BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: White House Comes After Bitcoin ep341

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

The White House on the offensive, Bhutan mining, bank insolvencies, pro-bitcoin presidential candidates and more on today's show.   💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: 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  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   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/ Been watching the show for a while? Like what you see? Help me cover my video costs by sending some sats over on my Geyser Fund page! https://geyser.fund/project/btcsessions

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions with our good friend, the soon-to-be streak-tipped, Nico from Simply Bitcoin coming to fill us in. Very excited. We're going to chat all kinds of stuff. The White House getting spicy with Bitcoin, some presidential candidates that are actually anti-C-C-cvd-C, all kinds of interesting stuff going down. The banks are doing banking fiat type things. Lots of stuff to discuss today. Anyways, this is live. Of course, anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay.

We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. Yeah. If you have not already, like, subscribe, share all those things super important. Shout out to those of you in the chat and shout out to everybody watching from Simpley's channel.

And I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we bring in, Nico, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is timechain calendar.com. We're sitting at $28,866 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 3,464 Sats. In terms of fees, guys, it's been all over the place lately. We've seen spikes to like well north of 100 sats per byte, 150 sats per byte.

And then we see lulls. Like right now, we're looking at 26 sats per byte next block. But with these numbers, I mean, don't take anything for granted. Use RBF. Get yourself some funds on lightning for your day-to-day expenditures and just plan ahead a little bit. And in terms of Bitcoin that have been mined, 92.21%, 19.36 million of them. And Mempool, purging anything below three sats per byte. We've got 606 megabytes for the transactions in the backlog.

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stack on this thing with one of their devices, with one of their embassy devices. You can set up Bitcoin core, lightning, mempool.spase, join market, a ton of other Bitcoin tools. You can host your data, files, passwords, photos, all of that stuff. You can also host Noster relays and Noster clients on this thing. It's a beast. You can get the Embassy 1. That's your entry level or the Mpc Pro if you're looking to go a little bit more hardcore and host everything on thing. And with that, I'm going to stop my rambling, by the way, head to start9.com. We need to bring in our buddy today. Here he comes. Mr. Nico. How you doing, man? Dude, I woke up this morning and I saw something in my hair and I went, I went to the mirror, bro,

and I had a blonde hair coming out. Did you pluck it? I plucked it because I was like, no, I can't ruin it. It has to be, you know, it has to be brown. It has to be untouched. It's going to happen all at once. It's suddenly, what is it, gradually, then suddenly, it's wanting to happen and then suddenly, bam, it's going to happen. That's how it works, man. Yeah, man, I'm super pumped. I'm going to be cutting my hair too, getting rid of the long hair.

And it's going to be interesting. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know what hairstyle I'm going to come up with. I'm not even going to recognize you. You're hitting the gym. You're dying your hair. You're cutting it. you're doing all kinds of things.

So it's just you're gradually becoming like a... I'm gradually becoming Ben. Yeah. What you need to do is you basically need to cut your hair like me. Dye the hair on the opposite side. So it's just like a mirror. And then we can just like mirror each other's movements as we show. Did this guy double himself up?

Oh, man. Amazing. Let's redecorate. Let's get... Wow. Awesome. So what's on your mind? What's going on this week? There's a lot. A lot. A lot. It's pretty crazy week. But I mean, I feel like we say that every week, Ben. Because there's always a lot. There's always, there's always, there's always a lot. Anyways, let's start with Michael Sailor's

vindication. Let's do that. Awesome. This is him on on. Yeah, there he is. Okay, here we go. So let's talk a little bit about earnings because in your core software business, software licenses revenue climbed 23%, subscription services revenue of 46%, but really the focus from the market, as per usual, since micro strategy is the largest publicly traded holder of Bitcoin is the fact that your impairment loss for Bitcoin was so much smaller than it has been in recent quarters. Walk me through the results and the flywheel between these two companies within the company. Sure. We have progressively built up a Bitcoin position up to 140,000 Bitcoin over the past two and a half years. When Bitcoin traded from $66,000 all the way down to $16,000, we took an impairment loss. And in the course of the last 12 weeks, that Bitcoin position has traded up $2 billion in fair market value.

So, of course, when it's trading down, there are tax consequences and indefinite and tangible write-offs, but when it's trading up, we reverse some of the tax accounting. The indefinite and intangible treatment hasn't changed any. But I think the short of it is the software business is very stable, and it's a cash cow, and we use it to pay our interest on our debt and to acquire more Bitcoin. And the Bitcoin itself is our belief that Bitcoin is our belief that Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is the ultimate digital scarcity network. And because Bitcoin has been moving up about 50% a year on average over the last three years,

the real key with Bitcoin is just to be able to hold on to it and stomach the volatility. And we have conditioned our shareholders and our bondholders to understand that we're long-term hoddlers. And because everybody is aligned in that interest, we're able to weather that volatility. And we end up doing very, very well as Bitcoin recovers. Yeah, and Bitcoin is recovering, though. We're still well off the all-time highs. We're up something like 70% since the start of the year. What do you attribute that recovery to? I think right now there are two twin drivers, right? There's the macroeconomic concerned about inflation. And as inflation takes place, people lose confidence in fiat currencies. And that means they start to realize that everything valued on cash flows is a currency derivative. And Bitcoin is not. not valued on cash flows. It's in a digital scarcity. The failure of the banks, Silvergate Bank, Signature Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, now First Republic Bank, causes people in the Western

