BTC Sessions - Own Bitcoin? This Should TERRIFY You — They Will STEAL IT ALL | Samson Mow, Matt Kratter, Mechanic

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

🚨 If you own Bitcoin, this should TERRIFY you. Samson Mow, Matt Kratter, and Bitcoin Mechanic reveal a disturbing trend that could put your BTC at serious risk.From government seizure loopholes to regulatory backdoors — they are quietly setting up to steal it all.This isn’t FUD. It’s a wake-up call.👉 Join BTC Sessions as we break down the threats every Bitcoiner needs to prepare for before it’s too late.FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS:https://x.com/Excellionhttps://x.com/mattkratterhttps://x.com/GrassFedBitcoinFOLLOW BTC SESSIONS on X/Nostr: x.com/[e-mail] private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted.https://bitcoinmentor.io/—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL - BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://qrco.de/bfiDBVABUNDANT MINES:https://qrco.de/bgYKPBAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCp#btc #bitcoin #crypto

All right. A major shift is happening, and if you value private property and privacy and freedom, you need to listen up now. Governments around the world are starting to feel very comfortable taking whatever they want, whenever they want. Assets, money, access rights, and now they're not even trying to hide it anymore. We're currently watching new taxes on unrealized capital gains in Europe, Bitcoin, seizures in America, record-breaking internet shutdowns in the Middle East, open geopolitical land grabs to the north, and financial surveillance has become normalized at a pace that should make everyone uncomfortable. The rules that used to protect us are breaking down. And policy is increasingly just a softer word for confiscation.

So here's the real question. Are you and your Bitcoin safe? What does this world look like for people taking self-custody? And even for companies sitting on massive Bitcoin reserves parked with custodians. It feels like we've crossed a precipice and things are getting crazier than ever. Is this what a fourth turning actually feels like? So to break it all down, this and more, we've got an amazing panel of guests tonight. Matt Crowder from Bitcoin University, Bitcoin Mechanic from Ocean Mining,

and Samson Mal from Jan 3. running a little bit late we'll be joining us shortly ben had something very last minute come up that he had to attend to so i am nathan with the btc sessions and this is your daily session all right let's go ahead and bring in all of our wonderful gas we got matt and mechanic gentlemen how are we doing today doing good good to see you nathan wonderful wonderful good to see you guys as well too mechanic i think your mic is just muted at the moment but i want to get your guys's take on kind of what we're seeing the moment so even just to start we had treasury secretary scott upset was talking, he was specifically referring to, you're going to get our smiling faces up here on the side,

he was specifically referring to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, that again we're seeing them talk about, this was specific to tornado cash, that they're going to be stacking this thing using stolen, confiscated Bitcoin, which I believe there's still some discrepancy with regards to samurai wallet devs and what's going to happen with their funds. Additionally, we saw in the news we had, the nemes, the nemesfuscated. Netherlands to tax unrealized capital gains. Let me just pull that one right back up here. Do do do to do to do, boom, share.

Netherlands to start taxing unrealized capital gains. Netherlands is moving towards taxing unrealized capital gains on Bitcoin, stocks, bonds, and other assets after Parliament voted to overhaul the annual income tax filing. So Matt, even just with that on the face of it, we also had Iran. It's had the internet shutdown for, I believe, 12 days now at this point, as well as we had, of course, the ongoing talks about the U.S. sees in Greenland, which is hilarious that they've actually responded to that. So I just want to get your initial take, your initial kind of thoughts. Yeah, my initial take, I love this phrase from Friedrich Nietzsche that I'm always quoting

on the channel that everything the state says is a lie and everything it has is stolen. And this isn't just 19th century philosophy. This is actually how the state functions. It functions through theft from taxes and also obviously through. through the money printer. But I'd say, I wasn't, I hadn't seen the Netherlands news yet. Unrealized capital gains tax have to be the most evil thing around. Because while you're trying to protect yourself from the money printer by investing in assets,

it's one thing to, you can sort of defer in a Buffett-like way, defer paying those capital gains until you sell. But once you have unrealized, unrealized capital gains taxes, then the mask has really come off. And it's basically, it's just, it's outright confiscation. And a lot of people who don't invest in stocks or bonds or Bitcoin don't quite understand how bad it is. But it ultimately hurts the government that's doing it

because you end up with capital flight. As California experienced over the last couple weeks, just a hint of an unrealized capital gains tax on billionaires, the knock-on of fact of that means that California's tax revenues this year are obviously going to plummet as as those people relocate. Now, it's absolutely ridiculous. It's gone to the point where it almost feels like it can't be accidental.

You can't be this economically illiterate to go that if you're going to try and force somebody to realize a gain on something that they haven't sold, they're going to try and escape. We saw it already, I believe, in Australia where the superannuation funds. And from people on the ground that I was talking to there, I think a lot of them actually moved over to New Zealand. They're at least moving their funds over to New Zealand. People will act to protect themselves, which is kind of the obvious case. To the point where I even saw a friend of the channel Simon Dixon talking about this, that it may actually be intentional where they're trying to push capital in different directions or trying to shift it out of certain areas by lobbying for such policies.

And in particular, I mean, with Bitcoin, you know, you can always take a fraction of it. You could sell a portion of it to meet that tax obligation, which sucks and it's awful. But even when I see these kind of proposals on things like real estate holdings, like if you got a commercial building and they're looking for an unrealized capital, what is supposed to do? Like sell 10% of that building, you can't take a fraction off a garage bay and then realize that in order to actually meet the obligations. So people might not be able to because usually the same people that would be in the situation of protecting their wealth like this aren't keeping a lot of cash around because cash is trash. It's absolutely awful. It's a melting ice cube. Just curious your thoughts there, Matt.

Yeah, I mean, we saw something. I think the classic example of that is, well, we've had it. I think it's been the Netherlands where they've basically been, it's been a backdoor way of seizing family farms by just taxing them. And then, of course, people don't have, you know, a multi-term. million dollar farm, but you don't have any money in the bank to pay those taxes, so you end up selling it. Something very similar happened around the time. I don't remember the exact details, but in England, around the time of World War I, where they basically passed some form of death tax or estate tax, and then a lot of people gave the money, basically passed on their estates to their children.

And then those children were sent to World War I, and a lot of them died. And then they ended up still having to pay the tax. And that's how quite a bit of private property was confiscated at the beginning of last century. I wonder, on that comment even earlier in the intro about coming to a fourth turning, I mean, it always seems like things are chaotic and increasingly getting worse. But even with that example of World War I and the tensions we're seeing up in the kind of geopolitical space heating up, it feels very much like the existing system might be trying to reset the board again, very much like they did in World War I, get their hands on the money and assets and deal with the unrealized,

what you say, the unrealized liabilities that are going on. So even we're taking a look over here. Let me just pull this one up here. We've got Iran has had the internet shut off for 12 days at this point in time with the ongoing protests and chaos there. I just had a wonderful conversation with anti-war.com, Scott Horton, editor on this topic as well. Scott is absolutely delightful. No one knows more about the ongoing and the history of the conflicts in the Middle East. He's a wealth of knowledge.

