BTC Sessions - SAYLOR Predicts $49 MILLION Bitcoin! ep430

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Welcome to this week’s Simply Sessions, your go-to source for the latest and greatest in Bitcoin news! In this episode, we explore the biggest developments in the Bitcoin world: • Michael Saylor predicts a massive $49 MILLION price per Bitcoin. • Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset starts to take form with a new US bill. • Democrats plan to sell Bitcoin held by the US in response to Trump. What message are they trying to send? • In a move undermining USD hegemony, Russia legalizes Bitcoin for international trade to circumvent sanctions. • Finally, could Tether be the CBDC the US was planning all along? We examine the evidence. Tune in for all this and much more! BOOK 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/ CREATE YOUR OWN AFFILIATE LINK TO EARN $21/REFERRED SESSION https://bitcoinmentor.io/affiliate-registration/ 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: BITCOIN WELL My favorite self custody bitcoin platform in Canada and USA! They offer KYC free accounts, 1% spread, no on-chain fees and tons of other incredible features. Check them out at bitcoinwell.com/btcsessions https://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessions COINKITE offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions HODLHODL is a NON-CUSTODIAL, ANONYMOUS solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION Speedwallet - your one wallet to send, receive, shop & earn. Simple, fast and convenient! Download now, use code this link & get 5,000 SATs on your first transaction. https://www.speed.app/sweepstakes-promocode-btc/ DEBIFI is a non-custodial Bitcoin backed lending platform with institutional grade liquidity providers and no rehypothecation of your funds. Find them at: https://debifi.com/ #BitcoinNews #BitcoinNewsToday #Bitcoin #MichaelSaylor #Trump #Tether #BitcoinPodcast #Crypto #SimplySessions #cbdc #russia

Yo, what is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. And yes, I am remote right now. A bit of a road trip. Head to Vancouver. If you're in Vancouver, make sure you hit me up. I'm going to be there on the 11th.

And we're doing a big meetup. I'll tell you guys about that later in the show. But regardless, we still have Nico here to give us the latest and greatest in everything Bitcoin. And I'm going to be hitting you up with tech updates. So make sure you stay tuned. Of course, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here.

We'll do it live. Do it live. I can write it and we'll do it live. The fucking thing sucks. If you have not already, please do like, subscribe and share all those things that really do help with time getting this content in front of more eyeballs. And I am Ben with the BTC sessions.

This is your Simply session. Before we bring in Nico, Let's take a quick look at where we are in the market. I am pulling up timechain calendar.com simultaneously. I'll get that chat on the screen here momentarily. But over at timechain calendar.com, let's give that a quick little refresh, make sure everything's current. But we are sitting at, as soon as it loads for me, $64,896 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will snag you 1,541 sats in terms of fees.

next block 11 sats per byte and bitcoin mine is 19.73 million of them that is 93.97% of the total supply we're going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors and we'll be back in one minute. On a mission to enable independence by being one of the easiest and quickest ways to purchase bitcoin in Canada and the US. The best part about it, every buy goes directly into your own self-custody. They never hold your coins. You can add a Bitcoin address as part of onboarding. There's a transparent 1% spread, no hidden fees, no withdrawal fees. Plus, they have KYC free sales and bill payments on their website.

They're also a publicly traded company under the ticker BTCW on the TSXV. Check them out over at Bitcoinwell.com. Check out my full tutorial on how to use them. And you can check out the links in these show notes down below and sign up today. for managing and securing your funds for the long term. You can set up hot wallets for day-to-day spending or create digital vaults for deep cold storage. They also offer assisted multi-sig options as well as inheritance planning. And on top of that, Keeper boasts a long list of support for Bitcoin hardware, longer than I've seen for any other mobile application.

You can check them out today by searching Bitcoin Keeper in your app store or heading to Bitcoinkeeper.app. All right, and we are back in and let's get Nico in the room here. Yo, buddy. How's it going? Yo! I miss you, bro. I miss you, dude. It's been some time.

You were busy. I was a little busy. I was a little busy. But now that I see you in a bedroom with that tip touched, you know. I mean, what can I say? I was telling you before the show, this is going to be a different kind of show today. It's totally going to be a different type of show. People think they're tuning in for Bitcoin content, but they're going to be surprised.

Yeah. So you had a good time in Nashville, though, man. You were killing it on the news desk and everything. How was it? Oh, man, it was a great experience, dude. It was pretty, like, for me, like, what meant a lot was, like, obviously, shout out to the Bitcoin magazine guys for allowing Simply to take over the news desk. But for me, it was, like, the day that Trump had his speech was the fourth anniversary of Simply Bitcoin.

And that, like, you know, you could read a bit. It's a coincidence, Nico. It'll be like, okay, fine, it's a coincidence. but still, I think like that was the first time Bitcoin really entered into kind of like the mainstream consciousness, like for real. You had all of legacy media there. You had the daily wire there. They had their own little booth and they were making content there.

And you can tell like, like we are still so early because they don't quite understand. They're starting to understand. Yeah. But I think it's the beginning of them understanding. And that's what makes me really, really optimistic. So yeah, I had a great time. Yeah. Yeah.

