BTC Sessions - Protests Embrace BTC, Bitcoin Billionaires Movie, Liquid Settlenet EP068

Starting point is 00:00:13 Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's up everyone? I'm Ben with the BTC sessions and this is your daily session. Before we dive in, of course I want to give a shout out to sponsors of the show, leaden.io. This is where you can use your Bitcoin for a bunch of different services. Now I've been working with these guys for well over a year now. I've been using them for the same amount of time. And the first thing I ever used of theirs was their Bitcoin backed loans. This is where you can use your Bitcoin as collateral to obtain a Canadian or U.S. dollar loan. So in my instance, I needed to get my hands on dollars.

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Starting point is 00:01:27 loan mechanism to instantly buy more Bitcoin, effectively doubling your Bitcoin on the spot. Now, if you want to check out these guys, there is a link down below in the show notes. And if you use that link to get a loan, they'll give you 50 bucks worth of Bitcoin for free. And secondly, we have coin cards. Now, these guys are available in both Canada and the US, although looking and expanding. I've been using these guys for friggin six years now. First time I ever used them. I was actually doing an experiment to live on

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Starting point is 00:02:32 Be sure to check them out. Coin cards, there's a link down below in the description. And with that, let's dive into the news. Now, obviously, a lot of device of crazy stuff going on in the world right now. And some of which are the protests happening just everywhere. And I touched on this guy the other day, I believe it was last week, but there was an interview on a Spanish TV station where he was talking about the way forward is to defund the system by opting out and using Bitcoin instead of using money that can be just printed forever and disenfranchise a lot of people. While this guy is back, he was at a big rally and he was speaking and he had three points. on how everybody can move forward.

Starting point is 00:03:22 And the first one was using Bitcoin. So again, using that pedestal to tell people about Bitcoin and the reason why it was created. Now, regardless of political affiliation and what you think of what's going on, I think anybody in Bitcoin can indeed appreciate the fact that Bitcoin was indeed created to remove inequalities for really anybody when it comes to like a base level of the economy. It removes the ability of individuals at the top who have control over how the money functions and how it is printed to get that unfair advantage and pass certain advantages onto their friends and anybody that happens to have the right connections.

Starting point is 00:04:11 while this just strips all that bare and forces people to earn what they actually, what they actually create or rather to create and be productive in order to earn their living and to retain the value of their labor. And so he does an excellent job speaking here. It was a short stint. He talks about his three points. The other two is the second one was volunteering within the community. and number three was not to discount the ballot box in regards to voting.

Starting point is 00:04:47 But anyways, kudos to this dude for bringing up the whole point of Bitcoin and why it was created to give everybody not a quality of outcome, but a quality of opportunity. And I think that's a solid message to drive home. Now, interestingly enough, yesterday on the show, we talked about a Pentagon war game. was modeled on a bit of an uprising as if there were a group of protesters that materialized in America trying to take down the elites and they used one of their, I guess, digital weapons as Bitcoin. This has very much echoes of that war game that they modeled. Now, I'm not saying that it is, but in a situation where this quote unquote,

Starting point is 00:05:40 D-bellion as the Pentagon Pendit happened, this would be what the precursors of that perhaps looked like. It's very interesting to see things like this playing out. Anyways, I will link to the video down below. I encourage you to take a look. Let me know what you think. On whatever side of the spectrum you're on, I'm curious to think what you think of this speech in particular.

Starting point is 00:06:05 Now, moving on, I am very, very excited about this. This is a book I read not long ago. In fact, this one. Bitcoin Billionaires. This was the sequel to the social network. And it was about the social network, of course, being about Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklewurst twins and the creation of Facebook. And I thought that was an excellent movie. Well, this is the follow-up book to that written by Ben Messrich.

