BTC Sessions - Open Source Sabotage? Odell Calls Out Saylor ep407

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Join us for the latest news on this week's Simply Sessions: -Odell calls out Michael Saylor for convincing ARK not to donate to open source development -Bhutan to ramp up mining as Paraguay mulls temporary ban -Politicians supporting Bitcoin/calling out fiat This and more on today's episode. BOOK ME for private one-on-one sessions on my website! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more. https://www.btcsessions.ca/ 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: BITCOIN WELL is the quickest and easiest way to get Bitcoin directly into self custody. They also offer non-KYC sells and bill payments. Transparent 1% spread, no additional fees and no withdrawal fees. Check them out today! https://bitcoinwell.com/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 NUNCHUK WALLET and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted mutisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ SEEDOR is one of the most robust metal backups on the market today. Get your SEEDOR starter set today! Use this link for 5% off. https://www.seedor.io/discount/BTCSESSIONS?redirect=%2Fcollections%2Fprodukte For US based customers: https://www.seedor.io/btcsessions Canadian customers: https://link.thecryptoboutique.ca/BTCSessionsSeedor 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 Server Lite,One or Pro 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. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION DEBIFI is a non-custodial Bitcoin backed lending platform with institutional grade liquidity providers, loan periods of up to 5 years, and no rehypothecation of your funds. Find them at: https://debifi.com/

Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to this show, another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. Nico is waiting for us in the wings. Going to bring us the latest and greatest in Bitcoin. I hope you're all having an excellent week. I hope it's been an exciting one. I'm happy to be home after a nice visit to El Salvador. And it's been a busy one.

So we're going to get this show rolling. Of course, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. Do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Do it live.

I'll write it and we'll do it live. The fucking thing sucks. If you haven't already, please do like, subscribe, share, all those things super important, getting this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC Sessions. This is your Simply session. Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at where we're on the market. Right now I am pulling up timechain calendar.com simultaneously going to pull up the live chat.

Everything you say in the chat from here on in is live for the world to see for better or worse. Over on time chain calendar, we're sitting at $70,384 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will snag you 1,421 sats. In terms of fees, spike today. Holy 103 sats per byte to get into the next blog. It says anytime 12, but who knows what that means. So yeah, make sure you are utilizing those lightning wallets. If you don't have a self-custodial one, then maybe you want to defer to Aqua in the meantime.

Lots of options out there. But of course, please do be mindful of the fees. In terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.68 million of them, that is 93.7.1% of the total supply. And the halving is coming in. Eight days and eight hours should be in and around April 20th at around 1242 a.m. And that is, I don't know what time's on that's in. Anyways, it's coming. It's coming. We'll do a quick shout out to sponsors of the show and then we'll dive right in.

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discount links are in the show notes down below. Backups are important and cdore.io has one of the most robust and beautifully designed steel backup solutions on the market today. You can stamp your seed frays into solid steel with one of their starter kits for one or two seeds and secure your seephrase from the elements like fire, water, and corrosion. On top of this, if you ever need to swap out any of the information they're in, you can just grab a new set of discs and slide them into the capsule as you see fit i've done a full tutorial on them that you can check out otherwise click the links down below for the best shipping options for you all right welcome back everybody we're going to bring in nico and we're going to get ourselves going

and uh i i see him there with his uh his minion in the background can you ask opti how many times he did indeed shoot his shot for miss el salvador opti how many times did you shoot your shot for miss el salvador Enough to win an award, boys. Hey, shoot or shoot, you got to take your shot. All right, guys, I'm just crashing for a moment. What's up, Ben? What's up, chat? Anyways, happy to be here, ladies and gentlemen,

streaming live from BitBlock Boom, 24 in Dallas, Texas. And it's crazy, Ben. I mean, like, holy cow, Simply Sessions has leveled up, man. Streaming from El Salvador, streaming from BitBlock Boom. Holy cow, man.

Yeah, we're going to... We've come a long way, dude. We've come a long way. We're doing more. I'm going to... up my game with my mobile setup too opti's got a list of uh a a a shopping list for me so i'm going to be making sure that when i'm on the road i'm up to snuff with simply bitcoin so so uh you know he's got me covered apparently uh dude good to see you you were you've just been on uh we were in el salvordid

together uh and then you immediately got home and got on another plane Yeah, yeah, I spent two days at home, you know, with my baby girl and my beautiful wife and literally got on a plane at 3 a.m. to get to Texas yesterday. And no, it's actually tequila. I only drink tequila, straight tequila. It doesn't give you hangovers, by the way, for anyone it doesn't know. And apparently I'm going to be on a plane to Nashville next weekend, too. So no, but dude, we got the Canadian Bitcoin. conference, which is going to be awesome. It's coming up. And our boy, Adam, is going to be staying with me at the Airbnb tonight. I actually wanted him to come on Simply Sessions, but unfortunately, his plane didn't arrive on time. All good. We'll get him on the next one. It's all good. Awesome, man. Well, let's, I guess let's

dive into it and chat about what's been going on. I'll bring up your screen here. What's been top of mind? What's going? on in the Bitcoin space. Yeah, man, it's like always, like I say this, I feel like I say this every, every weekend, like every, every week better said, like, you know, beating a dead horse. But I always feel beginning of the week that we have nothing to talk about. And then, you know, the, the Bitcoin news cycle just keeps on giving, man. So there's definitely, there's definitely a lot of news that has come to light.