I think, again, it looked like it was well organized. It looked like everything went very smooth. And I was saying that like, you know, last year, there's a few things here and there that, you know, that needed some refinement. And I feel like, especially like the flow of the live stream and everything just seemed to seem to go very, very smoothly. So, you know, hats off to the team that put all that together. Yeah, absolutely. I think they did an incredible job and, you know, just, just blessed to play a small part in it, you know. Hell yeah.

Hell yeah. I just got to bring up this from the chat before we dive in. But apparently, Niko's tip got taxed away. Yeah, yeah. We were supposed, I stayed with Ben for a week. I don't know what happened, but we had to get a retail. I mean, I'm going to be in Vegas with Ben. Yeah.

So at least what's not going to be there. Yeah, Lisa's not going to be there. I know. So you're going to have to come back to Calgary. You're going to have to join. I think I'm going to go for Christmas. Yeah. To get my tip touched.

Yeah. It'll be a Christmas miracle, if anything. Could we do like a special simply session? We have to, we have to make it festive. I mean, maybe I should do my Christmas special for that week. Oh, that could be a thing. We'll see. It'll be a thing.

We'll see. Awesome. All right. Well, I guess we can dive into everything that's been going on. There's never a shortage of exciting stuff in and around Bitcoin, man. So, I mean, what's top of mind for you? What's been going on? Yeah.

So Michael Saylor continues to double down. This is actually breaking news about an hour ago. Micro Strategy announces that they have a plan to acquire 169 additional Bitcoin. That's another big coincidence, right? That's 69 number. Obviously, he couldn't have sprung for one less or one more. Right? It had to be 169.

Anyways, Micro Strategy led by Michael Saylor has increased its Bitcoin holdings by purchasing an additional, it's just 169 Bitcoin. It's no big deal. For $11.4 million in July 2024. This acquisition brings Micro Strategies total Bitcoin holdings to 226,500 Bitcoin. The company's continued investment in Bitcoin has been a significant part of its financial strategy, as indicated by its Q2-2020-financial results. The announcement has sparked positive reactions from the cryptocurrency community,

with many expressing support for micro-strategy's long-term commitment to Bitcoin. So absolutely massively effing historic. Michael Stahler just continues to do epic shit. but also kind of buried into the documents. Shout out to Dylan LeClair. Here's a highlighted passage, and it says, we continue to closely manage our equity capital and filing a registration statement

for a new $2 billion at the market equity offering program. So looks like they're trying to raise more money to buy even more Bitcoin. And here, Dylan with a really kind of like hilarious announcement, basically says, quote, we're going to dilute shareholders by an additional 8% shareholders. More BTC per share. Let's go. Man, Bitcoin just breaks everything, you know,

in the traditional fiat system. So, yeah. Yeah, it's wild to see, again, like to just see him be able to continually just play the system for the broken mess that it is and just get a leg up over and over. and over again and the fact that he's done it in a way where even in the the worst of the worst of the bear market below what we thought it would go till he was still just fine i mean obviously

like not excited about it being down there but like he sailed through that bear market like nothing and kept on snapping up sats so yeah 100% um and also speaking of michael sailor he made quite an announcement over the weekend as well during his keynote he made his bull case his base case his bear case his bull case his base case and his bull case for bitcoin and his bear was three his base was 13 and his bull was 49 by 2045 so that's 21 years from now Um, that's like in an investing perspective, that's not too, too long. Um, and I mean, that bro, that'd be insane. Right. Um, all right. Uh, so let's check it out. It's about a one, it's one one minute and 40 seconds. But what's happening? Here's my macro Bitcoin forecast. It's 21 years.

Goes out to the year 2045. What do I think will happen? Well, I've got a bearcase. in a bulk case but what I think will happen is that 55% ARR goes to 50% 45 40, 30, 30, 25, 20. It's between 50 and 20. It'll gradually decelerate till it's growing about twice as fast as the S&P index. And at that rate, Bitcoin's $13 million a coin in the year 2045. 13 million. It could be a 3 million bear case. It could be a 49 million. billion bulkcase but what is Bitcoin seven percent of the world's assets then what about the rest of the assets well I actually think that AIs and technology are going to revolutionize tech we had no companies worth a trillion and then we had a bunch of trillion dollar companies you're gonna see more because you're gonna

see companies with a hundred thousand AIs and no employees and they're gonna do the work of companies that used to have a hundred thousand employees you're going to see mega corpse develop you know shipping robots and self-driving cars and a company that gives a personal physician to a billion people without any doctors on the payroll so clearly equity's going to grow fast gold's going to get demonetized land will be less monetized but look here's the future in 2045 doesn't look at revolutionary it looks like today it's just and he just goes on today it's just that Bitcoin is a bigger piece of the pie.

And he's just basically showing the graphic. And like, I'm going to try to zoom in. Sorry, guys. I don't have a better picture. But if you look at it from that perspective, it's really not that crazy. And again, his prediction is that Bitcoin will basically make up 7% of the total assets in the world. 7% of that will be Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a superior asset to real estate.

Bitcoin is a superior asset to basically. everything, is it that crazy to believe that? I don't think so. I don't think so at all. But still, you know, when someone, when the chairman of a public company is saying $49 million Bitcoin, you know, it's still like, you know, it still catches you a little bit off-footing, you know? Yeah. I love the whole chat right now. Sailor's bearish. That's great. Holy shit. Everybody.