world to start to lose a little bit of faith in the banking system. And they remember that Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace run by incorruptible software. So the phrase B-Uron Bank has emerged as an investment idea in the United States. But it's really a matter of financial survival elsewhere. And so the combination of that of that concern about inflation and counter-party risk with banks is driving Bitcoin's adoption. It's also being driven, by the way, by the crypto crackdown. And as people lose faith in crypto exchanges, crypto securities, and cryptocurrencies, there's a natural migration of capital from those crypto ecosystems into Bitcoin since it's viewed as the risk off safe haven asset of the crypto space.

Okay. Okay, man. So first of all, do you mind pulling up the screen, Ben? Yeah, let's do that. All right. So this is the first thing, right? That was the first thing I noticed, the smile. He's smiling. He hasn't been smiling for quite a long time. That was like an ear-to-ear, shit-in-grinned. Like, I'm, I told you, I told you guys. Yep, this is the vindication of Michael Saylor. And let's get through some of the, and I think this is incredibly insane. For, you know, for our audio listeners, right, it says, since micro strategy adopted a Bitcoin strategy, it is basically beating everything.

that hasn't adopted Bitcoin, right? So it compares it to, you know, the typical big tech stocks like Apple, Microsoft, Google, even Apple, you know, incredibly profitable company. It's up 51%. Micro Strategies up 166%. Oracle Enterprise Software stocks, right, which is very kind of similar to what Microstrategy does in a way. Oracle's up 72%.

Micro strategies up 166%. Now, what are the long-term consequences of this? Well, just like on the nation-state level with Naimu-Kale, in the next halving cycle, in the next bull run, it doesn't matter what type of misrepresentation, spin, propaganda, they try to throw up Bitcoin. It is going to become undeniable that adding Bitcoin to your treasury, whether you're a country or whether you're a public company is a necessity in today's world. And there's no amount of spin. They can't, it's going to become undeniable.

And I think that this is, that we're witnessing the vindication of Naimbukele and the vindication of Michael Saylor happening at the same time. And what's interesting, Ben, is that this little, I'm going to call it a meme, because that's what it is, this meme that Michael Saylor put up, it reminds me of this website called Price and Bitcoin 21, which Ben, I'm 100% sure you're familiar with. And what it does is it prices, you know, it prices, you know, either a house, S&P 500, gold oil compared to Bitcoin. And on a five-year time scale, Bitcoin is up in every single scenario, right?

If it comes to a new house, even with the housing, you know, costs basically two-xing over the last two years due to the money printing. If you were living on a Bitcoin standard, housing would actually be 46% cheaper. The S&P 500 would be 48% cheaper to you. Gold would be 47% cheaper. Ha-ha, Peter. shift oil 66% cheaper the dollar 66% cheaper life gets cheaper on a deflationary money and I think that this is the beginning of something I think that we can't even imagine then and I think the only comparison is when naim bukele made that announcement of making bitcoin legal tender at bitcoin 2021 it was

impossible for bitcoiners we we were talking about it we were talking about the game theory I have a really strong memory of that. Like it's inevitable before a country adopts it. But the actual thing happened in reality, man, it was a magical moment, right? So what's your take? That was a big moment. Like I remember sitting there and having this incredible appreciation for one, how important it was, but simultaneously how nobody else other than the people,

watching that live got how important it was. The world at large had no clue, and nor would they, or nor do they, for years to come. It's going to be so long before people understand the why and the how of all of this. And I mean, looking, so this is the other thing that strikes me about this is not only does this necessitate eventually people to have Bitcoin on their balance sheet. But it also drives home the fact that if you're not cash flow positive, you're fucked, right? Like the only reason Michael Saylor can do this is because he runs a company that's profitable. And with the additional income beyond expenses, he then stacks that as sats into the company treasury, which the treasury then grows. You can't do that.

when your company is operating at a loss, and this is really going to begin to differentiate all of the companies that are out there. If you're not running cash flow positive and you also aren't saving in Bitcoin, you're screwed. All these levered companies that are just zombies, they're going to get flushed.

100%. 100%. And it's market forces, right? It's market forces that are going to force a lot of these companies that perhaps they have an ideological stance against Bitcoin and it's going to force them to say, we have to adopt this thing. Like we have to put this on the treasury. You know, we have to basically be loyal to our shareholders.

You know, we are a public company. And I think that that's where it's heading. And these are very, this is vindication for Michael Saylor. This is I told you so, right? And all the all the BS that they gave him, all the, you know, all this guy. crazy or whatever, this number is just going to keep getting bigger and bigger, which is the crazy part, right? Anyways, I'm going to go to this.

