BTC Sessions - Paraguay To Introduce Bitcoin Bill In Congress ep180

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

Paraguay is the next country front and centre as many eye El Salvador's passage of a bill making Bitcoin legal tender. This and more in today's Bitcoin news roundup. 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Bitcoin In Canada With Bitbuy - get $20 free! https://bitbuy.ca/en/sign-up/?c=BTCSessions LEDN Bitcoin backed loans –  get $25 free https://bit.ly/397rlLN Get Wasabi wallet for Bitcoin privacy https://wasabiwallet.io/ Keystone Wallet: secure your Bitcoin! http://bit.ly/KeyStoneSessions BillFodl: get your wallet backups in solid steel. https://privacypros.io/btcsessions Bitrefill: use Bitcoin to purchase gift cards https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/?code=O04UMic9 BITCOIN LIGHTNING tips: https://strike.me/btcsessions

Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. I hope you're having a good day. Lots of interesting stuff going on this week. We got some stuff, some news out of Paraguay, Paraguay. Sorry, bad pronunciation here. Regarding following the example of El Salvador and working on a bill to potentially get

Bitcoin as legal tender in the country. But it's not so cut and dry. We're going to get into some of the details of that and what it entails and how likely it might be. And lots of other stuff to touch on just before I came online, Robert Breedlove dropped a blog post regarding the whole BitClout deal. So I was trying, that's why I was a little late getting in here. I was trying to sort through that quickly before we dove on. Anyways, we're going to touch on it. As always, of course, make sure you smash the like button, give this a share. Let's get a ton of people in here. Let's talk about what's going on, get those chat messages coming in.

As always, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my good friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Do it live. I can, I'll write it and we'll do it live.

The thing sucks. All right, we're going to get this thing rolling. Everybody that's here, thank you for being here. Smashlight, give this a share. And as always, I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. All right, before we dive into the show, of course, let's take a look at where we are in the markets right now.

We're sitting at $34,812 per Bitcoin. A single US dollar will grab you $2,873,000. Sats. 89.25% of all Bitcoin have been mined. And in terms of fees, for the next block, 21 sats per byte will do you if you're willing to wait an hour for sats per byte. So still relatively cheap fees despite the bump and price.

Now, we did bottom out just the other day. We did go below 30K for a while. We dove into the $29,000 range in that. area and some people were biting their nails. Other people were, people were saying, great, cheap sats. You know, if you've been here a while, you're used to this kind of stuff. It can be crazy at times. But yeah, we've bounced back since then. Of course, we had Peter Schiff called the bottom. He said it's going to zero. Obviously, he said, oh, head and shoulders, we're heading down and this puts us straight to zero. That's it, as if he's never called that in the past 12 years

multiple times at much lower price points. But hey, shift going to shift. And we're still here. So before we dive into the news, of course, shout out to sponsor the show. Leaden.com. You can use your Bitcoin here for a variety of different services. Of course, they've got their Bitcoin back loans. If you are in a pinch and you need dollars and you don't want to sell your Bitcoin,

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But it's coming. It's around the bend. So it's officially been passed. It's happening. And there's like a, there's a 90 day window from the moment it was passed to when it actually comes into effect. So a lot of countries started looking at that, particularly in Central and South America, saying, hey, we kind of want to jump on this train. And it looks like the first to at least propose it and get a bill to be voted on after El Salvador will be Paraguay. Now, how likely is this

to happen, though? So let's dig a little bit deeper here because it's nice to see this pop up and nice to see the interest, but is it likely? So I'm going to read a little bit here from Euro News. It says that lawmaker Carlos Rahala is now leading a bid to implement legislation to make Paraguay the second country to add Bitcoin as to its legal tender. On Thursday, he announced on Twitter. He would be introducing a bill to the country's national Congress in July that would likely mirror El Salvador's new cryptocurrency law. So he said in July, we legislate. slate. Now, the interesting thing is, how likely is this? So they say the devil's in the

details, bulk of the details of the bill have not been widely circulated yet. He says, this guy Rahala says he is outlining his vision for Bitcoin use in Paraguay, saying that he was working with the Paraguayan crypto community in order for Paraguay to become a hub for the crypto investors of the world and subsequently be placed among the ones of the cutting edge of digital technology. Now, he is not a higher up in the legislature here. Let's be clear. So he is, they have an 80 seat chamber of deputies.

