BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: White House Report Considers Mining Ban ep286

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

White House may consider proof of work ban, Bank of Russia greenlights cross border crypto payments, Poolin mining pool suspends withdrawals, P2P bitcoin seller sees jail time - this 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 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 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. Time for our news roundup this week. Lots of stuff to cover. We got Russia leaning a little bit more into Bitcoin and quote unquote crypto. We've got the White House, poo-pooing the whole idea. I mean, they said some positive stuff, but they have a report that came out just today, I think. We got some stuff from the SEC. We got Poulin. We got we got. We've got a whole bunch of stuff to cover. We've got, and obviously, Nico is here from Simply Bitcoin to take us through a lot of the goings on. Give us a good summary of what's been up. So plenty of stuff to talk about today. So stay tuned here. Of course, 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. The thing sucks.

If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share, all those things, super important. They help get more eyeballs on this content. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we dive into the news, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is the bitbo.io dashboard. We're sitting at $19,311 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up $5,179.

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CoinKite.com, use code BTC sessions for 5% off everything in the store. ShakePay.com, if you're in Canada, easy ways to be a stack and more sats. You can e-transfer in and out with no deposit or withdrawal fees, including withdraw your Bitcoin to your own self-custody, as you should be doing. There's a thin spread as well. If you sign up with the link down below, you get $30 for free after your first $100 purchase. You get $30 for free also every time you refer somebody via your own referral link.

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important stuff. So check them out, privacypros.i.o slash bTC sessions and you can get a little deal on your bill foddle. Before we bring in Nico, of course, shoutouts here really quick. Had a bunch from the past week. So just I'll quickly scroll through here. Thank you guys for the boosters. Those are always huge and helpful. So keep up a good work from Fly 54. Joey bullish on internationally growing bends, more bends and friends, surfing Bitcoin, OG tutorial and hashtag the original golden streak. I like that. Wait, sailing away. This is the future. Thanks, man. Then they fight you. The new segment with Nico shows you that Bitcoin is winning.

I will be watching Ben's news vids on YouTube. Keep stacking. Thanks, man, from JPC. Make sure you subscribe to Simply Bitcoin as well. Who else? Booster shot. Thank you, cryosats for the booster shot. let's fucking go from Norman Remnant. Good job guys from Robert Pacific Northwest. Thanks Ben. I've learned so much from you and continue to do so. Keep it up. I appreciate you.

Ben do me a favor. Tell Rinaldo the IDAD dude. I love him. Fuck Craig wrong. We're all the Hodlonaut. Thanks, buddy. From Zika Boy. Do it live from T-Ball. Ice cold baby from cryosats again. Fix the money. Fix the world.

Thanks guys. Fix the family. Fix society. Thank you. Chris. from Chris Betcher, who is on just recently from JPC. Another booster shot. A few bulls. I'm bullish to Bitcoin Grandma. I love that Bitcoin Gramm is on here. Michael Matilof, thank you, dude.

And allow cool joy. Allow cool joy. Great episode. Thanks, man. Second breakfast, great talk. I can relate to Chris's feeling of isolation. Seems like everyone is more concerned with their favorite sports team is doing

rather than learning new skills and maintaining good health and the dad bod. I like that. And then Joey one more time, BTC session has been for leader of the council. Ben's unfungible, the one and only golden streak, golden heart. That's great. All bends are equal, man. All bends, they all have a special place in my heart. Anyways, enough of this ranting.

We need to get in exactly what you guys came here for. So let's bring in Nico. Dude, it's good to see you, man. Yep. Happen to be on BTC sessions. It's always a great time. Yeah, simply sessions. There you go.

Simply session. Well, you flipped it right on me, bro. The background wasn't pulled up yet. Dude, how are you doing? Good, bro. Good, bro. Another week making Bitcoin content. Yeah.

It couldn't be better than that. Yeah. Yeah. You got to love it. And, I mean, making Bitcoin content consistently. and self-sustainably in bare markets is a beautiful thing to see. It is. It is.

It is definitely. Yeah. I love it, man. Well, let's chat what's been going on. I'll bring up your feed here. But what's been top of line, man? What has been happening this week? Yeah, man.

Continuation, Ben, this is a recurring theme that we've been covering for the last couple of weeks, bro. the continuation of in this particular i'm going to make the case that it's the continuation of the separation of money and state and also the u.s dollar is losing its place as global reserve currency and because they weaponized it they weaponized the dollar they used it to go after washington's political opponents and you know basic game theory obviously they're going to look they're going to seek alternatives whatever those alternatives are right So this is Bank of Russia. Bank of Russia agrees to legalize Bitcoin or crypto for cross-border payments.