But to me, again, this is another key example. And I hate that we have to have these, it seems like every couple of years of one, why you need to hold your value in Bitcoin and why Bitcoin is self-custody is so critical. Because I think Gary had the stat. It was something like $3 billion to one Bitcoin. Like just the outrageous inflation and debasement of anyone that was holding onto the local currencies, just screwed. Plus you got basically probably capital controls in place. And from an FX trading standpoint, like if you're trying to leave Iran with anything other than gold, US dollars or Bitcoin,

like good luck finding somebody who's actually going to be able to trade or exchange that for you. And then additionally, like the other freedom tools like BitChat, when the internet shut down, my God, do you need to have that fire extinguish or that ability to communicate with people that isn't reliant on the internet? Any thoughts on the geopolitical space, the fourth turning stuff going on? What's your read there? Well, it's funny. It sort of early on in the channel in 2019 and 2020, I started making videos about that asserting that we were in the fourth turning. And it makes sense that it began sort of with the great financial crisis in 2008. And I made those videos and I was very serious about them, but I'm almost shocked how well that model has moved going forward. And it's really, really happening. We saw with the pandemic and now it seems like the world is marching towards war.

And with that, we'll obviously come a lot of internet disruptions. Agreed. Samson, wonderful to see you, my friend. Thank you for joining us. We're just currently riffing on what's going on in terms of like Scott Bassett was talking about seized assets. for the Street Street of Bitcoin Reserve. We've got the news of possible confiscation in the Netherlands for unrealized capital gains there. Iran has had the internet off for 12 days and we're talking about seizing Greenland as well, too. So I wanted to get your thoughts on like, are we kind of at like a chaotic,

forth-turning point? How are you viewing the geopolitical landscape right now on the risk to Bitcoin and Bitcoiners? And the mechanical get your thoughts there as well too. So, Sam, great to be on. Yeah, there's definitely a lot to unpack there. and just in the world at large today. But it does seem to be getting more chaotic. And I think in times of chaos, you definitely want a sound portable asset like Bitcoin.

So I think things are looking good for Bitcoiners in general that understand the money, the tech, and everything around Bitcoin. But I feel like there's a lot of frustration right now because we're all watching Gold Rip. And Bitcoin hasn't had its moment yet. But I am absolutely certain that it is to come. Excellent. Mechanic, your thoughts on the state of the world, my friend. Following on from Samson,

I think gold doesn't really have any kinds of looming issues like Bitcoin does, right? Bitcoin's young. It's easy to forget how new we are in this whole thing. And unfortunately, there's a given, The kind of way we have to present Bitcoin to the world, we must project a lot of confidence and faith in what it is and what it must be. And some of that is us convincing ourselves along the way. A lot of it is us trying to differentiate between Bitcoin and crypto. And a lot of it is just straight up opium.

So we have a combination of these things we must present. Like it's new. We've got to prove ourselves to the world and we've got to keep doing that. So things are, it's been a rough couple of years in Bitcoin land under the hood, let's be honest, but I'm pretty sure that we're going to emerge from it long term in a good state. And I just to round off the thought, I'm not really sure if the recent downtrend in price is just the four year cycle doing its thing. Gold doesn't have those kinds of cycles. Or if it's as a result of disenfranchisement within the community and all the stuff, you know, the conflict. and stuff that's going on with direction and even, you know,

bugs around wallet import and stuff like that. So it's really hard to backwards rationalize what the movement in price is all about. But in my personal opinion is that I actually like seeing markets respond rationally because that's the whole theory on which most of us operate is that the market consists of rational people making informed decisions. Most of the time it doesn't. And that's why things like Dogecoin happen. but the relief is I actually like it when things are going wrong in Bitcoin and I'm not happy about it and the market responds to that.

I actually really appreciate the signal being there and providing a good mechanism for feedback that's just kind of bulletproof. If someone says something's bad and someone else says it's good, it can be anything, right? But the minute you have a market saying we don't like the direction of this thing, that can be very helpful feedback and it's so objective, pretty much. everyone can look at it and agree. So I'm hoping that this year kind of washes out a lot of the nonsense that's washed up on the Bitcoin shore lately, just like every bare market before has. It's time for building, time for getting things back together and on track. And hopefully that's what will clean everything out. I largely agree with a lot of that sentiment there. It feels like 2025 may have actually cleared out a lot of tourists and things as well too. People that really didn't

necessarily dive into the tech or even understanding what Bitcoin was. It was just another asset in in their trading account. And it's nice to see that we got Bitcoiners back to work. I think it would be a lot of building over the next year. I'm very, very bullish about 2026. And with that, of course, the show is, why are we bullish? We're here to find out the reasons why you guys are so excited and so pumped about Bitcoin, whatever that might be.

And so, Matthew, I'm going to start with you, my friend. That's the same question that everyone's going to get. Tell me, why are you bullish? I'm bullish because in spite of all the problems we've had and all the drama and crises, I'm bullish because there is still an underlying Bitcoin community of, and here I have to really put forward the Bitcoin plebs. And these are people who are not, they don't have ulterior motives. They tend to be family people. They don't have something they're promoting.

They're not trying to promote some sort of SPAC that vacuums up Bitcoin or they don't have some sort of political calculation that's driving their decisions. Instead, they want to do what's best to protect their money, and they frequently have much more money, much more of their savings in Bitcoin than some people who work on the project professionally, certainly more than some devs and more than some influencers. And so I think as long as we have the, you could call it the remnant, use that sort of biblical terminology that's been popularized, as long as we have Bitcoin plebs. And you can see them every day on BTC sessions on this channel in the common section of mechanics videos and my videos. You can see these real people. And that's why I always laugh when people say the knots nodes are just some sort of civil attack. You can see that they're real people here. And so as long as those real bitcoinsers are around, I'm quite bullish on Bitcoin, not necessarily price I'm very agnostic about.

I have no idea what's going to come in 2026. But I think as long as we have that foundation, and it doesn't, it doesn't, history is written by the few who have very strong, strong conviction. And so as long as we have that core and whatever percentage it is, that is actually, those people actually are the guardians of Bitcoin. That's absolutely beautiful. Samson, I'll start with you. What are your thoughts on Matthew's reason?

I mean, there's a lot of different reasons to be bullish. Those are some reasons for sure that Matthew outlined. But I would say my reasons are that we are on the verge of an infinite bid on Bitcoin. If you look at the macro landscape, everything is set up to facilitate this infinite bid. And you have this coming from the big print. You have STRC from strategy that is set up to basically buy forever and strip out the volatility. and package Bitcoin into something that is palatable for people that want to steady income for retirement.

You have nation states accumulating and more on the way. You have the potential for Bitcoin bonds also. That's another way for infinite bid to come. If you think about Bitcoin bonds, they're basically like a strategy vehicle, but at the sovereign level. And we at Jan 3 were working on discussions with the two countries.

One is probably further along than the other, but still, like, once this happens, the snowball is just rolling down the hill and it accumulates. What else is infinite bid? Just plebs stacking. I think Matthew talked about that, you know, just Bitcoiners accumulating, regardless of the market sentiment and quantum fud or whatnot. People are just buying constantly. And then you have Fiat collapse.

And a lot of people don't understand how easy it is for Fiat to collapse, but you just look in recent weeks of the Iranian currency, the Riel, and it just went like up and to the right, went to zero. It depends on which direction you're looking at it in. But Fiat collapse is infinite bid. And for people that are holding it, there's just no Bitcoin price that is too high. Like you're trying to escape a collapsing fiat currency. You get on the nearest lifeboat, and that is another channel. Then you have the ETS.

