BTC Sessions - SIMPLY SESSION: Institutions Are Coming For Your Coins! ep348

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

-Binance adding Lightning -Institutions launching Bitcoin/crypto exchanges -Hong Kong gets friendly with BTC -IMF wants global CBDC This and more on today’s show!   💪 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/ 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 an Embassy 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 Free video tutorials not enough? Need some extra hand-holding when mastering self-custody, multisig, coinjoin, running a node, or other skills? Book me for a private session on my website! https://www.btcsessions.ca/ Been watching the show for a while? Like what you see? Help me cover my video costs by sending some sats over on my Geyser Fund page! https://geyser.fund/project/btcsessions

What is going on, everybody? We're back with a live one for a change. I've been globe-trotting and missing my blonde-tipped brethren. And we're back with it. I've got, you know, back in the office, ready to go. Plenty to talk about, Nico has queued up a whole bunch of stuff going on, institutional, all kinds of wild goings on. And plenty of stuff has been going on today, too.

So I won't spoil it all. get into it momentarily. But unlike the past couple of weeks, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Do it live. I can write it and we'll do it live. And thing sucks. If you haven't already, like, subscribe, share all those things. They help a ton getting this in front of more eyeballs. Shout to everybody watching from Simply Bitcoin. I am Ben with the BTC sessions.

This is your Simply session. Before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. I am slowly pulling up the timechain calendar.com. So we're sitting at pretty much dead on $30,000 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up. 3,333 sets. Nice. In terms of fees,

actually kind of crazy. The mempools backed up by like a gig, but in terms of fees, not that bad. 22 sats per byte, 23 sats per byte next block. If you're only to wait a little bit, 17 is probably going to do you. It's purging anything below six sats per bite. So just keep that in mind, RBF, lightning, all that good stuff. And then in terms of Bitcoin that have been mined, 92.43 percent. That's 19.41 million of them. All right. Shout out to sponsors. the show, hoddlehottle.com. If you're stacking sats and you've got a few priorities in mind, namely peer to peer trading, instant self-custody, no KYC. This is the place to be head to hoddle, hoddle.Hoddle.com. You sign up with nothing more than an email address. Scroll down,

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That's coming up in September. Unfortunately, I'm dying that I can't be there because it's my daughter's first day at a new school. But if you're looking at conferences, Riga is badass. It is high signal

and it's by Bitcorners for Bitcoiners. Anyways, I digress. Let's keep going. If you're stacking, if you're stacking, and non-KYC sats, you're going to want to get them in something very secure. And some of the best, most secure hardware on the market comes from Coin Kite. Cold card Mark 4 is an absolute beast.

They've also got things like the tap signer, the SaaS card, the block clock, the open dime. And coming soon, the cold card, Q1. I'm stoked about it. If you want to reserve that or pick up anything else I've mentioned, head to coin kite.com. Use code, BTC sessions for 5% off everything in the store. Now, if you're looking to go, beyond. non-single sig and you want to dive into multi-sig. Check out what Nunchuk.io has going on.

They've got something called the Honey Badger package in which you set up an assisted multi-sig. They'll hold one key, be your signer of last resort. You always hold the majority of keys so you're always have full control over your funds. But it's super easy to set up. You do it on mobile. It works with things like tap signer, cold card and a ton of other hardware options.

It also has baked in inheritance planning so that your sats, you know they're going to get to your next to. kin without any worry, if should anything happen to you. And one of the best parts about it, no KYC, sets it apart from other options out there. You don't need to provide any personal information in order for this to be set up and to work for you. So check them out, nunchuk.com. And then shout out to Start9 Labs or Start9, your sovereign computing solution.

These guys are killing it. They just dropped in the past month a brand new slew of hardware options. They've got the light server. they've got your kind of entry level regular um i don't know we'll say like mid tier node and then they've got the pro or the pure and those things are absolute beasts in which you can host your whole life on so be sure to check them out uh lots of stuff coming down the bike this is now i've now migrated everything just to start nine so i don't have any other nodes run i had five before because i was getting experimental but uh yeah i coalesced on on start nine anyways and now

my rambling. Let's let's get let's get going here. I got to bring in my long lost brother here. Dude, it's good to see you. Good to see you too, bro. But it's cool because we remained in constant communication as because our hairs act as antennas. Yeah, I could hear your thoughts the whole time. It's like we never left. Yeah. Yeah. I just, you know, I wake up in the middle of night think tutorial, tutorial. Like it was pretty crazy. Yeah, it's like as I was working on them, you're you're learning everything you don't even need to watch my tutorials anymore you just the knowledge is instantly put through your brain yeah you know and i and i constantly had 24 hours with you so yeah if you know that joke you know yeah who needs uh who needs elan's neuralink when you have the

streaks right i i got to say my girlfriend was is getting very jealous oh really i don't want to know it nico i i've heard i i get it i get the cold card it's the best hardware wallet but I've heard enough. Yes. 100%. Awesome. Well, dude, it's good to see you again with an actual live show. And thanks for still having Benico be a thing even when I was working from afar.

It was much appreciated. So thanks, man. Of course, man. Benico doesn't stop. It's like the Honey Badger. I hope the videos were all right. Oh, they were great. I think, I mean, let us know in the comments.

been watching the past couple weeks while I was I was away but it was great I think I think it fit together nicely so thanks man let's uh let's redecorate in here let's get some some snazzy shabam well awesome uh so what's been going on what's uh what's top of mind dude I mean that so rules for thee and not for me more of a continuation of of total clown world also uh you know we had this narrative back in 2018. You were around back then, Ben. And, you know, one of the copes was, hey, the institutions are coming while the price of Bitcoin was dropping from 20K to 3K.