Last week when we reported on the show, it was Iran the same thing. And then it was a Russian minister. He hinted that Russia was going to do it. But this is actually them admitting to it. It's kind of a big deal. This is the Bank of Russia. The country's central bank has reportedly admitted that cross-border payments in crypto are inevitable in the current geopolitical conditions. the Bank of Russia was the largest opponent of Bitcoin in Russia, right? They specifically said they don't want that, right? Anyways, it goes on to say the Deputy Finance Minister Mosef reportedly said that the Bank of Russia and the finance ministry expected to legitimize cross-border payments in crypto soon.

Mosef outlined the importance of enabling local crypto services in Russia. Why are they all saying this? It is necessary to do this in Russia involving entities, supervised by the central bank, which are obliged to comply with anti-money laundering and know your customer requirements. And the reason the article goes on to say that they want to do this, Ben, is because they need an alternative to facilitate cross-border transactions. And they imply that's because of U.S. sanctions, right? So the two countries that are on the U.S. government sanction list, Iran and Russia, are seeking viable alternatives. And I'll make the case.

that it's not crypto it's bitcoin what country is going to want to use crypto if the devs of that crypto project could manipulate the monetary policy whether is it inflated fork it etc etc they know if they use bitcoin they're safe there right so what we always say ben bitcoin is the money of enemies yeah well and the and to your point um not only just the if it can be manipulated and debased and everything like that. But, I mean, look at what happened with the whole tornado cache thing. They're literally sanctioning specific

anybody that dealt with tornado cash. They can, because it's an account-based system, it's very easy to be like, well, sanction that. And not only that, but centralization of node runners and proof of stake, centralization of stakers, which is inherently baked into that system, is very easy to then begin to,

censor transactions. And so why would two countries that are trying to escape a system that allows for censorship of transactions turn to a system that it's very clear is equally prone to censor transactions or there's that government creep that's basically infiltrating that system. So yeah, I mean, the people that have the least to lose are the ones that are going to go to the freest systems first, right? And that's what we see. That's what we see here. 100%.

And it's like water, man. They're just going to flow to something that the least resistible path. And it's just a matter of time before they wake up to Bitcoin as a viable alternative. It looks like it's happening. And I'm going to refer to this awesome article that Alex Gladstein wrote back in the day. and he basically was making the argument that Bitcoin is the Trojan horse for freedom, and dictatorships are going to try to separate the freedom-enabling technology from the anti-censorship, anti-debasement technology,

but they're inextricable, right? Once they take that pill and the people of Russia figure out, hey, wait a second, why exactly should I hold on to the ruble? So, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be interesting. And these are just, again, like we're seeing this, and because we're kind of entrenched in this and we're looking at this type of stuff every single day. But the world at large doesn't truly know what's going on with this stuff yet.

You know, your everyday normie friends, you know, assuming Bitcoiners still have those. But probably a few severed ties there for the past couple of years. But nonetheless, it will eventually hit the mainstream, probably at first in a negative light. And so I think we're in for a lot of pushback on a lot of this in particular because it's so easy to manipulate the thoughts of individuals if you just sit them in front of CNN or something. But in the end, I think it'll just be inevitable that right now, yes, it's the pariah states that gravitate towards it because they have no other option. but sooner or later it's going to be the everyday Joe that goes holy crap they're printing how many more trillions I you know I I understand it's volatile but I can I can now begin to zoom out and realize what's happening so absolutely we shall see but so let's as a little segue here it's it's interesting to see um you know Russia Iran others saying huh this could be useful and then you know closer to home we have something else going on don't we yes we do and

i'm glad that um i'm glad that you glad that you did that segment i mean that segue because that's exactly what's happening and connect the dots everybody coincidentally all these reports right and i actually have a tweet of the things that have happened right um all in the last months michael Sailor Microstrategy sued for tax fraud. White House report banned Bitcoin mining. Open source software sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury. Now, what are you, are you trying to tell me that has nothing to do with this? Nothing, right? Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. So let's check this out, Ben. The name of the report, very ominous, right? Climate and energy implications of crypto assets in the United States. Now, to be fair, okay, because I'm a little bit, I'm, I would call myself a little bit more

militant a little bit, not as optimistic, but I am going to read a text from David from the Bitcoin Policy Institute because I wanted to get his take, right? It's good to get everybody's takes, not just Nico Jones. It says the OSTP report is more or less positive for Bitcoin. Contrary to popular fear, the OSTP did not call for a ban on proof of work, though the report demonstrated some misunderstandings. It acknowledged the benefits Bitcoin mining can have in terms of renewables and flared waste method and acknowledge that less energy-intensive consensus mechanisms like proof-of-state come with real trade-offs. Bitcoin Policy Institute will continue to educate policymakers on the benefits of Bitcoin and combat false narratives about mining's environmental impact.