So first, I'm going to start off with this story, but it's kind of like a tale of two cities, right? So a little bit of context. There was a Time magazine article that came out and the article was like, the kingdom of Bhutan has been secretly mining Bitcoin, right? And then what's really interesting, though, is that they never told anybody about it. The only reason that people found out was because the Celsius bankruptcy. And they had some like kind of like funds or something tied up and then it was exposed. and of course Time Magazine did kind of an expose.

Now it's out in the open, but what's really, really bullish about this is that not only are they going to increase their capacity, I'll get into the details in a second, but the time in which they're going to increase the capacity of doing it. Meaning we're about to enter the halving in about eight days or so, and, you know, they know that the amount of Bitcoin that they're going to be able to mine is going to cut in half,

and they're still going in hard with a major, investment. They were mining 100 megawatts. They had a 100 megawatts worth of capacity. They ramped that up to 600. So they ramped up 500 megawatts worth of capacity, worth of Bitcoin mining, which is absolutely insane. Anyway, so let's get through some of the article. Bhutan to ramp up Bitcoin mining capacity to 600 megawatts as having looms. Buton's investment arm, drug holdings and investments, and Bit Deer, Bittier, by the way, is a publicly traded company for anyone who doesn't know, are planning to ramp up their Bitcoin mining operation to help offset the revenue impact of an upcoming Bitcoin halving.

Now, this statement is incredibly bullish for a multitude of reasons. Reason number one is think about that for a sec. They're so bullish on the Bitcoin price that they're doing this anyways, which means that, you know, you don't invest, you don't build out 500 megawatt worth of capacity unless you feel optimistic about Bitcoin's future, right? And if you look at any other proof of work coin or shit coin better said, the hash rate is static. It's just going sideways. That includes Bitcoin cash.

That includes BSV. So this is extremely bullish. Anyways, the article on No BS Bitcoin continues to say, the plan upgrades will increase the Himalayan Kingdom's mining capacity by 500 megawatts by the first half of 2025. Matt Kong, chief business officer at Bit Deer, said in an interview, that would bring Bhutan's total capacity to 600 megawatts. The capital for this operation will be obtained from a $500 million fund initiated by the duo in May last year. At the time, they reeled intentions to utilize Bhutan's plentiful hydroelectric power for Bitcoin mining.

Kong anticipates that the fund will be fully raised by July. The nation's 500 megawatt boost will be built on Bit Deer's latest hard, to lower costs and improve computing power. Both DHA and BITDA remain confident that they can keep their operations efficient, even if Bitcoin's price falls following Bitcoin's halving. According to Kong, Bittier boasts one of the industry's lowest expenses per Bitcoin mine, costing only $20,000 per coin. Now, I did say it's going to be a tale of two cities because halfway across the world,

it seems like another country, it's... We'll take a look at the article and we'll let you guys be the judge, but it looks like another country. And of course, I'm talking about the beautiful country of Paraguay, which also has a tremendous amount of hydroelectric capability, is taking another stance. And as we saw with the China ban, you know, you can't ban Bitcoin mining. You can only ban yourself from Bitcoin mining and the benefits of Bitcoin mining. So, you know, it seems like Paraguay is taking another stance. Anyways, parliamentarians in Paraguay have proposed a temporary ban on Bitcoin mining, which according to them is disrupting the nation's electricity supply. The proposal presented on April 4th includes 14 senators who advocated for the halting of cryptocurrency creation, storage, and the operation.

See, that's why I believe it's political. Not just Bitcoin mining, but the storage. Like, what do you mean? Like, a temporary store? Like you what does that have to do with Bitcoin mining, right? And the operation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency mining farms in the country. The ban is intended to continue until Paraguay's National Electricity Administration could ensure that they have adequate infrastructure to meet the energy demands of Bitcoin and crypto mining without destabilizing the rest of the grid. Now, that statement is extremely interesting because that was a statement that was used in Texas when they were, they were, Texas was politically attacked, right?

you had the infamous Wall Street Journal article, which we covered on Simply Sessions, how they, uh, they, they photoshopped the sky to make it seem like this Bitcoin mining stuff was like, you know, horribly environmentally friendly. And of course, you had the Pierre Richard video and he just absolutely devoured them. Um, but that's like kind of like, like Bitcoin mining doesn't just stabilize a grid. If anything, it stabilizes a grid, right? It makes it so that grid operators could, they don't have to guess, how much electricity capacity they're going to need on a given day because they know that the Bitcoin miners are always going to want that electricity and then if the capacity for whatever

reason if you know in the case of Texas they had this crazy windstorm and a lot of people had to turn on their heaters what they did is that the Bitcoin miners just turned off and it wouldn't make sense for them to stay plugged in because it wouldn't be economic It wouldn't be economic, economical for them to mine, especially when there's a high demand for electricity. Electricity prices will go up, obviously. Bitcoin miners only flourish when the price of electricity is cheap, right? Anyways, it goes on to say the draft states that Bitcoin miners have gravitated towards the Alto Panera region, located in the southeast of the country near borders of Brazil and Argentina.