I'm going to pivot to this, Ben, real quick, because it's a really fast one, right? But this is a Telegraph article, and it was basically talking about what happened in the beginning of the week, right? New Republic Bank consolidated into JP, shout out Jamie Diamond, into JP Morgan Chase, right? So it's a continuation of this trend where the smaller banks are continuing to consolidate into the bigger banks, right? So it's just literally a handful of banks, which is very convenient for the government because it makes it a whole lot easier to control, right? But the good news is, and we talk about this concept a lot on Simply Sessions, Ben, which is the idea of Bitcoin content creators are making Bitcoin content that is not getting out of the Bitcoin echo chamber.

But slowly but surely that Bitcoin echo chamber is breaking, right? So I'm going to read the name of this article just to kind of give a little bit of context. And it's called half of America's banks are potentially insolvent. This is how a credit crunch begins. And here's a graph of, you know, this is this is some bad stuff. But anyways, Ben, could you play the video of Tim Poole? And the reason is because the average everyday mainstream content creator is starting to wake up to the reality, but take a listen to what Tim recommended at the very end.

regulators seized First Republic Bank and struck a deal to sell the bulk of its operations to J.P. Morgan, Chase and Co. heading off a chaotic collapse that threatened to reignite the recent banking crisis. Yeah, dude, you stuffed the water toilet paper in the hole. I don't think you're stopping the waters. J.P. Morgan said it will assume all of First Republic's $92 billion in deposit. insured and uninsured. It is also buying most of the bank's assets, including about $173 billion in loans and $30 billion in securities. J.P. Morgan's going to blow up. What? How can you assume loans? Bad loans from bad bank? They're trying to slow this thing down. As part of the agreement, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp will share losses with J.P. Morgan on First Republic's loans.

You see, there they go. The agency estimated that its insurance fund would take a hit of $13 billion in the deal. J.P. Morgan also said it would receive $50 billion in financing from the FDIC. The U.S. government is propping up this deal because the system is imploding. I can't tell you what to do.

I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to buy Bitcoin. I already got some. I've been buying some recently. Yeah. Yeah. We're at that part of the movie, brother. Dude, it's, I love

seeing this because Tim, Tim was like my go to during the craziness of like 2020, 2021. He was like, the guy screaming like, this is insane. Everything's insane. Why is everything insane? He was like my doom porn for a good couple of years there. And to see him like, and he was kind of like on the Bitcoin train a little bit then. But like, that's, that's a pretty stark like that's he's, he's fallen down a new. part of the rabbit hole, it would seem.

Yeah, yeah. And shout out to Max and Stacey for really being the vanguard of that effort. And then there's been a couple videos, which we've played on Simply Sessions, of him saying, I regret. Why did I listen to Max? Why didn't I do that? But it's getting to the point where he sees it and he's like, it's Bitcoin. Like, we don't have another alternative.

And it's just so important because this is, this is the heavy lift. The heavy lift is penetrating into the mainstream consciousness, which we have not been able to do as Bitcoin content creators because it's been kind of seen as niche. But I think that over the next five, ten years, Ben, I think what we consider niche now will become mainstream. And I think that Tim is an indication of that, him saying stuff like that on his very, very popular show. So I don't know how often you're around Normies.

But you're still, I imagine. having a difficult time, even with like banking failures, having people be like, oh, that's super interesting. Like nobody, like regular day-to-day people. Like, I mean, Tim, Tim is kind of on top of things. But like, so I, the reason I say this is I just, I love this meme so much that is going around. And, and, uh, Adam, Denver Bitcoin, uh, shared it.

And he just made such a good point. It's the one to like the guy at the grill. like flipping burgers. He's literally like, man, that's crazy. You catch the game last night? Yep. And Adam said, if there was only one single meme to describe everything about the year 2023, it'd be this one.

Whoever originally authored this just absolutely nailed it. It's so true because like all of all of the regular people in my life that I discuss this kind of or try to bring up this kind of stuff too, their eyes just glaze over. They have no idea what it means, what the implications are. And it's all like they've got other stuff going on. They just don't care. And it's kind of like, all right, yeah, whatever.

Like it doesn't affect me and it never will. So like, let's talk about the game. And you're like, this affects you directly. It's currently affecting you with your purchasing power. And it might affect you when you go to your bank tomorrow and it doesn't work. Yep, exactly. No, dude, you literally hit the nail on that. head with that meme bro. I can't relate to normies anymore, bro. I just like we're operating on

different wavelengths. Yeah. It's tough. And, uh, but that's why it's so important that people like Tim that do have the ear of a lot of normies that are addicted to the doom porn and they see the clown world happening and they tune into that. But there's a very powerful message, Bitcoin. And then they, they start to think like, what do you mean Bitcoin? Like, what is this Bitcoin thing? And then that leaves that. Is that the opposite of what I just saw? Exactly, right? Then they start to listen, they stopped listening to the guy in the suit on TV.

Anyways, this was absolutely bonker news. The tiny kingdom of Bhutan secretly held millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. Well, that happened earlier on the week. And then this also happened. This all kind of released around the same time. And the reason this news released, Ben, was because of the Celsius bankruptcy. Right. But this is kind of old news, but the kingdom of Bhutan has been quietly mining Bitcoin for years.