Now, I get it. Playing politics, Bitcoin Policy Insitudes is the lobbying arm of Bitcoin in Washington, D.C., right? They launched after Coin Center, even though I love the guys, Bredo, good dudes, they do great job, But the infrastructure bill kind of woke up a lot of Bitcoiners and made them realize, hey, perhaps all of our incentives don't align with Coin Center because they kind of protect the crypto industry at large. We need our own lobbying effort. That's when Bitcoin Policy Institute was launched, right? So I think they're playing a little bit of politics. Check this out, Ben. I would love to get your opinion.

This is a screenshot by the White House and it's of the report. and here's the paragraph that had everybody freaking out, right? Should these measures, and, you know, they're calling to regulate it to, you know, do reports on them? But the question that I have to you, Ben, is, are there reports on video game usage? Are there reports on washing machine usage? Are there a report on hair dryer usage? Why is it only Bitcoin mining? Maybe, maybe, again, you know, perhaps Nico's a little bit Alex Jonesy.

Perhaps it has to do with this, maybe. Anyways, Ben, this is what it said. Should these measures prove ineffective at reducing impacts, the administration should explore executive actions, and Congress might consider legislation to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto asset mining. In the same report, coincidentally, you know what they advocated for, Ben? Proof of stake.

So, I don't know, man. Of course, of course. It's, it's, it's so infuriating seeing paragraphs like this. And then, and effectively, this is just a, a governance mechanism to ensure kind of like the sanctity of, of basically the timing of transactions and, and a reasonable assurance that your transaction is set in stone and cannot be reversed. And there's no comparison to legacy finance and the energy use there. Like if you're going to start moralizing energy use, then shouldn't there be like an apples to apples comparison, right? Shouldn't they be turning the question on themselves as well? Like, you know, I don't like the idea of moralizing energy use in the first place.

I think if you don't like how somebody else is using energy, then produce some of your own or pay more to use that energy. energy for something else. But besides the fact, there's none of the self-reflection of well, how how does our monetary system currently

work and how much energy goes into securing that? There's none of that. There's not a single, and again, all of the assumptions, and I feel like a broken fucking record here, but like all of the assumptions are, it's a linear path of

energy use. That it'll just be because it's going up this much per transaction, which is a bunk metric anyways, it's going to go like that forever. Despite the fact it's been completely disproven in the report that said that Bitcoin would consume all of the world's energy by 20,

two years ago. And it's like, it's a fraction of a percentage of the world's energy use, of which most of it is waste. It's just, it's tiring, it's infuriating, it's all of the things. And it's just,

I mean, kudos to the people at the Bitcoin Policy Institute that are trying to educate people. And there are politicians that are getting themselves educated and are advocates and everything. I'm not going to put my faith in politicians. You know,

I'm glad that some people are playing. that game too so that at least we're kind of going at it on two fronts but really the only thing that can be done here in my opinion is just build things that they can't shut down that you know become uh become uh what would have basically on i mean bitcoin is unaware of the state right it doesn't it doesn't care about this report it continues pumping out a block every 10 and will continue to do so even if this report results in legislation. So, yeah. 100%.

It's about building a parallel economy, right? And I think that's really what it is. Rather than stopping the Great Reset, it's about opting out of the reset, right? I think that's basically the message here. Anyways, moving on to this, Ben, I actually wanted to share a video because I want to put two and two together. This is Gary Gensler and he said some things about, you know, security tokens being alt coins and whatnot, if I may. Okay, awesome. Here we go. Here I'll pull it up here. One sec. Going to make a lot of progress on the CFDC side, which is going to affect more