And I think this is a big catalyst that has not been tapped into yet. We see a lot of inflows more so than outflows. But the ETS effectively remove the barrier to buying Bitcoin that has dampened a lot of prior bull runs where you're trying to onboard with an exchange and you're a retail guy and you have to KYC and you have to wait a week or two weeks to onboard. That usually kills it. And we hear the stories about exchange compliance. teams getting backlogged for months.

That's gone now with ETF. So I think that alone is infinite bid from the passive flows. But when the real flows come, that it is a big infinite bid. But overall, like we are on the verge of all these things coming to fruition. And even if none of them happen and just one of them happens, that's enough. But we have, you know, seven, eight, nine different things that are pushing to infinite bid. That's great. Mechanic, there's lots of things to tease out and play with there. So even starting with Matthew's reason regarding the PLEBs and then maybe even a comment on

this idea of Infinite Bibb. Tell me, what are your thoughts on that and what's your kind of initial reactions? Yeah, I mean, it depends like who I'm talking to and what their, what their perspective is. Like, why am I bullish to someone that, some gold bug that, some boomer gold bug that thinks this is all silly, newfangled technology and, or why am I bullish to someone that's already a Bitcoiner, you know, they're very different questions. So I think I definitely agree with Matthew. For me, what keeps me, you know, from despair is BIP 110, the activation efforts around that, the pivoting away from a hostile reference client or just straight up incompetent reference client.

The fact that the community, it's not what happens to Bitcoin is how we respond to it. It's just like everything else. bad things are going to happen if we respond to them in the correct way then bitcoin is going to do well and that demonstrates the kind of life it needs so i see that happening i see very very active measures being taken by people to defend bitcoin and make it keep it on track as money and all that stuff then uh but i mean to your skeptic to any skeptical person listening because i mean it's it kind of gets dry like telling other bitcoin is telling each other how

bullish we are like there are people out there that still think this is all nonsense right and those are the ones i like to argue with the most because i my i'm big bitcoin's biggest critic at the end of the day i but i know where the problems are i just have come to the reasonable conclusion that there's nothing else anything like as good as bitcoin so we don't have to be we don't have to be like a blowing trumpets super loud in celebration of it i just need to look at your alternatives what are you buying instead of bitcoin what are you own Is it at all censorship resistant or confiscation resistant? Is it genuinely scarce?

Is it easy to verify? Is it portable? Like none of these qualities. Is it decentralized in the enforcement of it if it's anything, you know, similar to Bitcoin? None of these qualities can be ascribed to anything else at all. And the best people will point to is things like gold. And I say, well, you know what happens with gold because it's happened over and over again. you're not going to be able to do the things you can do with Bitcoin.

And you can realize that now or you can realize it later. But the sooner you realize it, the sooner you realize, well, this is the only shot we've got, and we need to make it work. And then you just become a community participant, and you become Bitcoin's immune system that helps it defend itself. So I would contend with anyone that isn't bullish on Bitcoin and just ask them, what's your alternative? And usually they don't have a good answer.

at all. There's a lot of things I want to impact there. Actually, Sam, if I could pass it back to you for a second, too, because I'm curious, specifically with their work at Aqua and Jan 3, what has the state of network adoption been like for, say, like, the last six months in your opinion? Are you having a lot of these similar sort of conversations that mechanics referencing that people are still, like, very hesitant, and he's trying to outline the, like, what is your better option? What kind of, what kind of conversations? How are you viewing Bitcoin adoption right now, outside of, like, the structure of ETFs and things? Well, I see, like, adoption on the ground is always increasing, and we're trying to

take advantage of that and get them into Bitcoin. A lot of the adoption in the market we're focused on, Latam is with stable coins like tether, but well, Aqua offers both. So you get tether and you get Bitcoin. So we're trying to get them into the Bitcoin ecosystem and we're trying to do it naturally. So give them what they're looking for. They're looking for dollar exposure and they get that in Aqua. And then you see Bitcoin very prominently and it's very easy to swap to Bitcoin.

But I would just want to address some of the things that, uh, mechanical was talking about, like people getting into gold and it's almost an eternal September. So we've kind of lost our way as a civilization and relied heavily upon fiat and centralized banking systems to handle money for us. And now it seems people are suddenly interested in hard assets again, but it's almost like they need to relearn the challenges with gold. And I met a bitcoiner last year. His journey actually, actually came from gold. So he bought a lot of gold and then he had a lot of problems selling the gold because it's easy to get the gold. You can even buy it at Costco, but how do you get rid of the

gold? And he found that there was massive amounts of slippage. You can't ship it easily. A lot of shipping companies don't want to ship like take your gold and ship it elsewhere. And to get out of that trade, if you're holding spot gold, is maybe 10, 20 percent, a lot of from what you're buying at. So maybe you bought gold. Maybe it went up a lot and it's like $4,800 bucks an ounce right now. But when you're selling it, you're going to take a haircut off of that because it is so difficult to deal with that. And people don't know.

They're just buying it because it's always easy to buy something. It's hard to sell something. And Bitcoin kind of addresses that to almost a detriment for Bitcoin itself so that a lot of hedge funds and trading firms, they're actually dumping on Bitcoin because it is so easy to sell Bitcoin ahead of market events, like fear of war and physical kinetic combat over Greenland, right? Like, what do you do? That's what we saw at March 12 back in 20, whatever it was, the COVID dip. It's just people are like, I need money now. And Bitcoin is just immediately right there. It's even on a Sunday night, it's like right there. There's no other market like that, right?

Yeah, well, even just a few days ago, right? Like today with Greenland and then like two days ago with the the Japanese bond yields going crazy and parabolic. Oh, yeah. So we're the easiest market that everyone can access to hedge or dump. And I don't think a lot of people understand that. But that is why Bitcoin is so amazing because it is so 24-7, so liquid. The gold and precious metal markets, they're bifurcated. have spot, which is easy to buy, almost impossible, if not impossible to sell at market

rates. And you have the paper metal markets, which are highly questionable. Like, you don't know what they have in there. And they're easily manipulatable as well. So I think people just have to relearn that metals are not the answer. And they're going to find out the hard way. They're going to experience the manipulative. or they're going to experience the challenges when they try to sell.

And eventually they'll figure out, well, Bitcoin is the better product for storing value. Amazing. I had to pull this up quick. Yeah, this is from Rob Wallace over at Bitcoin News. Greenland PM tells residents to prepare for possible invasion. Like, this is the weirdest timeline, but that's apparently where we are right now. Matthew, I actually want to get your take on if you feel that the swell of, say, retail enthusiasm in gold is going to rotate and find its way into Bitcoin. if you think they'll move down that stack and kind of have the same realization. And then additionally, I want to further tease apart your idea regarding the PLEBs. I often have concerns about like the kind of cypherpunk ethos being lost in Bitcoin.

That as we continue to grow, which it makes sense, right, it would be diluted. But I wonder if our numbers are essentially growing even though we make up a smaller portion of the overall population. And you've got a wonderful education channel there. So I'm curious your thoughts on, you know, that cypherpunk ethos, can we maintain it? Can we get people excited to run nose, participate, defend the network? and your thoughts on possibly rotating out of precious metals into Bitcoin? Yeah, those are, I think the last thing you said is correct that the number of cyphorpunk bitcoins is increasing, even if it's a fixed percentage of the pie, just because the pie is growing.