And, you know, that came out. This came out yesterday. And it was huge news. So, you know, it's just quietly mining Bitcoin and then, well, bam. Bhutan plans a $500 million fund for crypto mining in the Himalayas. Bhutan's investment arm and NASDAQ listed company BitDeer plans to seek investor funds to worth up to $500 million that will be used. to develop green crypto mining in the Himalayan kingdom. Fundraising targeting institutional investors will begin at the end of May.

The goal is to set up carbon-free digital mining that taps Bhutan's abundant hydroelectric power, according to a joint statement Wednesday. Mining is the least risky way for Bhutan to tap crypto opportunities, and for now the nation will focus on Bitcoin. Quote, it's important for us to look at assets that are low volume, high value, or digital, assets for that matter and try to position ourselves in a way that we can be competitive globally over time to build our economy. Do you hear that? A big strategy to build out the economy of the kingdom of Bhutan is going to come from Bitcoin mining. And we know that a big percentage of the

country's GDP is already coming from its hydroelectric power capacity, sorry, capabilities. Right. And what happens? Right. It says, It's abundant, which means it's abundant. That means that there's an excess supply. And if there's an excess supply of power of electricity, that is sweet, sweet Satoshi's for Bitcoin miners. They absolutely love this. But Ben, this is like, this is crazy.

So we have El Salvador lockdown. The Kingdom of Bhutan locked down. Guaranteed. Like, they're basing their countries, GDP and their economy in its future on Bitcoin mining. And that is a big investment. and I have a suspicion that is just the beginning of it. Yeah. I love seeing this.

You're going to see more of it. And I would be surprised if this is not the only low-key country doing this. Because you're getting real-world examples of people being like, hey, we have a ton of hydro here. And we don't have the transmission lines or the need for all the capacity that we have. Right now we're just like letting the damn run wide open most of the time or a good portion of the time. Why not just use all that energy all the time and have a buyer at all times? Why not? Why not? If somebody has access to some form of energy that is being wasted, it is, dare I say, absolutely moronic to not take advantage of it and to not be.

getting every bit of revenue that you can. It allows you to expand your economy. It allows you to expand your electric infrastructure. It allows you to do a lot of great things for stuff that you were literally throwing in the garbage. It's going to happen more. Dude, it's inevitable. It's inevitable. You cannot resist Bitcoin's incentives. Bitcoin's incentives stay winning. Anyways, Ben, the big news of today is, I am, here it is. Boy, Akasha. Robert F. Kennedy, big, big deal. And the reason that it's a big deal, he was just announced as a speaker at the Bitcoin

conference, of which Ben and I are going to be at as well. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is going to be speaking at the Bitcoin Conference. And the reason that this is a massive deal is because Robert F. Kennedy has gone out publicly to advocate against central bank digital currencies. He says, this is an old tweet. It says the Fed just announced it will introduce its Fed now central bank digital currency in July. CBDCs greased the slippery slope to financial slavery and political tyranny. While cash transactions are anonymous, a CBDC will allow the government to surveil, all our private financial affairs. The central bank will have the power to enforce dollar limits on our transactions,

restricting where you could spend money, where you can spend money, when you could spend money, and when money expires. And it's not only Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It's also Ron DeSantis as well. Have a video for you guys. But first, before we get to that, take a look at Brad Sherman's response to this announcement, It's absolutely hilarious. So 60 years, the late great Robert F. Kennedy went after tax evaders as U.S. Attorney General.

Today, his son is slated to speak at a conference for tax evaders. I followed up with inflation evaders asterisks because I think that's what he meant. But anyways, here is his take on specifically on cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin. It says cryptocurrencies led by Bitcoin along with other crypto technologies are a major innovation engine. it is a mistake for the U.S. government to hobble the industry and drive innovation elsewhere. Biden's proposed 30% tax on cryptocurrency mining is a bad idea. Yes, energy uses a concern, but Bitcoin mining uses about the same as video games, and no one is calling for ban on those.

The environmental argument is a selective pretext to suppress anything that threatens elite power structures, Bitcoin, for example. Some advocate tight controls of cryptocurrency to prevent. they're used by criminals, but it isn't just for criminals who want privacy. So do dissidents and ordinary citizens. Governments harass their enemies and crushed dissent by controlling accounts and payment platforms until we restore trust in government. We need cash and crypto to ensure freedom.

Now, that isn't just the bullish news. The bullish news here is this is a bipartisan thing. The two most popular, they're both in second place. So on the Democratic side, we have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and he's trailing Joe Biden. And then on the Republican side, you have Ron DeSantis, who's currently the governor of Florida, who is in second place to Donald Trump.