And he is representing the, I'm not sure how to say it, Hagemos party. and his party only has two seats of that 80 seat chamber. To put this in context in El Salvador, Buckele and his party have basically a sweeping majority of everything. They won the bill to pass Bitcoin as legal tender by like 64 votes in, again, an 80 seat chamber, I believe. And so when you're looking at this, actually they might have a few more seats in El Salvador. So I'm mistaken there, but they almost had three quarters of the vote. They definitely had more than two thirds. Whereas this, such a small party proposing this, I don't know if this is going to get through unless there just happens to be a swell of support.

But this guy is in a small party. he's bound to get some opposition from, you know, a good chunk of people outside of his party. So I don't know. I feel like we shouldn't get too excited about this. Again, it's nice to see the interest, but I'm not banking on this passing. Furthermore, if you really look into some of the language that he's talking about, It seems to be around just like a general let's get every cryptocurrency in the door. It's not like, hey, let's really help our people with Bitcoin and make it a legal tender.

It's like, hey, we're going to be extending an invitation to kind of everyone. And he seems to be going down a little bit of the shit coin rabbit hole. but when you see who's kind of behind him and helping him out, they had one of the CEOs of Bitcoin.com, CEO of CryptoExchange Bitcoin.com. I imagine their Paraguayan version of the website. He's collaborating with the congressman to introduce a project in Congress so that Paraguay becomes crypto-friendly, quote unquote,

for worldwide crypto investors. Yeah. And so it's no wonder that he's kind of using the type of language that Bitcoiners tend to say, what are you, where are you going with this? Because Bitcoin.com obviously was originally bought by Roger Vair, not originally, but under the ownership of Roger Vair. And that website very much has pumped Bitcoin cash and replace a Bitcoin for years. So obviously they're going to be pushing like the more crypto outlook. on things as opposed to, hey, let's make Bitcoin legal tender.

Let's push for a Bitcoin standard. Let's utilize the Lightning Network. And let's focus on making a cohesive infrastructure for everyone so that it's just easy to transact as they see fit. And that doesn't seem to be the way that they're going. But hey, you know, we'll see. Again, I'm not super hopeful about this particular legislation, but seeing the interest around the globe and in this region, regardless, is at least encouraging.

Another, the game theory here is playing out pretty nicely. So Miami obviously became a big focal point with Bitcoin 2021. The conference was massive. Tons of people went to it. And the mayor, Suarez, has talked about paying city employees in Bitcoin, accepting Bitcoin for taxes. holding it on the balance sheet of the municipality. A lot of a lot of buzz there around this. And the Democratic frontrunner from New York says he will turn the city into a Bitcoin hub to rival Miami.

So some of his quotes here, he said, I promise you, in one year, you're going to see a different city. We're going to become a center of life science, the center of cybersecurity, the center of self-driving cars, drones, the center of Bitcoin. we're going to be the center of all technology. And he later went on to say, Miami, you had your run. We're bringing our business back, directly kind of pulling a shot up Miami and saying, hey, we're going to compete with you for this.

So, yeah, it's interesting to kind of see this playing out both on like a country level and a municipal level. We're seeing it play out in states as different states pass favorable regulations for for Bitcoin miners. You had Kentucky have reduced taxes for anybody that's mining in the area. You have Wyoming trying to pass, well, actually successfully passing a ton of legislation in and around cryptocurrency and, well, I mean, namely Bitcoin, to encourage business to come and domicile there.

So, yeah, the game theory is really starting to get rolling here. you know, it's not all going to happen at once, but had you taken just this handful of stories and brought them back to 2017, people would have lost their minds. So, yeah, encouraging to see. And then just another thing to add to here, banking giant BBVA launches Bitcoin trading custody services in Switzerland. So the Madrid-based financial services giant BBVA is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and they will soon be offering Bitcoin trading and custody services

through its Swiss subsidiary. Their quote here, after six months of testing with selected groups of users, BVA, Switzerland makes its first crypto asset trading and custody service available to all of its private banking clients. And this is according to an announcement from the bank's office. The service will be limited to Switzerland and is scheduled to begin operating on June 21st. So that was, you know, earlier this week, this story was from the 18th, but still worth bringing up. A Bitcoin management system will be integrated into a BBV Switzerland app where performance can be viewed alongside other investments. So again, we're kind of seeing this rollout where, and we've seen testimonials from banks saying, hey, we're losing business. We're

seeing money flow out the doors to the exchanges, we want them back so we better start offering these services. Otherwise, they're going to eat our lunch. I'm, I highly encourage all of you to do your own self-custody and not be trading. But hey, these banks are trying to compete. They see a lot of people that are pulling money out the door and they don't like it. So rather than trying to ban it at this point, they're, I think they're just going to play ball. So, okay, now, let's get into this China mining fud that's going on. So China, well, first of all, let's address the previous fud around China. What was it before?