Starting point is 00:06:38 I hope I'm saying his last name correctly. Anyways, Ben Messeridge wrote. this Bitcoin billionaires and this is what happened after the end of the legal dealings with Mark Zuckerberg and how the Winklewold Swins went on to learn about Bitcoin and then build an empire around it and eventually becoming Bitcoin billionaires. I really loved this book because it was cool to read about people that I've seen around the Bitcoin space over the past number of years. Some people that I've met, like Eric Voorhees, um, uh, chart, God, why the hell am I forgetting his name? Anyways, a lot of the early, are the early people in Bitcoin, especially in and around the New York

Starting point is 00:07:21 area, are featured in this book. And I'm very excited to see them portrayed on screen, uh, and see how that all plays out. Also, depending on how quickly they can pump this out, this movie that they're putting together, this could be a very interesting set of timing. So I'm just going to read a little bit from this article from Deadline. They say, Greg Silverman's Stampede Ventures has teamed with the Winkle Boss twins to produce a feature film adaptation of Bitcoin Billionaires, the best-selling non-fiction book from Ben Mesrich. Silverman and John Berg will produce with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The twins began their journey.

Starting point is 00:08:04 with Mesrich on his bestseller, The Accidental Billionaires, the basis of the Oscar-winning film The Social Network, which told the story of the Winklewals Twins' legal battles with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Bitcoin billionaires was Mesrich's follow-up, and The Tale Chronicles the Brothers, as they do The Impossible, Catch Lightning in a Bottle this second time around and mount the greatest comeback in history of business

Starting point is 00:08:28 through Bitcoin. Yeah, so anyways, I really can't wait to see. this. A solid historical Bitcoin movie is directly up my alley. And I just look forward to seeing this on the silver screen, seeing how it's received. I hope it's as good as the social network. And again, the timing could be excellent if history happens to rhyme. And what I mean is the last, so the halving in 2012 resulted in a crazy rally in 2020. The halving in 2016 resulted in a crazy rally 2017. If the having in 2020 results in a little bit of a mania next year, and if these guys get their act together and pump out this movie in due time, this movie could be dropping potentially in the midst of an insane mania for Bitcoin, which would be unbelievable.

Starting point is 00:09:32 Anyways, let's hope. I'll cross my fingers. That's how this plays out. That would be incredible timing, though. Moving on, a Reddeter has nearly found 5 million of lost Bitcoin, although this headline is not entirely accurate. If by nearly you mean probably not at all, then that's more accurate. So what's going on here? one Redditor has come tantalizingly close to finding 533 Bitcoin stored on his late brother's laptop worth a cool $5.2 million at current prices. So the Bitcoin was stored on a laptop that Redator Shodakon, I believe is how you say it, Shodokon, gave his brother, who died last August, unfortunately. He unearthed the computer while rifling through boxes of his brother's possessions ahead of a big move,

Starting point is 00:10:26 he wrote today. But, and it's a big but, the laptop's hard drive is missing. Kind of important. And that's where the Bitcoin is stored, of course. That means Chautokan has no way of accessing his stash of Bitcoin, which he must have bought for pennies back in 2010. So currently, as we said, Bitcoin, 33 of them would be worth just north of $5 million, $5,176,000, roughly. at the time of print of this article, if he'd sold at the absolute top in 2017, that's well over $10 million. He says he's going through the boxes.

Starting point is 00:11:07 He's going through them with a fine-tooth comb. His brother liked to take things apart and see how they work. But he's not super confident. He's going to be finding it. He kind of has the inclination to believe that it's gone, gone. But, hey, if somebody dumpster dives and finds that, that will be a cool payday. sidebar, I really do think that in the future, you're going to get the equivalent of people on the beach with metal detectors actually just diving through the dump and looking for old hard drives and skimming them to see if there are any Bitcoin waltz on them.

Starting point is 00:11:46 That could be an excellent source of revenue for some individuals. Anyways, let's move on. Blockstream has announced OTC Bitcoin trading on the Liquid Network with something called SettleNet. So SettleNet is a way to utilize, again, utilizing atomic swaps with assets issued on the Liquid Network. So this is initially launching, I'll read a little bit here, SettleNet is built on the Liquid Network. by the team at Crypto Garage, a joint venture between Digital Garage, Tokyo, Tanshi, and Blockstream. At launch, SettleNet will support trading between Liquid Bitcoin, LBT, and CryptoGarages newly launched Japanese yen, which is Settlenet, Settlenet Japanese yen, is what it's called, or JPYS.