And I think that this is how it always is that most people, and not talking about the plebs here, but more talking about normies, most people really just. don't know what's going on in the world. And they have very short attention spans and they follow the 24-hour news cycle or now the 24-minute news cycle. And I don't, I'm trying to think of a nice way to say this, but those people don't matter. They don't make history. And I think that's one of the exciting things about being in Bitcoin is that you're with so many people who are high agency and are interested in the long term and are sort of shedding their skin when it comes to all their preconceptions because once you realize just how absurd the situation is with fiat money

and how governments fund themselves i mean it's just it's insane that this is true that central banking is actually how most of the world's money works once you question something like that you begin to question obviously everything else in existence and so i think bitcoin is um it really is a portal for so many people, not just to good money, but to becoming clearer, clearer thinkers. So I, you know, I'm bullish on the people who will lead humanity and the people who are willing to take action, you know, the kind of people. And in Bitcoin, you can see, it's the people, it's the people who run nodes. And it, you know, it takes all of us. It took me a few years to really, I understand intellectually why it was so important, but it took me well to actually do that.

But those are the people, those are the people that make history. And this is certainly, This is certainly what always happens with soft forks as well and user activated soft forks. It's the strong people with conviction who make the difference. And then what was your other question was about Greenland or gold? Just gold. If you think that the retail fomo into gold that we saw with like lineups at Costco and even with the price ripping right now, if you think that the new coming precious metals team will find their way to Bitcoin. It's hard to say.

I don't have strong opinions on gold. It does look. I mean, I see people in my comment section saying they don't, they just, you know, they can't take it anymore, maybe because of my black pills, but that they sold their, they sold their Bitcoin for gold. And I just think like, you know,

that's, you know, that's probably not the, even if you were a trader and you had a one or six month time horizon, that's a very bad trade. And long term, it's a very dumb thing to do. I'll say that very much feels like sell low and buy high immediately on both of those two. things. So, you know, people have to do that. They did do as ship coins too. You know, they

and then they learn their lesson. They get burned and, or they get impoverished and then they don't really have a voice anymore. Beautiful. All right, gentlemen, we are going to put a boat on that topic. We're going to take a quick second for a shout-out to show sponsors. Everyone watching, if you're enjoying the contact, if you love what these guys have to say, please do smash that like button, leave a comment, subscribe. It really helps out. And if you're new to the channel, welcome. When we come back, we're going to get to mechanics reason for being bullish. We're going to unpack what is BIP 110, because that'll be interesting. And I wonder if mechanic has anything to say about running a note.

Might be a spicy take, might have an opinion. We'll see how that goes forward. So I'll be right back with you in just a second. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua Wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin with secure cell custody. Aqua also supports lightning and liquid network, making fast, fast, cheap Bitcoin payments and asset transfers easier than ever. Plus, it even supports stable coins giving you ultimate flexibility. Build on open source code, Aqua is transparent, trustworthy, and perfect for beginner and pros alike. Ready to upgrade your Bitcoin experience? Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR

code on the screen now to download Aqua Wallet today. Securing your Bitcoin doesn't have to be complicated or invasive. With Nunchuk's Honeybadger plan, you get state-of-the-art multisig with built-in inheritance planning and no KYC required. Nunchuk is trusted by users to secure billions of dollars in Bitcoin. The Honey Badger Plan offers 204 assisted multi-sig, guiding you step-by-step on mobile or desktop. It works seamlessly with hardware wallets like TapSigner, Cold Card, Jade, and plenty of others. So you're always in control.

Plus, with non-KYC inheritance planning, you can ensure your Bitcoin goes to your loved ones. No private info needed. Take control of your Bitcoin today. click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen to check out the HoneyBadger plan. Debify is the best and easiest way to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Funds are held in a multi-sig escrow where you hold a key, and the platform allows for excellent hardware like the cold card Mark 4 and the queue. You have access to flexible conditions, the best rates, and institutional grade liquidity.

If you're looking to make use of your capital, don't sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it. You can head over to debify.com to check them out or simply scan the QR code on the screen. All right, all right, all right. We are back in here. We will get to mechanics reason as soon as he gets back on the mic and back on the camera. But in the meantime, oh, and we're back. He's welcome. Wonderful, sir.

Good to see you. Sorry, I'm allergic to adverts. That's okay. I don't believe. Totally fine. Although one of them is Aqua, so come on. You show us some love to the sponsors. which, by the way, if anybody hasn't checked out Aqual while yet,

highly do recommend it is absolutely one of my daily drivers. And Samson, I really hope that dolphin card comes back at some point in time because I definitely wasn't using it in Canada, but hypothetically I was using it in Canada and it is absolutely phenomenal. So mechanic, same question that everyone gets. Tell me, why are you bullish, sir? Didn't I answer that already? You did.

Let's see if we expand upon a little bit more. So then what is BIP 10? And tell me, do you have any opinions on running a node? That's BIP 110. It is a, it's a temporary consent. limiting of all the ways of inserting arbitrary data into Bitcoin that are sort of that have become sanctioned on the on a bunch of ways basically our return is like here is how you store data in Bitcoin and it was always allowed to be one megabyte by consensus which is crazy but there

was a there was this gentleman's agreement aka the spam filters that stopped it realistically being bigger than 83 bytes since it ever existed with a couple of, you know, little, tiny little battles along the way where it changed every now and again. But more than 99% of op returns were tiny and harmless. And then suddenly there was a massive switchup, and that's what all the controversy is about, which was, let's rip open the floodgates and make them 100,000 bytes by default instead of 83.

This does no benefit to anyone, but in theory it was supposed to help with a couple of network metrics like block propagation and fee estimation and mining decentralization even about these are not serious claims so anyway now that that gentleman's agreement has been somewhat obliterated bitcoin's just vulnerable it's not a generic database for storing generic files and all the problems that would come with such a thing there are lots of open file sharing platforms and protocols in the world and all of them have some sort of checks and balances and protection for their participants that mean not to be crass but that mean that you don't end up with illicit content on your hard drive because no one wants that kind of hassle i want to run a bitcoin node so i can participate in

permissionless censorship money i don't want to run a file server in my house to anonymous people can upload files to over the tour network like that's not no one signed up for that battle and And a lot of people just got so ideologically, you know, gaslit or, you know, high on their own farts that they decided this was a necessary thing to do. And it was freedom in action and all that stuff. And I don't think any of these people really understand what they're saying. You're not going. It's, it reminds me of, sorry if I'm going off on a big time. It really reminds me of Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden back in the day when people would come after them saying, oh, if you don't have, you know, if you, if you, if you, you, if you, you.