China controls Bitcoin. Too much of the hash rate is in China. China's destroying the planet because all of the mining is there. They can control Bitcoin. They could shut it down. They could do whatever. It was always China controls it too much. And there was so much worry around that.

They were also, there was a lot of thought around the environmental aspect of it. Oh, it's horrible for the environment. Funny enough, China, it was primarily hydro. Sure, there was some coal involved, but a lot of it, a lot of it was hydro in China. Anyways, they started cracking down on mining recently. They used the excuse of carbon footprint. But again, they're now going to basically all of the hydro and shutting down those. mining operations as well. So it seems to be just like a sweeping ban of mining in China.

Now, the worry was China controls Bitcoin, right? But if China is banning Bitcoin, then that obviously does not seem to be the case. If they controlled it, then they wouldn't try to ban it because they could just control it. So clearly they can't control it. So now they're trying to ban it. But the fud around this now is, oh, if China's going to ban it, then Bitcoin's going to die because China's going to get whatever it wants. But that's not how Bitcoin works. If the hash rate drops, there's a difficulty adjustment. The same amount of Bitcoin will be mined every 10 minutes after that difficulty adjustment hits, which is roughly every two weeks. The upcoming difficulty adjustment should be around July 1st.

So in about a week now, actually we can check that right now. We are looking at actually sooner, June 29th estimated retarget date. And we're looking at an estimated difficulty change of around down almost 21%. So it'll be 21% easier to mine Bitcoin because currently with the amount of hash rate that has pulled offline, it's that takes that much longer to mine Bitcoin. So what are the implications of this? What's going on? Basically, the hash rate has been chopped in half for a lot of these miners.

You can see the change in hash rate from like ant pool, F2 pool, you know, Hyobi, I never know how to say that one. Anyways, they're telling like 82%, one tarahash down 97%. So a bunch of these, a bunch of the smaller operations are basically going totally down. and they're going to have to take their miners to different locales. And meanwhile, the ones that are still mining, they're going to be making bank, right? Because all of the same mining rewards are now just divvied up

amongst the remaining hash, amongst the remaining miners. So they just get a bigger piece of the pie for the time being until those rigs are relocated and then come back online. So we're going to see some massive drops in hash rate. which is totally fine. And then it'll retarget. Everything will be back to normal. And then we'll see as those machines find new homes, huge increases in hash rate yet again.

And you'll see quicker blocks when that's happening instead of slower blocks right now. Right now, transactions will probably take a little bit longer than they would have. Transactions might be a little bit more expensive than they would have. But you'll see exactly the opposite when these come back online. So yeah, it's very interesting to see, again, about 65% of the world's Bitcoin mining took place in China as of April 2020. And over months, that dominance has been fading. Market participants at the time in China, they have less than 50% of the share of Bitcoin

hash rate and falling. With the latest crackdown, share has been further declining. Bitcoin price plunge in recent weeks and other are another major reason for hash rate fall. According to data compiled by the block, most Chinese Bitcoin mining pools now have seen their hash rate fall by over 50%. However, North American miners like Foundry have seen hash rate increase. In fact, Foundry is up about 15% during the same period. So you're going to see this mass relocation of mining hash rate and it'll just be further decentralized because of this legislation, which is super funny to see. All of a sudden,

all of the fud around China controls Bitcoin, China's banning Bitcoin. I saw a tweet earlier. How many people have money on the sidelines looking at the China FUD right now saying there's all these threats from China. And all they're going to see is China bans Bitcoin. Nobody is binding Bitcoin in China anymore. And Bitcoin still functions exactly as intended. Nothing.

Nothing will change. will continue, it will retarget, and it will just keep pumping out blocks roughly every 10 minutes. All of a sudden, that fud is gone. We're in the midst of that being worked through the public psyche right now or anybody that's paying attention. So very interesting. Somebody who doesn't get it is Jim Kramer. Jesus Christ. Come on, Jim.