Only 7% bear. I mean, again, when he lays it out like that and again, the trajectory of what we've seen and the amount of attention and the amount of realization we've seen globally from people whose jobs it is to preserve purchasing power and hold on to the fruits of their labor and they're directly incentivized to do so. the types of people that are waking up to this, I don't, I don't see this as as too crazy. Also, the amount of devaluation you're getting out of the dollar and the pace at which it's moving nowadays and the amount of government spending, this is going to be a solid mix of, yes, Bitcoin's increased purchasing power, but also the decrease purchasing power of the dollar. So $49 million, you know, it won't be quite what it, used to be, but also the purchasing power of Bitcoin will be quite a bit more.

Yeah, man, it's going to be crazy. Maybe we get like a Simply Sessions jet. That'd be dope. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, $49 million of Bitcoin. Holy cow. That is crazy. That is absolutely nuts.

And let's see what happens. I think it's going to be a bumpy ride getting there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's not going to be like a nice smooth uphill. at a steady pace. Yeah, man. So anyways,

let's see what happened. Even the bear case, like I'll be honest with you, like bear $3 million Bitcoin, like, bro, that's still insane. Like, that's still freaking crazy. So, yeah.

Obviously, Michael Saylor is incredibly bullish. You know, he doesn't only just talk to talk. He walks the walk. And the walking, the walking is his actions backing up what he's saying. So he truly believes in this.

And I think we, if you're a bit coiner and you're anything like Ben and I that is just 100% in, that we believe in this, you know, 100%. You know, I'm sure you feel the way that Michael Sailor does. Anyways, this was interesting. I got to say, I got a comment first. And I'm glad that Ben brought this up beforehand. So we had two speeches. We had, of course, the Bobby Kennedy speech.

and we had the Trump speech. The thing is, the Bobby Kennedy speech won up the Trump speech 100%. But it's something else that, like, a lot of people have to understand is that Bobby Kennedy or RFK is running as an independent. So he is able to say things

that are completely outside of the Overton window. He's not associated with a mainstream political party. That's something to keep in more important. That's something to keep in mind. Something else to keep in mind. Something else to keep in mind is the fact that Trump is associated with the mainstream political party and the fact that Trump is saying that he's going to free Ross, protect the right to self-custody, protect Bitcoin miners, and then announce the strategic Bitcoin

Reserve, he's incredibly bullish. And that's something because I saw so many people who were disappointed about the speech. I was initially, but then after I digested a little bit, I was like, the way that he did this was really intelligent. because as soon as his and you you would have only have known this if you're at the conference but as soon as he was done they brought on cynthia lumbus shortly after and cynthia lumbus was basically the one that gave the details on the strategic bitcoin reserve and here's the thing if a president made that policy he would do it via executive order and when you do things via executive order

they don't last after that president goes out of office. So the only way for the U.S. to have a truly lasting strategic reserve in Bitcoin is if it goes through the legislative process. So that's something else to keep in mind. But talking about the Overton window shifting, it definitely, definitely did. And here's a 15 second clip of just that. But for too long, our government has violated the cardinal rule, that every bitconer knows by heart, never sell your Bitcoin.

Like, in what timeline did you ever have imagined that? It's funny because like you go back to when he was president and he wasn't, obviously people like they can learn and they can change their minds over time. Also incentives, aka votes and fundraising. But to hear what is, is, is, likely to be like there's there's a definite definite i'd say likelihood that he's going to be president again to hear that person say never sell your bitcoin is fucking crazy like imagine even a year ago being like all right yo so there's going to be uh a previous president

likely to be president again on stage of the bitcoin conference telling people to never sell their Bitcoin and how stupid the government has been for doing that previously. I would have called you insane. And yet here we are. Yet here we are, right? And one of the things that he said also that made me incredibly bullish. And it's something that I think gets lost on Ben and I and gets lost in a lot of Bitcoiners. Like Ben, you know how grueling this has been making content for a living and building a business in Bitcoin?

One of the things that Trump said was that this industry is still in its infancy. It really is. It doesn't feel like it in the thick of things, but we are just getting started, right? And Donald Trump making an appearance at the Bitcoin conference, and also Elon was supposed to make an appearance, but he rugged last second, is not a testament of Bitcoin needs Elon or Bitcoin needs Trump. It's a testament that Elon and Trump need Bitcoin in order to achieve what they're trying to achieve. Trump would have not been there if it wasn't for the fundraising from the community, if it wasn't for the fact that he thought that he can get votes for this.

I saw someone in the comments say basically, Trump talked about Joe and Kamala for 45 minutes and then said four things about Bitcoin. Yes. The reason that he said that is because you have to understand that this is a campaign rally, and he actually has a shot at winning. Like, not trying to jab at RFK. I loved RFK's speech way better, but Trump actually has a realistic chance of winning. So he was campaigning.