This region is home to the Aitipu hydroelectric dam, the world's third largest, which fulfills all of Paraguay's domestic electricity demands since February. There have been 50 instances of power outages in the region due to miners secretly and illegally tapping into the electric grid, which was stated in the bill. So, Ben, what's your take on this? Okay, so that last part, due to miners secretly and illegally tapping into the electric grid. So this has nothing to do with this is resulting from people, stealing things. It's not resulting from above board miners being like, I would like to purchase power

from you in order to mine. It's literally just people being thieves. And so when you have, you know, legitimate companies saying, hey, we would like some capacity, that sorts itself out just fine. And furthermore, the jurisdiction can have, you know, when they sign contracts, they can have caveats like they do in in Texas where it says like, hey, if there's some sort of an emergency and we need capacity, then we'll compensate you to shut down during those times. And that works out just fine. So it seems like all of this is stemming from thieves stealing power, which is actually detrimental to other residents that are using the same grid. So it doesn't seem at all to do with mining other than they're doing such something illegal to

mine, right? It's not the act of mining. That's the malicious thing here. 100%. 100%. And, you know, again, but again, you can't, that's the Winston Churchill quote, right? You know, never let a crisis, a good crisis go to waste. And once again, you know, politicians politicking, which is, you know, quite funny. Anyways, for anyone tuning into the show, you are listening to Simply Sessions, live from BitBlok Boom and Ben is in Alberta, Canada. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. I'm looking forward. I'm so excited.

I'm so excited. I'm going with my wife and my baby girl and I'm super hyped for it. So this is me good. Anyways. All right. Maybe the next simply session is going to be from Nashville. Holy cow. I don't know if I could take this.

Okay. In other news, speaking of politics, politicians politicking, here is the Deputy Treasury Secretary O'Wali at the Yemmo, and he said, quote, when Congress designed the Bank Secrecy Act, we didn't have cryptocurrency or digital assets, and we need to make sure that the definitions are now captured within the Bank Secrecy Act. I mean, okay, a couple things here. So when Representative Tom Emmer interviewed the head of FinCEN,

in the head of FinCEN, he admitted that terrorists preferred using the traditional financial system, which, by the way, have these regulations in place, and for some reason terrorists still prefer the traditional financial system. And for some reason, for some reason, again, they're going after digital assets. Now, what was really interesting is that, and we'll play you guys the videos in a second, this week in the Bitcoin Policy Institute, shout out David Zell and shout out Bitcoin magazine for live streaming that, the senators finally said the quiet part out loud. So anyways, before we get to that, I do want to play the clip. Help us understand.

You know, we've heard from your boss, Secretary Yellen about her worries about cryptocurrencies for quite some time. But what are the regulations that you think need to be put in place to prevent the illicit use of cryptocurrency? Thanks for having me. It's good to be with you. And I think part of what we need Congress to do is simply update the regulatory authorities they've given us over the last 30 years. And when they design things like the Bank Secrecy Act, we didn't have cryptocurrency or digital assets. And we need to make sure that those definitions are now captured within the Bank Secrecy Act and the other legislation that we use to both regulate but also go after bad actors. We also need a tool that allows us to go after some of these bad actors who are claiming to be dollar-backed. but trying to escape your jurisdiction.

I think a great example that'll matter to your viewers is if you're a CEO of a company or you're investing in a company, one of the things you're most worried about is cyber security risk. Those cyber criminals who are doing ransomware attacks, they're almost exclusively doing them in cryptocurrency. And what our data is shown is that it's almost doubled

the amount of money that they've received using cryptocurrency from 2022 to 2023, which is one of the reasons we need these new tools. Well, you have been very concerned about cryptocurrency for a very long time, and I do wonder what the shift in terms of the SEC's even approach to things like Bitcoin, how that has changed your view or if it changes your view about Bitcoin or the like, now that it has truly become mainstream, and I would argue, has reached escape velocity, whether the regulators are catching up with it or not. I think the regulators are doing everything we can with the tools we already have. And I think what we need from Congress is additional tools to make sure that we build a regulatory environment that allows those people who want to transact safely within the digital ecosystem to do so, but also gives us the tools to be able to catch bad actors, be they,

terrorist, be they ransomware actors or drug dealers who want to use this ecosystem to try and illicitly move money as well. I'm going to pause it right there for a second. Okay. So much to unpack. Okay. When the Bank Secrecy Act was established in 1970, it was 1970, I believe, okay, the amount that was required, so basically every transaction over $10,000 had to be reported. If you adjust for inflation in 1970, $10,000 is the equivalent of $80,000 worth of purchasing power today. You notice how that amount stayed exactly the same? He did mention terrorism too, okay?