Jim Kramer from Mad Money. He bought in a while back when Anthony Pompliano had him on the show and explained it to him. He bought in. Then he sold like half of it to buy a house. And then he dumped almost all of it recently because of the China stuff. And he was saying like, well, China always gets what it wants. And they're going to come in and there. He doesn't seem to understand in the segment here. He's talking on air and he's saying there's less people mining it. So why is the, Why would the price go down if there's less Bitcoin being mined? There's never less Bitcoin being mined within a four-year epoch.

There's the same amount of Bitcoin always being mined within the four years until the issuance gets cut. So Bitcoin upon inception, 50 Bitcoin were mined every 10 minutes. And then that number gets cut in half every four years. Right now, six and a quarter Bitcoin get mined. mind every 10 minutes, regardless of how many people are mining it. This is one of the innovations of Bitcoin, digital scarcity. It doesn't matter if the mining capacity quadrupled or 10xed overnight. You would have a period of a short period of time less than two weeks, and it would retarget

and you would have 10 minutes every time the same amount of Bitcoin being issued. Conversely, if 90% of the hash rate dropped off the network and there's only 10% left mining Bitcoin, you'd have slow blocks for a while. And then when it retargeted, it would be right back to every 10 minutes the same amount of Bitcoin issued. So Jim Kramer, unsurprisingly, doesn't understand Bitcoin. And I think it's going to be super hilarious watching him look at this through later this year as he realized that he dumped. in and around like $30 something $1,000. And it was on FUD that has been recycled for years. We've been hearing this shit since 2014 and earlier.

I guess people just really don't look at what they're buying. So, yeah, it is what it is. more FUD coming out from the bank for international settlements. So the world central banks launch new campaign against cryptocurrencies. Surprising, who would have thought that they are not fans of Bitcoin? So central bank owned Bank of international settlements says cryptocurrencies work against the public good. this drivel from the CVC is Don Pittis, dude, you got to look into this more. Like, did they just send you like a press release and you just copied it and put it into an article?

Because this article, I challenge any of you to read through this and not have your blood pressure go through the proof because it is just, it is astounding how much is wrong with this article. Anyways, it's basically like a marketing stick and a smear campaign against Bitcoin while pumping the benefits of their central bank digital currencies. They go through everything. The volatility. One of the things that they talk about, and you got to hear this. They say innovations such as cryptocurrency, stablecoins and walled garden ecosystems of big tax. all tend to work against the public good element that underpins the payment system. They say that walled systems are a bit like Canadian tire money.

Effectively, chits that you can only spend in-house. They say central bank issued digital money called CBDCs, for short, an area where China has become world leader, because we all want to follow that example, was first seriously mooted after Facebook proposed its own stable coin. unlike cryptocurrencies, which can rise and fall unpredictably, the value of CBDCs are known, and unlike stable coins, they can be spent anywhere as legal tender. They're known and they're known that they will continue to decline in purchasing power in perpetuity forever. Anyways, as described Wednesday by BIS Research Director, Korean economist Hayun Song-Sin, Central Bank Digital Coins,

would have many advantages of crypto without the disadvantages. And then they said, you could pay someone just as you would handing over cash, but do so digitally using your smartphone. CBDCs are a claim on the central bank, which means the payment is certain and final without leaving things to intermediaries to complete the transaction. What the fuck are they talking about?

There are no intermediaries in Bitcoin. It's peer to peer. That's the whole premise of it. it. I don't get, I mean, I do get it because they're just talking out their asses. They, they are trying to paint it as, while these things are scary and they're trying to hurt you, you need to come under the umbrella of us so that we can control your money and we will be the ones that have security for you. They talk about better privacy, even though like surely you would have to register your name and identity with a central bank digital currency to use the

wallet, at which point their database of who owns what would eventually be subject to somebody finding your information, right? Like, do they really think that that information will never be leaked? I mean, we've had, we've had major, major leaks of financial data from, from major companies that are supposed to protect that for the globe. Like, most of the tax base in the year. US was leaked just like a year or two, all of their social insurance numbers and everything. It was insane.