bitcoins than, say, altcoins. Altcoins are going to all end up over at the SEC and have to struggle with the higher level of scrutiny associated with consumer protection, and disclosures, that the SEC is really good at. So, you know, it's easier to talk to Bitcoin people than some of the other cryptocurrencies about this, because your complete decentralization status is something that federal regulators understand. So, yeah. So, and that was Cynthia Lummis last week, and she is, and they're having conversations about this, Ben, because this is exactly what Gary Genser came out to say on the Wall Street Journal. Now, there is a negative part about this. I'll get to it in the second. Anyways, the article says, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensar signaled that he would support Congress handing more authority to the SEC's sister markets regulator to oversee certain cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Mr. Gensor, speaking at an industry conference at Thursday, he looked forward to working with Congress to give the commodity futures trading commission added power to the extent the agency needs greater authority to oversee and regulate non-security tokens and the related intermediaries. Leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and here's where I want to get your thoughts, Ben, which oversee the CFTC are pinching legislation that would assign oversight of the two largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ether.

Right? So there's clearly political pressure trying to get big, everyone sees the writings on the wall. Most, most alt coins are going to be labeled securities. You heard it from Cynthia Lammis, and now you're hearing it from Gary Gensler, right? And it goes on to say the SEC has declined for years to assert jurisdiction over Bitcoin and Ether, which proponents say are more decentralized than other cryptocurrencies. Mr. Gensler, now this is curious because they keep adding ether into this, into this mix. But Gensler, says this. Mr. Gensler noted that Thursday that Bitcoin is often likened to a digital form of gold and that it doesn't bear all of the characteristics of security. I don't see Ethereum when they

quote him, right? So yeah, man. And if you kind of connect this with what Cynthia Alamis said, it looks like, in my opinion, which is why Coinbase is trying to fight this so hard, they are going to regulate altcoins like securities, the only one that might, be spared and I suspect it's because they've accumulated a tremendous amount of political leverage is Ethereum, which means that the big competition between the two in the future is going to be Bitcoin versus ETH. And the EF guys are going to throw anything they can at Bitcoin and that includes the environmental attacks. Which is why suspiciously they advocate, the White House is advocating for Fufu Steak. Look at that.

Well, I mean, look at the trajectory and the control that you've seen throughout Ethereum's history, right? Like 70% pre-mine, you know, huge

swaths of that for the Ethereum Foundation. Nobody runs a node. Everything is super centralized. They can turn on a dime. They put off the difficulty bomb so many more times than I can count. There's been even instances of them forgetting to do so

and then having to hard forking for two times within a couple weeks. And now look at the inherent censorship that's going to be happening as they move to proof of stake given the government pressure. They're positioning themselves to be the state-friendly option. Right. It's it's their proof of stake. We have proof of stake as our current system. They're just weaseling into it by being more of the same. And they're there, they're, you know, Bitcoin got to its position because it's it's unregulatable in that sense in terms of you can't shut it down. There's nobody to point to and say, oh, there's yeah, this, this is a security and so and so forth. Ethereum's if it eaks out that win, it's because they've joined the good old boys club, right? They've become the system. And you better believe they're gunning to have CBDCs built on top of it, everything.

It's going to, it's when you've been championing for decentralization and espousing things like a world computer and ultrasound money and all of this other. bullshit that they say. And then you're excited that you're basically becoming an apparatus of the state. It says a lot about how how truthful you were being in those earlier statements. So, yeah, I assume that's probably the trajectory that's going to happen is they're going to possibly eke out a favorable bit of legislation in that they're not considered. a security, even though it was obviously, like, and we've all seen the video of Battalick and them talking about, like, well, we're going to, the initial price will be this and we'll do

a pre-sale for people and X amount is going to go towards this. And why would you buy some now? Well, based on this and based on the marketing team we have in place, well, you know, you might buy some now and hope that due to our efforts and the building of the system, it will go up in value over time, an expectation of profit based on the work of others. Dude, and you, Ben, you hit the nail on the head. This article came out from Zero Hedge Thursday, September 8th, Ethereum is the most likely base layer for global CBDCs. So, dude, you absolutely nailed it.