Now, the terrorism thing is interesting. Like I said, the Wall Street Journal released a bogus article that the FinCEN took advantage of, and also Elizabeth Warren, to try to impose more regulations on the industry, even though the head of FinCEN literally said like verbatim, I'm quoting him, terrorists prefer the traditional financial system rather than Bitcoin. What's interesting about the traditional financial system is that all the things that this guy, this gentleman is asking for, they're already in place, right? So what is this about?

Well, that's a great question to ask. And here is Senator Cynthia Alamos. the Bitcoin Senator, and she is finally saying what we have been saying on Simply Sessions for quite a long time. She's finally saying the quiet part out loud. Let's check out the video. So the state of play on Capitol Hill is, I think, best explained by what I see is the overarching motivations. And in this administration, there are a number of high-ranking policy positions that are held by people who are threatened by Bitcoin because they know they can't control it.

They know it's decentralized. They know its potential. And these are people that are so wedded to the government being in control of the money, how it's spent, how it's used, that they find it threatening, that something exists that they can't control. And so with that policy over our children,

motivation. We're seeing things like a proposed 30% tax on Bitcoin mining. We're seeing things like that truly odd regulatory overreach by the EIA Energy Information Administration over at Energy to send out questionnaires about mining consumption of energy that was just egregious. And so these are the policy headwinds that the Bitcoin world is facing right now. And it's really, I think, entirely based on this administration's fear of things they can't control. That sounds like a personal problem. That sounds like a you problem. I mean, I love that.

she rightly pointed out that it's just it's simply an issue of control right it's simply um it has nothing to do with with terrorism or the environment or anything like that like all of that stuff is moot because the the existing infrastructure already has you covered for all of that stuff it's just it's strictly control and i love that she points out that this is attractive to people because they they can't control it. They cannot control it. They can control on and off ramps and some, some bells and whistles off to the side. But like when it comes to Bitcoin itself, it cannot be controlled. 100%. And, you know, and again, like, it, it's just to me and Ben, we went through this, you know, to give Opti credit. Opti was like, now they're trying to control us from the get go. But like,

at least personally, you know, on simply Bitcoin. And, and, you know, and, um, on Simply Sessions, I've always tried to give in the benefit of the doubt. I've always tried to be like, okay. But when I saw the Wall Street Journal article, like when I saw like Elizabeth Warren being like, she is just misrepresenting information for a political end goal, when you have, you know, the deputy treasury secretary on there basically saying, we need the same rules. But it's like, okay, but you, what, why do it,

terrorists still prefer the traditional financial system, which have the rules in place already. Like, why aren't they held accountable for that? Like, why is it always more and more of a power grab? And I'm just so glad how Cynthia Lummis so elegantly put it. Like, guys, like, you already, like, you know, this is nothing to do with rules. It has to do with the fact that you cannot control this thing. This is decentralized. It has to do with the fact that you can't, like, you can't conceive of a world where the government doesn't have control over the money.

And that's what these regulations are all about. And what you guys are doing is you guys are hiding behind the whole, oh, this is about consumer protection. You know what? If you guys are so concerned about consumer protection, how about you guys stop printing effing money? How about you guys stop devaluing the currency or devaluing the money that, Americans and you know and this is happening worldwide. This isn't just America problem, but how about government stop debasing currency, stop stealing from people? How about you guys do that? If you guys are really concerned about consumer protection, that's the number one thing you guys should be doing

rather than trying to stifle and rather to try to close the escape valve. And then it's like you're blaming people for seeking an alternative. It's like people have to feed their families. Do you really blame them for trying to opt out in the first place? Like, it's so ridiculous, but I'm so glad that Bitcoin exposes incentives. And it doesn't matter how nice their suits are. It doesn't matter how, you know, how, how, how, how, you know, formal their seal of like, this is the treasury. You know what? At this point, this logo and this logo has more weight than the seal of the.

Treasury because of how much they've lied to us over the last couple of years, the gaslighting on inflation, saying that Thanksgiving is getting cheaper, saying that there won't be any inflation. Like, people are sick and tired of it. And I think, you know, this inevitable conclusion by a U.S. Senator is just obvious. Like, yes, this is what it's about. Has nothing to do with quote unquote protecting the public. Yeah. Yeah.

And a beautiful thing about what you just said in regards. to why don't you stop printing money, then maybe people will stop leaving you en masse. This is why a CBDC will never win because the reason people are fleeing fiat currencies is because of their monetary policies and their draconian overreach preventing people from doing transactions as they please. That's not going to go away with CBDC. It's going to be put on steroids and I hope and pray that when a CBDC drops in your local jurisdiction that it accelerates the exodus of people from Fiat into the open loving arms of the Bitcoin ecosystem because we're here we're ready for you we're ready just come our side's a lot nicer so it's a lot brighter in

here it's a lot 10 times and we're hopeful and it's it's a lot nicer so this this this um this in this meeting this summit better said the the the 2024 bitcoin policy summit it was historical so you have senator cynthia lumas saying the quiet part out loud and here you have another senator so senator u.s senator marcia blackburn and let's check out what she has to say and look ben she's saying she's saying what you just said there is so much that appeals to me about bitcoin and i have to tell you I am absolutely thrilled to see such a full room. This is exciting to me to see you all here. First of all, when you talk about freedom

and you talk about privacy, Bitcoin allows that for individuals. Also, the decentralized nature of it. No government interference. And that is important to people especially, and I think you're going to have a session on Afghanistan and some of the work that took there. As people are less trusting of government structures,

as they're less trusting of fiat currencies, and they want something that is going to be a good solid store of value. Oh, I think you're muted. Sorry about that. Yeah, people just kept complaining like Nico should mute yourself because of the background noise. Sorry guys, I'm out of conference. There's lobby con is happening and there's a little background noise. But yeah, you know, like I'm just glad that it's not just Bitcoiners saying this in the Bitcoin Echo Chamber.