Starting point is 00:12:45 I'm just going to say that, so I don't stumble over my words. Anyways, this does operate in a regulatory sandbox program set up by the government of Japan and is open to exchanges, OTCJS, brokers, asset managers, and other financial institutions from around the world. A number of global OTC firms and Japanese exchange platforms are already signed up to use the platform. So this kind of minimizes risk by using atomic swaps. And what that means is in Bitcoin, or rather in liquid Bitcoin, which is a one-to-one peg token for Bitcoin for quick settlement, again, the settlement is fast. When it comes to actually sending money through the traditional financial system, it's not fast. It's also not final.

Starting point is 00:13:33 And so when receiving a hard asset that cannot be reversed in exchange for a not hard asset that furthermore can be reversed, it's essentially. extremely risky. That is why things like this can be useful. So you get, I mean, if you're dealing with fiat anyways, I guess what's one further step of separation by adding in even more counterparty risk to the already insane amount of printing and devaluation we're seeing? A pegged fiat token would be a trust holding actual fiat in a bank account and that being represented by a token. So that's why the regulatory framework to hold people accountable that are holding the actual fiat. And again, things can obviously go wrong there. But the speed of settlement is kind of what people are going after here,

Starting point is 00:14:27 as well as things like confidential transactions where not only the amount, but also the asset in question are obfuscated for onlookers to the protocol. They actually can't see the amounts or the assets being sent when auditing the blockchain. They can see that a transaction took place, but that's it. So if you're looking to settle between liquid Bitcoin and Japanese yen, this can be a quick exchange service that allows you to do that. And then you actually have something relatively tangible that you can then exchange for the actual asset.

Starting point is 00:15:02 In the case of the yen denominated token, you can then put that and peg out via the trust. In the case of Liquid Bitcoin, you can then peg out. out to actual Bitcoin. It just expedites that settlement and adds a few additional bonuses to it. Now, here's why I find this interesting. I find it interesting because in a world where we start to move towards stable coins,

Starting point is 00:15:28 and as you've heard, I'm not especially excited about stable coins, it's additional counterparty risk on an asset that can already be printed nonstop, but besides the fact, and there goes my doorbell, Besides the fact, once people start utilizing stable coins as a regular means of payment anyways, and it becomes kind of more accepted, then it's that much easier to convert into Bitcoin. And that's where I think the orange pill moment comes is where if you're already holding digital dollars and something like Cash App allows you to hold like a USDC or a tether, something like that.

Starting point is 00:16:10 and that becomes like just another form of payment like credit cards or like debit cards or whatever, then all the sudden that conversion, that easy conversion to something that is better, that makes it that much easier. So that's why I'm interested to see stuff like this, like SettleNet, like atomic swaps, start to come to fruition. Anyways, let's move on here. I just want to point to some general macro stuff. Okay, so first thing is that the NASFRAP.

Starting point is 00:16:40 Hasdak has hit a record as stocks continue to sort and this is absolutely insane in regards to In regards to The news that's been happening with the stock market right now is that we are actually We're actually seeing these massive massive runs up Pretty much just because the Fed is pumping liquidity into the market Again here I'll read the first the first the first little bit of this fortune article, but Wall Street's enthusiasm about reopening the economy since stocks scrambling even higher on Monday and the NASDAQ composite wiped away the last of its

Starting point is 00:17:21 coronavirus-induced losses to set a record. This is happening in the face of this. The optimistic U.S. employment figures are underreported due to miscalculations. So there's a jobs report recently that quoted that the unemployment dropped unexpectedly in May to 13.3%. But not so fast, it did not. It actually rose. So millions of people appear to have erroneously been classified by the survey as not working but employed. These people should have been classified as on temporary layoff and therefore unemployed.