He was basically telling everyone in the audience, like, look, like, and by the way, I agree with him. I don't agree with a lot of the rhetoric because it's very divisive. But the overall points that he was making in regards to how bad a potential, Biden, Kamala, term two would be for the Bitcoin industry in the United States. Trump was absolutely dead on. They haven't walked anything back. They've said a lot of things, but they actually, none of the actions they have taken

show me that they regret any of their things. Like, they regret any of their actions, right? So anyways, before I get to that point, I do want to mention the strategic reserve and then I want to get your thoughts on this. So this is what Cynthia Lummis was talking about after Trump's speech. And again, very similar wording to what Saylor said in regards to making it equivalent in regards to states. Like, for example, the United States, they purchased Louisiana from France and then they

purchased Alaska from Russia. and she's basically equating it to that, like buying Bitcoin at these prices. Anyway, so here is the official press release that was released yesterday, and it gets into a lot of the details. So following her announcement of a historic proposal to supercharge the U.S. dollar

and pay down the national debt by establishing a strategic Bitcoin Reserve, today, U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis officially introduced the Bitcoin Act in the U.S. Senate. Quote, as families across Wyoming struggle to keep up with soaring inflation rates, and our national debt reaches new and unprecedented heights,

it is time for us to take bold steps to create a brighter future for generations to come by creating a strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Bitcoin is transforming not only our country but the world and becoming the first developed nation to use Bitcoin as a savings technology secures our position as a global leader in financial innovation. This is our Louisiana Purchase Moment that will help us reach the next financial frontier. The Bitcoin Act establishes a strategic Bitcoin Reserve, to serve as an additional store of value to bolster America's balance sheet and ensure the

transparent management of Bitcoin holdings of the federal government. Specifically, the legislation would establish a decentralized network of secure Bitcoin vaults operated by the United States Treasury Department with statutory requirements ensuring the highest level of physical and cybersecurity for the nation's Bitcoin holdings. Implement a 1 million unit Bitcoin purchase program over a set period of time to acquire a total stake of a approximately 5% of total Bitcoin supply, mirroring the size and scope of gold reserves held by the United States, be paid for by diversifying existing funds within the Federal Reserve System and Treasury Department, affirm self-custody rights of Bitcoin holders, and emphasize the

strategic Bitcoin Reserve shall not infringe upon individual financial freedoms. So I think this is very, very historic, and I think it's a game changer. What do you think, Ben? It's interesting the stuff in and around the Federal Reserve because I, you know, I always wonder like how, you know, a lot of people tend to say like, well, the Fed is it's supposed to be its own thing separate from the government. But, but clearly like there's, you know, there's, you know, there's very deep. ties there and and i'm curious how easy this would be to implement in terms of the way it's written and and uh i i wonder how easily the fed would go along with this given that their power lies in their monopoly on controlling the money that everybody else uses and in a way of way if this were to happen, it would be a quasi-acknowledgment that that power is waning.

And I wonder if they're ready to do that. I don't think that they are and maybe their hand could be forced a little bit, but that's what it would be. That would that would be the signal to the world. Hey, the shit that we print not going so well. We need to hold on to something else now. Yeah, and I think, first of all, I think you make a really good point, versus like, it's, it's kind of like a, it's like a, it's like a symbolic hat tip, right? And I think, you know, I think like Trump and there's this other senator that made some Congress, made some comments recently on the legacy media that was basically like acknowledging what you're saying, Ben.

And the way that they were saying it is not so much like, we're going to get. get we're going to give up on the dollar. They were just seeing the writing on the wall and they were basically coming to terms with, look, if we don't do this here, we might not like this, but if we don't do this here, China will overtake the United States. We don't have a choice but to let this industry develop in the U.S. for the U.S. to benefit versus it developing in China and it potentially hurting the United States, which is why she's using like the terms like the Louisiana purchase and all these things.

And I think they're absolutely dead on when they approach it from that perspective. Now, are they just letting in a Trojan horse? Like Alex Gladstein wrote in, wrote the article, like Bitcoin is a Trojan horse for freedom. Are they letting in a Trojan horse that later down the road, they'll, you know, they'll regret. Like in Alice Gladstein's article, he made the case that basically that like freedom go up technology and number go up technology are inextricably linked. You can't disconnect the two. So, you know, I don't know. Let's see what happens.

I want to just hit on something in the chat here. So Ronnie alluded to Bitcoin backing Fiat, right? Like it's, that would be the quasi play here by having that strategic reserve. That's effectively, you know, the end goal is protecting some of that. And the interesting part about it is prior to, so like go back to the gold standard. You had, again, the U.S. dollar backed by gold at a, you know, a certain amount per ounce depending on the year. And at that point, most of the gold reserves, those were all in the U.S. And impossible to audit.

Clearly, they broke that peg well before Nixon went off the gold standard. But there was no real other way to do it. Like, that was the agreement. The gold was already there. And the control was in the hands of the U.S. Everything changes with Bitcoin. So, like, yes, I agree. like, you know, fiat backed by Bitcoin, very easy to break that peg.

But the interesting part about it is, number one, you can audit that fairly easily, right? Like, you can see there's on-chain sluice that can be like, here's the reserve for the U.S., here's their stash. El Salvador already does it publicly. Like, here's our address. Audit it. There you go. So that's one. So like debasement becomes very, very clear as that happens.