That is crazy. So there's a non-zero chance that in 2024, there might be a Bitcoin president in the freaking White House. This is nuts, dude. Anyways, Ben, do you mind playing the clip with DeSantis? Here it goes. The danger of the digital currency is that, one, they want to make that,

the sole currency, they want to get rid of crypto, which my view is, is like if you want to invest in crypto, it's up to you. You can do it. I mean, like, you can make those decisions. But they don't like crypto because they can't control crypto. So they want to put everything in a central bank digital currency. And I guarantee you, if they're able to ever get away with that, they will impose ESG and social credit scores onto that. And that's going to be a huge reduction in freedom for people in this country. And so what we've said, what we're going to say in Florida is they haven't done it yet. I don't think Congress would authorize it, but if the Fed or the Treasury tries to do it unilaterally, in Florida will have a prohibition against that. And I think that that's ensuring your financial independence and making sure that we don't have a financial surveillance state where they know every transaction that you're making. I think that that's fundamentally wrong. So we're recognizing the dangers with this agenda.

Dude. Damn, strong work. I love seeing stuff like that where individual states are effectively drawing road signs and directions to where the most freedom is. Yep. Yep. And then that creates competition between the different states. But what I'm most bullish about Ben, because it's been kind of like a troubling pattern, is that it started to become part of. in a little bit, like the Republican states and the Republican senators are friendly towards

Bitcoin. And then it was on the Democratic side that were like they were a little bit more hostile, but that all just changed. That all just changed, man. So I am so incredibly bullish. I can't believe if we were having these discussions five years ago, we would have been laughed out of the room. Well, and think of, because I mean, you're going to have, you know, each, each group is,

effectively, they're going to have to choose their candidate, right? Like, I mean, maybe, you know, maybe Biden will just run again and they'll just default to him. But if not, like, you know, automatically just picture the debates. Like the debates within the parties deciding who's going to be their official nominee. And like even just on the Republican side, having DeSanda's in there, like pointing at CVDCs being like, this shit smells funky. We need to not be doing this. And then it's clear that even though there's a possibility that you might not see as much of it this time around, it's now, it's on the world stage. And it's on the, you know, it's on the ballot now effectively is what's happening.

Yeah, 100%. It's on the ballot. And, you know, one of the things that I like, Ben, as well is that one of the things that I like as well is that Ron, Santis isn't just all talk, right? Like he's coming through, and it was just announced today, says, if you could pull it up, if you don't mind. Says Desantis anti-CBDC bill just passed the House and Senate. I brought a select few of our members up to Florida's Capitol to meet with the

governor's team, the chief financial officer team, the Office of Financial Regulation. In order for us to push legislation, we have to build relationships with our elected officials. The House voted on our bill while we were there. So now it's just missing basically DeSantis signing off on the bill, but we already know how he feels. Now, so there's that side, right? There's a side of freedom. You know, it's bipartisan. We have a Democrat who is in second place for the presidential candidacy.

We have a Republican. And then let's talk about the forces of darkness. The party of Green. And let's see what they're doing. So this is something that we've been covering on Simply Sessions for quite a while now. We were speculating how the Biden administration felt for a very long time based on patterns that, based on patterns that we were picking up, right? And those patterns were basically everything that Nick Carter laid out in Operation Shookpoint 2.0, Caitlin Long's Bank, which was rejected a federal banking charter. but they really came out of the closet when the White House released the economic report of the president,

and it's a yearly release. And in that report, I mean, I think this quote says it best. The amount of attention given to digital assets is substantial, especially when viewed in comparison to other areas of financial services that have arguably been far more detrimental over the past few weeks. the assessment is striking in its definitive tone and broad brush strokes, right? And for anyone who doesn't remember, 20 pages were dedicated to making the case as to why central banking is a good thing, why you need a state for money, and you can't have money without a state, and why central bank digital currencies are the future, and why Bitcoin is

fundamentally a bad idea. And of course, they use financial stability, they use the environment, and they use terrorism and money laundering and all, you know, all the buzzwords that we're used to hearing, right, as the excuses as to why, right? But we know now that's BS based on, look, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It's not just Bitcoiners saying this. We're laying out the case. And, of course, on the Republican side, you have Ron DeSantis saying that as well, right? So I don't agree with that narrative. I think it's a BS narrative. I think it has to do with they want to be able to control these things. So this was the big breaking news of this week, which was Biden proposes a 30% climate change tax on crypto mining. We already had a response by, you know, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., basically saying that that was BS. You know, it was over to quote him, right, it's not Bitcoiners.

It's not our opinions. He says it's somewhat overstated. It uses as much energy as the video game industry. not to mention that Bitcoin mining uses isolated energy. That's why it's cheap. That's why it makes sense to mine there. But anyways, let's take a look at some of the reasons as to, some of the reasons they gave, right?

So the White House is trying to persuade Congress to pass a 30% tax on the electricity use in cryptocurrency mining in the next federal budget in order to minimize the nascent industry's impact on climate change. Quote, crypto miners, high energy consumption has negative spillovers on the environment, quality of life and electricity grids where these firms locate across the country. The President's Council of Economic Advisors argues in a blog post that they will appear on the White House website on Tuesday to which Yahoo News gained advanced access. The post will lay out the case for the digital asset mining energy excise tax,

which the C-EA-C-E-A writes is, quote, an example of the administration's effort to fight climate change and reduce energy prices, bro. look at this point, they're spitting in our faces. Anyways, currently crypto mining firms do not have to pay for the full cost they impose on others in the form of local environmental pollution, high energy prices, the impacts of increased greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. Like, dude, like, it is, and again, it's not Bitcoiners debunking this. You have, you have a president, a Democratic presidential candidate literally saying,

what they're saying is a misrepresentation. It's a spin. It's a narrative, right? And I think that's what makes Robert F. Kennedy extremely powerful. And that's why I'm so hyped that he's speaking at the Bitcoin conference. Yeah. Yeah. It's bipartisan now.