If you don't have anything to hide, what's the problem with having the NSA, you know, warrantless wire tapping and all that stuff? And they always just said, look, anyone that makes that claim to me, I want screenshots of your email inbox, I want your password, I want to be able to read all your stuff. No one will ever agree to such a thing because it's a complete violation. And it's the same kind of naive ideology that says all data is just ones and zeros. I don't care what it is. Dump it on my computer. It's all the same. just not realistic. It's not how anyone works. And it's pretty much unanimous across all the

different legal frameworks in all the different jurisdictions. There's some stuff you don't want to have accidentally end up on your computer in your house. And Bitcoin was perfectly happy just being a monetary network where you might have a controversial transaction on your computer that said some very bad guy paid money to another very bad guy. But that's not your problem. That's the bad guy's problem. You just have a ledger that said he, sent some money to him. You weren't a participant in that. Whereas if you have files on your computer,

just stuff that you would extremely prejudicially go out of your way to never ever see on the internet, I'm sorry, you can't open Bitcoin up to stuff like that. So all that is to say, we're naturally very hostile to arbitrary data being stuffed into Bitcoin's blockchain. It's philosophically not what it's for on a practical level. It presents problems that mean people would be, dissuaded from running nodes and we've we have plenty of methods of countering it and

Satoshi was the first to allude to that there are other things we can do he said in reference to people you know in that conversation about uploading Lady Gaga videos to the blockchain he said I really hope we don't do that there are other things we can do in addition to the measure he was putting in then so yeah long story short at 110 responds to core 30 opening the floodgates and says all right well the spam filters are too little too late at this point because the dominant client is now relaying all this stuff around the network by default. So it becomes very difficult to fight it now the way we were in the past. So something a bit more extreme and hence temporary is required. So BIP 110 is a temporary consensus limit

of op return size and what's known as the inscription envelope and a couple of other ways of stuffing data inside Bitcoin that's been pressed up to look like the Bitcoin Transcendix. action when it's really just arbitrary data. And it lasts for a year. It will activate on September 1st of this year. And during that year, we don't know exactly what will happen. But it's likely that people don't want to keep having the disruption of doing things like this at the consensus level because it's far more disruptive.

And we can just return to a kind of sanity, which is the default nodes people use, don't by default relay lots of arbitrary data out of basic respect for. their own property and the principle of property rights. It's my computer. It's not yours. I don't have to relay things if I don't want to. No, it's not censorship. If I don't agree to do stuff on your behalf, that's not what censorship is. And I think, yeah, so at the end of that, assuming things go the way I'm guessing they will, which of course they won't, but assuming they go along that plan, at the end of the year of activation for all that, I mean, after it's been active for a year, I would assume people go back to what we did all.

the way in Bitcoin's history up to 2023, which is by default, nodes don't relay junk. And miners, by virtue of that, don't really have any junk to put in the chain anyway. So even if they route around the network, the spammers or whoever it is that wants to use Bitcoin's network, stop fighting it and decide to actually broadcast transactions that the network is okay with rather than fighting them and putting in stuff the network doesn't like, but it's consensus valid, and then having to pay a minor, a ton of money to get them to include it out of band and then get it. subjected to all their content moderation and all this stuff which is akin to you know um i guess

it starts to laying the groundwork for censorship and all that you don't want that you don't want services like mara slip stream where they're going to say all right upload anything it doesn't matter whether the network likes it or not but here's our terms and conditions you don't want to start creating that kind of infrastructure in bitcoin because they can easily just apply it to financial activity too and once they do that that's a big problem so So basically just the sane network starts with the nodes and says, what are these guys all right with? Let's work around that. Beautiful.

Matthew, Samson, I love to get your guys' feedback, your thoughts on what mechanic had to say. Here's some, Matthew, I'll start with you. Yeah, I think one thing I would add, too, is that there's this internal sort of logical contradiction using the Bitcoin blockchain for data storage. When you game it out, it doesn't even work. because the whole idea is this blockchain can be around forever, and the miners will defend it forever, and that's why it's such a great place to store your data. But it's a little bit like one of these trees

where you get parasitical ivy growth on it, and it consumes the tree, and then the whole thing collapses because miners are not going to secure your data for the rest of eternity when Bitcoin is no longer good money. So even the usage sort of breaks down over time. The other thing I would add to what mechanics, The panic said is that I think there's a good chance actually that it activates before September because the way it's structured, it sort of reverts to a user activated soft fork by September,

but there's also this opportunity for it to be activated by the miners themselves. And this is an opportunity, so the minor activated soft fork. If we get, I think it's something like 55% of blocks signaling for it within a two-week period, then it will activate. And there's really no reason that any mining pool or miners should be against a soft fork. And I imagine especially the regulated ones and the publicly, the ones that have a lot of public visibility. It's not really hell you want to die on that, you know, you want to store all this junk. And I don't think large mining pools are going to stick their necks out and defend spam and C-SAM on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Interesting. Samson, softwork, never a contentious issue. Everyone's always completely in agreement on those sort of things. What's your view of the situation? What's your view even on how things have gone since even the release of Core version 30? Well, I've stepped away from this discussion for maybe a few months now. I've been pretty busy. Fair enough.

I'm pretty vocal. I don't think Bitcoin Core has been doing a good job. I think a lot of the maintainers are questionable and probably shouldn't be maintainers, especially in light of what they did. But as for the BIP 110, I followed it early on a bit, and then I just kind of lost my way, and I don't know where it's at now. But I don't know.

I guess it's a question for a mechanic. Like, are the mining pools interested to activate it, or have you guys talked to anybody? I haven't. I have to be aware of it. I'm not a neutral participant and I consider myself and my advocacy for it to be harmful, if anything, because I'm seen as such an activist in the space. I don't want to come across like I'm overly pushing for the thing because already the

response is from a lot of core or everyone who's thinking is downstream of Greg Maxwell, who is the thought leader of the whole Bitcoin intelligentsia, right? It's just dubbed as an ocean fork immediately. And it didn't come from us, right? Like Luke did lay out the concept for it on the mailing list, but he's not Dayton who composed this. And he's not in favor of the approach taken anyway. Luke wants it to be the reactive method,

which is a can of worms I won't get into now. But basically, though, the approach it is now, Luke thinks it's too little too late, but just hopes by grace of God we make it and don't have a bunch of stuff put in the chain before it activates. that just discussed too many people running nodes and makes them turn off and causes centralization. So all that is to say, I'm not reaching out to mining pools.

I work for a mining pool, so I'm a competitor too. So there's always a lot of distrust in any of those kinds of communications anyway. And to be honest, Bitmain is the parent pool for nearly all the pools out there anyway. And the translation issues and the complete disinterest, like the last time I spoke to anyone, from Bitmain, they were like, aren't the gas fees really high now on Bitcoin? I'm like, that's, that's an Ethereum term. Do you like, that's not even, so I mean, as far as I can tell now, they're mostly into AI as well. So like the straight up, people I know have gone over to, you know, that part of the world. And they're not aware of core versus knots, let alone, you know, niche grassroots,

things like BIP 110. So I don't know what exactly is going to happen. there, it will take a while. But again, I just think I really want this to be a community-driven effort. I don't want to be some charismatic leader trying to be like, everyone needs to do this and people are in favor of it without really understanding what it does. I really don't think Bitcoin should be that kind of thing. I don't want to do it. I really would like for people, like Nott's doesn't have Bip 1-10 yet. That's a good example. This should be a community-led thing. And if it really is, Nots can follow, ocean can follow, and then pressure will be put on other mining pools to follow as well. I think that should be the way the thing naturally happens.

It shouldn't be a top-down effort. And I have changed position and standing in the community. A couple of years ago, it just would have been me yelling into the void with 100 followers on Twitter, but that's not the status I have now. So I'll be seen as a leader, and I do endorse it. I am in favor of it, but I need to just watch and see organic, growth. I don't want to astro-turf this thing. I do love that if you're a charismatic leader, you're like the softest spoken charismatic leader I've ever seen. It's just like whispering lullabies

into a mic. Samson, do you have any initial thoughts or response to that? Well, I just want to say for the record, I philosophically support it. I just don't know if 110 is the right way to implement it because I haven't looked. And I'm kind of waiting to see it bubble up in my feed and amongst people I talk to. So that's where I sit. I appreciate it. I do think there isn't really much. There are some practical concerns for miners that might adopt it or not adopt it. But I don't think there's like what it actually does is very easy to defend.