And we all thought the institutions would come and, you know, save the day. And, you know, but we've reached this, this moment in history where the institutions are here. Like, they're finally here. And that's what we're going to talk about today during Simply sessions. But first, Ben, if you don't mind, could you play the video? Yeah, let's do it. Let's go. Following up from some announcements earlier this year, during the department's regular

oversight of our execution of presidential drawdown authority for Ukraine, we discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine. In a significant number of cases, services used replacement costs rather than netbook value, thereby overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks, and provided to Ukraine. Once we discovered this misvaluation, the Comptroller reissued guidance on March 31st, clarifying how to value equipment in line

with the financial management regulation and DOD policy to ensure we use the most accurate of accounting methods. We have confirmed that for FY23, the final calculation is $3.6 billion, and for FY22, it is $2.6 billion for a combined total of $6.2 billion. These valuation errors in no way limit or restricted the size of any of our PDAs or impacted the provision of support to Ukraine.

And while the DOD retains the authority to utilize the recaptured PDA, this has no bearing on appropriated USAI or Ukraine PDA replenishment funding approved by Congress. Whoopsie doodle. Catacomb says small billion dollar oopsie. Those happen all the time. Dude, if that isn't like an argument to separate money from state, like, I don't know what is. Could you imagine like in your tax returns? It's like accounting error. Looked back and my mistake, my bad.

And you mean to tell me the people that were cataloging all this stuff didn't know how to properly account for things. Like marking down the valuations of various items. Like people know that. that like when when you're you're marking the assets that you have, that there's depreciation of your assets. Like that's a, that's a thing that accountants and people responsible for that would be very privy to. Dude, it is,

again, it's rules for the not for me. But hey, you know what, Ben, maybe we're being too harsh. It's just $6.2 billion. You know,

like, it, it happens. I'm sure they would extend the same leniency to any mom or pop shop, mom and pop shop that, you know, accidentally just misplaced or didn't report, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, it's not like they were trying to pass a law that would, you know, basically force banks to report every $600 transaction. You know, it's not like they're trying to do that. So, you know, seems fair, above board.

Yeah, completely. We'll give it a pass. We'll give it a pass. Anyways, in other news, we got some other stuff. So we talked about the Pentagon and some shenanigans over there. Also, out of all the exchanges, Binance being, you know, one of them that's literally the, the accusation by the SEC were literally accusing CZ of actual criminal intent versus the accusations against Coinbase, which were, hey, you were selling unregistered securities. The accusations against Binance were, hey, you're commingling customer funds.

You were allowing people to kind of bypass U.S. securities regulations. Some money apparently was being used to buy like a $12 million dollar yacht. Well, it looks like Binance doesn't care. And, you know, Binance confirmed that, you know, it is working on Lightning Network integration. And normally on its, you know, on its face, you would say, okay, this is total noise. Nico, why the fuck are you talking about a shitcoin casino? Well, well, that's because remember what happened when Robin Hood and Venmo and PayPal and all these services announced that they, were going to start allowing Bitcoin purchases, right? Initially, they were completely against the idea of self-custody, right? Like, they weren't, they didn't even allow the, they didn't even allow that, right? But what happened was that you had alternatives like cash app, like Swan, like, like Strike, right? That they did offer withdraws. So therefore, there was market pressure on these other exchange, like on PayPal, on Venmo, on Robin Hood, to,

Eventually, they were all forced to add withdraws. And I think that these same market forces are affecting an exchange like Binance, just like they affected Cracken. I think eventually it's going to happen to Coinbase, too, if they're still around in five years, because their business model is currently being attacked by the SEC. And if the SEC gets their way, Coinbase will literally go out of business.

They won't exist five years from now. But, you know, it's the beauty of incentives. It's the beauty of free market, right? free markets do these beautiful things. And even in the most predominant shitcoin casino that has ever existed in the history of mankind, that has definitely been doing some shady shit in the background. They can't resist market forces themselves, you know? So Binance adding lightning, pretty cool.

Kind of sucks for a lot of those shit coins listed on there. Kind of defeats a lot of their narratives, that's for sure. Yeah, I heard that Bitcoin was slow and expensive. What's up with that? Weird. Yeah. It is very strange. It is funny to watch, you know, the big guys that that rely on the previous narratives of,

oh, this coin has more transactions per second and all that crap that's been trumpeted over the years. They had no incentive to do it until, like, it really became an issue, right? Like when you're withdrawing from, you know, one of these entities and they're charging you like 10 or $20 withdrawal fees, stuff like that. And it's like, well, how about you just do the thing that we want and actually give us access to, you know, instant settlement like the rest of the world has been using for the past few years here. It does force their hand.

So, I mean, like, you know, your initial, you know, initial reaction would be, oh, hats up to finance, but like, really, come on. Let's get it going. Let's get it going. Yeah, and then, so what else is missing? So it's Coinbase, you know, the shitcoin casino, the BitTrucks went out of business. Gemini, I guess, you would say. I think all the, you know, all the Bitcoin-only exchanges are already basically integrating.