The other thing about it is you don't need a central bank to have a Bitcoin backed, easily spendable denomination. Obviously, on chain will get more expensive, but you can have abstractions of Bitcoin in which the reserves for that are instantly auditable. Not to say that it's impossible to have a rug pull in a situation like that in like an e-cash type thing. But those can be segregated into smaller pieces, smaller communities, whereby if there's a rug pull, it's very concentrated into a single small group of people. It's not like a nationwide, the world reserve currency just rug pulled you for your convertibility to gold. And so it's a very different ballgame when you get into Bitcoin backing anything. I still obviously at this stage of the game, you know, the ultimate amount of sovereignty is holding your own keys and your own coins. But as on-chain transactions get more and more expensive, barring anything that allows partial ownership of UTXOs, then we'll have to get inventive with that.

But we want to build systems where the verifiability and auditability of everything is super easy for everyone on the planet. 100% and you buried the lead there ben like you made such a great point in regards to el salvador making their reserves public the u.s unless they do the same thing it's a larp it's a larp because the moment they make it public it makes it very difficult for a politician to take a little bit off the top right so can you imagine can you imagine el salvador sets the bar here we yeah we're showing where our reserves are here's our reserves you can audit us 24-7 and then the US comes out and they're like we're not going to let you know what our addresses are and everybody's like El Salvador can do it you the United States government can't

fucking do it come on guys catch up here yeah it would be a larp it would be a total larp and then all the shit talking like you are not allowed to talk about you're not allowed to talk shit about El Salvador unless you make your country's reserve public like full stuff you know um anyways So moving on, okay. So there's good news and bad news regarding the last conference. What is the good news? The good news is this is a Bitcoin election and this election, if Trump gets elected, it will be a very pro-Bitcoin regulatory environment here in the United States.

What is the bad news? The bad news is that now, like, If Kamala and Biden get elected, he will not be good for Bitcoin in the United States. As soon as this happened, as soon as Trump said that he was going to make, you know, he was not going to sell any Bitcoin under his administration. The U.S. government split the $2 billion worth of the Bitcoin they had into two addresses. A lot of people were speculating that they were selling some. And they were selling the sum just to spite the potential income income.

Trump government. Here's Mike Germano, president of Bitcoin Magazine. He says, well, now the games begin. Already working on the Freedom of Information Act requests will take months to get to the truth. This is a direct reaction to the Bitcoin conference, and they wanted to send a message. I mean, it's very, very clear. Now, not all Democrats feel this way about the Biden administration and Elizabeth Warren and how they look at the industry. Here is a letter for. from 27 Democrats, and let's check out what they have to say. I'll read the first two paragraphs. We representing a range of Democratic officials,

candidates for the House and members of Congress rights to urge you to take a forward-looking approach to digital assets and blockchain technology. This area holds immense potential for American innovation, economic growth, and financial inclusion. Representing the emerging stance of the Democratic Party in the United States, leaders such as Senate Majority Leader

Chuck Schumer, Senator Speaker Emerita, Nancy Pelosi, and the majority of House Democratic leadership have recently supported pro-digital asset legislation. However, there is a public perception that the party holds a negative viewpoint on digital assets, largely due to the current SEC's approach to these transformative technologies. We believe this previous hostility does not reflect

our party's progressive, forward-looking, and inclusive values. A refreshed leader of the ticket represents an opportunity to change that perception. What do you want to bet that Pelosi is loading up on non-KYC sats in the background? That Pelosi stock tracker, like, if only we could see into that wallet. Right? Like, she's just loading Bitcoin.

And look, I think that they should rightly be paying attention. Here's a White House live stream. I mean, Ben, me and you get more bigger numbers than this, bro. And then here's the Bitcoin magazine live stream, 56,000 live viewers versus the 8,000. 22 live viewers. I mean, yeah, they better get on it. And again, this isn't like this isn't monolithic. This isn't black and white. There are Democrats, like for example, Congressman Roe Kana that went out and spoke at the Bitcoin conference. And he said how, yeah, this is, this isn't a left or right thing. This isn't a conservative, progressive thing. We should get behind this. But I think that's important.

Like, I think it's important to keep in mind, like two things. First thing. is like this is the first Bitcoin election in the United States and number two this is not a partisan issue I think the current administration and Elizabeth Warren made it a partisan issue they forced it to become a partisan issue um so I think a lot is on the line in this election man I got to be honest bro like like it's not a good sign that as soon as Trump says we're not going to sell any Bitcoin they literally move it that Monday like that's not a good sign. It is so blatant. It's, I would say I can't believe it, but I can believe it. The shade, the shade, man. And another thing that I'll say is like, I don't think that the current

Democratic Party represents the will of their constituents. I think that if their constituents are actually informed on the matter, they wouldn't be okay with this. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a bit interesting. Anyways, in other news, talk about the game theory playing out, Russia legalizes Bitcoin for international trade to bypass sanctions. In a significant legislative move, Russian lawmakers have passed a bill permitting businesses to use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and international trade, according to Reuters. The development is part of Russia's strategy to circumvent Western sanctions imposed following the invasion of Ukraine.