And again, I'm going to give a shout out to some of the more like progressive bitcoinsers out there because they're also seeing the value of it. Jason, Jason Mayer, he wrote the progressives case for Bitcoin. Just got launched by Bitcoin magazine. he's going to be down in Miami and he's going to be on the show tomorrow night for why are we bullish but like we need more people like him saying like because again

Bitcoin's an open network it can contribute value to everyone it's just you need people in your cohort that see how it benefits you because it literally does benefit everyone and so you're now starting to see progressive voices be like well I mean like it's useful

for us in this way. And you're going to see a lot more of that. I think, I think, like you said, presidential Democratic candidate, that's pretty striking to me. Like I, I, and even, even a Republican presidential candidate is, is striking to me. But like, again, I, I assumed we wouldn't see a ton of Democrats jumping on. But here we go. Gradually, then suddenly, I suppose. Gradually, gradually, then suddenly. And I think we're in the suddenly. I think we're in the infancy at the very beginning of the suddenly phase, for sure, man.

I think so. I want to, Nico, you got to give my meme a rating here in regarding some of the fud around the environmental stuff. I got to say, I love the cleanup Bitcoin Twitter handle because they get like all of the engagement that they get is just Bitcoiners trolling them. So I got to share this one. I'll read from it first. Basically, they said in Montana and across the nation, Bitcoin mining has caused devastating environmental impacts. Check out at EWG's excellent case studies. And then they have like this image. And I'll show you here. But they have this image of, of,

a field and it's like they almost look like fortresses with barbed wire or razor wire surrounded by open prairie so i took a i took the woman from uh from that horror movie uh oh i know he her hierarchy right yeah yeah i backed off her with like a beautiful sunset over the open prairie and she's screaming her face off yeah anyway Dude, it's so laughable. That's a great, that's a great meme, bro. And for that, Ben, I'm going to have to give it a Buddha. Awesome. I love it.

Yeah, that's my meme score. What would you rate that meme, Ben? I mean, I'd rate it. Wait, wait, wait, before, before, hold on, we have to cue the epic music. Okay. All right, Ben. No pressure. No pressure. One brand you there.

of sick-ass sunglasses. Oh, man. Oh, jeep. That was fun. Dude, it's coming up. We're kind of equipped. Before you go, maybe together we should plug our little event that we've got going on. Here's the page for it.

Beautifully done. Art is not dead. We'll be in Miami together on Tuesday. May 16th at Bitcoin Grove, 11 till 3-ish, something like that, 11 till 2 or 3, something like that. Anyways, you can, if you want to come down, Nico is going to get his hair dyed by my beautiful wife, Mrs. Sessions. He's going to get a streak. We shall then touch the tips together. Here's the description. Upon successful hair-died treatment, two streaks shall come together to be as one. We'll touch the tips result in a massive price pump. Is this part of

Yellow's prophecy. Was this the trigger at Balaji Fersaw in his $1 million price prediction? No one can say for sure, but you can damn sure that attending will make you part of the Touch Tips tribe forever. So yeah, come on down. You can go to BTCSessions.ca.ca. slash touch tips and grab a ticket. We'll do something live there, I imagine, even as we'll maybe do a little something. And we'll, I've got some swag to give away as well. And DW in the chat says, they're going to cross the streams. Yes.

New hashtag being born. Cross the streams. Touch the tips. All of the things will be crossing and mish-mashing. I don't know what's going to go down. It's going to be madness, bro. It's going to be madness. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Really excited. It's always a privilege and an honor, Ben. Guys, this was your Simply sessions. Good to see you, man. Talk to you soon. See, bro. All right, everybody. A few more things before we clock out. I got some updates on a few apps and stuff.

You might want to check out. So, of course, if you're using Blue Wallet, if you've been using Blue Wallet for your Lightning solution, the custodial option, they are suspending that. They're no longer focusing on custodial lightning. They're doing all full self-custody options. You can still use the lightning stuff to link up to L&D hub and kind of run your own thing or link another external wallet.

But you need to get your funds off. They were going to stop this entirely as of the end of April and you had to get your funds off before then. They've extended the deadline to the end of May. So if you have not done it yet, go to Blue Wallet, check if you have any funds in a Lightning wallet that is specifically Blue Wallet and move it somewhere else. So if you want some good suggestions, moon is really easy, M-U-U-N. You can move into something like Breeze or Phoenix. If you really want, you can set up your own lightning node on voltage or, you know, on starting your Start 9 embassy. Or, you know, if you really just, you just need to move it quick.