I know Swannis, Strike, Cash app. So, yeah, I mean, I think everyone's going to have to enable Lightning, which is freaking awesome. Very, very cool. Anyways, in other news, I think this is the very big news. And shout out to everybody in the chat, everyone watching on BTC sessions and on Simply Bitcoin. Congratulations to everybody. You have frontran one of the most evil organizations in the history of mankind. And I'm talking about BlackRock.

But before we get into that, you know, the Chad Saylor saying the quiet part out loud, the window to front run institutional demand for Bitcoin is closing, right? And here is a Wall Street Journal that Michael Saylor was retweeting. But this isn't talking about just BlackRock. And mind you, like, there's way too many coincidences. There's way too many coincidences for this to be a coincidence. Okay. In the last two weeks alone, okay, finance and Coinbase were sued.

And then fast forward a week later. Black Rock announced an ETF. The day after Fidelity announced that it was rumored that they wanted to launch an ETF. And then the day after that, the title reads itself, right? Crypto Exchange backed by Citadel Securities, Fidelity, Schwab starts operations. And these are very, very big financial players, right? which is very crazy. So it goes on to say,

a new cryptocurrency exchange backed by Citadel Securities, Fidelity Investments, and Charles Schwab is seeking business from broker and investors interested in digital assets, but wary of troubles at FTX and finance. The venture EDX markets, I'm not a big fan of the name, quietly began executing trades in recent weeks,

so it's already up and running. EDX released a statement about the launch Tuesday, nine months after its backers unveiled their plans for the crypto market. The launch shows that some Wall Street firms remain interested in crypto despite a regulatory onslaught by the SEC and a market that has cooled off substantially over the past 18 months. And I think that statement, Ben, is a very strong statement, right? And it's not just some Wall Street firms. I think that is an understatement, right? Fidelity has trillions of dollars assets under management. BlackRock has $10 trillion assets under management. So these aren't just some Wall Street firms. These are titans on Wall Street that are showing interest despite the fact of the SEC lawsuit, despite the fact that, you know, Bitcoin is down more than 50% from its all-time high, right? Despite these things, these things are still happening.

Anyways, it goes on to say, spokesman for Sidel Securities and Electronic Market-Making firm with a huge presence in stock and obviously. confirmed it was trading cryptocurrencies on EDX. EDX says its approach draws on standard practices in traditional and regulated financial markets and differs in ways from how crypto exchanges typically operate. One major difference, EDX is a non-custodial exchange, meaning it doesn't directly handle its customers' digital assets. Instead, EDX runs a marketplace where firms agree to execute trades of coins and dollars using its platform to agree on prices. then the firms moved from crypto and cash between each other to settle the trades. Later this year, EDX plans to launch a clearinghouse to facilitate the process of settling trades,

but even then it plans to use third-party banks and crypto-custodian to hold customer assets, which is I think this part is really, really interesting because that has been the debate, really, in the last, I would say, you know, a couple of weeks or a couple of months or so, is there's been two approaches, right? There's been the approach of Swan, which, you know, wants to separate the custodian from the broker. And then there's been the approach of places like River, like exchanges like River, where the broker and the custodian are the same. I find it interesting that, you know, these Wall Street Titans are taking the approach where they want the custodian. and they broker to be separate. And that coincides with a lot of exists how, you know, the traditional financial system,

that's how it operates, right? The custodian and broker traditionally are separated. I think it's by law that they're required to do so. So anyways, dude, this is this is absolutely crazy, crazy news. And again, Fidelity and Charles Schwab, it looks like they don't give a, they don't, they don't give a flying F what, what the SEC has to say about Coinbase. doesn't seem like it bothers them a lot. It almost seems to me like they've got information that others don't have.

It's like, you know, because BlackRock tends not to fuck around and seems to know what they're doing. And like I was seeing something like out of their ETF filings that like 99 point whatever percent of their filings have been approved. So it's like if they're filing, they're doing it for a reason. They're pretty confident. And to have all of this happen at once, it kind of, you know, it seems a little bit like, oh, the good old boys club. Like they all just kind of like got together behind the scenes. And they're like, all right.

And now. And everybody up until now just got screwed and slapped and put all the, you know, yeah, sure, the Winkle Boss twins. run their shitcoin casino but those guys have been trying to get a friggin etf since 2016 and every time no no no over and over and over again i mean if black rock gets it like when nothing materially has really changed like yeah okay there's the lawsuits and everything with the cc but like i mean the cc dragged its frigging feet on on even explaining what it saw as a security versus not and Like it's just it's kind of laughable because it seems like all of these huge institutions were able,

were basically given time to get their ducks in a row and then execute when when stuff was ready. Yeah. We'll see. Also, side note, don't sell your coins to BlackRock everybody. Don't do that. By the way, you were, you're, you, you, you, your intuition, Ben, you're not the only person that, that, that thought that. This is a lot of coincidences. You know, it's like, you know, the Winklevi, you know, isn't it convenient that the FTCX blow up happened the way it did?