Starting point is 00:18:01 Had they been counted correctly, the jobless rate would have been roughly three points higher at 16%. So that means instead of the 13.3% and they had expected much higher, it would have actually been 16. So that on top of, look at the insanity in the market. Hertz is a company that went bankrupt and it has erased all post-bankruptcy losses. Just some figures here. Where was it? it's up an insane amount. I think it's like 800% since the low. If I can just find it. I tried to find it earlier.

Starting point is 00:18:45 Oh, there we go. There we go. So her stock shot up 115% to 553 on record trading volume of more than 533 million shares. After running up 71% on Friday and 83% on Thursday, the stock has now gained. nearly sevenfold up 574% in three days and almost tenfold since crossing a record low of 56% of 56th on May 26th. It's bankrupt. This company is bankrupt. It's still bankrupt.

Starting point is 00:19:21 Somebody tweeted out, $10,000 invested in Hertz the day after it filed for bankruptcy is now worth about 125 grand. And this, I love the meme. Got any more of them bankrupt? up C stocks. The market is insane. It makes zero sense we're at right now. And this is the kind of mentality that you start to see. Again, another article from MarketWatch here. The title is, Warren Buffett is an idiot,

Starting point is 00:19:52 says investor who claims day trading is the easiest game I've ever played. And the byline here, I'm better than he is. That's a fact. Okay. And so this is referring to Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. I think it's Portnoy. I'm not sure how to see his last name. So on Monday, Portnoy slammed Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett for unloading airline stocks as the coronavirus epidemic took its toll. He also went off on how he made almost 300 grand on the day, but missed out on an even bigger number by getting out too soon. I'm just printing money, Portnoy said. why take profits when every airline goes up 20% every day? Losers take profits. Winners push the chips to the middle. I should be up a billion dollars.

Starting point is 00:20:46 And then he doubled down a couple days later. He said, I'm not saying I had a better career. He's one of the best of the best ever to do it. He said, I'm the new breed. So he's talking about Warren Buffett, by the way. He called him washed up. He said, I'm the new breed. I'm the new generation.

Starting point is 00:21:04 There's nobody who can argue that Warren Buffett is better at the stock market than I am right now. I'm better than he is. That's a fact. And the rants of this idiot on Twitter are unbelievable. People are just saying like, hey, this is, these kinds of things are clear indicators that it may not be a good time to get involved. When you see people that are just suddenly day trading and making hundreds of thousands of dollars this quickly, It does raise some eyebrows. Yeah, so Gary Evans from the Global Macromoter,

Starting point is 00:21:46 he said that this could be an epic signal of a blow-off top. And in regard to this guy, he says, frame it, Evans said, then run like hell. Yeah, scary. Anyways, moving on, this is an article out of Yahoo Finance. I just want to kind of give you in a picture of what global macro and U.S. kind of macro economy stuff are looking like right now. This is a Bloomberg opinion piece. The era of the U.S. dollars exorbitant privilege as the world's primary reserve currency is coming to an end.

Starting point is 00:22:21 The French finance minister coined that phrase in the 1960s, largely out of frustration, bemoaning a U.S. that drew freely. on the rest of the world to support its overextended standard of living. For almost 60 years, the world complained but did nothing about it. Those days are over. Already stressed from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, US living standards are about to be squeezed as never before. At the same time, the world is having serious doubts about the once widely accepted presumption of American exceptionalism. currencies set the equilibrium between those two forces, domestic economic fundamentals,

Starting point is 00:23:06 and foreign perceptions about a nation's strength or weakness. The balance is shifting and a crash in the dollar could well be in the offing. So they're talking about the supremacy of the U.S. dollar and how it's basically just given the U.S. the right to screw over everybody else. they actually get to export their inflation. And the reason they do this is they can rack up U.S. denominated debt, and then they can print more money to pay off that debt. And the inflation, the effects of the inflation, aren't really felt by the first person who spends the new money

Starting point is 00:23:48 because the value of that money is based on the current money in circulation. But as it gets spent out around the world, that inflation is felt and actually realized the supply of new dollars results in a decrease in purchasing power for those dollars. So essentially, as they spend that money on the debt, the debtor, the individual that is receiving the money for the debt they issued, is at a loss over time. Just a quick note here is that the U.S. has run a deficit in its current account, which is the broadest measure of trade, because it includes investment every year since 1982. So they haven't run a surplus or even just broken even since 82.

