BTC Sessions - SEC Fumbles: Bitcoin ETF Launch Chaos ep389

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

In today's update, we tackle the SEC's mishandling of the Bitcoin ETF launch and the ECB's declaration to never buy Bitcoin. Hear Tom Lee's staggering $500K Bitcoin prediction and explore the potential U.S. government seizure of Bitcoin ETF funds. Stay tuned for concise, impactful Bitcoin insights. Like, share, and subscribe for more! #BitcoinETF #ECB #TomLee #BitcoinPrediction #USGovernment #BitcoinNews BOOK ME for one-on-one private sessions to learn about wallets, hardware, multisig, privacy, nodes and much more. https://www.btcsessions.ca/ 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Coinkite offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions Nunchuk Wallet and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted multisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Pass on your savings to your loved ones with ease in a simple claiming process with full customer support. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ SEEDOR is one of the most robust metal backups on the market today. Get your SEEDOR starter set today! Use this link for 5% off. https://www.seedor.io/discount/BTCSESSIONS?redirect=%2Fcollections%2Fprodukte For US based customers: https://www.seedor.io/btcsessions Canadian customers: https://link.thecryptoboutique.ca/BTCSessionsSeedor Start9 is your Bitcoin & lightning node, and full personal server - enabling you to take back control from the gatekeepers of your money and data! Grab a Server Lite, One or Pro today and become truly self-sovereign! https://start9.com/ HodlHodl is a NON-CUSTODIAL, NON-KYC solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Furthermore, you can check out their Lend platform for p2p loans that are never rehypothecated. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. We're going to be going through all of the craziness that's been going on this week. Wow. I mean, it's been nothing short of entertaining, if anything. But anyways, welcome. We will have Nico in here to give us the latest and greatest and everything that's been going on in Bitcoin this week.

Of course, this is live so anything can happen. and I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks.

If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share all those things super important getting this content in front of more eyeballs. Hit that little like button just below the screen. Share this on whatever socials you may be on. And of course, subscribe. Help me in my quest to 100,000 subscribers by the end of 20. We're on track. So thank you guys that have been doing that.

Anyways, I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your simply session. Before we dive in, I am first going to take a look at where we are on the market right now. I am bringing up timechain calendar.com and simultaneously I'm going to bring up the live chat. Everything that you type into the live chat from here on in will be live for the world to see for better or worse. And timeschain calendar.com, we're sitting at $46,431 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will snag you 2,154 sats in terms of fees. Nice to see those low double digits for a change.

37 sats per byte next block. Anytime fee, 33 sats per byte. Mempool is purging anything sub 23 sats per byte. And in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.6 million of them, that's 93.31% of the entire. supply of course side note if you guys need any additional help alongside the free tutorials that are available on the YouTube channel if you need some more handholding you can reach out to me at BTC Sessions Dacia and book me for private one-on-one one sessions shout out to sponsors the show hoddlehottle.com

if you're buying Bitcoin and you have some priorities in mind including peer-to-peer trading instant self-custy no KYC you can sign up here with nothing more than an email address once you're in choose your currency payment method and amount and start browsing offers immediately to stack non-KYC sats they also have peer-to-peer lending with no re-hypothecation check them out links are down below now of course after stacking sats you're going to want to use some of the best hardware on the market to secure them and i love coin kite and everything they're doing the cold card mark four is my go-to i have all their other go their goodies like tap signers cold cards uh sats cards block clocks and i pre-ordered the hell out of the

the cold card queue, very excited for that one. So if you want to pre-order that or pick up anything else I've been mentioning, head over to coin kite.com, use code BTC sessions for some heavy discounts at checkout. Backups, of course, are important as well. And CEDOR has one of the most beautifully designed and robust options on the market. Their disc and capsule design has you set up with your full, your full kit to get your seeds going either one or two, depending on the starter set you grab. If you do need to swap out a seed, you can just swap out the,

discs. You don't have to replace the entire system. And you can add in additional info like the name of the wallet, derivation pass, all that kind of stuff. So check them out. Links are down below, depending on where you are shipping to. Nunchuk has you covered with your multi-sig or your assisted multi-sick needs. Their HoneyBadger program sets you up with a multi-sig on your mobile device. They handhold you the whole way through. Once you're set up, they hold one key. You hold three. The whole thing has baked in inheritance planning. So your stats get to your next of kin, if anything, happen to you. And bonus, no KYC, you don't need to give up your personal information to set this thing up and have it work for you. Check them out today, nunchuk.io. And finally, shout out to start non-your sovereign computing solution.

These guys have plug-and-play devices to host not only your Bitcoin stack, but your personal data. So you can host things like Bitcoin Core, your Lightning Note, Memble, the Space, join market, as well as files, passwords, photos, Nostrarealizing clients, AI, tag, all kinds of great stuff. You can check them at it. You can pick up a server light on the entry level all the way up to what I'm running, which is the Start9 server pure. Start9.com. You can check them out and you can check on my tutorial how to set the thing up. Anyways, with that, let's finish with my rambling.

Let's get Nigo in here. There is. Good. Hey, man. What's up, dude? Oh, man, hyped. What a, what a, can I care, is it has it been past a two minute mark? Yes.

What a cluster fuck of a week, bro. Holy cow. Oh man, dude. It's been insane. I can't like, I sat like laughing and clapping at the screen of my computer. How could you look away? It was such like, I mean, the past two days have been just an absolute train wreck and entertaining as hell. And like the seething and the anger and the vitriol of everybody that didn't like it for one reason or the other.

Oh, it's like that meme. to like, oh, feels good. So good. Dude, it's, it's just crazy. Like, it's absolutely nuts. But I think, like, it's just a testament to, like, how strong Bitcoin's incentives are. Because, like, dude, like, they weren't able to stop this. And, like, we know that Gary Gensler was colluding with Elizabeth Warren's office on trying

to stop this thing going through. And the fact that Bitcoin's incentives just, like, you know, bruteful. forced it in is just crazy. But at the same time, it's like the absolute mishandling of, first of all, it reminds me of the scene from Gladiator where he's like, are you not entertained? It like reminds me of that because it's you're absolutely spot on. This has been pure entertainment. But at the same time, the absolute mishandling by this government agency was just like, what are they doing? The legitimacy, the, the, you know, the public, trust in that institution, they just dropped the ball in so many ways, delaying the inevitable.

Oh, if anybody had, if anybody on the legacy side of things had any, any, like, trust in these institutions to like, about their competency, holy hell, did that ever dissolve over the past couple days? What, what an absolute insane nightmare. This is so funny, so funny. 100%. It's been absolutely hilarious. Great, grade A entertainment without a shadow of a doubt, and an absolute cluster F. So anyways, here's Walker of America. Twitter did such a good job at aggregating all this news. But yeah, so this is essentially what happened on 3 p.m. on the 9th of January, this tweet came out from the official, official. SEC government verified account. And it said today the SEC grants approval for Bitcoin ETFs

for listing on all registered national security exchanges. The approved Bitcoin ETFs will be subject to ongoing surveillance and compliance measures. Right. Then fast forward, Gary Gensler says the SEC Twitter account was compromised and an unauthorized tweet was posted. The SEC has not approved the listing. and trading of spot Bitcoin exchange traded products. Fast forward.

Of course, the legacy media comes to the rescue. The problem is that the legacy media is being disintermediated by people like me and you, Ben, independent content creators. People don't really trust what the legacy media has to say, maybe it's because they've been just a tiny little bit dishonest. Check out the framing in this Bloomberg article because, like, it's like they think we're stupid, I think. Anyways, it goes on to say the headline for the audio listeners is SEC account hack amplifies questions about X security.

That's right. Has nothing to do with the government dropping the ball securing the account. They have to call into question the security of Elon Musk and his platform. The SEC said its account on social network X was compromised, leading to a spike in the price of Bitcoin, raising fresh questions about X reliability as a source of information, and the security of options for its users. Did you see how they frame that, Ben? Did you see that? That is like straight up propaganda, my friend. Oh, Lord. Like, I, I can't. I love the, I mean, we'll get to it, I'm sure, like the, the, the, I don't want to spoil anything. So many fun things that happened with all this.

So that, that's how the, you know, the legacy media responded. This is how they responded on TV. and you'll notice, for example, that one of the anchors wasn't buying it and just take a look at like the thousand-yard stare when she came to a certain realization. Oh, I don't know if we got it. Oh, sorry about that. There we go. Let's try that one more time.

Okay. And so I'm just going to reiterate it one more time. It would appear that X has been hacked, that the U.S. government, the SEC has not been hacked, which in of itself would have been, quite interesting since the did you see that side stare in the blink like oh man they really

fucked up like oh my god it's so great it's so great it's so good and of course the community note coming into the rescue X was not hacked the SEC account was compromised the SEC account

did not have two-factor authentication enabled someone gained control of the SEC's phone number associated with the account via a third party. But wait, ladies and gentlemen, it gets a lot better. I tweeted this out. It seems like Twitter did a little bit of investigating. Seems like Gary didn't follow his fucking rules. This is a tweet from October 24th and it says this is a reminder to secure your financial accounts as well as protect against identity theft and fraud.

Remember, use strong passwords or passphrases. Set up multi-factor authentication. Keep account alerts turned on. But wait, Ben, there's more. I hope Gary's watching this right now. He's not, but it would be so great. Oh, man. October 16th, a tweet from the SEC.

Careful, what you read on the internet. The best source of information about the SEC is the SEC. It seems like that didn't work out, did it? Oh my God, it's so good. Dude, it's so good. It's an absolute disaster. They really fucked up. But there's more.

Like, you have to question yourself. Like, why are they framing it like this? Like, why is the legacy media framing it like this? Because the whole thing is like, look, we're the SEC. But essentially, what they charged Elon, which coincidentally is now the new owner of Twitter, back in 2018, they charged him of securities fraud for misleading tweets, right? You know, that was a huge deal. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you consumer protection brought to you by the SEC

manipulating the market with misleading tweets, right? I mean, the crazy thing looking at that is you have to think about what they did in that moment. Even though the tweet wasn't meant to be sent out, the market responded by saying, this is, this is good for Bitcoin. You know, I've placed bets on this and I'm now, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I think that this is good. And I'm purchasing Bitcoin because of this. The SEC knew that even though they didn't send the tweet, that it was factual. And they turned around and they tweeted out, we have not approved this. They wiped out anybody that was basically placing bets on the direction of price action based on that tweet,

knowing full well that within 24 hours they were going to turn around and correct it and say like, oh, yeah, well, now we're approving it. Now that we wiped out, God knows how much money. 100%. And the worst part, like Ben, out of all this, is that they use the legacy media. to essentially place the blame on Elon because they essentially are guilty of what they accused Elon of, right? It's exactly what you said.

They must have known the day before that this was going to get approved. They wiped out a bunch of people and then they say, no, no, no, no, we didn't approve it. But here's the worst part. They don't even take responsibility for saying, yeah, guys, we messed up. We got to raise our came. And the reason that they can't take responsibilities is because they have to save face.

Like, if they can't even secure their own account, how they expected to safeguard, you know, consumers, because that's the whole point of the agency. This is why this tweet is so perfect. It's like this is literally a government agency, if you were on a long position or short position, literally wrecking you. They manipulated the market with that tweet.

They could have just let it go. They could have been like, When the Grand Theft Auto trailer, it was leaked a day before. You know what they did? The rock star, whatever, the developer, they went on Twitter and they said, hey, the trailer was leaked. We're going to release it now just so you guys can see it. But they can't do that.

They have to save face. They have to, like, you know, present themselves from a position of authority and, like, say, like, no, we didn't do this. Like, they are guilty of the thing they accused Elon of, which I think is poetic justice, because now he owns Twitter, of five years ago. Like, they fucked up. They really fucked up here, you know? Yeah.

Unbelievable because it, like, it didn't even, like, end there. Even on the day of launch, right? Like, there was, there was the CBOE, and I don't know if you were going to touch on this, but the CBOE started putting up all these, like, approval letters and everything. And then midday, they started yoinking them because they, like, what, jumped the gun early or something? And then ever the market starts freaking out and dumping because it had gone up because they saw those go up. And then the CBOOE yoinks all the approval letters off because they probably in turn there jumped the gun. And then on top of that, the SEC, the PDF of the approvals went up.

And then they yoinked it offline. It seems like they jumped the gun there too by like whatever an hour. And then they released it again. Like the amount of fucking up here was unfathomable. Like, I mean, it's just, it was a chef's kiss of like, these are, these are supposed to be the adults in the room. And their thumbs are up their asses. A hundred percent. Like, these are the, these are supposed to be, you know, the regulators.

And they did a horrible job, absolute embarrassment. And they, they weren't able to stop it. Like, the reason that they were walking this so slowly is because they didn't, want to approve this. Gary Genser really, like the salt, and we'll get to in a second, he was so salty. We got lucky because an hour before Simply Sessions, Elizabeth Warren finally came out with her, you know, her defeat tweet. She's super salty as hell. There was another SEC commissioner that said like basically this is the end of the world. Like it was just an absolute total effing embarrassment. Yeah, I'm just so, so.

so, so disappointed. Breaking news. They are not adults. Absolutely not. Because Thanks, Becca. This is just, it's absolutely embarrassing. But, you know, I think the good guys, I think the good guys won at the end. So yesterday was a historic moment. And man, this is, the world has, the universe has some crazy coincidences because the day that the Bitcoin ETF was approved, which was yesterday, it started trading today. How Finney tweeted back in 2009, January 10th, right? Same as yesterday, January 10th. He tweeted running Bitcoin.

So shout out to Hal Finney, absolute legend, you know, part of this. We're literally standing on the shoulders of giants. I cannot believe that it got approved the same day, 2009, that this happened. So that's pretty crazy. I don't know if you have any words for Hal, Ben. I mean, it's, yeah, it is, it is poetic that. And it keeps on liking my shit. There you go. Yeah. Like, again, how many times, by the way, have you been back to re-lik that?

I think right below it, I've responded the real proof of work is Bitcoiners coming back here to re-like this tweet for 14 plus years. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's just crazy, man. It's crazy how this happened. You know, everything's come full circle. But the big news is that finally, the spot Bitcoin ETF was approved, started trading today. Seems like it was a bit of a sell-the-news moment. But we'll get to why that could be it in a second. We do have news to cover that.

But again, it was an absolute disaster in terms of how salty these tears were. Here is Gary Gensler's initial statements. very long, but I'm going to read you guys the best part out of all of this. Nick Carter, he's been going absolutely crazy on Twitter the last couple days. His tweet was hilarious. He says, I used to flip the board over when I lost risk or monopoly, and even I wasn't this sore of a loser. So Gary Genser says, though we're merit neutral. We're neutral. However, I would note that the underlying assets in the metal ETPs have consumer and industrial uses, while in contrast, Bitcoin is primary speculative, primary speculative. So, okay, hold on a second. We're neutral. The market has given it value. People find it valuable or else it wouldn't be at like 46K right now. But we're still telling you that it's a speculative asset. That doesn't sound neutral whatsoever. Volatile asset that's also used. And here's, this is where Elizabeth Warren was like, we have to have the final say. We have to have the final say. The asset is also used for illicit activity, including rent.

where money laundering, sanction evasion, and terrorist financing. While we approved this listing and trading of certain spot Bitcoin ETPs shares today, we did not approve or endorse Bitcoin. Investors should remain cautious about the merit of risk associated with Bitcoin and products whose value is tied to crypto. Now here's the thing, Gary Genzer, 99% of illicit finance. And we know this because of the fake Wall Street Journal article is done using the traditional financial system. That includes money laundering, that includes tax evasion, that includes sanction evasion,

and that includes terrorist financing. How come that isn't mentioned, right? It's obviously because they're more interested in a political agenda, you know? It's just, it's absolutely disgusting. I'm surprised, like, I'm surprised he didn't issue a statement on the, the proliferation and use of gold coins by pirates. Look at look out guys this this is I mean it's it's a it's an industrially used metal and but it is highly speculative and also pirates use it guys it's not it's not okay you got to be careful there dude it's just so crazy man it's crazy and you know like it's so obvious this stinks to heathen of of politics right here is another SEC commissioner's warning Crenshaw this person

literally, like, hold on, I think I have a tweet that really summarizes how this person felt. Give me one second. It, like, straight up, just like that. Because, you know, the really, really, really, really, really got upset. So this is SEC Commissioner Crenshaw. And they said, I am deeply concerned about today's actions. I am concerned that these products will flood the market and land squarely in the retirement accounts of U.S. households who can least afford to lose their savings to the fraud

and manipulation that appears prevalent in the spot Bitcoin markets and will impact the ETPs. I mean, like, what about the fraud of Fiat money? Like, what about that fraud? Why is that never ever talked about, you know? Anyways. Yeah. I'm going to talk about the manipulation of, you know,

the Fed buying up just junk bonds and all this other shit through other parts of the financial system. the Fed stepping in to to buy government bonds when nobody else will prop them up in order to it's it's again like let's let's let's uh don't look behind the curtain place yeah it's it's just pure projection man it's pure projection and it's just like really sad and i and i and i really think like what it has to do uh what it really represents is just like projection by the central planners. Like, before I, before I finish that, that, that, that, that, uh, that statement that he made. Uh, here's Stefan. He could complete, Stefan Dele and he hates Bitcoin. And like, look at how

backwards he has this, right? So he says, Bitcoin represents serfdom, stagnation, and subjugation to the tyranny of the discredited ideas from the Middle Ages. Fiat money represents a future of growth, sovereignty, and freedom in advanced information economy. Like, what the F is he smoking, bro. You know? It's so crazy. Somebody quote tweeted him and was like, this is North Korea levels of indoctrination here.

100%. It's so crazy to me. They're like projecting onto us, you know, what it is. They're guilty of themselves. So it goes on to say, I am concerned that today's actions will create the, Ben, what is that word? I don't even know that's a word. I've not seen that word before to be.

Premature, in premature? Imprimitore? I don't know. Primator? Of, I guess it means premature, which is a fancy way of saying it. Anyways, of commission approval and oversight of the underlying spot markets when really no such oversight exists. I am concerned that there will be confusion about what exactly these products are. They are not ATFs registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940.

the ubiquitous products that today are used by millions savings for retirement, and that investors may infer protections that do not, in fact, exist. I am concerned about what comes next. When new, potentially more speculative products bearing greater risk of investor harms seek to list, we will hear a chorus of well-heeled voices saying that the SEC's hands are tied by the new standards that we have set. I fear that today we are setting ourselves up for tomorrow's failure, and it will be the investors that we have a duty to protect who will ultimately pay the price.

I mean, how many times have they fit? Like, okay, all right, they have a duty to protect investors. All right, I really, that's a, that's a saying that just sticks in my head. This is the consumer protection brought by this SEC. They can't even take responsibility for their own actions. Anyways, on the other side of things, it seems like some representatives are bullish about this. Here's Tom Emmer.

He's the GOP majority whip. He says, this is a result of an emerging industry fighting for the future of this country against tremendous odds and prevailing over the tyrannical, bureaucratic roadblocks. Nick Carter really hit the nail in the head when he said this. It was the judicial system that did this despite the best efforts of the executive.

And Ben, Simple Sessions has caught, we hit the nail on the head. We've been saying Operation choke point 2.0. We've been saying, you know, it seems like the Biden administration, they're really trying to isolate the industry, all the hostile language that has been coming out all of last year when we were covering this, man, they've really tried. They tried to do everything to stop this, and they would have gone away with it if it wasn't

for the judicial system, if it wasn't for the courts ruling in favor of, you know, these ETFs, right? Which is crazy. If we would have gone through the executive branch, they would have just kept denying it and denying it and denying it and denying it. Absolutely nuts. Anyways, so this is SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce,

and she tells the other side of the story. She says, first, our arbitrary and capricious treatment of applications in this area will continue to harm our reputation far beyond crypto. Diminished trust from the public will inhibit our ability

to regulate the markets effectively. this saga will taint future interactions between the industry and our staff and will dampen the rich, informative dialogue that best protects investors. She's absolutely right. Look at the last two days. She hit the nail on the head there, right? Second, our disproportionate attention on these filings has diverted limited staff resources away from other mission critical work. Over 10 years, likely millions of dollars of staff time has gone toward blocking the these applications. Like that's a really strong statement, man. They spent 10 years, millions of taxpayer dollars to stop the inevitable, right? Like, how is that for the good of people? I don't know.

Third, our actions here have muddied people's understanding of what the SEC's role is. Congress did not authorize us to tell people whether a particular investment is right for them, but we have abused administrative procedures to withhold investments that we do not like from the public. Fourth, by failing to follow our normal standards and processes in considering spot Bitcoin ETPs, we have created an artificial, you mentioned this, Ben, an artificial frenzy around them.

Had these products come to market in the way other comparable products typically have, we would have avoided the circus atmosphere in which we now find ourselves. 100%. 100%. they created a circus this week. They completely embarrassed themselves and they don't even take responsibility, which is the worst part.

Fifth, we have alienated a generation of product innovators within our space. Our unreasonable approach to these applications has signaled that regulatory prejudice against new products and services can lead us to sidestep the law and unreasonably delay product launches. The industry has logged hundreds of meetings,

has filed submissions, withdrawals, and amendments, and ultimately had to resort to a costly legal battle to get us to today. So I think this is the most base take by any member of the SEC. I think the other ones are cry harder. I'm really salty this got approved. But I think that this is the most accurate take because I think she hit the nail on the head

on every single one of those well-thought-out points. Yeah, I mean, it's nice to see. At least there was some dissent. and around this, but like, again, 10 years, like over a decade on this crap. Over a decade spent trying to say, no, the people are not allowed to take the fruits of their labor and allocate it as they see fit. But, like, how many years has it been since people have been able to speculate with cash settled futures, which inherently, you know, can manipulate the price when there's no spot? It's just, again, the combination of malice and incompetence here is staggering.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm here for all the seething, though. I love it. When there's people in positions of power that are pissed, it's probably good for Bitcoin. It's probably good for Bitcoin. And that was a great segue, Ben. We did not plan that. Because ladies and gentlemen, speaking of seething, I have for you guys.

I'm going to like it because I'm on Sophie's account because I broke my computer last week. I have for you, ladies and gentlemen, Elizabeth Warren. The SEC is wrong on the law and wrong on the policy with respect to the Bitcoin ETF decision. She sounds like a tyrant. Like the court ruled that the SEC was wrong. Right? The market wants this, and she's saying, no, that's all wrong. I'm Elizabeth Warren.

You have to listen to me. And she finishes off by saying, if the SEC is going to let crypto burrow even deeper into her financial system, then it's more urgent than ever that crypto follow basic anti-money laundering rules. Again, it's the same narrative over and over and over and over again because, okay, this got pushed through, but now her next target is self-custody in the United States. of America. That's her target, right? Elizabeth Warren does not want you using a money that doesn't steal from you. Plain and simple, massive win, but I think things are just going to get a little bit harder from here just because like a wounded animal, you know, pushed into a corner. That's when they're the most dangerous. Yeah. I almost wonder if she's going to flail too hard though. Like, she was already reaching with some of the shit she was proposing. Like it was all and she, and she

he's got a horrible track record. I feel like she's going to be, like she's already got like the BDS, the Bitcoin derangement syndrome. Like it's got to be dialed to 11 with this. And so I feel like she's going to come out the gate with things that are like so far off base and try to like overdo it so much

that people will be even more dismissive than they have been. But some of the stuff she's probably going to propose at this point is going to be just totally out to lunch more so than it ever has been. 100%. 100%. So yeah, big win for Bitcoin. And once again, I have to bring it back to this. You know, it was literally approved the day that the legendary Hal Finney tweeted this out so, so many years ago. So I think that's a full circle, absolutely historic. In other news, And I did actually, I did a little bit more research on this. So I actually have a bit that I can read in regards to this.

But it seems like just because the spot Bitcoin ETF was approved, other financial institutions have not allowed the trading of it yet. One of them being Vanguard. Vanguard is, I think, either the second largest asset manager in the world, $7.7 trillion under management. and I think Neil Jacobs hits the nail on the head here. He says, I have a retirement account with Vanguard. I called them, and they said they will not be offering any of the Bitcoin ETFs. I'm working on transferring assets out of there. Then I close my Vanguard account.

Terrible business decision by Vanguard. Here's Stephen Lubka. Stephen Lukka says Vanguard, City, Merrill, Edward Jones, UBS are all being reported to not allow clients to trade the ETF. And Wells Fargo advisors, Morgan Stanley, Stone Compliance Review, Raymond Jane's not offering it yet. So it seems like all these financial institutions, even though it's approved, are not allowing this. And I got a little bit of some backstory here. This was a bitwise article that came up. And he went on to say the author said,

everyone wants to know how much money will flow into Bitcoin ETFs. That's hard to say. I've seen long-term flow estimates of $30 billion to $200 billion. But one thing we do know is that the flows won't come all at once. In fact, it's more likely that they will build up over time. There's a reason for the slow buildup. For instance, although ETFs make it easy for many people to invest in an asset, they aren't automatically approved on all platforms. It takes time, for instance, for conservative wirehouse brokerages like Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch to approve new ETF. So according to the Bitwise report, it seems like this was expected. But the awesome part about market forces is that they're driven on incentives. And then you're going to have more.

And then I think the Neil Jacobs is a great representation of this. You're going to have more people like Neil Jacobs that are going to say, hey, you're not offering this. I'm going to take my business somewhere else. Imagine, imagine people that have accounts in those places that they were literally just waiting for this, which I mean, pretty much everybody watching this is, is likely just has Bitcoin and self-custy. But imagine being one of those people that was like, I would like exposure to this through an ETF. And imagine your brokerage says no. And so you're like, well, I'll just not. And then imagine missing out on, you know, the next year or two because they'd drag their heels on it. And imagine like all, everything that you're going to miss because of that.

As a matter of fact, if you don't mind me sharing, I've got a meme for you to represent that. Absolutely. The projection, the protection provided by Vanguard for boomers right here. That's Vanguard, protecting boomers from all the green deldos that are coming their way. The silent protector wrote, that's absolutely hilarious. That really, really hits the nail on the head. Yeah. Oh, man.

Like, again, like, what are you protecting us from? All of the massive upside and, like, you know, high double-digit gains that have plagued Bitcoin for its entire existence? I think, I think they're just protecting themselves. Like, I really think so. I think eventually it just, like, you know, I think eventually all roads lead to Bitcoin. All roads lead to self-custody Bitcoin once people realize that they're paying these crazy, crazy fees and that they would have more Bitcoin if they watched the BTC Sessions tutorial and learn how to take self-custody.

So anyways, in other news, everyone's getting excited about these ETFs, but it's important to remember, and this is the case that I was actually making this week, is you have two options, right? Option number one is, you know, perhaps going through slight difficulty and learning how to take self-custody and properly securing your backup wallet seed words and, you know, getting yourself a hardware wallet. And the other option is to pay someone else to hold your Bitcoin.

They're going to custody it. And part of the terms and conditions, this are not my words, these are their words, the trust will dissolve if any of the following events occur. A U.S. federal or state regulator requires the trust to shut down or forces the trust to liquidates its Bitcoin or seizes in pounds or otherwise restricts access to trust assets. So like just use common sense. You have two options, right? Option number one, you take self-custody.

You pay no fees and it's unconfiscatable. Option two, you pay fees and it can be confiscated. with an executive order of which the U.S. has a history of doing that with the 6102 order, right? Option number one, option number two, like, really is the convenience that much worth it? I don't think so. Man, they shove that right at the top of that list. Of all the things that could go wrong, we feel this one is the most important to outline. It's so great, like, because they know, like, you know, it's like the U.S. government gets in a pickle or this thing gets

too popular? Popular rugpole. Here's Max Kaiser. He says, one, government seizes the ETF for national security. Before they send you, your US dollars, price moves up 100,000. You pay tax on the gain from the payout with what's left. You buy Bitcoin at 100,000 higher. Price crashes. You're now sitting on a net losing position from where you started. Like, I mean, like, bro, like, is it, is it too crazy to say that? We have about a minute left, so I do want to show this video real quick. And it's basically a member of the DOJ admitting to Bitcoin's number go-up technology. Let's check it. I think this is one of Opti's ex-girlfriends too.

Almost 120,000 Bitcoin, which at the time was worth approximately $71 million. Today, the value of that Bitcoin has grown to over $4.5 billion. billion dollars. Like, I don't think they realize the self-own that they're doing to themselves. And of course, ladies and gentlemen, if you price your life in Bitcoin and you save in Bitcoin, everything gets cheaper. That's the beautiful part about number go-up technology. Even housing, that's doubled, really.

In Miami, it's doubled in the last three or four years. Housing is still 80% cheaper. The dollar is 92% cheaper if you've been saving in Bitcoin for the last five years. years. Anyways, dude, it is what a crazy week. But it gives this stuff to talk about, right? It does. It's, it's, it's never not entertaining. Like, there's so much going on. And this, this week crank that dial right up. And I'm here for it. Like, it's, again, the, the insanity of this week. Like, it's been, it's been a while since it's been this crazy. And like, you know, the price action was has been like, fine.

but mostly it's just the hilarity and the absolute clown show that has been our institutions trying to pretend they have any control. 100%. 100, dude. This is the nation states dying. Everyone's still playing. Pretend. Fiat money's dying.

And they're just trying to hold on. They're trying to hold on to that privilege of being able to create money for free that everyone else has to work for. Anyways, guys, this was. your Simply sessions, Ben. I will see you next week. Later, man. And everybody else, stick around because we are quickly going to run through some

tech updates and a few quick things that I want to get through before we round out. So I'll bring up my screen here. So first up, I just wanted to quickly make mention of the new Zeus wallet for mobile beta that just came out, 0.8.1. This supports Nostr contact import

and as well as point of sale and more. So some of the big things to outline here. Their new standalone point of sale, you can create a product list and manage it. You can manage product categories, price items in Fiat or Bitcoin or mix and match. You can enable or disable tips. You can also set a tax percentage as an option if you want to do that. And then you can also review your sales. Or if you do have a square terminal, you can actually tap into that as well. That on top of the Noster Contact import, super awesome. Can't wait to play around with it. Zeus has been killing it lately. A couple of good articles coming out from Shinobi writing over at Bitcoin

Mac. Number one, this is on Mercury Layer. So I previously did a video on something called Mercury Wallet, which is a privacy enhancing layer on top of Bitcoin. A little complex, but I'll just quickly kind of detail what's going on here. It used to be a little bit more, how do I put it? It wasn't censorship resistance. So like, you know, if somebody were to come down and shut down what's known as a coordinator, then that could be a problem. It's gotten a lot better and it's also gotten a lot more private. But basically, Mercury Layer today was released.

It's an improved version of their variation of a state chain. So state chains, they're essentially like payment channels in many ways, like on Lightning, except for they were a collaboratively shared UTXO with pre-signed transactions as a mechanism of last resort for people to enforce their own ownership or take ownership of the portion of that UTX they owe they own. The major difference between Lightning Channel and State Chain is the parties involved in collaboratively sharing the UTXO and how ownership of an enforceable claim against it transfers to other parties. Unlike Lightning, which is created and shared between two static participants, a state state chain is opened with a facilitator slash operator and can be freely transferred in its

entirety between any two participants who are willing to trust the operator to be honest and completely off to be honest and this can be done completely off chain. Someone wishing to load a state chain collaborates with the operator to create a single public key that the creator and the operator both hold a share of the corresponding private key with neither having a complete copy of the key. From here, they pre-sign a transaction allowing the creator to claim back coins after the time lock. So it's this funky way of, again, being able to partially own a UTXO as you would in a Lightning Channel, but you're not having to actually set up liquidity and because there's a coordinator, you coordinate with them and you can basically transfer those funds to anybody that you

like. And this is active and available now. Now, there's not like an easy to use like interface or wallet or anything like that yet, but it is there. It is being built and very exciting. So yet another way to scale Bitcoin in a private way. And also this version of state chains with Mercury layer is much more private because the coordinator cannot actually see what you own or even know what they're signing, which is awesome. Another update. Also, So written by Shinobi here, Breez announces Fiat Link, a lightning to Fiat API standard. Basically, it's a competitive and streamlined solution to integrate Fiat to Bitcoin transfers for wallet and application developers to integrate.

So basically, if you've ever had a Bitcoin wallet and it says like buy Bitcoin in the app, typically those bridges are a pain in the ass if you've ever actually tried to use one. And on top of that, most of them don't really work with lightning. This is just a simple API that apps can really easily plug into and operate with. And then you can have an entire host of options in terms of buying Bitcoin from directly within your Lightning app. So kind of cool. We'll see how it plays out. But Breeze has been putting in a lot of work making standards available for people to utilize.

And that's why we're seeing a lot of development in and around Lightning wallets right now. Moving on, Rockstar Dev over at BTC Pay Server just did a video on how to use coin join and pay join within BTC pay server. Yeah, so more or less, you can unlock the privacy of your Bitcoin transactions with comprehensive guide on BTC pay servers, coin join and pay join features. Basically, they say this all started a couple of months ago with drama of not being able to withdraw from exchanges to certain addresses. With this setup, you can now easily withdraw to your BTZ pay server, and your coins will be auto-forwarded to your cold storage in the end after having been coin joined. So anyways, cool, and I love to love it when Rockstar puts out new content. Phoenix wallet also update on iOS.

Now you can have the inbound liquidity feature. I love this because a lot of people, like in terms of lightning wallets, you're basically going custodial option, which are disappearing from the US, or you've got some sort of automated option or you're running a full lightning node. And not everything has been super seamless unless you are kind of deferring all responsibility and taking custodial,

which is not ideal, I would say. Phoenix has been my go-to for a while. They just added a feature where you can basically tap a button and you can pay to get a huge inbound channel to your Phoenix wallet and it will last for a full year. So I pitched some stats. I got like a 10 million sat channel open to me. So I have no worries about receiving inbound transactions anymore,

and I can just seamlessly use my lightning wallet all the time. So I'm super glad they just had it on Android for a while, but now it is also available on iPhone. So check it out if you're so inclined. Last couple things here. I just dropped a tutorial earlier in the week on how to consolidate your UTXOs. If you've been buying small amounts of Bitcoin and consistently sending them to your wallet over and over and over again,

immediately after purchasing, then basically you've got a bunch of tiny pieces in Bitcoin sitting in your wallet, and that can really, really screw you if you go to move a meaningful amount later, and the fees are high. The fees are low right now. So if I were you, and it sounds like you, having DCAid and bought like $50, $100 chunks of Bitcoin for an extended period of time, you need to consolidate some UTXOs and get them into B.C.A.D.A.com. bigger chunks because you will get absolutely screwed on fees if you don't get your house in order. So go do it now. This should be your weekend homework because it's something that you should know about. Just search up again, search up UTXO consolidation. It is on YouTube

and it was just dropped earlier this week. So go do some learning. Also tomorrow, why are we bullish? We have Dennis Porter. We've had a lot of positive news in the realm of protecting self-custody at the state level. And that's been in large part due to Dennis and the work he's doing with Satoshi Action Fund. So we're going to have him chatting. We're also having Jaime, who's doing a lot of work with My First Bitcoin or Me Premier Bitcoin. And then we've got Mr. Rich Swisher. And he's from Motiv, Peru, that is also building out a circular economy down in Peru, which is awesome.

So it should be a good time. That is tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern time. please do go ahead and bookmark that, hit that like button early, and we'll see in the live chat there tomorrow. And with that, I'm going to round out. Thank you guys so much for being here. Of course, like, subscribe, share all those things, help a ton. You can also hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. Those were hoddle, hoddle, coin kite, cedore, nunchuck, and start nine.

And of course, if you really want to help out and you need some help yourself, maybe you've been watching tutorials, but you need some extra handholding. Well, you can head over to my website, BTCSessions. Dot CA, and you can book me for individual one-on-one private sessions to go through, whatever you want, whether it be self-costy, hardware, multi-sig, lightning, nodes, UTXO consolidation like I just covered. Of course, check out the free tutorials. That's what they're there for. But if you need extra help, that's what the book sessions are for.

There's a QR code on the screen, too, that you can scan to take yourself directly there. or if you listen on the pod, BTCSessions.ca is where you're heading. And before I log off, I see a good question in the chat. What's a good minimum number of sats for a UTXO amount? I would say at this point in time, it's advisable to have UTXOs that are larger than 1 million sats, which at the time of this video is around 470 bucks.

Think of on-chain as your long-term savings. Think of lightning and potentially liquid if you're okay with tradeoffs as your spending mechanism. The majority of your stuff, large UTXOs in cold storage, if you're just spending day-to-day, then that kind of stuff, if it's a tiny portion of your stack and you're just using it simply like that, then it is up to you what kind of trade-offs you're willing to make. But I really like Phoenix wallet for that. and I do use liquid quite regularly as an in-between mechanism, but it's not for everybody, so make your own decisions with that.

Anyways, guys, I'm going to round out there. Thank you guys so much for being here. Of course, I will be seeing you guys tomorrow for Why Are We Bullish. Have a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. See you guys next time for your daily session.