Anyways, I don't know how much time I can spend on this article. It's horrible. It's bad. It's incorrect on so many things. I challenge you to read it and not throw your computer through a wall. It's bad. But they talk about the public good in this. They talk about working that the central banks are.

working in your best interests. And here's a great example of working in your best interests. Christine Lagarde, this from the European Central Bank. Negative interest rates have often been criticized because of their potential side effects. Our assessment continues to be positive as the benefits outweigh the costs. The benefits outweigh the continued costs. What do you think about that? Negative interest rates. What does that mean? That means when you, you have your money deposited with a financial entity, there's a good chance that they're scraping a little bit of it away, the longer you don't spend it. Does that sound like a good deal? Does that sound like it's in the interest of the public good? It sure as fuck doesn't to me. And in a world of

central bank digital currencies, they can enact negative interest rates directly into your wallet. So the insulation you would get of like just pulling your money out of a bank and holding it as cash yourself would no longer be there if everything is digitized. They can just say, well, you haven't spent any money in a while. So we're going to start chipping away at that and taking our cut so that you go and spend like a good little consumer. I don't want that. And so luckily we have something that allows us to just opt out of this narrative and this. assessment of the benefits of negative interest rates because it sure as fuck doesn't benefit me and I'm willing to bet it's not going to benefit you so you do have the choice to opt out now

let's get into some more positive stuff here I'm interested to see I hope this is something good there's a new event happening called the B word and so this is July 21st coming up next month. And so it is, the B word is a Bitcoin-focused initiative that aims to demystify and destigmatize mainstream narratives about Bitcoin, explain how institutions can and should embrace it,

and raise awareness around areas of the network that need support. The B word will launch on July 21st, 2021, offering a live experience and a library of content to the investor community, enabling a more informed discussion about the role Bitcoin can serve for institutions across the globe. And this is going to be put on by Kathy Wood, founder and CEO of Ark Invest, Jack Dorsey from Square and Twitter, Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, also cited in the Bitcoin White Paper, Michael Morrill, Senior Council at Beacon Global Strategies, and John Newberry, Director of Brink.

So I'm very hopeful for this. I'm glad that there's initiatives like this to cut through the bullshit that you see in the news. That is just so ill-informed. And I wish them all the best. I'll be trying to tune into some of this to see some of it. But some of the things they're covering, demystifying Bitcoin, supporting the developer ecosystem, securing the Bitcoin network, regulating Bitcoin, preserving the Bitcoin ethos. And there's a live session called Bitcoin as a tool for economic empowerment.

So let's hope for the best. Yeah. And I also like that it's entirely Bitcoin focused. So kudos to them. We'll see how it plays out. And Kathy Wood, she's also, you know, she's got skin in the game. She's not just walking the walk. She's talking to talk and walking the walk.

Kathy Woods' arc ETFs loaded up on Coinbase, which, uh, and grayscale Bitcoin trust as the price was collapsing. So the arc ETF loaded up on investments as Bitcoin fell below $30,000 just yesterday, uh, or actually rather on Tuesday. They bought over 1 million shares of the gray scale Bitcoin trust and 214,000 shares of Coinbase. And she's sticking to her long-term price target of 500K. Hats off. Yeah.

I mean, that's ballsy. Good for her. She stacked a bunch of stats. I know it's through grayscale. But there's something that makes sense there. I'm going to show just a brief mention because this always happens. But micro strategy, of course, acquires more big. They now hold over 105,000 Bitcoin in total.

They picked up another $13,05 Bitcoin for around $489 million in cash. This is as of June 21st. Average price so far of their holdings is $37,617 per Bitcoin. Actually, sorry, that was their last purchase that they made. right now the average purchase price of all their Bitcoin is around 26K. So they're still doing well in that context. But let's talk about GBTC, gray scale. So these guys hold an insane amount of Bitcoin.

About 3% of all existing Bitcoin are stuck in this fund. And it's like a black hole when it sucks up Bitcoin. It's just in there. They issue shares based on the amount of Bitcoin that they hold. Okay. And those shares, based on demand for them, can be at a premium or a discount to the price of Bitcoin. So the Bitcoin that each share represents can actually be worth more or less than the price that the share was bought at. Okay. So for a while, the Bitcoin that was going through Grayscale through their investment trust was at a massive premium. So people would buy that up and then, uh, be waiting on on the price to to be able to unload that. But basically there wasn't a lot of on ramps to purchase Bitcoin. So gray scale, people would be buying at a premium.