Starting point is 00:24:37 That's insane. That's what that's 38 years. That's crazy. And that's because that they can afford to do that. They can get all this debt. They can run deficits and they can just pay it off with money that they print until people stop valuing the US dollar as a as a, uh, as a world reserve currency. And it seems like maybe we could be getting to that point.

Starting point is 00:25:01 Maybe not right away, but the dominoes are lined up very, very nicely right now for that scenario. One last little thing I'm going to touch on here. China can force Donald Trump and the Fed to destroy the U.S. banking system from Forbes. Donald Trump has reignited his long-running battle with China, something that's likely to heavily feature his re-election campaign. meanwhile China is poised to launch a digital version of its yuan and could be about to create a serious problem for the US banking system potentially forcing the US to digitize the dollar to compete now the Federal Reserve has warned central bank digital currencies

Starting point is 00:25:42 might one day replace commercial banks creating a deposit monopolist and playing havoc with the banking system now so what they're saying is that commercial banks they'll get issued loans by the Federal Reserve or sometimes bailed out by the Federal Reserve and then loan out that money to individuals while they are still able to create fractional reserve basically loaning out more than they have

Starting point is 00:26:07 and maintaining a fraction of that reserve. In an instance of a digital dollar, people could actually go to the Central Bank themselves and be issued currency. Now, I don't think this is actually how it would play out. We saw the EU talking about ways in which you'd still have central banks and private banks, or commercial banks, rather, and the central bank would still issue these digital tokens to commercial banks,

Starting point is 00:26:34 and then the commercial banks would then create, I guess, a layer on top that would be like fiat tokens that go out to them. But that said, I don't think that in the end it's the Chinese digital yuan that becomes the threat. I think that it's people realizing that whether it's digital or physical or somewhere in between, it's still shitty monetary policy when you can just print away your debt and pass it on in the terms of inflation to whoever you give that currency to. I think the exodus from fiat currencies digital or physical to something like Bitcoin that is an actual hard asset that cannot be debased is the real threat to the current monetary system,

Starting point is 00:27:31 which at any point to those that make that leap, they'll be better off because of it. It could be bumpy in the interim, but I think in the end, again, it leaves us all much better off. Anyways, guys, I'm going to wrap it there. Again, a lot of macro talk here, but the world is an interesting place, interesting things are happening. If you are here on YouTube, again, thanks for watching and or listening. Please do remember to hit like, subscribe, and share. If you're here on YouTube, though, do subscribe elsewhere.

Starting point is 00:28:01 I don't want to rely on just YouTube. So I am always streaming to Facebook Live. I stream live to Twitter, D-Live, Twitch, all of those. I'm also audio only in the podcast realm when it comes to Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google, all of those. You can find me pretty much anywhere. audio only. There's a link for that down below, by the way. Now, if you want to help out the show in another way, you could hit the sponsors I mentioned. That was Ledden and Coin Cards, both linked

Starting point is 00:28:27 down below. Also, if you're not already using a hardware wallet, first, please do that. Whether it be ledger or not, if you want to help out the show, you can click below and pick yourself up a ledger. I do use both the Ledger NanoX and the Ledger NanoS, and they work very well for me. But if you don't want to click that link, at least start checking out things like Trezor and Coldcard. Again, both solutions that are better than just leaving Bitcoin always on your phone. It's not necessarily secure, especially if it's an amount of money that you would be uncomfortable carrying around as cash. And finally, if you really loved what you saw, you can always drop me a lightning network tip at my

Starting point is 00:29:08 tippin.combe page. That is tippin.m.me slash at BTC Sessions. And with that, I'm out. Have yourselves a wonderful evening, a wonderful rest of me. of the day and we'll see you next time for your daily session.

BTC Sessions - Protests Embrace BTC, Bitcoin Billionaires Movie, Liquid Settlenet EP068

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