The new law expected to take effect in September aims to address delays in international payments, particularly with key trading partners like China, India, and the UAE. Central Bank governor of Russia, a proponent of the law, announced that the first cryptocurrency transactions will occur before the year's end. The central bank will establish an experimental infrastructure for these payments. Quote, the risks of secondary sanctions have grown. They make payments for imports difficult, and that concerns a wide range of goods. Now, it's really interesting that as soon as that was made announcement,

El Salvador kind of threw their hat in the ring and said, El Salvador proposes using cryptocurrencies to settle trade with Russia. Now, what's really interesting about this is the game theory. The U.S. government decided to do two things that pissed off a lot of people that were using the dollar. First thing, they started debasing the currency. So if you're Russia or if you're Brazil or if you're Argentina and you're holding, if your central bank is holding a lot of dollars, you're basically, you're footing the bill, for the reckless spending of the U.S. government.

That's thing number one. Thing number two is, hey, what do you know? What happens when you politicize and weaponize the money? People tend to seek an alternative, and that's exactly happening in the case of Russia. They seized all these Russian assets. They were convincing the American public that they were doing it for regime change.

The regime never changed. Regime stayed in place. They weaponized the money, and now Russia's like, you know what? I don't want to use the dollar anymore. more. And I think this is where the U.S. government is metaphorically shooting itself in the foot because that gives the U.S. dollar a tremendous amount of power the fact that it is being used for global trade. And now if you have other countries seeking an alternative because they

see the dollar is weaponized, that's not a good idea. That's what funds the lifestyle of the United States, right? That's a lot of people have to keep in mind. The United States and Argentina would be exactly the same if it wasn't for the fact that the U.S. is the Global Reserve. currency. The reason that the U.S. government is able to spend the amount of money that it spends, which is trillions of dollars every single year, is because they have the ability to print. If they don't have the ability to print, the U.S. becomes Argentina. Yeah, 100%. I picture the U.S. and the U.S. dollar. It's a metaphor for the tale of Icarus, right? They're flying too close to the sun. They get ahead of themselves. They get cocky. Yeah, well, we'll debase like crazy. We'll print as much as we want. And on top of it, we'll sanction anybody who does things that we don't like. And, and guess what happens? Well, their wings are melting away. So yeah, 100%. All right. Well, it seems like we got, we got, I remember the first time I hearing that story in, in, in high school and stuff. And it always stuck with me, man.

It always stuck with me. Even though the Greeks didn't know that the higher you got, the colder it got. Yeah, exactly. It made common sense back then. Yeah, yeah, that was great. Okay, so the last story is, which was, I got to say, quite unexpected. I think a lot of people, not to name any names, were expecting another Bitcoin company to go public. But that wasn't the case.

It seems like Fold was built. in the back end, and they are just putting their heads down and building. And Fold is set to list on NASDAQ with over a thousand Bitcoin and corporate treasury. This is the first Bitcoin financial services, Bitcoin only financial services company that is set to go public. So congratulations to the Fold team and Will Reeves. This is a huge accomplishment. And I got to say, a little bit of an upset. And this came out of nowhere.

I was not expecting this whatsoever. Yeah, that's why. I mean, good for them. I've been using Folds since, you know, when it was here, I was using Fold in Canada in 2014. And back then, 2014 or 15? One of the two. Anyways, back then you could basically, you could buy gift cards with Bitcoin on chain. And if you didn't use the full balance of the Bitcoin of the gift card, you could refund the remaining balance in Bitcoin back to your wallet. And so I use that for an entire summer. driving from Calgary to New York and back, hitting up Starbucks in the mornings. And the story is that I was not yet married, but my now-wife, then-girlfriend, I got some work canceled leading into the trip. Like all of my contracts for an entire month just got canceled.

And so I was basically screwed. I didn't have any money for the trip, but I was like, listen, what I can do is I have this full thing and I do have some Bitcoin. So I like, I got breakfast every single day. And then I'll, you know,

pay back after we get back for everything else. And, yeah, Nico, do you want to care to venture how much I spent on Starbucks that, that fateful summer? I, I have a feeling it's going to be extremely painful.

In today's terms where the Bitcoin is about $300,000. I'm sorry to laugh, but like, Oh, yeah. Yeah, it still burns. It's my own little pizza story. Dude, don't we all have one? Like, I feel like you haven't paid your dues in Bitcoin if you don't have equivalent of a...

So, like, Ben, it seems like you're not a fan of fold that enabled this behavior. Burn it to the ground. No, no, they're great, though. And I keep on bugging will to win Canada. Come on, man. Get up here. Yeah, man. No, man. All right. Well, dude, happy to be back. This was, this was great. I missed you last week. And everyone, this was your Simply sessions.

Hell yeah, man. I'll see you soon. All right. And everybody, stick around because we are going to be hitting you up with the tech updates. Also, we're going to be giving away some sats. So make sure you get those lightning wallets out and ready because we got that Bitcoin well wishing well giveaway. And we're going to be giving away some stats. We'll see how. how many it is when we get back. But before we do, we got a quick shout out to sponsors of the show, so we will be back in a moment. Coin Lightning Wallet built with simplicity in mind. Spend and receive with ease, claim your own Lightning address, shop your favorite gift cards,

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The cold card queue is an absolute powerhouse and is my daily driver. And on top of this, they have plenty of other goodies including the Mark 4, the tap signer, open dimes, the block clock, and much more. If you head over to their website, make sure you use code BTC sessions at checkout to get a nice discount. Links are in the show notes down below. allows you to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Collateral is held in a three of four distributed multi-sig with trusted parties.