Well, now it's at a discount because there's other vehicles that you can invest in Bitcoin through that weren't at a premium. Now it's at a massive discount. And when I say massive discount, I mean like 10 to 20% below the price of regular Bitcoin. Yeah. So they're trading a 10 to 20% discount to NAV. All right. So when people originally bought Bitcoin through Grayscale, it got locked up for like a six month period. And a lot of those are now being unlocked. And presumably some of them sold onto the market, right? Because they were locked up. Somebody probably has made a pretty penny.

Or they just don't want the risk anymore. They don't want the volatility. And maybe they're unloading some of those shares. Well, if it's at a discount, then that seems pretty attractive to somebody saying, like, you know, I can pick up Bitcoin that's technically trading 10 to 20% low, the actual below the actual price of Bitcoin. And so a lot of people, a lot of investment firms are looking at this saying, well, we could we could buy spot price Bitcoin on an exchange and self-custody it, or we could get exposure through gray scale and start buying. up some of these unlocked shares of GBTC that are starting to come onto the market. And so this is actually soaking up a lot of spot price demand that would have been seen on

exchanges. A lot of them are now going through GBTC. And so a lot of these are continuing to be soaked up, but there's still a lot more Bitcoin to be unlocked through grayscale. So the demand on the regular market, on the spot market, may be kind of muted because a lot of that capital is going to go into gray scale in the meantime as as people pick up these discounted bitcoins for the time being. So that hopefully gives you a little bit of insight as to why the price is kind of, you

know, stayed low and ranged in this like 30, between 30 and $40,000 range. A lot of GPTC shares are coming onto the market being unlocked and they're at a massive discount and a lot of people are buying that instead of actual Bitcoin. Now, I know myself, obviously, I would want the actual Bitcoin. I would want self-custody. But institutions don't always think that way, right? So to them, it makes sense. They want exposure and that's what they're doing. So I imagine all of this discounted Bitcoin through GBT will be soaked up over time. And once that happens, then you'll see some movement. But we still got some ways to go over the next two months. It says the equivalent of 82,000 Bitcoin worth, almost 83,000 Bitcoin worth of GBT shares are being unlocked.

And as long as GBT continues to trade at a discount to NAV, which should be expected, lots of Bitcoin demand will go towards grayscale, which won't be reflected in the Bitcoin price. Okay. So just keep that in mind that, you know, just ride out, write it out the next couple of months here. I'm fine. I'm just continuing to accumulate. I'm happy with it. Now, a sad note, John McAfee,

he was pretty prolific. He was a wild guy. But he has died. He was in a Spanish prison. He was on the run from U.S. authorities. He was arrested while on the run, put in a Spanish prison in Barcelona, I believe. and he apparently died by committing suicide.

He was just approved to be extradited to the United States, and within hours of that, he was found dead in his cell. Now, I don't want to speculate too much on what's going on there, but he was all over the place, especially like the 2017 Bull Run. He was tweeting all kinds of crazy stuff. He had like a coin of the week. he would get paid for tweets and stuff like that.

He was kind of in the Bitcoin camp for a while, but then he wandered over into like the Bitcoin Cash camp and did a lot of, you know, questionable things. Regardless, I don't think it should be anybody's fate to end up dead because a country chases you around the globe wanting their cut of your money. So it's unfortunate to see that. Also, there's been a lot of,

of speculation around this online, but he did tweet multiple times that he was content and that he would never kill himself. One of his tweets, I am content here. I have friends. The food is good, all as well. Know that if I hang myself a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine. This was October 15th of last year. Could things have changed for him over the past nine months, possibly? I mean, you've got to imagine not having your freedom does a number on you. But yeah, I don't know. I guess I won't speculate too much more. Take it for what it is.

A little warning to you guys. If you have a ledger, I know I do. And if you did not use a PO box when purchasing it, or if you've used your full name and address, you've probably been subject to some type of phishing emails, things like that. Well, some scammers are stepping up their game because previously there was a hack of Ledger's online store and everybody's data got leaked effectively, home addresses, all of that information, emails. Well, these guys are getting pretty sophisticated because they're mailing people, ledger products that have been repackaged, that have been tampered with that are effectively, they take out the inner workings of the ledger. And they instead insert was basically just like a thumb drive that is meant to look like, that is meant to look like a ledger.