It's finally, you know, people with authority, people in positions of power, people that actually have influence that are finally saying the things that Bitcoiners have been saying for years now. And of course, these are politicians. You know, they're trying to get power. They're trying to get an office. But, you know, at the end of the day, like, you know, they, they can have a big impact on your life. You know, if you live in certain jurisdictions. Like, Ben, you went through this personally, you know, with the Canadian truckers protest, right? Like, politicians at this moment, I know we all want the thesis from the sovereign individual to play out in real time.

And we want it now where Bitcoin and information technologies will make politics irrelevant. but we're still in that transitionary period, you know. So I think this is a big deal. And, you know, shout out again, I can't thank David Zell enough and Bitcoin magazine for really putting this together. Yeah. Yeah, it's super cool to see. And again, I'd say general rule of thumb, never trust a politician further than you

can throw them. But I will say that when you do happen to get failed. favorable legislation and you get somebody in office that is that is friendly to Bitcoin, it is an excellent time buying mechanism because Bitcoin is inevitable. It will proliferate people who want to use it and claim their self-sovereignty will use it. But it will be nice if we get some welcoming arms as opposed to roadblocks all the way down the line. So when you when you get those chances, take them and build as much as humanly possible and prepare yourself for when we'll say antagonistic politicians get into office because

that will also happen. So always be prepared. But you know, when you get a gift like somebody in office that's going to help and support the ecosystem. Fantastic. Take it for what it is and use it to further bolster your resilience when they are no longer there. Amen to that. Amen to that. I could not have said it better myself. So let's get to today's headline story. Ben, I feel like this is up your alley more so than it is up my alley. But I will try my best. So O'Dell is the founder of OpenSats. OpenSats is essentially, you know, Ben, how would you describe open Sats? So OpenSats is basically a public charity, and I'm just reading off their website here. They are a public charity and they provide sustainable funding for free and open source

contributors, working on freedom tech and projects to help Bitcoin flourish. So basically, when you donate to OpenSats, there's different ways you can do it. you can pick specific projects that you think have value and you want to contribute to, or you can donate to the general fund, and it will just be kind of distributed evenly across all the projects that they kind of have under their umbrella. And none of this goes to OpenSats itself. It all gets directly into the hands of the developers. So it's just a way to go and support the people that are building the things that you as a

Bitcoiner are using. Awesome. Thanks, Ben. And so the rumor is, of course, you know, O'Dell is the founder of this and, you know, this is funding open source devs. And I don't want to say it's a rumor, it's a claim, better said. And here's Magoo. Of course, you know, if you guys are on Bitcoin Twitter, you guys know who Magoo is. And O'Dell is claiming that Sailor actually stopped multiple ETFs that promised that they were going to donate to you know, OpenSats and, you know, Bitcoin open source developers. And Odell claimed that he, that Sailor went out of his way to stop that. And apparently Sailor was successful.

And, you know, both some of these ETFs, not all of them were going to donate to open source devs. But apparently Sailor stopped that in his tracks. Now here's McGoo saying, Odell, you got any proof or you want us to believe you? O'Dell said, asked Sailor. Bitwise and Vennack are legit. Not sure why people ask them unless they cannot read. Who told you? Odell said, I lived it, sir.

Who do you think race is most of the money for OpenSats? Parentheses, I do not make any money from OpenSats. We are 100% passed through. All donations go to devs. So Bitwise and a van folded like a weak chair. And I said, no, they both committed to supporting devs. They are legit. it. The other ETFs did not support devs. One specifically was going to and pulled out after talking

to Sailor. I do not feel comfortable mentioning which one, but it was incredibly disappointing. I tried to handle it privately, but it has been over three months, so felt like it should be made public. Now, our buddy Jack Dorsey said, it's Arc. I like that he's just like, fuck it. I'll just say it. so yeah and you know I'll I'll chime in before I play the the Jack Mallors because this was making quite the rounds and Jack Mallors addresses this I don't know if we'll have time to play the entire six minute video but we'll definitely play a part of it but essentially my take on this is and Ben please I know that you're all you you're you're much more of a tech person than I am I'm more of a geopolitics person But isn't there like an unduly influence if open source developers start getting their funded from publicly traded ETFs?