It provides institutional liquidity providers, loan periods of up to five years with flexible conditions and the best rates. And best of all, no re-hypification of your funds. If you want to check them out today, head over to debify.com or hit the link in these show notes down below. All right, we are back in and we're going to be giving away some stats here. So get those lightning wallets ready. am pulling up if you're unfamiliar by the way this is bitcoin well and uh bitcoin well they're available in canada and the u.s awesome place to not only buy bitcoin but also be able to uh pay your bills and do all kinds of great stuff uh on there and uh it's it's an absolute asset for me uh living on a bitcoin

standard but i digress um bitcoin well they basically allow you to load up on points when you sign up when you buy and sell bitcoin when you refer your friends there and these points points can be used to toss a coin in the wishing well that can win you sats. And it could be anywhere from 500 sats up to a million sats and you can redeem them via LN URL. So we are going to go ahead. We're going to throw a coin in the well right now. We'll see what we get.

And here we go. I'm going to enlarge it a little bit. 2,100 sats get scanning there. Everybody, I hope. Whoever gets those sats enjoys them. So snag them while you can. And I'll give you a few more seconds here. If you miss it, you're going to have to scrub back through and get them.

If you do win the sats, let me know in the chat or shoot off a tweet or a note on Noster and let me know that you snagged them. But congrats to whoever does. But now we're going to move on. And, yeah, some tech updates here. So Fetty, the FETI app, which uses FD. in the background is they've got a countdown going for their August 6th launch. Mark your calendars, help us spread the word and share the news with someone else you care about freedom technologies as much as you.

So I previously did a video on the FETI app, but what is this launch? I believe this launch is in and around the ability to easily create your own mints and tailor them however you see fit, launch your mints and share them out to the world. So this app is basically like an interface for the back end, which would be fedaments that can be distributed anywhere. And so that's very exciting because that gives a lot of power to individual communities to be able to create community-based, basically like community banking in a way that. And so I should also clarify, what are the benefits of using fetament? Now, there is a trade-off, right? In the realm of using Bitcoin, obviously, on-chain transactions,

they're going to be a little bit slower. They're going to be more expensive and more expensive over time, but also very, very transparent. You can see everything. You can track everything on chain. With fetamints, you effectively can set it up in a way where it's a multi-sig. You've got distributed custody and guardians that are holding keys that are part of the fetament. But then you can transact into it and out of it easily.

via the lightning. And when you're dealing with anybody in the same mint as you, instant transactions, no fees, and perfectly private, meaning that even the key holders of the multisag have no idea who owns what. And when you go to spend out of a mint, it's a lightning transaction. And nobody can really tell who in that mint sent out of it. So you get the privacy of the crowd. And same thing, when you're receiving a lightning transaction into the mint, nobody knows who. who's actually receiving that on their end, they just know somebody in the Mint received a transaction. So you get the benefits of privacy, low fees,

interoperability amongst your community, instant transactions, all of that. But again, there's a trust trade-off, which is why I think FETI is designed in a way where it mostly makes sense in smaller communities where you know your guardians. So anyways, stoked for that. And when it launches, I'll start digging

and start learning how to make my own fetament so that everybody else can go forth and do so and I'll make a tutorial on that. Anyways, moving on, Nerdax version 2.1.5, new firmware available. So there's a framework update or rebased with Bitax tag, new BTC screen price, up button turns on and off the screen, auto turn off screen, that's an Axe OS option and other fixes.

If you're curious about the Nerdax, I just did a tutorial on it a couple weeks back. This is home mining. And somebody actually was running a Bitaxe and they ended up mining solo mining a block. So on a $200 piece of hardware, somebody won a block and got 3.125 Bitcoin plus the fees. I think it ended up being $3.19 something. Anyways, about $200,000 from a $200 piece of hardware. So congrats to that person. Anyways, play around with it.

It's a cool way to learn about mining. Don't plan on making money, but it's an awesome, awesome device. A little teaser here from Oaken, getting ready to test some of that good, good from Start 9 labs, still weeks away from being ready for everyone else, though, but this is still fun for me. Looks like he's playing with the next release of StartOS, which is exciting because rumor has it. You're going to be able to do things like ClearNet and other options for connections and a little bit of a cleanup on the interface. And it'll be the last big release

before the next complete overhaul that they have coming. So that's very exciting for me. Moving on, I did do a tutorial earlier this week for Proton Wallet. So same folks that brought you Proton Mail and VPN and Cloud Service and KeyPass and all of that stuff. these guys have put together a Bitcoin wallet. Now, I did want to touch a little bit on Proton wallet because this is a privacy-focused company, but obviously Bitcoin is transparent.

And so you've got to be aware that there's a bit of a trade-off when it comes to this stuff, especially because it's early days and they haven't added a lot of different features. So it's pretty bare bones. It's easy to sign up as the main selling point. point. If you have a proton account, you can, it's still invite only, which is probably good because they're still figuring stuff out. But like basic sending and receiving is really easy. You can also send via email, especially to anybody who has a proton account. Now, the tradeoffs here, there are a bunch of things that are missing. Number one, replaced by fee and child pays for parent.