And then, you know, the night and shining armor, Larry Fink coming on a white horse and he just comes in to save the day. So it's a lot of coincidences, aren't they? But we aren't the only paranoid bitcoins to think this. Here's Preston Pish. He says, I'm sorry. But after watching Black Rock Fidelity, Schwab, and now Deutscheich, and now Deutscheicheng, we're going to get. to that in a second, by the way. So it's that we, we just hit the tip of the iceberg. We're, we're, we just, we've just been talking about fidelity citadel and Schwab. We haven't even

hit the black rock news and we haven't even hit the bank news. This is all happened within the last week or two. And this happened the week after the SEC lawsuit. Like if if, if you think this is a coincidence, I have, you know, what's that? What's that? What's that a question? What's that a expression, I have a bridge to sell you or something like that. Like, I don't know, bro, but like... I have a fork of Bitcoin that is the real Bitcoin to sell you. Exactly, exactly. Oh, man.

Okay. So Preston says, I'm sorry, but after watching Black Rock Fidelity, Citadel Schwab, and now Deutsche Bank all apply for Bitcoin ETS, spot exchanges, etc. Only a few days after the SEC drops a TRO on Binance and Sue's Coinbase. How can't you think that this entire past year was a giant inside job coordinated between the Wall Street parasites and government regulators so they can catch up, right? Here's David Bailey.

So let me get this straight. They sent in their goon, SBF, pumped him full of money, enabled his massive Ponzi that wiped out the native industry, all the while they were preparing their own exchanges and ETFs to come in and, quote, clean up the mess. Pretty genius, to be honest. Here's Marty Ben. Come out of nowhere, Wonder Kid, Master Trader, Names Arena, Celebrity Endorsements on CNNBC weekly. Sit down with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. I don't know if I could say that.

Rug the world. Usher in the need for adults in the room. The most obvious government asset and recent memory. SBF is a CIA asset. And shout out to Marty Bent. This was August 4th, 2022. Mind you, he was being treated like a wonder kid. Like, New York Times, even after the guy got arrested, crime. Hey, and then, you know, they brought him up. They did an official interview. Like like like and he's like I just didn't know what I'm doing Mr. Wonderful's like I believe him and then they all gave him around him again. Yeah. You made a mistake, but that's what good builds good businessman. Really? What about the fraud? What about the fraud? Exactly. And then and then what dude, they drop charges by the way on his case. They dropped like four charges. It just came out recently. So yeah, you know, again, I don't want to sound like a crazy conspiracy. theorists, but like, these are a whole lot of coincidences, Ben. Yeah. Like, am I

seeing things that are not there? Robert in the chat says, SBF is a patsy, not a Ponzi. Yeah. Oh, man. So, okay, but, but, you know, the story, the story is not over. So, okay, so we have you know, Citadel,

we have Fidelity, we have Schwab, but then the big gahuna comes in. And I love the way that Blockworks framed it, which is, uh, black rock Bitcoin ETF, the wolf enters the henhouse. But before, you know, before I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, know, I, I, uh, just because this is the, this is the, this is the, this is the, I have this Bloomberg subscription that it just sends me an email every time, like, there's, like, a notable, like,

article I want to read, but check out the name of this article and then connect it with what, uh, what, uh, what, what, uh, with, with Marty Bent and David Bailey just said. I kid you not. This is the subject line of the email. Larry Fink goes from Bitcoin skeptic to savior. That's right. In the eyes of Bloomberg, Larry Fink is the savior. Save me, Larry.

Save me. I need rescuing. He's pointing at you, Ben. Yes. Hey, Ben. Do you want to touch tips? Oh, man. Wow.

Wow. I love that. I love Loki in the back. W-E-F like perfect perfect dude reality stranger than fiction like you can't write this if you tried you couldn't write this script if you tried anyways it goes on to say black rock bitcoin ETF the wolf enters the henhouse so I appreciate shout out to blockworks you know because the the Bloomberg subject line email was just comical it goes on to say it's institutional scale bitcoin investment in America, the dream of many early digital gold asset backers is becoming a distinct

possibility. But for some, an institutional move into Bitcoin is nothing more than a dystopian nightmare when a noble battle against the corruption of the Fiat money system ends with the rich, once again, getting richer. The application for an ETF by the largest asset managers in the world, BlackRock, could not have happened at a stranger time in cryptocurrency's regulatory history. Just as the SEC is hunting down Coinbase for allegedly flouting securities laws, BlackRock is requesting the SEC's approval for a spot ETF with Coinbase as its custodial partner. Okay, so hold on. It gets weirder. Coinbase gets sued the week before. Wow. And then the week after, BlackRock's like, you know what? Not only we're going to file Bitcoin ETF, but we're going to use Coinbase to do it.

Like, bro. Like, bro. clean, clean slate for Coinbase, I guess. Black Rock, Black Rock says make it so. Yeah. No, and did you see the James O'Keefe video that came out? Yeah. It's like, you want a senator, 10 grand. You can get a senator.

No problem. And it's just a guy that worked at BlackRock. Like, this is just crazy. This is crazy stuff. Anyways, so it goes on to say, just as the SEC is hunting down Coinbase for allegedly flouting securities laws, BlackRock is requesting the. SEC's approval for a spot Bitcoin ETF. It goes on to say it should be no surprise that BlackRock would choose to work with Coinbase for its ETF as they have a as they've had long been strategic partners.

So the still the entry of old world wealth into Bitcoin into the Bitcoin realm is raising red flags in the community on a recent on the margin podcast, Mark Yusko. I think he worked with Pomp. He was part of that. I forget the name of the company, expresses some of the fears of handing over the keys, both figuratively and cryptographically to the institutions. Bitcoin community seems unenthusioned, while the notion of large-scale,

heavily regulated investment entering Bitcoin appears on the surface to be highly bullish for the industry. Not everyone is enthusiast or enthusiasts, enthused concerns about some sort of host style takeover or swirling in the community. I mean, rightly so, I'll say this. And I think, Ben, you already said it. Don't be a moron and sell your Bitcoin of BlackRock.

Yeah. This is what I got to say about that. Yeah. They had some stuff on there in some of their documentation talking about how like they could if, you know, they'll basically choose if there's a fork of Bitcoin, then, you know, they'll choose which one is the one. and it may not be the most valuable chain. And like, so I mean, there's definitely room for fuckery in there.

And I wouldn't be surprised if some was tried. But I mean, run a node, man. Run a node. And then BlackRock can't tell you what Bitcoin is. That's the best thing to do. So go. Exactly. You know, you hear that, Larry?

You hear that Larry? No, Nico. I see you. Anyways. All right. Also, just to kind of give a reference to how big, you know, the, how big Black Rock is. Quarter, 2022, BlackRock had $8.49 trillion. That's with a T. Okay. You know, the Pentagon losing $6.2 billion, you know, that's, for Larry Fink, that's nothing. Drop in the bucket. That's, that's literally the change in his couch cushions. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, these guys basically only, you know, these guys basically only,

the world. And I'm not even kidding when I say that. It's not an exaggeration. By the way, the good news is is not done. So the same week, again, freaking crazy coincidence. So the same week that Citadel and Fidelity and Charles Schwab decided to launch an exchange, the same week that BlackRock said we're going to file an ETF with Coinbase, which is being sued by the SEC. the same week that Fidelity is rumored to also file for an ETF. This happened as well. One of the largest banks in Russia, not Russia, in France, basically wants to custody Bitcoin, right? But it's not also France.

The largest bank in Germany, Deutsche Bank, files for crypto custody license. And again, ladies and gentlemen, we're not talking about the billions anymore. This isn't just, you know, Pentagon Trump change. We are now talking in the trillions, right? So these are massive, massive institutions that are circling around. I don't think this would have happened if, you know, the Black Rock news didn't come out. I don't think this would have happened if the fidelity news didn't come out. I think these massive institutions, they see the writing on the wall and they want to get a piece of the action.

I think that's the reality. I think the 2018 narrative of the institutions are coming. Boy, the institutions are here. Like, they're here now. And congrats to everybody. You have front run these massive, you know, institutions that have been calling you crazy for the better part of a decade. You were right. And they were wrong.

That's because Bitcoin's incentives stay winning and they're superior to anything they have. Don't get tricked, man. Because I feel like these, you know, like they're applying for a custody. license like fuck that don't yeah don't don't buy their ios um self-cust of your shit get a hardware wallet run a node do all the self-sovereign things that you've been geared up to learn over the past number of years um you don't want you don't want their ios let let the normies go take the receipts and and think that they own bitcoin because um it won't be real Yeah, yeah, exactly. So instead of trusting Deutsche Bank or Douchebank, watch some BTZ Sessions tutorials.

We got them. We got plenty. So, okay, next part is all this is happening, right? Also kind of more bullish news, right? So, you know, real quick, right? All that stuff that just happened, right? All this crazy institutional interest, you know, these lawsuits that are happening in, you know, in the United States. States, Coinbase is being sued. Black Rock is like, I don't give a fuck. We Bitcoin ETF on the other side of the world in Hong Kong, which we've been covering in in Simply sessions for a while now, and we've been making the case how Hong Kong is being used by the CCP to kind of play both sides, right? So Hong Kong is part of this one country, two systems. Used to be a British colony and it was handed back to to communist China, but communist China decided to keep it as a

lazai fair capitalistic city. So what they're doing is that they're using Hong Kong as a testing ground to, oh, we can benefit from Bitcoin, but at the same time, don't let, you know, our mainland populace, you know, benefit from a number go up and freedom enabling technology. We still want them on a social credit system, central bank digital currency standard. But in Hong Kong, we're like, you know, we'll benefit from all these companies. you know, potentially moving here. And the push is pretty hard, bro.

It goes on to say Hong Kong's banking regulator is pressuring lenders, including HSBC and standard charter to take on crypto exchanges as clients, even as U.S. regulators cracked down on the industry. At a meeting last month, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority questioned the UK-based lenders and Bank of China on why they're not accepting crypto exchanges as clients. It goes on to say due diligence on potential customers should not create undue burden, particularly for those setting up an office in Hong Kong to look for the opportunities here. Banks do not have a ban on crypto clients, but they are reluctant to take on exchanges over fears that they could be prosecuted if the platforms are used for money laundering and other illegal activity.

The pressure underscores the difficulties being created by Hong Kong's push to establish itself as a global center for the crypto industry despite a series of high profile and damaging collapses, including the implosion of FTX. the Hong Kong Monetary Authority encouraged the banks to not be afraid. A person with the knowledge of the discussion said there is resistant from a conventional banking mindset. We are seeing some resistance from senior executives at traditional banks. This month, we already talked about the SEC, yet in a sign of Hong Kong's enthusiasm for the sector,

pro-Beijing, so someone who's in bed with the CCP, lawmaker Johnny NG, who is also a member of China's top political advisory body, invited Coinbase and other crypto exchanges to set up in the city following the SEC lawsuit. How freaking crazy is reality right now, bro? This is nuts. The country that banned Bitcoin mining is now going to Coinbase, which is currently being sued by the SEC,

which is currently being used by BlackRock to file an ETF, and the CCP is saying, hey, Coinbase, come over to here to Hong Kong and set up shop here. What the fuck is going on? Is this? We're just watching the incentives play out. We're watching as the world realizes, oh, this thing is actually going to be huge. It's going to be used by everyone because it cannot be stopped. There have been plenty of examples of it not being able to be stopped.

And I think that you're just seeing different iterations of that. And you're also seeing governments trying to have their cake and eat it too. Well, we want to ban it, but we also want to have it here because it's very beneficial to us. But like not for our citizens, but for us, yes, please. But you can't as when your citizens see that you're benefiting from Bitcoin, your citizens are going to have Bitcoin. It's going to happen. And so I, yeah, it's kind of wild to see it all play out when everybody was, was, was, kind of positing that this type of stuff would happen over the past decade where like oh you know nation states will start to get it institutions will start to get it you're going to start to see this competitive environment and like this is exactly like we see the u.s kind of clamping down on shit and then we see the the country that most aggressively clamped down on everything now letting it eke back in and saying well in hong kong let's let's actively encourage you.

it. And so do we see that play out state side as well? Well, I know that we came down pretty hard, but maybe we should actively encourage a little bit because we can't let China get all of this. I think we're going to start to see a little bit of that ping pong back and forth. There's still going to be horrible regulations. There's still going to be people that want to control this thing. I think that they will find that that's exceedingly difficult. But there's going to be a mix of both. They'll want the benefits and none of the drawbacks to their power, but they won't get that. Yep, exactly. I always remember the article that Alex Gladstein wrote, and there was something that he said in that article that really resonated with me.

Freedom enabling technology and number go up technology are inextricably linked, and you cannot separate the two. And this is a pill that governments have not swallowed yet. And I love the CC, to be honest with you, like I admire the CCP's attempt of saying, hey, we can benefit. We can have both. Why not? You know, which I find absolutely hilarious. They'll find out. Anyways, Ben, do we have time for one funny-ass video clip?

Let's do it. Okay. Awesome. Okay. So this is a little bit of a simple, this is the end. So this is no longer simply sessions. This is called simply tabloid sessions. Right.

So we all know Andrew Tate. If you live under a rock, I'm sorry. I don't have the time to explain it. Let's say he's a highly controversial red pill type of internet figure, finally been charged. And Romanian prosecutors, they seized 21 Bitcoin, but it wasn't 21 Bitcoin. According to Sky News, which we're supposed to trust,

you know, remember, you have to trust the trusted sources. apparently it was a lot more than 21 Bitcoin. Let's hear what the trusted news sources have to say. Oh, I don't think we're getting audio on that. Oh, we're not getting audio. Oh, I screwed up. Anyways, so in Sky News, they said that they seized 21 million Bitcoin from Andrew Tate. Wow, big hall.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He must know Satoshi or something. that's that's that's that's quite incredible like i'm to see a newscast i mean the news has been expertly reporting bitcoin for well over a decade now and this is just a continuation of oh 100% we're misinformation bro they're they they're trusted sources yeah wow wow congratulations sky news you vote done yourself oh fantastic well dude um This was fantastic.

It was good to have you back or good to be back as well. Yeah, man. Shall we do it again? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, hey, can we mention your upcoming trip? Yeah, yeah. But now you're going to be touching the tips again.

Yeah. And where? Where? Where shall we be doing it? Should we tell people? Yeah, I mean. The land of maple syrup and moose. Yeah.

You're making your, you're making your, what do we call it, your pilgrimage to Canada. Yes, yes. I'm, dude, I have not been in Canada in over a decade. I'm so excited. Well, you get to come to the good part. So, yeah. Those of you unfamiliar, Nico will be in, maybe I'll just bring it up here while I get the chance. Nico's going to be in my hometown for a little something.

We're doing the Bitcoin rodeo. It's coming up. So anyways, it's going to be a good time. It's going to be in Calgary, July 4th and 5th. And I'm super stoked that you get to come. I get to show you around. We'll go to the mountains. We'll hit up Calgary Sanpede, which is like, just bring your Advil.

It's going to be a time. But there's going to be a bunch of good people. in town. Steve Barber lives like 10 minutes from me. And of course you've been chatting with Dave Bradley. He is the co-founder of Bull Bitcoin. Currently works at Bitcoin. Well, there's going to be a bunch of other

awesome bitcoins in town. I won't rant on it too much. But yeah, man. It's going to be exciting. I am super, super freaking pumped. I'm going to bring my girl. So this will be good. And yeah, we're going to maybe we do a live

live simply sessions? Let's do it. Why not? All right. I got to touch up my tips, bro. The roots are going in. Let me talk to Dave. Maybe we can do one on stage from the thing. That sounds like a good time. Anyways, everybody, this was your Simply sessions.