Yeah, it's going to be an evil alliance. The Ethereum people are going to join with the regulate. joined with the state because they want to survive and the state will provide the moat right and the state's going to lie with them because it keeps them relevant it keeps the party going right the the inflation the basement control party going yeah yep it's uh i i think the writing's on the wall uh for that one it i mean it's it's funny because if you had gone back a few years i wouldn't have assumed that one of the final showdowns was going to be state-backed ETH versus Bitcoin. Like, I didn't see that one coming a few years ago, but it's pretty clear that it's like, oh,

yeah, we need to grow enough and become entrenched enough that the state tolerates us and incorporates us versus Bitcoin basically thrown up, thrown up deuses and, and being like, fuck you, we exist. Yep. It's, uh, it's definitely going to be a hell of a fight, Ben. That's, that's my two sats, bro. Like these people, they're, man, it's a competition to be the next global reserve currency. And there's a tremendous amount of money that comes with that, influence power, you know, all the things that drive humans to do very interesting things. I'll leave it at that. But anyways, Ben, next thing, huge news. Pullin, one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools, suspends withdrawals from wallet service. Pullen wallet, the wallet service of one of the

world's biggest Bitcoin mining pools is suspending all withdrawals as it ties to preserve assets and stabilize liquidity. The firm said on Monday. Pullen plans to pause all. withdraws, flash trades, and internal transfers within Poulin systems starting 2 p.m. on Monday to, in order to preserve assets and stabilize liquidity, where have we heard that before? Sounds like Celsius. Celsius Poole. Now, Corey pointed something out, which was really interesting. He said, all the way back in February 2021, Poulin was into DFI yieldfinding. What could possibly go wrong? Now, the silver lining in this, and I think this is a lesson for everybody, is the beauty of Bitcoin. Pool in at one point had 10 to 11% of the hash rate.

A week later, they're literally down to 4.69%. And one of the criticisms that the shit-cointers that were experiencing cognitive dissidents while they were coming to the realization that Ethereum is run by Jeff Bezos, controlled by the U.S. government, and one of the attacks that I would say is like, dude, there's only a handful of mining pools.

Miners do that out of convenience because they want profit stability. It does not represent that that mining pool owns all of that hash rate. And what is happening with pool in is a prime example of that. Miners are going to redirect their hash rate to a better pool. And now kind of connect this with what happens when the U.S. government inevitably starts asking American mining pools to censor like they already did with Marathon. You know what miners are going to do? They're going to switch over pools. Why? Because the so-called blacklisted TXs, you know,

know what they're going to do, they're going to pay more in transaction fees, right? So then it starts becoming more economical to go to a pool that's not censoring transactions, right? But just, again, to reiterate, just because Foundry USA has 27% of the hash rate or and pool has 18% of hash rate does not represent that they own all of that hash rate. They probably own a fraction of that. And the reason people pool together their mining resources is because they want profit stability. If you're mining yourself and you have 100, you know, 100 tarahashes, you're never going to find anything. So what are you going to do? You're going to pool together your resources.

And dude, this is Bitcoin doing its thing. What doesn't kill the Honey Badger makes it stronger. 100%. I love that you're using Mempool. That space's new lightning dashboard. I think that's fantastic. I love it, man. That's great.

I'm going to draw a perfect A perfect comparison here In that migration of hash rate away from Poulin Your example of well what happens if they crack down on the US mining pools They'll just move I mean we learned this lesson that mining pools don't own the hash long ago Many people may not have been around then But there was a mining pool called G.

hash.io and they got above briefly 51% of the hash rate at one time and everybody's freaking out going oh my god they're going to you know there's they could exert a 51% attack on the network if this is sustained and independent miners that had been pointing at g hash were like all right fuck that we'll we'll redirect and literally they they eked above 51% and then dropped a ton because people were like, okay, other pools, and they just moved the hash rate because it was too great a risk to just have that sitting there. So again, exactly to your point,

miners are not beholden to the pools that they point their hash to, and they can independently decide to point to any pool that they see fit. unfortunate about about people that may have had some sat stuck in there is there in your opinion what would be some good alternatives given what's happening with pool in

if somebody was maybe mining with poolin do you have a favorite pool that you think people might redirect to? Yes slush is amazing I know the guys at Luxor awesome guys F2 pool is also good but I would really recommend slush.

Slush is great. They're all pretty good. Foundry USA doesn't allow you unless you're like a big industrial miner. Antpool, I've used them for quite a while because of Bitmain, but it's also Bitmain. So, yeah, I would really recommend slush is great. F2 pool is great. Luxor.

I love the guys at Luxor as well. Those would be my choices, but obviously I'm a little, I'm slightly biased. All good. Awesome, man. Sweet. Well, happy to hear. And I'll be talking to this after we get through the news. But I'm finally, I've got a minor on the way. Yes. Yeah, I'll talk about that in a bit. But yeah, maybe I'll go slash. That's soon to be brains, right? Yes. So, yeah, so the brains is a custom firmware that in my opinion, every time you plug it in S9 or in a minor in.

general, it ramps up for a while. Now, you know, it's just a little bit of hash rate, but my, my, you know, my thought process is imagine a thousand of those miners getting plugged in for that one second, two second. That's a, that's a lot of hash. You don't know where it's going because there's a factory pool already on the minor, right? And you could change not, you could change the pool, but you could also change the firmware on the minor because the factory firmware, you're really going to trust a bit main with that? What are they doing? They've been known in the past to throttle your hash rate sometimes so that they end up being a little slightly more competitive. So it's like don't trust them and still brains. It's it's absolutely great. Anyways,

moving on to this Ben, this was a big deal. It's kind of a lot in thread, but I feel like it's very important. Stop me when you want to. This is by Risen and Risen was arrested for facilitating a peer-to-peer Bitcoin transaction, right? And again, on its own, it's not that big of a deal. You'd say, you know, bad luck, wrong place at the wrong time, maybe who's caught in association. But what I want you guys to pay attention to is the precedents that are being sent, set, peer-to-peer transactions arrested.

An open-source software developer arrested, right? You know what I'm saying? Michael Saylor, micro-strategy, sued, right? A lot of these things have only happened in the last two or three months. And because they're all happening at once, dude, these are crazy coincidences, my friend. And then this connects me with this passage from the sovereign individual, which I always refer back to. It says, since it will be obvious that information technologies facilitate the escape of sovereign individuals from the power of the state, the reaction to the collapse of compulsion will also include a neolute.

attack on these new technologies and those who use them, right? And if you haven't read this book, you should because holy crap, did they predict a lot of things? Anyways, it says, so hey, I'm heading to, I'm going offline for an indetermined amount of time. I'm heading down to Bumont's FCI, where Uncle Sam will be footing the bill for my room and board for the next six to 15 months for the crime of selling Bitcoin a few years ago. You read that right. Did you know that that transacting Bitcoin peer-to-peer is a federal crime punishable with up to five years imprisonment. I didn't either. As interpreted by the FinCent back in the middle of 2019,

says you must register federally to do so. If you only sort kind of know me, and you may not know that I've been in crypto and Bitcoin space since 2011. One of the ways in which I've learned to network in the space is to put an ad on the OTC trading boards offering Bitcoin for sale. When I was a full-time journalist, it was a great way to learn Bitcorners were at any point. When I moved towards consulting, it was great lead gen. When the pandemic hit, I sold my business in 2019.

It was a great way to make ends meet while I found my next thing. I've always been just one of hundreds of thousands of OTC traders on websites like Paxville and local Bitcoins. One of the hundred or so site users regularly dealt with at the time, as it turns out, was being used as a meal in a lottery. scam. On October 23rd, I was rated by 15 armed agents who waived guns and search warrants in the faces of my family and proceeded to question us for five to six hours and walked out with about $60,000 worth of property. After speaking transparently with agents, I thought this was going to be the end of it. But two months later, the agents returned with a target letter imploring me to come in and speak with the U.S. Attorney Office. I proceeded to engage in a reverse

per offer per offer meeting and I was told that they had enough evidence. Check this out, Ben, to convict me of my client's frauds, but because my wife shared a bank account with me, my wife as well. This would be 35 years imprisonment for both of us, right? And again, sovereign individual quote. Yeah. I think applies perfectly here. Ben, what are your thoughts on this, my friend? So, I mean, obviously the precedent is scary as fuck. So I was kind of looking into this too. And like, I think, and it got glossed over a little bit.

But he said that he briefly mentioned that he was a mule for like some sort of like a money-making scam or something like that. but I think it was the volume because you don't get a sense of it here and at least it don't get me wrong I'm not at ease over this but I'm a little bit more at ease than I would have been had I not read one of the things that said that he he conducted 37 transactions between five, totaling between $550,000 and $1.5 million, of which was for that, whatever that scam was going on.

So it was like a fair amount of facilitation of whatever the money laundering shit was going on. And I mean, again, I think a lot of it, I think it's bullshit in general. Like you should be able to freely, transact with whom you please. I don't know how much this guy knew about, I think he was just, he was lucky enough to be

early in Bitcoin. He had a lot of Bitcoin. It was easy to sell and purchase and go back and forth and make, you know, a decent percentage on doing so. But yeah, I mean, having this as a precedent, it makes it very easy if somebody doesn't like something that you're doing to go and be like, well, this guy went away for it. So we've now set that precedent. This is how what happens to people who do that thing, regardless of amount.