And I'm not saying that's the motivation behind Sailor, but it would concern me if the vast majority of the open source development came from publicly traded ETFs. I feel like that is not a good recipe in my humble opinion. And then also, what would be the motivations behind Michael Saylor doing what he was doing? Supposedly. So if I had to guess, and again, this is just kind of speculation here. But, okay, so number one, your first point. Yeah, I think that there can be a danger in, you know, like the good old boy. Boys Club funding open source development and making demands. However, going through something

like OpenSats, it's always no strings attached. You don't get to say what they're doing. It's just this money flows to them directly through OpenSats. There's no demands on anything that gets done. And so, yeah, you know, you got to be careful around that. I think OpenSats is striking a pretty good balance there, making sure that it doesn't determine how Bitcoin is developed for. In regards to why might somebody not want some funding for this stuff? I mean, Saylor has said he basically just wants Bitcoin to stay put and ossify. He doesn't want a lot of change, right? He's using it in a certain way. We'll just say that to a hammer everything looks like a nail. And Sailor is effectively a hammer in the sense that he wants

pristine collateral. He wants something that will simply store his wealth and prevent it from being debased. He's not interested in payments. He's not interested in peer-to-peer commerce and circular economies and living on Bitcoin and using it as money. He's not interested in that. So what does Bitcoin look like to him? Pristine collateral for him to store his wealth. But a lot of other bitcoins, myself included, actually use Bitcoin too. And I'm not saying that everybody has to have that use case for Bitcoin. But in order to have people actually have kind of pure self-custody, there will need to be

some improvements, you know, backwards compatible improvements. Otherwise, we go down the route of, you know, partial custody or shared custody or just full custodial, take my money and give me an IOU as a worst case scenario. So maybe there's a degree of, you know, does he want the funding to go to this type of thing? if I were him, I wouldn't be super keen on all those, you know, on any proposed changes to the base layer because, you know, I have a very specific use case and I don't want anything kind of coming between. And I've heard him chat about this where he says, like, I don't want anything to change. He talks about real estate in New York and how he doesn't want the foundation to move whatsoever. I tend to sit somewhere in the middle where if it's very responsible,

responsibly looked at and very slow and careful development, then and also backwards compatible, then, you know, I would make concessions on certain things. But I do think we need to be even more careful than we were with taproot, right? 100%. Unintended consequences there. But I don't necessarily think we should stay at a total standstill if something compelling comes about in and around privacy and in and around scaling. I think those are two important areas that are worth at least looking at.

So anyways, that's kind of my take on why he might, again, we don't have specifics on any of this, but, you know, he doesn't want Bitcoin to change, that's for sure. So I don't know. Yeah, and someone pointed in the chat, and I have a little bit. And again, and I agree with you, Ben. And I come from the, I wouldn't say like total office, off you. How do you say that? It's a very difficult word.

Office occasion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't come from that like 100% office office. Okay, you guys. Occasion. Office occasion camp. But I do come from the camp of I remember Tapper root. And I remember how everyone just piled on and they were so giddy about it.

And they were just like everyone just ossification. Thank you. Bitcoin dash then or underscore debt. Dead. And I remember like, and I remember. And I remember that and there was there was unintended consequences and the unintended consequences were the ordnals, right? And people didn't foresee that. And I think that every single time you change Bitcoin, there's unintended consequences. And, you know, ordnals, okay, you can make the arguments not that bad, but like, what if it's bad, right? We are dealing with, you know, we want Bitcoin to be the world's money. So I think we have to be extremely careful. Anyways, Ben, I know that we're over time. So I know that we're over time. So I'm, I don't know if we have time for the Smallers video. Maybe let's just do a little bit of it

because he does have a couple good points in there. All right, let's check it out. Yo, out here on a run in Chicago, just checking my phone, getting caught up on everything, wanted to give my two sats. One, we got to find ways to support open source Bitcoin developers, period. I mean, Bitcoin's got to be one of the only truly distributed censorship-resistant, decentralized software networks we have as a species today.

I'd make the argument. It's the biggest. It's the only distributed censorship-resistant software network that is operating at the scale that's operating. It's worth now over a trillion dollars in market cap. It is open-source Bitcoin contributors that support the software, that support the network, that maintain the libraries. In my history, my decade-long history in Bitcoin, I've never heard that as a controversial take, opinion, idea, is that we have to find them no strings attached support. We don't want them supported with a bias, with a directive, with a motive.

We want funding for open-source contributors to build what they deem is necessary to support the project. Now, if someone built something that you don't agree with or that you don't like, don't run it. Someone built Bitcoin Cash. I didn't update my node. Someone built Bitcoin Unlimited, Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Gold. I didn't update my node. It's a permissionless system. People are going to build whatever they want, whenever they want, no matter what.

If you don't like it, don't run the software. That's how Bitcoin works. Now, if you want developers and the network to adopt something that you're interested in and that you think the rest of the network would be interested in, then you advocate for it. You gather support for it, and we arrive at distributed consensus. So it's seem inefficient, frustrating, slow? Yes. it's the cost we bear to have the best and the hardest man-made money in the history of our species.