And then they get you to input, to create a seed and then input it. And that can communicate that information back to them, at which point they take control of the seed. They wait for money to be added to the account and then they sweep the wallets. So these have been going out to the leaked list of ledger customers, basically saying like, hey, we had a problem. Here it says, let me read from the email here. They say for security purposes, we have sent you a new device. You must switch to the new device to stay safe. There's a manual inside your new box.

You can read that to learn how to set up your new device. They've changed their, they say they changed the device. structure, we now guarantee this kind of breach will never happen again. And yeah, so they basically are hoping that some people will buy this and then will input their seed words and they'll be able to steal their funds. So anyways, be aware of this. If you have friends or family that maybe aren't up to snuff on this type of security, let them know that this could happen, especially if they purchase it themselves,

then they might be getting something in the mail. So this sucks, man. I got to say, like, we got to do better with this kind of stuff. This is really bad for Ledger. People knew it was bad at the time. They kind of downplayed it. It's clear that this was a big fucking deal and we got to do better with our data. For yourself as an individual, if you're buying Bitcoin-related stuff, it's advisable to use like a PO box or use just an alternative address, like have it sent to your work instead of having sent it to your home.

The little things like that can help a lot in the first. future. Oh, God. Let's touch on this. I know this is a long one, guys. It's been almost 45 minutes, but I got to touch on this. Robert Breedlove. If you have him paying attention to the saga, right after Bitcoin 2021 in Miami, he tweeted

out asking about BitClout, which is just like they'll upload your Twitter profile to this kind of scammy website that that then values. a token specifically assigned to your name and profile. And people can buy your coin if they value you. And then you can dump your coin onto the market because you'll automatically be assigned a certain number of coins. They tried to get this, get people interested by basically taking their likenesses and getting it on this website.

You can request to have it removed. But he tweeted about this. By the way, if you put Bitcoin into BitClout, you cannot get it out once you put it in. Just so you know. Anyways, he tweeted about BitClout. People were like, dude, what are you doing? It's a shitty, scammy token. You don't need to dive any further.

Even if you're curious, like, here's all of the research people have done on this. It looks shady and crappy. And there's no point working. on diving in further. And people try to be like, listen, man, don't. Don't trust me. And Robert Breedlove himself has been very vocal

and said like, hey, don't go down the shit coin rabbit hole to a number of people saying like, listen, Bitcoiners have your best interest in mind. They're just trying to help you avoid the shitcoin rabbit hole and the pain that it involves. And a lot of people said, hey, man, you're going to give people the wrong idea. They're going to dive down this rabbit hole.

They're going to think that you are promoting. this or legitimizing it in some way, shape, or form, and they're going to get hurt because of this, even if in your mind you think it's harmless, people are going to see this, and they're going to start believing in the platform. So he continued to kind of tweet about it and people, in my opinion, rightfully so, kept on saying, what the fuck are you doing? This is not a legitimate project, you know, it's trash of all things. Why are you pursuing this? And then obviously, people started making memes, the more he continued to pursue it. And he seemed a little bit defensive. Anyways, he dropped in the end, what happened is after activating his account via Twitter and looking

into it. He ended up selling all of his tokens for, I don't know how many thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. And there were even screenshots of tweets of people being like, I'm buying Breedlove token just in case he likes the, just in case he likes the platform.

I want to hold this token in case it goes up. There's one guy in particular that got absolutely destroyed holding it. And yeah, so he dumped all these tokens in this blog post. He did say that he dumped the tokens likely into the hands of other people that thought that they would have value. He deemed that they did not.

And then he did donate the proceeds from that to Bitcoin Core development. But I will say in the process, people still got hurt. So it's while the proceeds of the scam token still ended up. in what's a worthy cause in Bitcoin Core development, the people that were holding the token that, you know, basically followed his lead into BitClout, even if he didn't intend it to go that way,

they were left holding this token that dropped substantially in value after he dumped all of his on the market. And so they basically unwittingly donated to Bitcoin. Core. Maybe they didn't want to donate to Bitcoin Core, but they did through proxy because he dumped the token and the value of their tokens went down. And I don't know. I'm curious if he had the intention of donating any of this to Bitcoin Core previously or if this was like an afterthought after all of the pushback. After that, he then dropped this very lengthy blog post, basically talking about his experience. It's very, very long, his experience in and around

the pushback of everybody, but most of it amounts to what he previously stated as as kind of like an immune system response to negative stimuli, aka scams and shit coins. In the case of that negative response to him. He said it was too toxic is effectively the TLDR on this blog post. I don't know, guys. I don't buy it. I think it's fucking bullshit.