You need something simple out of the box. You don't want to set anything up. Wallet of Satoshi or Albi have custodial options where you can just send over instantly and then figure it out later. But go do it now if you haven't already done it. You don't want to get to the end of May and realize that, you know, you had 50 or 100 bucks sit in there and it's gone. All right. So do it. Also, speaking of Albi, showed it to Albi.

They just launched their Noster Wallet Connect now available on Umbrell. And I'm sure it'll come to other Node options soon. It says that Noster Wallet Connect allows users to import their existing Bitcoin lightning wallets into apps. developers can offer one-click or even automated Bitcoin payments with just a few lines of code alongside the ZeroOct2 wallet API. Albi's SDK now also includes the Noster Wallet Connect API, which exchanges payment requests and lightning invoices securely over the Nostra protocol. The dedicated Albi Relay ensures the payments and messages are not published, but reliably sent

to the receiver. Apps are able to conduct payments on users' behalf. and depending on permissions given by the user and receive a pre-image back for confirmation. The long and the short of it is effectively your Albi wallet, your lightning wallets, and Nostr are all becoming very much interoperable and easier to do and easier to self-host. And that's an awesome thing. So you're going to start seeing plug-in. So, oh, you run an Unable node with a Lightning node.

Oh, you can plug that into Albi. Oh, you have an Albi wallet. Well, you can use that for Nostra, which is already the case. Oh, you have Albi wallet connected to your nostril. You can log into this other website with it. You're going to see all kinds of interesting stuff pop out of this. So kudos to Albi. Just a side note for me.

I've got my voltage node linked up to my Albi, linked up to my crowdfunding stuff, linked up to everything. I can see it in my browser. I have full control over it on my phone. Everything's right there. It's awesome. So check it out. Up next, Stacker News has launched.

subs for Bitcoin and Nostra. So Stacker News is effectively like a lightning powered Reddit. So instead of upvotes, you zap people, you know, a sat every time you upvote something. It's linked into a lightning wallet. You pull it out whatever you want. And they just, it used to be a lot of just Bitcoin content, but a lot of Noster stuff started popping up because it's very Bitcoin adjacent. They felt the need to create different subs. So now you can go and sub for the Nostra feed or the Bitcoin feed. And there's probably going to be more. coming down the pipe. So that's awesome.

If you haven't been to stacker. Dot news, check it out. Well worth, well worth taking a look. And then one more thing on the Noster front. This is a cool new client that I came across called primal. Primal. Primal.

Not a, sorry, blah, good spelling. P-R-I-M-A-L dot net. And yeah, pretty awesome feed here. They've got a lot of trending stuff over to the side, the most zapped. notes out there. And just the whole flow of it is is pretty badass. I've got to say it's it's

pretty good. So anyways, check it out. Always love seeing new Noster clients. A couple of the things. Toddled twins. I saw somebody talking about it earlier in the chat there. I can't recall who brought it up. I'm I'm going to pull it because I got to say, I think it was. Geez, Rand. Rand brought it up, I think. Anyways, yes, this is, Tuttle Twins is basically

a very libertarian-based children's cartoon show. So if you're kind of sick of the messaging that your kids are currently getting from other options, then maybe throw the Tuttle Twins their way and see if they take to it. Anyways,

they did a Bitcoin episode, which is super awesome. I need to show a clip from it because this is my favorite part of the episode. I thought it was so funny. But you got to take a look here. This is a clip from Tuttle twins, the Bitcoin, it's called Bitcoin and the Beast was the episode. Here we go. So how do we make money

that's easy to carry but hard to create? Well, one solution is Bitcoin. What about gold? Gold is rare and hot to mine. But because gold was heavy and hot to carry. Government started using paper money that represented gold installed in a big vault. Oh, like a coupon where you've been five dollars of paper money for five dollars of gold. Exactly. The government couldn't take more money without mining more gold and it worked great. People built wealth. Society thrived. Paper money makes so much sense.

But then governments became greedy. Instead of making the same amount of paper money as gold, they just started printing new money out of thin air. Paper money makes no sense. People worked their whole lives saving paper money, only to lose everything inflation. When the government made creating money easy. When money is easy to make, society begins to break.

I love that. The quick turnaround. the paper money makes so much sense. But then governments printed way more money than there was gold. Paper money makes no sense. Toss us the bell off the side. So awesome. Anyways, you can watch the full episode for free.

Just go follow them on Twitter at Tuttle Twins TV. So T-U-T-T-L-E-T-L-E-Twins TV. And, yeah, it's basically they have an app that you can download and you can watch it for free. I'm going to have one of the guys, one of the creators, on Why Are We Bullish, probably after Miami. So very excited for that. And also they said that a lot of the inspiration for the show, a lot of the information was based around the Bitcoin standard from Safe. They even had Safe come on and do a little hello and love the episode.

They also had Natalie Brunel come on for some Q&A with a live chat afterwards. Yeah, it was badass. So stoked for this. I got to show it to my daughter. She's probably old enough that she'd appreciate something like this. So I love seeing stuff like this. What else we got here? A couple of things.