And so at the end of the day, I've never found this controversial. I'd be shocked if it was controversial. We have to find ways to support our open source community in Bitcoin. Number two, we should never deem anyone else responsible for funding. As an individual, you don't ever have to do anything you don't want to do in Bitcoin. Now, I personally believe as an individual, we should all feel some sense of responsibility towards helping developers get funded. Because if Bitcoin is benefiting you, if Bitcoin is helping you, if Bitcoin is part of the future of the world that you want to see, open source development in this industry is paramount. It's the nucleus. I mean, it's a software project, guys. We're running code at the end of the day. We've got to find ways to maintain it and support it and ensure it has the longevity to live for centuries to come. So we should all be helpful, whether that's literal funding, education, whatever that means. But if you as an individual don't want to cut the check, no problem, the second that you get in the way of other people cutting the check. Now that is where I personally would draw the line. You got to let people do what they want to do in this industry, in this network, as long as they're not being malicious or there's any harmful intent. I mean, come on, I don't have to give that disclaimer. We're adults. There should be obvious lines.

drawn there. But for funding Bitcoin open source development, I mean, if you're getting in the way of that, if you don't want to fund it, don't fund it. No problem. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do in this open distributed network. If you're, you know, intently getting in the way of others, now that's where I think there's rightful questioning. And then the last is doing it all in private. I've lived through the block size wars. In my opinion, we have public discourse. Yes, it is challenging. Sometimes people are offended. Again, it's the cost we bear to have a truly distributed system. There is no central planning in this network. Maybe sometimes we forget that the amount of central planning in our lives has maybe allowed us to forget.

just, you know, how difficult it is for a collective species to move forward in one unified direction. It's tough. It's hard. But we got to do it out in the public. There are mailing lists. There's GitHub. There's Twitter. There's spaces. There's Noster. There's all sorts of ways to have public discourse on what we think the direction of this project should be. No one is bigger than Bitcoin. And so we all come with individual opinions or opinions representing a corporation. And we arrive at consensus. All right. So, you know, the part that really stuck out to me there, Ben, was the back room deals. and the kind of shadowy type of like that's very fiat like and again like if he had a problem with it right

say it out in the open yeah you know like take the bullets for it like you know say say it on the don't don't like and again this is the this is the whole block size wars right you have a consortium of some of the most powerful no the most powerful mining manufacturer in bitcoin at the the time bit main um you know go join with other very powerful uh entities at the time and it was a back door it was it was all back room type of dealings and all this stuff so you know i that's i i i do agree

with there i do agree with jack there right this is messy you know this that's a kind of get everyone to agree but that's a that's a feature not a bug but do it out in the open right you know get your look if you felt like your idea was popular if you felt like you had a strong case, you would be out in the open about it. The fact that you have to do it kind of in the back rooms tells me that you don't feel confident. You don't feel very good

about what the public is going to think about what you're doing. Yeah, yeah. And this is where I'm kind of like, if this did indeed happen three months ago. Exactly. Supposedly. Yeah. But I mean, if this did indeed happen three months ago

and there was a group of people that were intent on donating to open source devs and supporting them. And you have somebody come in between them and doing that for their own reasons and trying to impact their decision. And it sounded like there was, there was some type of an ultimatum. If that's what happened, then why wouldn't, again, the best course of action would have been for him, you know, in terms of transparency to be like, I don't think ETS. should be contributing at all to open source development and here's why but if it did happen

then there's also a reason why it wasn't said publicly because i mean imagine the shitstorm of saying that right i don't think that you should contribute to this this um yeah so i don't know again we're kind of this is all kind of hearsay at this point but um interesting nonetheless because the same lessons can be gleaned. I think Mallor's chat just there, his little TLDR was pretty on point, right? You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, but don't stop others from doing what they wanted to do and give them ultimatums and do everything out in the open. I think it's a great set of lessons to live by in this space. Amen to that. Amen to that. All right. I know we went a little bit up on time. I do want to give a Rustin coming here, come in here.

Photo bomb, photo bomb. We got Russed in the house. Creator of the Simply Bitcoin originals. Anyways, guys, this was your SimplySessions. I'll see you next week. Take care, Ben. All right, dude. Have a good one.

Oh, subscribe to Simply Bitcoin and tune in to the BitBlok Boom live stream on Saturday. See you guys later. Bye. Awesome. Later, man. All right. Everybody, thank you for being here. Of course, we've got a couple last minute things.

Before we do that, we'll give a quick. Shout out to sponsors of the show, and then we'll dive into our tech updates to round it out. Here we go. If you appear trading and lending, instant self-custody and no KYC, hoddle-hottle is the place to be. You can sign up with just an email address, and once you're there, you can start browsing offers immediately, whether you're looking to buy and sell, or whether you're looking to lend or borrow.

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You don't need to give up your personal information to have it set up and working for you. You can check them out today over at nunchuk.io. All right, and let's dive into our tech updates. A few updates that I got for you here, Sparrow Wallet version 1.8.5 World Pole over Decentralized Sorbon and others. So this release updates the Whirlpool client. which now uses the decentralized Soraban network to communicate with the coordinator. This represents a significant first step in the decentralizing of the Whirlpool Coin Joint Service.