Why do we want one megabyte op returns a consensus? I don't know. There's no one in the world that's sitting here saying, I need that for Bitcoin to be great money. I need a one megabyte op return of consensus. There's just, you know, but Pip 110 does do more than limit op return. And it also gets rid of op-if from within taproot, which is used by some people at the moment, but it is fundamentally a counter to the entire concept of taproot, which is that you get rid of ifs from scripts and put them all in their own tap leaf,

and then you only reveal the one condition that gets executed, and that's efficiency. That's why it's scaling tech. So having op-if inside tap-rout transactions is it defeats the whole point. of it because then you have to reveal all the other conditions and use more space on chain. That's the kind of the whole point of taproot is to not use op-if. And that's what the inscriptions envelope uses. So that's just gone entirely from it. You still have op-if with regular Segwit and stuff. It still remains as an op-code in Bitcoin. So that's the other thing it does. There's another couple of things it does too that I want to understand better before I

try and talk about them. But just on a practical level, I don't see any minor being like, this is a bad idea. It harms Bitcoin in some way. I just see them being like, well, only 3% of people support it and I don't want to be on a dead chain myself. That would be the objection. I do have a mechanic. I want to throw a question to you that something that's really kind of bugged me in the back of my mind. And I'm sure there's a very good reason for it. It could be a stupid question as well, but might as well take advantage of having your wonderful tech skills here. The whole like, even to me, the idea of needing the operative seems unnecessary in the sense that like, so to take for example, like I understand it's not completely permanent, but still like pretty

good, but like any additional data that you needed to include with the transaction, you could just take a Noster event hash and throw that in there. Like, you don't need to have the data itself there, even if there's something else that you need to point to. We can store it somewhere else and just have a hash to refer back to it. I don't understand why that, I'm sure there's a good reason, why that's not necessarily something that's levered is more often. Well, I guess the devil's advocate there is always the zero knowledge proofs are bigger than the 83 byte return that was allowed. And op return was allowed because fake pub keys are possible in Bitcoin and they're more harmful than not pretend. So you get in this snowball of, well, if we don't extend any olive branch, then they do something pretty bad. So we better give them this thing that's not quite as bad. And then

they're just going to want to keep making that bigger and bigger. And it's, it's a very annoying sort of, people have come up with those analogies of putting garbage cans around because otherwise people are going to throw garbage on the floor. And I'm like, all right, but now we just have a public area filled with literally garbage cans all full that can never be emptied, by the way. So they're just permanently full of trash. So I mean, yeah, like, let's be honest. It's all scams at the end of the day. If your data is important to you, email it to yourself.

That's it. Like a one megabyte email, that's what's that $3,000 worth of block space to use one entire megabyte? Like, no, it's fundamentally just abusive. Like you're just trying to get other people that trying to engage in money and you're taking advantage of the fact that they're trying to be sovereign in doing that by pretending you're doing money and wrapping up your data as money and tricking them into storing it for you. It's fundamentally antisocial behavior.

And this is the thing, like, it's freedom technology. And people always get hung up on the freedom of it and then forget about how to make things like that usable and deal with antisocial people that come along and ruin it for everyone. You have to be vigilant about that. Otherwise, you end up with nanny states. You end up with people saying, well, you all couldn't regulate yourself. So now I'm here to run it for you. That's what always happens when you get, you know, sociopathic people parasitically,

like coming into areas where people have gentlemen's agreements, where we have a free association where people generally act within a code of conduct and say, this is a good thing and let's not spoil it for each other. You just get someone come in, act incredibly antisocially, and then just say, and then start making all these alluding to all these principles, like freedom of speech and censorship resistance and permissionlessness. And it's just all hiding behind the fact that you want to scam other people. You want to trick other people into helping you out in a way that doesn't benefit them.

And you want to gaslight them ideologically saying you have to do this. Otherwise you're a Nazi and all these things they've been throwing at people that run knots, right? And people should see through those kinds of rhetorical games, but it's not easy to do, unfortunately. So it's all about self-regulation. then you get the benefit of freedom. If you just go freedom, freedom, freedom, without the ability to self-regulate, then you just end up with a tragedy of the commons, essentially,

where no one is prepared to run nodes, you know, it's, and that's just centralization and crypto. That's all that is is just crypto again. Even just like, this is succinct up. This always kind of felt to me, like it was a conflict between the idea of like programmable money. Like if you're going to have programmable money, well, those are two different things.

And if they ever come into clash, which one do you favor? The programmability side or the money side of it? And I feel like that's very much kind of how we split down. Matthew, did you have anything you want to add or respond to with mechanic there? Well, just respond to the most recent thing you said, Bitcoin is already programmable money. But we don't need giant smart contracts.

And we also don't need giant JPEGs. I think that's probably all I have to say on that. Beautiful, beautiful. Samson, are we going to get the Mao client at some point in time in terms of maintainers? Are we going to get the Jan 3 Bitcoin client here? Who knows? Who knows? It'd be a wonderful adventure. Well, awesome, guys.

I'll put a bow on that topic. We'll take another quick break for sponsor shoutouts. But when we come back, I want to jump back into this idea of the infinite bid. Because that sounds like a great pairing to the Omega candle. And Samson, there's a lot of things that you threw out there in the list. Like even what was it, is STRC? I'm going to be completely honest here and go, I have no idea what STRC is. So I love for you to actually take us through that breakdown exactly how this adds to the Bitcoin demand,

what you're seeing and what that might mean. So again, everyone, if you're watching, if you're enjoying the conversation, please do hit that like button. It really does help out. We'll be right back after this quick sponsor shoutout. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen.

or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC sessions to sign up today. And you can share your own personalized referral link to earn commissions. Coin kite has been in the game for years, creating hands down the best and most secure hardware when it comes to securing your Bitcoin. The cold card Q is an absolute powerhouse and my daily driver, and it's ideal for newcomers and advanced users alike. The tap signer gives you a little.

low-cost, user-friendly option for those just getting started or for convenience when traveling. You can head to coincite.com and use code BTC sessions for discounts or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away. One company I like pointing people to when they ask about Bitcoin mining is abundant mines. They were founded by Bo and Christine Turner after losing over half a million dollars to broken promises in the mining industry. and they built their hosting model to remove the usual headaches. With abundant mines, you own your machines and keep 100% of the Bitcoin you mine.

There's no revenue share, no hidden skims. Pricing is simple. One flat monthly fee covers power, parts, labor, and repairs. They also guarantee uptime. If a machine goes down, their hash rate redirect system routes hash power from their fleet, so earnings don't just stop. And every machine is insured at full replacement value. Everything is hosted in the U.S., powered by hydro, and mining equipment may qualify for 100% Year 1 bonus depreciation.

Learn more at Abundantmines.com slash sessions. All right, we're back. We're back. So, Samson, I want to jump right into essentially talking about this infinite bit, because that's quite an outlandish and strong claim there, my friend. That's a big one. So what exactly, the individual component, specifically was it STRC? what is that? Why is it going to be adding additional demand for Bitcoin? And then additionally, do you have any plans to travel to any countries anytime soon that we should maybe be aware of?