Oh, yeah. Speaking of Save Aene, it's the five-year anniversary of the release of the Bitcoin standard. So kudos to Sabadine. Awesome to see how much things have grown. Funny story, after he released the Bitcoin Standard five years ago, shortly thereafter, his first public speaking gig was in my city for an event called the Bitcoin Rodeo, which we're doing again this year, July 4th and 5th, by the way. So follow at the Bitcoin Rodeo.

And yeah, if you're in the Calgary area, come check it out. It should be a good time. But yeah, that was the SAFE's first speaking gig after printing the Bitcoin standard, which is kind of awesome. Yeah, so why are we bullish tomorrow? Very excited. David Bailey from Bitcoin Magazine, host of the man that's put, on the Miami event.

Jason Mayer, author of the Progressives case for Bitcoin, and Brian DeMint, author of Bitcoin Evangelism, and also he's working with Orange Pill app, which I'm an advisor for as well. So I'm sure he's going to come talk some Bitcoin social layer stuff with us. It should be a good time. I'm very excited for this one. And speaking of Miami, it's coming up quick.

Holy crap. Like, what is it? 14, the two weeks from today is industry day, I think. Holy hell. Yeah. So if you haven't got tickets yet, you're running out of time. But 150 speakers, 15,000 attendees, 2,000 companies. This is my fourth time attending.

I hit up the original one in San Francisco in 2019. Obviously, 2020 was locked down. But I went in 21 and 22, and I got to come back. It's a barrage on the senses. There's so much going on. It's very exciting. You can focus your time and you can do a ton of stuff. If you're looking for stuff to do while you're down there, here's a little sneak peek of what I'm going to be hitting up.

Obviously, Benico will be doing that again Tuesday, May 16th. I'm going to be at, thank God for Bitcoin. I'm going to be doing like a very basic kind of wallet introduction for some of the people that are there that maybe aren't as familiar with Bitcoin and are starting their job. journey. So I'm excited for that. Also, I'm going to be hitting the Bitcoin cocktail party at the Gale Hotel on Tuesday, May 16th in the evening then. I've got my cold card workshop. By the way, alarm bells, there's one ticket left for this. Who's going to be the one to get it? One ticket left for the cold card deep dive workshop in Miami Beach, Florida on Wednesday, May 17th, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. we're going to start from scratch,

get you through the basics of the cold card, set it up, use it, back it up, recover it. And we're going to dive into some of the cool features that a lot of people just don't even know where there. There's so much awesome stuff. So anyways, if you want to check that out, you can head over to my website, BTCSessions.ca.

It's over on the right under in-person workshops. That's where you can grab tickets. What else is going on? Of course, Bitcoin Happy Hour, the pleb party. That's going to be awesome. Is this the right one? Did I even click on the right one?

No, I didn't. This is the one. Yes, Anders and Pubby Toxic Happy Hour Pleb Party, Miami brought to you by swan.com. This is going to be a blast. I'm super excited. This was so fun when they did it in L.A.

Or Anders did in L.A. And it's growing. Yeah, if you're going to one party, go to the toxic app happy hour club party. That's going to be a lot of fun. The Friday night, I am hitting up Nostrich karaoke.

Some of you would love that. Some of you may cringe. I don't care. I'll be there anyways. Hit up Nostrich karaoke. And then the Saturday I'm going to hit up the Bitcoin 2023 after party. So holy crap, that's a lot.

And that's like outside of the stuff that I'm speaking at at the conference. I'm going to be doing a content creators panel. Nico's moderating. We've also got, I think, Mick from Geiser Fund. And we've got Carla from the crypto couple that's going to be on it. That's going to be a lot of fun. I'm also doing a chat with Coin Kite and Cold Card and everything the first morning with

D from Coin Kite. And that's going to be a lot of fun too. So, yeah, check it out. Should be awesome. Anyways, guys, I'm going to start rounding it out. Of course, like, subscribe. share, those things help a ton. You can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below if you want to help in another way.

Hodel, hoddle, coin kite, nunchucks, start nine. They're all down below. Grab a ticket for Bitcoin, 2023. Use code BTC sessions for 10% off if you're grabbing a last minute ticket. At least that'll take off a chunk of it. And if you really liked what you saw, you can grab me for a one-on-one session on my website. Or you can drop a tip at either my tip page, which is just on my main website, hit the tips button. Or you can, I set up Geyser Fund.

Geyser is awesome. And I've already had a few tips come in. So you can just go to geyser. Dot fund and you'll be able to find me, just search BTC sessions. Super simple. You can just use Lightning and send over a few sats. And you can leave a message with it as well.

And I'll see it over at the top. So again, I see Mick and James and civil BTC Saber. So thank you guys already for the stats that have come in. But easiest way to tip the show is go to geyser. and search me. Anyways, with that, I am out. Thank you guys so much for watching.

And I'll see you guys tomorrow on Why Are We Bullish for your daily session. We have BTC sessions. Bitcoin is after your money. You can't stop it. Get yourself some Bitcoin and hold it yourself. Pure to pure exchange. You know, people are going to organically come to it and gravitate towards it, especially in the world we're living in now.

It's incredible. It's a great tool. I can't wait to see it proliferate everywhere.