Also, initial server connection should now be faster with optimizations for fee rate fetching. Sparrow also now indicates more clearly when it is disconnected with an instruction on how to connect again, which is nice because I've run into people that are like, I can't see my money. It's not coming through. and it's always just the switch in the bottom where it's not connected. Also, further improvements include hyperlinks on common functions when no wallet is open, display of CQRs, retention of seeds when changing a wallet's output descriptor and several other features. I'm going to pull up, where is my sparrow?

I'm just going to, I want to show you guys really quick here, the look. One of the things that I like is this. So these used to just be, you know, it used to be just text and you have to actually go up here to do things. But now they're clickable. Okay, new wallet. Give it a name. Open wallet. It opens all your different wallets.

Import. It gives you your options. So it's all clickable from the main screen, which is fantastic. Yeah. Also, I did notice that the connections happen a lot quicker when you're connecting to your own note. Moving on, Zeus. They've been rolling out the updates like nothing else here. But anyways, one of the interesting ones, L&D, you have on-chain TX coin control.

So when you're doing an on-chain transaction, you can actually go through your UTXOs and select and use the ones appropriately. You can also do custom pictures for saved nodes and wallets, enhanced peer control between other nodes and your neutrino filters. and they also have reduced Zeus pay lightning address fees by around 50%, which is great. Now, this is one I'm actually quite excited about Mutiny Wallet version 0.6.2, federated lightning addresses for Mutiny Plus users. So they're excited to announce this preview of lightning addresses for Mutiny Plus users. No more invoice requests needed when paying friends by name directly on. Mutiny Wallet.

Yeah, so basically, this is going to be using Chalmian eCash or Casu, I believe, in the background, or Fetamint? No, fetamints, actually. Which is locked to your pub key. So you can basically receive offline lightning payments. It will go into a fetament, which is locked to your key for your wallet.

Then when you come back online, you redeem the eCash as lightning funds directly into your own wallet, which is really cool. So basically, what this is is I was able to do it. I basically, right now it's only in preview version for those that pay for Mutiny Plus. So I went and I did that.

So I basically spent, I don't know, like $10 or something to help, again, support your open source devs. So I spent $10. I got Mutiny Plus. This gave me, the ability to add a lightning address, which is now BTC Sessions at Mutiny. . And then I was able to basically add a federation.

So if you want to add a federation, one of the ones that is now publicly available is, this is by the way, fetti.xyz slash builders. This is the federation that was set up for the Madeira conference for Bitcoin Atlantis. And so basically all I had to do was go into my wallet, go into the settings for federations and I just needed to copy and paste the federation code right here. And then I joined the federation and then I set up my lightning address to be whatever I wanted, which was the BTC sessions at Mutiny.com. And so now, again, every time I'm offline, I don't have to have my lightning wallet open,

which is a condition of lightning wallets if you are not custody your own funds. This is kind of a go-between where, again, you can really. receive the transaction, come online and automatically get it into your own lightning wallet where you hold the keys. So it's a nice little, in my opinion, that's a pretty acceptable tradeoff where it sits in a federation for a period of time while you're offline. As soon as you come on, you can pull it into your own lightning wallet. That's pretty solid.

I think, and honestly, the user experience of setting this up was pretty simple. So kudos to mutiny. They are killing it. Very happy with this new development. Me Premiere Bitcoin introduces their 2024 edition of its student workbook. The Bitcoin Diploma 2024 version is a flagship free and open source 10-week Bitcoin education curriculum that has been implemented worldwide. It offers a deep dive into Bitcoin's history, technology, and global impact.

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So I got the privilege of going down to me Premier Bitcoin, one of their graduation ceremonies in El Salvador just this past week. It was awesome to see high school kids, not only learning about Bitcoin, but also learning about money in general, how fiat currency is created, how inflation happens, much more education on how their money works

than any of us ever got in school. So super awesome. I also picked up a copy of a physical copy of the 2024 edition of their workbook. I'm going to sort through it. Super awesome. They are killer. And we're going to round it out here.

Coming up tomorrow, we have, why are we bullish? We got Opti. Opti's joining us as well as Julian Figueroa, formerly kinetic finance, but now, new channel called Get Based, which is very exciting. They've been putting out some pretty good content too. So it's him, Isabella, and Adam O'Brien from Bitcoin Well, which is very exciting.

And then I've got Brandon from BTC cards that is going to be on. Love me some BTC cards. So that's going to be tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern time. Make sure you're tune in. And actually, since we're talking about it all day, make sure you head over to opensats. org. And please do support your open source developers. You can again donate to the general fund or donate to a specific operation as you see fit.

Super awesome. And actually in the chat here. bring it up. But if you're in Calgary, Bitcoin Walk in Calgary every Saturday, super stoked about that. So I'm going to have to get to one of those. Glad we're doing it here now, too.

And finally, if you see fit, well, I'll round it out here, of course. Thanks again, everybody for watching, joining in. Like, subscribe, share, all those things. They help a ton getting this content in front of more eyeballs. You can also hit the previously mentioned sponsor. and the show notes down below. And if you want to, if you're sorting through the tutorials on the channel,

you need some extra hand holding some extra help. Head to BTCSessions.ca, which is revamped. Thanks, Selling. And head down to the booking section. You can book me there for one-on-one private education sessions. And with that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.