This whole thing watching this play out, he's put out some fantastic content. And I've got to say that this one hurt. This one sucked. Watching this play out was probably one of the most if not the most disappointing thing of the entire year. You know, like, fuck Elon, whatever. But like, Breedlove was solid in his explanation of Bitcoin and its benefits.

And I feel like this whole thing just cast a massive shadow on all of his previous work. I know that we're all good at taking value from the ideas and separating them from the person. And it's just unfortunate that we have to do this again in this instance. You know, like Nassim Taleb with his Bitcoin derangement syndrome, had some good ideas in and around skin in the game and being anti-fragile. But when faced with something that didn't fully line up with the way he expected to be, he flew off the rails. But I'm able to separate some of his ideas from him the person.

He just couldn't stand up to his own ideals. this one sucks though because like you know even with trace mare you're like well you know he did some weird things in the past he he pumped some other you know shit coins previously and then he kind of went down like the bitcoin only route and then he gets caught like on like under the table trying to pump scammy shit to other people and then he got called out on that and that one sucked because he was a great voice but it wasn't fully unexpected this was unexpected this I didn't Ed you told me like four months ago that Brilov was going to go down the route of of

not even like explicitly endorsing but like you know what's going to happen when you say I'm curious about this is the first time I'm looking at something not Bitcoin and and curious if there's some of course people are going to look at that and say oh well if he's interested in it must there must be

something meanwhile everybody in the comments is saying listen look at all of these examples of why it's a terrible project. And then in the end, of course, he came to the conclusion as a terrible project and dumped his tokens on unsuspecting people that weren't yet on that level of thinking about it, which, again, calls into question

whether or not he ever really fully entertained the idea that it was legitimate. It just fucking sucks, man. I just... We're going to have to do this time and time again this was just one of the less enjoyable ones

anyways let's end on a lighter note this one had me giggling I tweeted out the other day could someone just create a bot that copies every tweet from Peter Schiff but with alternating caps lock and then today to my surprise on my feed

I finished my second Twitter bot last night its purpose is to crawl Peter Shift tweets and to repost them using alternating text. If you like, check out alternate Peter

and there's now Twitter profile called Alternative Peter where you can follow him. It's his exact tweets but with alternating caps locks.

So it's said like condescending SpongeBob. This is why I come to the internet, guys. Anyways, I'd say just follow that account. Don't even follow Peter Schiff, follow alternate Peter, and you can get all of the stuff he says about Bitcoin,

but said in like a voice. And I think that's way better. It's accurately reflects what I think of a lot of things he tweets. I think that's so funny. Hats off to California Hoddle for creating this bot. You made my feed. Thank you very much. Guys, I'm going to wrap it there. This was a lengthy one. Holy crap, 52 minutes, 53 minutes. Anyways, thank you all for joining me. There's well over 200 people here. Be sure to smash that like button. Give this a share.

Subscribe if you're not already. If you want to help with the show in another way, you can end up the sponsors I mentioned in the links down below. Ledden, Keystone, Bit Buy, BitRefil, and Bill Fottle over at Privacy Pros. And if you really loved what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin Lightning Network tip at my strike page. that is strike.me slash BTC sessions. If you haven't seen my video tutorial for strike,

I dropped it on Monday. Dude, this thing's awesome. And I can only imagine how much is going to help the people of El Salvador down there. Jack Mallors is doing excellent work. If you didn't see the clip of him today from Fox Business, where he just destroys the anchor for saying that it's a threat to the people of El Salvador. you got to see it. It's excellent.

Anyways, guys, I'm going to leave it there. Feel free to check out any of that. Links are below. And with that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. I will see you guys next time. Oh, wait, wait. Tomorrow, I got to bring it up right now.

I got to bring it up right now. Tomorrow, I've got a killer panel coming up. Where is it? Why are we bullish? Tomorrow. at 6 p.m. Eastern time, Max Kaiser,

Stacey Herbert, Dennis Porter, and we got Dread. It's going to be great. It's going to be a good time. So set that reminder. You can head over to my page. You can set the reminder.

And I will see you tomorrow for Why Are We Bullish. Everybody, have a great night. I'm Ben with the BTC sessions. And this has been your daily session. Hottle by Bitcoin.