And yeah, maybe then you're headed, headed to have Uncle Sam foot the bill for your room aboard for the next little bit. So yeah, not super promising. But I think the volume and where the money ended up going was part of that. But on peer to peer markets, again, to play devil's advocate to myself, you don't know. You don't know who you're dealing with. that's kind of the point. You're trying to get non-KYC Bitcoin or provide it for anybody who wants Bitcoin that doesn't want, you know, a list somewhere that can be hacked and obtained and paint a target on your back for anybody who sees how much Bitcoin you have.

Absolutely. And I think, and you're right, Ben, like $1.5 million. That is a large transaction. But I think one of the big questions that we have to ask, right, is, Remember how the anti-money laundering law was initially shown to the U.S. public and it was passed, right? If you adjust for inflation, $10,000 in 1970, it's about $70,000 today, right? So it's over time that they've slowly accustomed us to, hey, any amount over a certain thing is money laundering, to the point that now the U.S. Treasury last year requested that every six hundred over any, transaction over $600 must be reported to the U.S. government. Right? So it's like you give a little finger and they just continue to take and take and take and chisel away over time. And now we are

in a moment in time where they're trying to float around the ideas of central bank digital currencies that will lead to absolute control by governments. Right. Look at what happened during the protest, right? It's just a lot of things are just, you know, anyways. So everybody can look forward to to their totalitarian state CBDC on Ethereum and having everything. I saw something actually, this is a bit of a tangent, but Binance is looking at implementing the, what's it called the Soulbound tokens, which was like a spec by Vitalik,

which is basically a non-transferable token that sticks with your particular, in this case, ETH account, but BNB account. And it basically is like can be used as an implementation of like real world like transactional history tied to a real world ID. So it's like all transactional history relates to your soulbound token. So stay tuned for that with your CPDC. Oh, God. All right. So I know we're running out of time, Ben, but I'm going to go faster this.

Let's do this one because I feel like it's important is the Human Rights Foundation donates. $325K to Bitcoin development total. Largest contribution, $100,000 goes to Bitcoin pay server. Two donations, $50,000 each will allocate it to John Attic, John Kittman. Their core developers, $25,000 go to Keith Mukai. His work in Seed Siner, hell yeah. Lee and Kuhin receives $25,000 grant for her work in developing a Bitcoin donation guide for nonprofits, Robosats and Open Source, Peer to Lightning Exchange will also receive $25,000.

A Gazeta, an independent Russian news outlet, focused on investigative reporting on Russian politics society, will also receive 25,000. The Vietnam Initiative, a nonprofit Bitcoin Research and Development Center, will receive 25,000. Human Rights Foundation has donated over $1.5 million U.S. dollars in Bitcoin and USD over the past two years

to further Bitcoin development. And that's one of the downsides of open source, right, is that, hey, you need grants, right? You need people contributing, to your projects. And I'm really happy that Seed Siner got a donation because that's a great project. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Seed Siner. I was stoked to see Seed Siner, but also Robosats because that's like, that's a younger project, but they've been knocking it out of the park too. So yeah, like, congrats to everybody on that list. But Seed Siner and Robosats kind of stood out to me there,

which is fantastic. Absolutely. Awesome, dude. Yeah. Well, dude, I don't want to keep you too long, but I do appreciate everything that you brought to us here today. Yeah, I mean, it's nice to end on a high note in that people are still building. That's the key takeaway, right? There's all the noise, but here's the signal. People are still building incredible shit and supporting people that are building incredible shit. So anybody watching that you know if you want to contribute to projects there's some excellent ones there but you know Support support support your local dev

I think it's important Dude thank you so much for being here And everybody make sure you go subscribe to Simply Bitcoin so you can get your your dose of Bitcoin news six days a week. It's important Always an honor to be on the legendary BTC sessions YouTube channel. This is your Simply Sessions Awesome. Thanks, man. I'll see you soon. All right. Everybody, how you doing? How do you like that little update? I love when Nico comes and fills us all in.

I'm going to fill you in with a few last things here. I've got a couple things to share with you. I asked you guys your favorite piece of Bitcoin related content this week. And I heard you loud and clear, Tomor Strolight with a new article on Medium called the legendary treasure of Satoshi Nakamoto. Tomer is just an excellent writer and thinker in the space. He's been on the show many times before. And yeah, I love him. So definitely worth a read here.