I don't know. I have to go to Italy soon, but that's not a nation state one. But yeah, I mean, I guess where do you want to go into it first? The infinite bid is just entities that will buy forever at any price point. And there's so many different triggering events for the infinite bid from an array of different entities. but STRC is probably the most obvious one that you can't deny anymore. So you said you don't know what it is. It's like a preferred stock. I think it's called Stretch from strategy, formerly MicroStrategy.

And it's targeted to be at $100. And it pays right now, I think 11% a year. So if you put in 100,000, you're going to get 11% of that. every year back. And in the US, I think it's a return of capital, so it's tax advantaged. And if you're elsewhere and you're, you'd have no tax, then it's basically the best yielding product out there on the market. And what it is is you buy $100 of STRC, sailor takes that and buys Bitcoin with it and effectively strips out the volatility. So you get back that 11% forever in perpetuity. And he takes that to buy Bitcoin, which he thinks will,

appreciate at 30% a year. I think it's probably going to be closer to 60%, but basically he's pocketing that 20% difference right there. But if STRC holds 100, then people will just keep buying it and it can fund infinite bidding on Bitcoin at any price. Interesting. Earlier Mechanic was referring to Bitcoin being able to respond in terms of real time, like the open free market in terms of geopolitical events or things that might be going on there. We actually get some signal on the price. But I'm curious, Samson, if you share that sentiment, or if you think that there's been anything that's been holding this beach ball underwater. Because I'll tell you, like a few things that jump out at me is that I can't say

for certain, but it looks to me like silver kind of got that short squeeze on paper silver, and that's what caused it to rock it up, which, by the way, one of the most encouraging things is to watch the precious metals markets move by trillions. It's like, you can take that same market cap and apply it to Bitcoin. And we're moving pretty fast and pretty high. I'm wondering if you have, if you have any inklings or concerns around that there may be like some sort of derivatives paper game being played on top of Bitcoin that might be part of why we see it not moving in tandem with precious metals and other sound money assets. Well, there's always a game, right?

And this is just a way the world works. Anytime there is an asset that is merged with the traditional system, you're going to have people playing games with it. And you have infinite fiat that can pressure the price and do interesting things. like the 7 a.m. dump that was most of December. Stuff like that. It can always happen. But the problem for these guys that are trying to control the prices, Bitcoin is finite.

So you can do it to a point. And I think that point is just an indeterminate couple weeks or months out in the future. And once you're at that point, there's just no return. Like you can dump the price down and it'll come back up and you'll never be able to, recover or arb that back anyway, it just will take off and it'll just keep going parabolic. So the metals can be manipulated to a large degree. If you look at like gold and silver, like I think who was it? Someone posted like you had a 2% cagger for silver over like the last 48 years or something like that.

Right. It looks awesome now, but actually if you go back and look historically, you only have two. percent from 19 something years in the 1900s. But, you know, that's because silver is not traded at spot much. It's mostly paper. And yes, there's industrial applications of silver, but, you know, that's not the price driver, at least not previously. So maybe it's the combination of those two things, like natural demand for industrial

purposes plus just the inability or someone's on the wrong side of the trade and they're getting squeezed that is pushing it up parabolically. But I think with Bitcoin, you reach that point much sooner because there is a limit. Like every time Saylor drops a massive buy and Bitcoin dips, everyone's like, how can that be possible? Like, why? I think it's because the trader with coins on exchange that can move the price up and down, they're taking the opportunity to move the price for their own benefit because they see like Sailor shot his shot already and there's an opportunity there. So if you're trying to dump for whatever reason and you've hedged it, you want to push the price down, that is the most opportune time to do that. But eventually, you know, let's say another

strategy comes up. Like we have 21 and you have VSTR. You know, they can, there's going to be too much raw demand. Like one of them is just going to buy the Sailor dips after he and announces the purchase on Monday. And maybe there will be a dip after that one, but then the other company will come swooping in. But I don't think people understand the magnitude of the demand, the raw demand, the infinite bid. And they're playing chicken with this.

And they're thinking, well, we can push the price down. We can dump it on spot and derivatives and, you know, get it back lower because the market panics. But eventually that all comes to an end. Like, these guys don't understand absolute scarcity. And they're going to. No, 100%. I'm actually quickly before I go to Matthew Mechanic on that, Samson, I'm curious, and maybe it's both, right?

There's no reason to can't necessarily be both. But when you think of like the Omega Candle, like the big green, hard, up extended line that we get, when that moment happens, when you kind of envision it, is it coming from a position of like short sellers having to cover their losses, like a squeeze sort of scenario? Or are you envisioning it more as kind of a flood of new demand coming in, almost like S-curve adoption sort of thing? Probably a flood of demand. And it's everything, right? Like that's all Omega candle fuel. So let's say another country has the currency collapse, you know, and people want to get out. They're going to exit through Bitcoin.

And you're going to see that amplify it. And that's going to catch some people trying to push the market down or shorting Bitcoin off guard. And they're going to have to cover. And as it goes up, you're going to see more demand from strategy with STRC. And they're just going to buy at that price. And it's sort of self-reinforcing. you'll see one a mega candle up and then you might get another one the next day. But it's all on the, we're basically on the precipice now.

It's all on the horizon and any of these things can fire off at any time. That's incredible. Mechanical, go to you first too. I'm actually curious if you view Bitcoin's adoption as kind of like the diminishing marginal returns over time, or we think that we'll have that kind of technology, exponential growth in terms of demand at some point. Outside, of course, the Canadian currency failing and everybody needing it immediately. I don't know. Like I'm very bad at making price kinds of predictions. Unfortunately, I think it's a lot of people have a lot of knowledge in that area, but it all kind of seems, you know, like it's like weather prediction, right? People tell you it's going to be 25 degrees on next Wednesday and here's how I know it. And I'm like, well, if it just isn't, what happens to the fact that you said that? So I really don't know. I don't, I have very, I have very. I don't have that much faith in like the,

Samson is the turbo bull, right? It's the omega candles, the green, the green candles and all that. Very, very bullish, very, very optimistic. I don't have that kind of sentiment. I just always resort back to there's nowhere else to go. Like, I'm staying in Bitcoin, that's it. And eventually enough other people will probably realize that. And the Fiat will just die.

That tends to be my point. I have no idea how we get that, though. all the micro strategy stuff and all this all this financial engineering caught me extremely off guard I'm kind of I find it quite out of keeping with the Bitcoin ethos frankly and I thought it was quite revealing when Saylor described people as paranoid crypto anarchists for running nodes and storing their own private keys and things I found that to be quite in quite poor taste because that's actually that is what gives all of your coins value even if he can't do it Like, Saylor doesn't need a cold card and a node because everything he does is, you know,

as long as the CIA says, all right, we're not going to confiscate them all today, but tomorrow, like, you know, that's everything he owns is public. He's operating publicly. He's not a crypto anarchist, right? But his investment is given value by us crypto anarchists. So I don't understand why you would denigrate that or speak in a derogatory manner in that way. I think he gets a lot of flack for that comment. But to his credit, he has more faith in conviction in Bitcoin than a lot of hardcore Bitcoiners like these days.

A lot of people have this down sentiment like, oh, I can't believe gold and silver are ripping and it's so bad right now. Like, you know, people are saying this is the worst sentiment they've ever seen. And that's not really true. It's like it's just them. They're lacking conviction. But if you look at Sailor, you know, he doesn't care. He bought it 95. It's down.