Peace out. Later, man. All right, everybody. A couple things before we finish shop. I got a few things that I wanted to touch on that I thought were exciting this week. So of course, again, if you're if you're in town or in Alberta or in Western Canada, or you want to make a trip over, come to Calgary. Come to the Bitcoin Radio, July 4th and 5th, Bitcoin rodeo.com. But yeah, there's a few things that caught my eye this week that I thought were worth mentioning. Jack, Jack Dorsey tweeted out, nodeless.io. So I was curious about that.

clicked on it. And it looks like a way to basically be able to accept lightning payments and on-chain payments directly, create storefronts, all this kind of stuff. BTC pay store, BTC pay server style, but all instant self-custody. So if you have a lightning address, if you have just on-chain, then you can do that. So trade-offs here, just from my initial poking around, the on-chain thing, they don't allow you to do an ex-pub. It's just a singular address. Not great. I would prefer X-Pub,

but I think they're trying to keep it accessible. Maybe if they add an advanced feature that allows you to do that, that'd be nice. Lightning address, nice and simply you plunk it in. You can set it as your default payment method and any store that you put up, all your payments will go directly to Lightning. Yeah, so, I mean, it looks like you can basically create

donation pages, online stores, paywalls, all kinds of different stuff. So yeah, interesting. Now, the other tradeoff here, too, is, okay, one, it's easy because you don't have to set anything up. You just plunk in your info and then you're off to the races. The tradeoff for that is because they're basically managing everything for you, I think they take, I think, like, 1% on transactions that come through.

So, like, weigh it, I don't know, like, do you want to, would you rather set up BTC pay on voltage and do like a monthly you know pay for a light note or something like that i don't know whatever you prefer i haven't played with this yet i'll probably end up doing a video on it at some point just wanted to bring it to your attention a couple other things start os uh so start nine they just dropped a new update if you've been having any issues with tour connectivity apparently this addresses it and that's um i had a couple every once in a while my tour connection would not be great and i restart it to kind of get a new uh identity so if you've been having any any any issues of that. This fixes it. And so you can check your node for updates. I don't know if they

pushed it yet, but it should be there soon. A few other bug fixes, different things, experimental features tab, a few other things coming out of them. So check that out. Also, they just added Simple X server available for StartOS. So this is actually pretty interesting. I think this is cool. So it says announcing SimpleX server for StartOS now available on Start 9 registry. Like Noster, SimpleX is neither peer to peer nor federated. It uses servers to relay messages. You define which server to use for receiving messages and your contacts define which server for receiving messages. Every conversation is likely to use two different servers.

Servers are simple relays adhering to SMP protocol. They do not store profiles, contacts, or groups. They only retain messages until they are delivered to clients. SimpleX was designed with Tor servers and Lodels. mind. It does direct messages, group messages, calls, voice messages, and video calls, and everything is end-to-end encrypted. Kind of cool. I'm kind of interested to play around with this. So anyways, I thought that was interesting. If you've got, if you're running Start 9, then maybe check that out. I'm going to play with it as well. Sparrow just dropped an update one,

version 1.7.7, high fee environment improvements and more. Basically, you have improved MMPPOO fee rates chart, improvements for high fee environment, performance optimizations for large wallets, better usability on border wallets, grids. Just a little bit more on the details here. Yeah, you have basically finer granularity. Same color scheme as Mampool. Space and clicking on the chart expands it and offers a 24-hour view, which is kind of cool. It also has optimizations, improved performance on VEmpowments.

very large wallets with high address reuse. So that's actually useful for me because I've got some wallace that I've have for quite some time that I use frequently. Sometimes it's going to be a pain in the ass to load. Seems like that'll be improved now. QR scanning is improved. All kinds of stuff. So hats off to Craig Ross, Sparrow.

Always killing it. Again, my go-to-day desktop wallet. Ledger, recover, technical white paper release. So the whole shit that Ledger released or announced that got them, got everybody freaking out. And the reason that I've been doing one-on-ones nonstop is people are like, I need to move to a cold card now, which again, hats off to everybody making that leap. So the thing that everybody was worried about, I guess it does suck because they dropped the white paper and it wasn't super favorable what people had to say about it. It says, although a welcome move, the technical white paper has failed to alleviate the key concerns surrounding the upcoming recover service whose source code is said to be released this summer. So basically they release like what this does and like how it works.

And some of the comments. So Seth for privacy did like a pretty good breakdown on everything that he thought could be wrong with it. And he basically said it confirms it's as bad as we thought and still completely unverified. in practice. The bombshell here is the explicit confirmation that ledger themselves hold the master decryption key for all ledger recover users. Your seed is encrypted using their key and not your own, so they always hold the ability to decrypt your seed from shards. So basically, ledger will hold like a piece of your key and two other trusted third parties will hold pieces of your keys. And then ledger has the like decryption key that allows them to put two of those

parts together and gain full access to your funds. And as we heard from the CEO of Ledger, you know, if they were, you know, if they're, if you're using the service and they get a subpoena and it's basically, oh, give up the keys, they can do that. So don't use this. Unfortunately, there's no way to verify whether or not it's just running in the background already. I'm not, I'm not saying it is. I don't think it is.

but there's no way to know in the first place. The other thing here from Zach, it says, Ledger Recovery sounds like a disaster for the AID fake era. From my reading of the white paper, all an attacker needs to do is get a photo of your ID and know what you look like. No other verification needed. What are they thinking?

Yeah. So anyways, what can I say? Don't use this service probably is the best. thing I can say. I just definitely not for me. Anyways, moving on. I just did a tutorial earlier this week. It dropped bolts. It's a web app. It is non-custodial. It uses atomic swaps to swap between lightning to on-chain or liquid Bitcoin. So I did a little demo and kind of outlined where it might be useful to swap from lightning to liquid and kind of basically made the case for if fees on the main chain got prohibitive leave high for things like dollar cost averaging, but you still

wanted to build up. If you're just dollar cost averaging into lightning, that means that you've got to have a meaningful amount of Bitcoin sitting in a lightning wallet, a hot wallet, until you move it over to on chain. And maybe you don't want to do that. Maybe you would like to secure with hardware. Well, the tradeoff that you could make is to swap from lightning to liquid. Now, liquid has a different set of tradeoffs. Liquid Bitcoin is a federated model. It is a peg one to one. It is secured by a large multi-sig between multiple institutions around the globe. So around, I think there's 15 signatories and you would need eight or nine of them to collude in order to steal your shit. So I guess the comparison would be, would you trust your Bitcoin with one company? Probably not, especially not

to if it's a meaningful amount. Now, would you temporarily trust a percentage of your Bitcoin to a collection of 15 entities of which the vast majority would have to collude to rug you? And the tradeoff is that you don't have to be hit with those on-chain fees for a period of time until it builds up and then you swap to on-chain and take full self-custody on-chain. with hardware. The trade-off also being that liquid can be secured with a hardware wallet. Some might say no to that and some might say yes, but I basically kind of laid it out as an option and kind of showed how that would work. Anyways, so that's kind of my take on that. Go back and watch

the video for bolts. I just dropped it, I think yesterday. And then lastly, shout out to Riga, Baltic Honey Badger, again being I mentioned it at the beginning being put on by the guys at hoddle hoddle. I'm so sad I can't be at this Baltic Honey Badger is so badass. I went 2019. It was awesome. I would love to be at it again. I'm really going to make a point of it next year to try and get there. But this year it's my daughter's first day of school at a new school.

I got to be there. So I don't want to miss that. So, you know, priorities. But still, they announced kind of the way it's going to go. So August 31st is Noob Day, introduction to Bitcoin, free entrance, and a pitch competition for Bitcoin startup builders. September 1st is Layer 2 day.

So they're going to have different Layer 2 developments with Blockstream, Breeze, Synonym, Arc, Voltage, LNP-BP Standards Association, Galois, T-Dex, Fujimony, LNBits, and Dusty Damon, and more. September 2nd and 3rd will be the official Honey Badger Conference, days and the fourth will be BTC PACE server day. In addition to above, the conference organizers also hold a now cypherpunk stage, a dedicated stage for privacy, opsec, freedom of speech, open source and freedom ensuring tech. And it will only be available if you're there. So basically, all of it's going to be private, none of it's going to be videoed, all the people that are going to be on stage there are going to be privacy conscious bitcointers that are kind of outlining

the tools and what you can use. Anonymous Bitcoins would take over the stage and share their expertise with our guests expect security privacy freedom peer-to-peer noster and more topics we will also host an a m a m a session with the original cypherpunk mailing list member and do a deep dive into bitcoin history um yeah lots of signal coming out of these guys honestly i had the best time there in 2019 i just it hasn't lined up that i've been able to get back which makes me sad i'm going to really make an effort for next year but like if you're already over in europe or you're thinking to go into europe Anyways, Riga is a good time.

So check it out. Anyways, enough my rant there. Tomorrow, why are we bullish? It might be beneficial if you showed up. There's going to be a lot of good Benergy going on. It's a high council of Bitcoin Ben's meeting. We've got five of us, including myself. So we got Ben Gagnon.

We've got Ben DeWall. We got Ben Schmidt. And we've got Kiwi, aka New Zealand Hoddle, who is also a Ben. So all kinds of bend goodness. And we're going to have a great Ben time tomorrow. So make sure you tune in. It's going to be a little bit earlier than normal. Normally I do these things at 6 p.m. Eastern time.

It's actually going to be at, what is that, 4.30 p.m. Eastern time. So a little bit earlier than normal, but make it out. It should be a good time. And yeah, that's it. Thank you guys so much for watching. Like, sub, share, all those things help a ton. You can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below, Hoddle, Hoddle, Coinkight, Nunchucks, Start 9.

You can also, if you're looking for some extra handholding, whether you're switching from Ledger to Cold Card, which I've had a lot of lately, or whether you're looking into lightning or multi-sig or whatever it may be, hit up my website, btccessions.ca, and there's a place right here to book private sessions. You can also scroll down a little bit. If you really liked what you saw, you can drop me a lightning tip.

There's an LN URL or you can click it and it'll take you right to my Geyser fun page. And a huge shout out to everybody that's been dropping sats on my Geyser page. It's always really cool to, you know, anytime somebody drops some sats and says a nice little thing or I learned how to do this. I've got to say that traveling, so on the topic of traveling and being out of town and going to Prague, to Oslo, going to Toronto. Man, it was overwhelming with so many people that came up and had so many kind things to say. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you guys for being a part of the show. Thank you guys for, you know, watching and recommending any tutorials that have helped you in the

past. It really, really, like, there's something about it that, you know, somebody comes up and says that they learn something. It means that much more than just, oh, I liked your silly video. made. It's it's like, oh, that that made a difference. And, and somebody leveled up their self sovereignty because of it. And that's, that's huge. It puts faces to the numbers on the screen. So for all of you that guys that show up in the chat all the time and all this, I really appreciate you. I really do. And yeah, thanks for being awesome. You guys are awesome.

Anyways, with that, I'm going to wrap up. Thank you guys so much for watching. have a great, wonderful evening, wherever you may be. I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.