And he's got a great book. Why Bitcoin? It's like a coffee table book. And it's just the art in it is beautiful. So make sure you check it out. Tomer Stirlight, the legendary treasure of Satoshi Nakamoto. You can find it on. If you search that, Google.

or go to his medium page. We were just talking about grants for SeedSigner and Robosats. Just a reminder, if you haven't checked out Seed Siner, I do have a full tutorial on it, and you can go check that out. Build one yourself, it's fun. It's a great learning tool, amazing tool to be able to manipulate private keys and create multi-sig quorums, all kinds of crazy stuff. I do also have a tutorial on Robosats.

You can go and check out as well. If you're curious about peer-to-peer Bitcoin, Also, Robosats has been added as an app within Umbral. So if you're running an Umbral node, you can download that app and do it directly from your dashboard there. A couple of things I'm playing around with. LNBits, they officially added, and I've done a video on LNBits, but it's basically a whole bunch of tools for a Lightning Network that you can play with. They do have a native app for that inside Umbrole as well.

but you can do NFC stuff now. They added an NFC tool so you can make bolt cards. So I covered the bolt card from Coin Corner, basically like a tap and pay debit lightning card. And the thing with that is it would come from a Coin Corner account if you were using it as an actual tap and pay debit card. Well, now you can program one yourself with LNBits and just allocate funds to it and then go tap and pay wherever you want

that accepts Lightning. So really, really cool, really cool. What else have I got on the docket here? I tweeted out earlier. I was asking about Alberta cattle ranchers that would be willing to sell Bitcoin, sell beef for Bitcoin. May have found one.

And that put me in contact with the Beef Initiative. And they're putting together a ton of different cattle farmers in and around North America, primarily in the States right now, but maybe we'll have some new members up here in Alberta and around Canada. If you happen to be an Alberta cattle rancher or anywhere in Canada,

I would recommend you reach out to the Beef Initiative. If you're looking to stack some sats and sell some beef, could be a good option. I'm very interested lately in building that kind of circular economy. I'm trying to find people in and around Alberta where I live, where I can start buying, you know, groceries and, you know, poultry and eggs and things like that for Bitcoin. So if you know people like that in the area, then please do let me know. But also, if you're looking to kind of step out of the state apparatus and become a little bit more sovereign, I encourage you to do the same.

Look around. Look around for local people that are. willing to transact in Bitcoin. I think this is, it's less larpy than it used to be. Back in, back in 2014, 2015, everybody's talking about merchant adoption.

But they didn't really give a shit. It was like a marketing schick. Oh, we'll accept Bitcoin, but really, they're just using BitPay and dumping it for dollars immediately upon checkout. I'm more interested in stuff like this, people who want to receive Bitcoin for their products, So yeah, that's kind of my current line of thought right now.

I alluded to it when I was talking to Nico. I've got a miner coming. I've been dealing with the guys over at Upstream Data, Steve Barber and Adam over there. So I've got a what's minor M30S plus on the way. 100, 100 terahash, I think. And so I've got that and I've got a black box coming. So I'm going to be getting those up. My father-in-law is an electrician.

He's going to help me get the correct voltage going to that thing. So that'll be my project kind of through the fall here. I'm going to get playing around whenever they arrive. Could be a few weeks before I get my hands on anything here. But I'm very excited, nonetheless, very excited to start playing around. And finally, last thing, tomorrow. We've got a stacked panel, very excited. We've got Nathan Fast.

He is working with Swan down. And he's working on the Pacific Bitcoin conference coming up. So he's going to be on. We've got Obie. And he's doing a ton of stuff in and around Fetamints and Fetti right now. And then we've got John Stephanopoulos. And he's with Future Bit, which is like mini miners that you can just plug into the wall in your home that basically emit no sound.

Really awesome. So anyways, be sure to check it out tomorrow, 6 p.m. Eastern time. Very excited to have them all on. With that, of course, please do like, subscribe, share, all those things. Super, super important. They do help get more eyeballs in the room. All of you that have been sharing around the show, leaving boosts, all those types

of things. Thank you guys so much. If you want to help the show in another way, you can hit up the sponsors mentioned. They're all down below. Coin kite, shake pay, lead, and bit refill bill foddle. They're all down here. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a tip at my strike page. Strike.me slash BTC sessions.

Get there. Type in any amount you want. Hit the tip button. You'll be greeted with a lightning invoice or if you tap the arrow to the right, a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I'm out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening. I'll see you guys next time for your daily session. You know,