And what this allows you to do is if you send a transaction, you have too low of a fee, RBF allows you to bump the fee up, or if somebody sends you a transaction and they have a low fee, you're still able to spend those funds and subsidize their fee with a higher one that you pay for your transaction, that's child pays per parent.

Neither of those are present in this yet. So if you get a transaction or you send a transaction that's very low fee, you've got to find another way to bump it. Luckily, mempool.space does have a service to do that, but it's expensive. It's like 50 bucks. So not a,

ideal, not ideal if you don't have those and you get caught in a fee spike. Okay. The other thing, it's a privacy wallet. There is not yet any UTXO control. You can label transactions, but that doesn't do you any good for privacy. If when you go to spend, it just pulls from wherever and intermingles different funds. So that's something that really needs to be in there. Another thing that I think would be great to offer as an option soon is the ability to connect to a node of your choice or your own node. Now, these guys, obviously everything's running through the proton, whatever they have set up for nodes. And they say that they're not taking logs.

And I imagine that they wouldn't be given that they're a privacy-focused company and they don't want to screw their reputation. However, for very privacy-focused individuals, that is something that they're going to want to have the ability to connect to their own node. Now, the other major privacy no-no, and this is just definitely a bug. rather than just how the wallet works. But when you go to import an old wallet into Proton with a seed phrase, it does not, for me at least, it didn't properly scan all of the addresses to see if they had been used before. So it basically showed no wallet history, no balance.

There wasn't a balance, but there was a wallet history when I imported it. And because it didn't properly scan, it pulled up an address right out of the gate. that I had already used and was basically starting from the top of the list. So all of those addresses would have been reused more than once. So that is not great for privacy either. So anyways, I'm hopeful that given their privacy-focused company,

and this is just like first out the gate, it's not even open to the general public yet, that all these things will be addressed. And I am happy to see like an easily accessible, Bitcoin wallet come out for people that are already using a widely used service. But for a privacy-focused company, they're going to want to add all these things for individuals. So those are my thoughts there. Let's move on a little bit.

As I said, I am going to be in Vancouver. And if I can pull it up here, Vancouver, Vancouver Bitcoin. I should have been more prepared here, but I am going to be in Vancouver very quickly. And maybe I'll just, it should be here on my feed. We'll do a quick little scroll through. Come on, Vancouver. Anyways, I'm going to be in Vancouver. The fine folks, Fustler over at BTZ Van City, has put together a meetup.

And I'm going to be there on August 11th. And it's going to be an absolute blast. I can't wait to be there. You can find it on meetup.com. And we've got a good group of people coming out. I think I'm going to do a little fireside chat, some stuff like that. And yeah, it's going to be a great time. So make sure, and maybe I'll be at C.

Van City. There we go. Yeah, so I'm going to be out there very soon here. And they changed the start time to 3 p.m. So it's an afternoon session. So yeah, come down. We are at, geez, where is it at? It's at a, I believe a coffee shop.

Here it is. I'll pull it up here. Funk coffee bar in Vancouver. So, yeah, make sure you come down Sunday, August 11th, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. We may have been go out for a little drink afterwards. So come on down, chat it up, and it should be a good time. So thanks Fustler for putting this together and everybody involved. And then, of course, after I get back from this road trip, I am heading to Riga and I'm so excited.

I haven't been there since 2019. And I'm going to be hitting up a Baltic Honey Badger, the most OG Bitcoin conference out there. It's been around for ages. And it's an absolute blast, super focused, high signal. I love it. I can't wait to get back. But yeah, that's going to be August 24th and 25th in Riga. Latvia, really, really cool.

How would I say? It's very, all of the architecture is like old castles. And like we had a dinner like down underneath and almost like a hidden cave like restaurant. It was amazing. So anyways, highly recommend if you're in Europe or if you're going to be in Europe and you want to come check it out, please do. I'll be there. If you do still need tickets, make sure you use code BTC session. and you'll get, I think, 10% off your tickets.

It's going to be an absolute blast. And with that, I'll round out. I will, of course, say, don't forget, like, sub, share, all those things. Really do help. You can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors in the show notes down below. And of course, if you're perusing the tutorials on the channel and you need some additional help, you can hit up my team over at bitcoinmentor.io, where they will do one-on-one video tutorials with you one-on-one as in they're on with you walking you through anything you need to do

wallets hardware multi-sig layer two home mining running a node you name it they can help you through it uh and of course they're all hand selected and trained by myself so again bitcoin mentor dot i by the way if you do have family or friends that are learning and you want to recommend them but you also want to earn some sats on the side we have an affiliate program as well you can go to Bitcoin Mentor.io slash affiliate dash registration. You can sign up there. And then you can earn, I believe it's, I believe it's $21 per session that somebody books through your link, which can be meaningful because a lot of people, they don't

just come for one session. They come for many because they want to cover a whole bunch of different topics. So get yourself over there. Get yourself an affiliate link and you'll be sitting pretty. But with that, I'm going to round out. Thank you guys so much for being here. This is a blast. Great to see Nico again.

And even though we're on the road, we're keeping these shows going. And with that, I'm out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. See you guys next time for your daily session.