It doesn't matter. he's going to buy again and again and again because he believes in the asset. So I think you can give him flack for his comment about not reading a note or whatever, but you have to also give him credit that he has that conviction in the future of Bitcoin. Yeah, that's well said. He definitely deserves a lot of recognition for not just the conviction in buying and selling a lot of it and doing it, you know, whether come rain or come shine, but also publicly, you know, reversing his position because years ago he said it was nonsense it's going to suffer the same fate as

online gambling right and you know he had to eat humble pie and say i was wrong about that and i respect that yeah but i just want to comment one more thing like you said the price predictions are kind of like predicting the weather i think it's more like looking over forest and you're seeing fires pop up here and there and you're kind of predicting there's going to be a big fire because there's so much kind kindling on and dried foliage on the ground that it's going to go up in flames, right? That's the way I look at it. If you look at the big print infinite bid, that's becoming more and more apparent. In Davos, there's that clip of Brian Armstrong talking with the central bankers,

and they're like all smugly talking about central bank independence. But what's happening in the U.S., you know, J-POW is getting sued and getting a nice nice blast of lawfare for not cutting rates, right? So is there such thing as central bank independence? Not really. And it's all going to come tumbling down very, very quickly once it is apparent that it's just a bunch of old guys saying on a stage talking of independence, whereby there is none. Matthew, your thoughts. What's the manifestation of that, just money printing like no one has ever seen? Is this This is your thesis. I pretty much believe it.

I mean, we're living it, but it's like, you're just used to it. Like, oh, we're up another trillion in debt. Like, what is a trillion? Like, what is it really? It's like a football field filled with cash, you know? It's, we've kind of gotten used to it. Like, even us as Bitcoiners, aware as we are of the world, we're still kind of like that pot in the kettle. Like, we don't really think it's on the kettle's boiling yet or the pot is boiling yet. But it is boiling. And it's getting hotter and hotter. I'll even add to it to Ray Dalio,

when speaking about how would we know we were at the end of a credit cycle, it would be the merger between the central banks and the Treasury that they essentially just become outright one. And I feel like we're getting closer and closer to that point. But Matthew, I want to get your thoughts on all this. Oh, we were at that point in 2009 when quantitative easing began in the U.S.

And it's been, you know, Bernanke famously said he was going to contract the Fed's balance sheet in 2010, 2011 and the exact opposite has happened. So I mean, and to respond to the other points about central banking, it seems like there's really only one central bank that matters, which is the Fed. The ECB is just a suburb of the whole Eurozone is a bit of a project of the US. And it has no energy, it has no defense.

It's highly dependent on the US as we're seeing. And China manages its currency with reference to the US dollar because its largest trading partner really matters. And so it really is, it's one big house of cards. And maybe there's some nuances there. There's some really small central banks that don't matter. So what happens when the only central bank that matters has no independence? That's the question you gotta ask yourself.

Go on, Samson. Independent in a very, very long time. I mean, like to be sort of boring about it, isn't it midterms, Trump does everything you can to get them to print as much money as he can, to make everyone as temporarily happy as he can in order to keep what he can of the House and Senate and all that. My understanding of U.S. politics is pretty bad, but it's pretty spot-on. It's like the only lever they have to pull is they're going to try and force down interest rates

and have a whole bunch of fiscal spending to try and juice the economy artificially, right? It's just all nominal, make people feel better and get a vote. Because if asset prices are down, they look screwed for the midterms. And there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of Fed rate cuts in the, if you price it out, it's something like 25 to 50 basis points. So at least the market currently doesn't believe. I think the lead in, I don't think he's been chosen at Kevin Warsh is, I think he's fairly doveish.

So maybe those prediction markets would change. I can never reconcile the contradiction with an inflationary currency and low interest rates. The two things are completely contradictory. The more inflationary, the currency, the higher the interest you have to charge for it to make sense to lend it in the first place. That's why I can't control the long end of the curve, which is such a fun, fun rabbit hole to go down in terms of the Fed doesn't actually control all that much. It's a bunch of, what you say, psychological and messaging games. They can really only control the overnight rate. And even then, you'll see people that would get a better spread the overnight window and they won't take it.

They'll go elsewhere because they want those treasuries as collateral. They can control long rates. They can absolutely control long rates. If they start buying them up. What's that? I was saying if they start buying them up and actually doing... Yeah, they do it with quantitative. Control and quantitative easing.

Control whatever part of the curve they want, but then they lose control of the currency in the process. One of the things has to get... Well, gentlemen, I think that's a fantastic point to start to riving out the conversation. There was at least one more thing I wanted to throw in there for my own selfish benefit, just to make sure that we're kind of all on the same page. Once we have the sovereign country of Alberta, Samson, I'm sure you'll commit to come and maybe advise on Bitcoin policy and mechanic, you're going to relocate from BC

to the sovereign country of Alberta? and Matthew, of course, you're welcome as well. I was hoping BC would just sort of go along with that, though it seems more likely to relocate itself to the most left-wing part of Portland, Oregon instead, which I don't know. Somehow all of Canada's insaneness doesn't seem to ever happen here. I don't know how we're immune from it,

but I pay no attention to politics in Canada. I remember that Mark Carney was prime minister yesterday when everyone, like, I genuinely just, just don't pay any attention. I think it's all, as Frank Zappa said, the entertainment division of the military industrial complex. I find the less time I spend getting outraged about something Trump or Biden or Trudeau or any of these clowns did, the better. I just try and ignore it. Samson? I'll move to Alberta if you can leave. Okay, done. Matthew? I support a free Alberta. Love it. Gentlemen, wonderful. We'll round of the conversation there. I'll go to you each quickly.

just tell again everybody where they can find you, where they can check out your stuff. And additionally, we're talking so much about the tech and the tools. I think it's really important these days. You guys are all fantastic educators. If you have a call to action, something that somebody should go learn or check out, please throw it out there. So, Matthew, I'll start with you. You can find me on YouTube, Matthew Crowder's Bitcoin University. And I'll be putting out a tutorial tomorrow about how to run the, probably tomorrow or Friday,

how to run the new, the BIP 110 software client. So be sure to check that out if that's something you're interested in. Beautiful mechanic. I work at Ocean. That's Ocean.xyZ. We are a mining pool. We pay much more than any other mining pool. And we also are the only transparent pool.

So we've been revolutionizing that whole industry for the last couple of years. We've grown a lot. And that's where I would send people. I can be found at Grass Fed Bitcoin. And yeah, thanks. You're very welcome. Everybody should try out mining used out. Try setting up data on your own server.

It's a fun little project. And Samson. I'm on X mostly. Xcelion is my handle. EX C-E-E-L-I-O-N. And you can find out more about Jan 3 at Jan3.com. And follow us on X as well. We make the Aqua Wallet.

Beautiful. I am Nathan with the BTC sessions. And this has been your bullish session. Hey, you. Yes, you are watching the Bitcoin price movements and the latest exciting news. It's awesome to stay informed. real power of Bitcoin comes from taking control. Don't just watch, take action. Head over to BTCsessions.ca slash learn for free step-by-step tutorials that guide you through every major skill

you need to know, plus full video playlist for deeper dives on any topic you like. And if you're ready for the ultimate fast track, scroll to the bottom and check out Bitcoin Mentor.io for premium one-on-one experience with my team of Bitcoin experts to ensure you get it right the first time. Don't wait, secure your Bitcoin future today. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen.