BTC Sessions - SIMPLY SESSIONS: Grayscale's HUGE Win, Oman Mining, Blackrock's Mining Play & More! ep362

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

-Grayscale wins SEC lawsuit -Oman mining Bitcoin -Blackrock owns shares in 4 of top 5 miners -Google Cloud 7 year El Salvador partnership   💪 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://store.bitcoinmagazine.com/collections/hardware/products/seedor-safe-starter-set 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

Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. So we're back. Nico is in the house to fill us in on the latest and greatest. Everything been going on with Bitcoin. We had some big grayscale news this week. Some people got excited. And then we had some BART action and all that fun stuff. But we're going to chat about it all. Excited to be rolling with Nico again today. Of course, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my good friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live.

The fucking thing sucks. If you have not already, like, subscribe, share. All those things, they help a ton. Thank you, everybody that does them. And if you haven't liked it already, it's right there. You can just click it right now and please those algorithmic gods and get more people here. Anyways, guys, I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your.

simply session. Before we bring in, Nico, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is TimeChane Calendar.com. We're sitting at $25,997 per coin, hardcore BART action. We're at 28 just the other day for a tick. Nonetheless, a single US dollar will pick you up 3,847 sats. In terms of fees, next block looking like 12 sats per byte, same with anytime. So pretty much flat across the box.

board. Don't go sending off any transactions sub six sats per byte. They're being perched from the mempool at the moment. And in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.47 million of them, that's 92.73% of the total supply. Shout out to sponsor to the show, hoddle, hoddle.com. If you're stacking stats and you've got some priorities in mind like peer-to-peer trading, instant self-custody, no K-YC. This is the place to be. Sign up with an email address. Once you're in there, head down, choose a currency, a payment method, amount and you can start browsing orders immediately. You can also check out their peer to peer lending.

Nothing is ever re-hypothicated. Check them out today. Links are below and also hats off to them. They're hosting the Baltic Honey Badger as we speak. I wish I was there. It was my daughter's first day of school today though and I had to make sure I put on that dad hat. So nonetheless, up next, when you do stack some sats, of course, you're going to want to secure it. Some of the best hardware on the market. I love coin kite and everything they're doing. The cold card mark four is my go to. I've of course got myself a tap signer, sats card, blog clock, open dimes, all kinds of great stuff. And coming soon. I hope you're as excited as I am, the cold card Q1 dropping later this year. Looks badass. If you want to reserve it or pick up anything else I mentioned, head to

coin kite.com. Use code BTC sessions for 5% off everything in the store. Now, you're going to want to back up all of your wallets super securely. And Cidor is beautiful. One of the most robust hard backups on the market. Have you seen this thing? It's amazing. Basically, it protects your seed phrases from the elements, fire, water, corrosion, all that stuff. The way it works is you got a stamp, you got a mallet.

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them out. There's a link in these show notes if you want to grab yourself. Their starter pack, which will get you started with two full seed phrases like so. If you want to dive into multi-sig, nunchock.io, their Honeybadger assisted multi-sig setup is a dream. I use it myself. Basically, you set up your multi-sig on your mobile device with things like the tap signer, cold card and a ton of other hardware options. It walks you through everything. It's got baked in this inheritance planning, so your stats get to your next of kin. And the whole, whole thing is KYC free. Check them out. And hey, I'm going to be doing some Nunchuk and multi-sick tutorials down in LA in a couple months here. So keep your eyes peeled. And finally,

shout it to Start 9, Sovereign Computing solution. You can host everything on these plug-and-play devices, Bitcoin Core, Lightning, mempool.com, space, your data, files, passwords, photos, all that good stuff. And they've got everything from entry level all the way to what I'm running, which is the Start 9 server pure, an absolute B. So check him out, start nine.com. Enough of my rambling. Let's get our buddy in here. The tips are getting closer.

Oh, there we go. Oh, man. Dude, our nodes just synced. Good to see you, man. How you doing? Good to see you too, bro. You know, just been doing the thing and had a unfortunate event.

I was so hyped with Bip-Block boom, and, you know, I'll say this, like, cherish your loved ones, your grandparents and your parents while they're around. And, you know, so the last two or three days I've been kind of taking it easy. Opti's been holding it down for me. And, of course, you know, the teams at Swan, I've been doing it as well, holding down the fort. But, yeah, it's my first day back, bro, and I'm happy to be with you and, you know, and ready to go. Well, dude, hurt goes out to you. Obviously, family's super important.

So, you know, I'll just echo what you said. Of course, keep your loved ones close. You know, don't let a day go by without letting them know how important they are to you. But, dude, I'm glad to be spending time with you here. Glad to be chatting news. There's been lots going on. What's been top of mind? What's on your mind?

Dude, so it's not like a crazy amount of news like usual, but it is a lot of very high signal pieces of news. So it's like a handful of news, but all of them are a big freaking deal. Some weeks we have like, you know, we have a lot of news, but like, you know, you could make the argument that some of it is noise per se. All of the news this week was signal, some very, very big news. So if you don't mind if you could share the screen. Thanks, Ben. But yeah. First piece of news is this, which was the lawsuit with gray scale and the SEC. It looks like gray scale one. Let me, before I play the video, let me give a little bit of context by the Bloomberg article that articulates it so beautifully.

Crypto scores landmark US legal win with gray scale ETF ruling. Now, again, I hate how they infer it. It really was a Bitcoin ETF, but somehow crypto gets in there, whatever. And I don't know if I'm going to play the entirety of the clip, but here's a really, really high piece of signal from the Chad Saylor himself, the person who's basically making it impossible for the rest of the world to stack a whole coin, Michael Saylor. And he said the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF will mark a crucial inflection point in the history of Bitcoin adoption. Now, as a paranoid bitcoiner, as a bitconer that advocates for self-custody and for people to stop. trusting other people with their money. I,

the ETF is a double-edged sword because it will enable re-hypothecation, according to Caitlin Long, according to Lawrence Lepard. But if you, you know, according to Greg Foss and James Lavish, they'll say no, you know, that's what ETFs are for. They're going to document it. They're going to see it. So it depends who you talk to.

But one thing I think that everyone agrees is that it will lead to a ridiculous amount of money going into the space. now will it actually change things no because in order for things to change people need to take back personal responsibility of the storage of their wealth and i don't know if a you know i don't know if uh you know again all i hate labeling specific generations but let's say the a specific generation likes to you know access their funds using their brokerage like Charles Schwab and, you know, and whatever they're, you know, poison of choices. And if you make it so easy for them to feel like they have exposure to Bitcoin, but also not taking self-custody,

I feel like that could lead down like a dangerous path of rehypothecation like Caitlin Long said. Anyways, this is my two sats. Here's the video. Meanwhile, Bitcoin, as you might know, coming off of its best day in quite a while on hopes that the streets first Bitcoin ETF could get approved and soon, Bob Bassani is focusing on all things crypto today, Bob. Yeah, Gary Gensler's got to make some very important decisions on this. So what's next here? The ball is now in the SEC's court. A lot depends on whether SEC chair. Gary Gensler wants to fold or fight to the end. The SEC has several choices to make. The first one of the most important thing is whether the SEC wants to appeal the case. The regulator has 45 days to make that

decision. An appeal is possible, but the harsh tone of the judicial ruling certainly makes it more difficult SEC to appeal. Now, if they appeal, the order would be stayed until there is a decision on the appeal. But there are at least eight other applicants for a Bitcoin ETF that may have to be given a thumbs up or down in that period. The first of the applicants to file was ARC. They filed back in May. So the SEC has a maximum time of 240 days to approve or deny those applications, including ARC, which was the first one. So the first deadline would be January 10th of 2024. If they decide, not to appeal. They could go along with the court ruling and approve all or some of the nine applications for a spot Bitcoin ETF. And that could happen fairly quickly. Third, they could come up

with a new rationale why the application should not be approved and dare get gray scale to sue them again. Okay, so I'm going to stop it there. And then we're going to dive into the Bloomberg article, but current Bitcoin ETF applicants include gray scale, arc, bitwise, and of course, Black Rock. The last thing that the anchor said was really interesting, Ben, which was they might come up with another reason. And my suspicion is that they're definitely going to come up with another reason. Here's some more information from, I'm not going to read all of it, but some more information from, I'll just read the bullet points. Ruling by Appeals Court overturns decision by SEC to block ETF. And then of course we all saw the Bitcoin price surge after release of court opinion on Tuesday.

Right. And the court basically ruled that like they didn't really have a justification to deny, you know, to just deny it. So I don't know, man. I don't know what's going on with the SEC. I don't know what's going on with Gary Genser, bro. But like it makes you question. And this is something that we've brought up on the show before, like a theme. the same people that are empowered to,

empowered to regulate Bitcoin, you could also make the argument that those are the same people that have the most to lose if Bitcoin wins, right? Anyways, my two stats on that. What are you thinking, Ben? So there's an interesting, I'm going to show a tweet from Press and Pish that I saw just earlier. So number one, we should note,

and I see it in the chat there. Somebody brought it up that, yes, they did delay. They were supposed to give an approval or denial to a handful of applications in the next couple of days here, I think by September 2nd. Or they can delay it. And of course, like the SEC loves to delay all that shit to the last, the absolute last minute. So like the ones that were up right now, of course, this court decision just happened. I think, you know, regardless.

of whether or not the SEC has said, okay, well, I guess we're going to start approving things. I don't think they were going to do it in any case for this batch anyways. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like they're going to still try and find other reasons, but I feel like they're going to start running out of reasons because, again, they've got all of these applications. They've got, I mean, the result was mostly because they have these derivatives.

markets and they couldn't really argue that the fraud that they were saying is wrought throughout the spot Bitcoin market would not affect the derivatives market. And so they're saying like, why are you treating these two things differently? If you can have a derivatives market, why could you not have a spot market? Why are those things for the arguments that you put forth, it doesn't make sense why you still can't have both of those. So that's one thing. The other thing I wanted to quickly pull up was Preston Pish.

He tweeted out, he said, I'm convinced BlackRock won't greenlight the SEC. And then in brackets, you read that correctly to approve the Bitcoin. That's great. To approve the Bitcoin ETF until Binance is destroyed or so insanely crippled that its market dominance is done. Gary is Larry Fink's lap dog And then underneath you have a tweet basically saying From AB Abacus saying Sources state that sealed Binance motions this week

Are riddled with heavy heavy claims One source quote Given the nature of the issues here We're surprised we see We the SEC are taking this on This should be in the hands of the DOJ at this point So yeah it sounds like In the background there might be

some wild stuff going on with finance and press and pitch seems to think that black rock is because they own the world is basically saying to the regulator like no let's delay a little bit longer until these guys are gone um you know that probably makes you know i wonder like part of me i i don't put it past that to be the case i would not be surprised at all at this point after everything we've seen the last, you know, a couple of years or so.

Uh, doesn't surprise me. I completely agree with him that BlackRock owns the world. If they're going to take out their biggest competitor, CZ, Binance, you know, this massive all-coin casino in the process, I wouldn't put it past them. Uh, so yeah, dude. Like, but, uh, you know, one thing's for certain, Ben, like, this is weird, dude. Like, this is weird. Like, the fact that they just continue, remember, they didn't play fair with Caitlin

long either with her federal banking. charter. And then we know that there's Operation Choke Point 2.0 happening, which is an attempt by the Biden administration to isolate the Bitcoin and Chick coin industry from the traditional financial system. So is it too much? Is it like, is it, is it too far of a stretch to say that the delay of this ETF is due for is because of political reasons? Like, is that too far of a stretch to say that? Like, I know that we don't have complete confirmation. I know that we don't have complete confirmation. I know that we we can't say that for certain, but, you know, a lot of things point to that. Like, you can't, you can't say that that isn't possible at this point because it's just, it's just fishy, man.

They deny, they deny the court rules against them. Like, this isn't really good logic. Yeah, I, I don't know what's going on back there, man, but, uh, I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't know. And to, to last little nail in the coffin here, too, Canada's have, we have like seven ETFs here. They have, they now launched a European Bitcoin spot ETF. Like, it's, it's laughable that the argument is there's too much fraud and spot Bitcoin ETF to, to have a product like this when they have a derivatives market ETF already. So, yeah, it's stupid.

Of course. Yeah, it's, and yeah, Europe too. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. Guys, if you're enjoying the live stream, smash that like button. Ben and I's channels. Smash it, smash it, smash it. It tells the YouTube algorithm to push it harder. Anyways, all right. Next, next big new. This is crazy, dude. So I learned this. Okay. So apparently in Islamic tradition, Islamic faith, if something is bad, it's Haram. And if something is good,

it's halal, right? And apparently Bitcoin is now halal. Okay, but fine. You know, It's just like, this is stupid. This, and this news in itself for audio listeners, it's a headlines article from Forbes. And it says, Oman's Bold Bitcoin Play, $1.1 billion investment on Bitcoin mining infrastructure. That news in itself, you could say that's noise, but you have to connect the dots. We saw the same thing happened in Bhutan, which is a very small country. We covered it here on Simply Sessions. So it looks like countries all over the world that have excess power,

therefore stranded energy, are starting to figure out that holy cow, now we can monetize the stranded energy, we can turn this stranded energy into Bitcoin, into Satoshi's. Bitcoin's incentives are so strong that even in a heavily, like a very conservative Muslim nation of Amman, They jumped the hoop of saying, you know what, Bitcoin and all of his things, it's whatever. This is halal.

This is acceptable in our conservative country, which is absolutely hilarious. And I think it's a testament of Bitcoin's incentives. We saw this happen in Bhutan. We saw this happening in Texas. We're seeing this happen in El Salvador with the Volcano Energy Initiative. Shout out Max and Stacey. And you're also seeing this. Most importantly, you're seeing this in China, in mainland China, where literally that you can be

locked up in jail for mining Bitcoin, it's still, according to an article that I last saw by McKenzie Sagalos of CNMBC, it's estimated that between 15 to 20% of the Bitcoin hash rate is still in China, right? So the hash rate, the incentives are so strong that people are willing to go to jail for it. Religions are, or change the rules in order to accommodate it. And I think that's a testament of Bitcoin's incentives. And I truly believe that we're going to win because of those incentives. When the CCP banned Bitcoin mining within their borders and the hash rate dropped 50%. Within nine months, the hash rate recovered without any central authority telling them to do so. No CEO, no nothing. It just recovered by mere incentives alone. And I think the only thing they have

to throw at us is coercion. And that's the only thing they think that's the only thing they have left to get people to use central bank digital currencies. And I don't think they'll be able to do that. Anyways, dude, this is crazy. This is like, when I first read this, I was like, holy shit. So it goes on to say, Oman's authority for public service regulations publicly commented on a public, on a press statement about his nation's government. So speaking about the leader, his nation's government support of privately owned Bitcoin mining facilities, which are set to attract a total investment of over $1.1 billion. This initiative aligns with our goal to diversify our economy, integrating modern technologies while upholding our commitment.

to ethical and sustainable practice. Oh, Bitcoin's, it's sustainable now. That word is very interesting, because I'm going to get to it in a second in regards to Black Rock. Anyways, it goes on to say, given Oman's conservative nature and its emphasis on Islamic law, introducing a concept as disruptive as Bitcoin mining required significant deliberation. But after rigorous regulatory discussions that started back in 2019, the government of Oman eventually found Bitcoin to be in line with Islamic law, accepting the modern animation into Oman's deep-rooted traditions.

Dude, it's so crazy. Bitcoin's incentives, man. So it goes on to say, no, it tells you a little bit of the story of Oman and all that stuff. And then it gets into details about what the mining project is itself. So investing in Bitcoin infrastructure and renewables. In this context, Oman's forward-thinking vision has paved the way for XAhertz, a homegrown startup to take center stage in the digital evolution. The ambitious establishment of a pilot Bitcoin mining site of 11 megawatts capacity, which is pretty big, by the way, coupled with an ambitious plan to expand to 800 megawatts, backed by a staggering budget of $1.1 billion, signifies more than just a technological advancement.

It lays the groundwork for the technology infrastructure of the future. This has been a long time coming. Exa Hertz received its license from local regulators in September 2022 and delivered on an operational, pilot within 22 days. Dude, this is crazy. It goes on to say, stabilizing the grid is a primary concern in this era of prudent energy consumption, Bitcoin mining with its ability to function as a load balancer for power networks can aid in reducing fluctuations and electricity supply. So, like, again, we've been saying this as Bitcoiners. We've been made fun of as Bitcoiners. We've been attacked by the legacy corporate media as Bitcoiners, but this is fun. People just don't give a shit.

And I think that people don't give a shit because of Bitcoin's incentives. Again, referencing this previous article that we covered on Simply Sessions, it isn't just Oman. The Kingdom of Vutan has been quietly mining Bitcoin for years. Why are they mining Bitcoin? Because they have a tremendous amount of hydroelectric power capacity. They have an excess amount. And they realized, Holy crap. What do we do with this? We can monetize it. We can make it into Bitcoin.

So Bitcoin is spreading worldwide. I think it's incentive to stay winning. Now, this article, the Forbes article, it mentioned something about sustainability. And I thought it was really interesting. And we've noticed the change in tune from the legacy corporate media in regards to covering Bitcoin. You see anchors on CNMBC coming in defense of Bitcoin six months ago, a year ago, that was unheard of. And safety and said it best. Expectations.

BlackRock will subvert Bitcoin. Reality. Bitcoin will subvert BlackRock. It's worth considering the possibility that Bitcoin won't be attacked by the powers that be because stacking SAT has a higher long run expected return than running an evil empire that owns everything and turns everything into depth slates. Now, this is something really interesting because this was originally mentioned in the white paper. The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest.

If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments or using it to generate new coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favor him with new coins than everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth. Now, what's really interesting about this, Ben, is this is what we talked about when we were talking about El Salvador, this is a system of aligned incentives.

So what happens when you fix the system from a misaligned incentive system to an aligned incentive system, all of a sudden, evil empires like Black Rock actually start behaving well. They actually start doing good things, which is crazy, which leads me to my final point. It truly is, fix the money, fix the world. I truly believe that. And I think Oman, Bhutan, Black Rock are all testaments to that. Yeah. It's wild because, again, you're talking about incentives.

And you think of the incentive of Bitcoin, like you said, is to your biggest incentive, if you're part of the network, if you utilize the network, is to bolster it, to make it the best it can be, to make it as valuable as possible. and to ensure that those sats are secure and sacred. Whereas if you're part of the Fiat system and you're directly incentivized and you're in control of it, you've kind of got like a mixed bag of incentives because your incentive is to ruin the value

and the purchasing power of the unit at a pace that breaks the money eventually, but not too soon because you're busy siphoning wealth from everybody. So you're trying to walk, walk this tightrope, whereas everybody in Bitcoin is like, oh, just use Bitcoin, make it as efficient as possible. And we're good. Whereas in Fiat, it's like, okay, we got to ruin the currency, but not too fast. And so this is like, and so like you're incentivized to ruin two systems, the one you're in and Bitcoin because it's competing. And so like you've got split attention and you're ruining your own shit anyways. The other thing I wanted to quickly say was in regards to mining, you're seeing nation state level adoption of Bitcoin as a way to monetize stranded energy resources. I very much think, and I don't think this is, I think this is a little bit of a no brainer.

But like for your average person that's at home, the days of, of, of, uh, And the days of just mining at home are, I mean, right now, you're not going to be profitable for the most part. But I think we're moving into the period of for a lot of people, mining, it's not going to be a direct profit motive. It's going to be a bring down my costs motive. It's going to be a where do I need low grade heat and how can I utilize Bitcoin to offer? set those costs. And so, yeah, you may see the return of home Bitcoin mining, but for a different reason. I need to bring down my utility bill.

I need to be as efficient with the energy I have as possible. And, you know, all of these governments that are putting in place, all of these kind of screwed up incentives around energy, they're only going to exacerbate it, right? people are going to look and say like, oh, crap, maybe if I can just make back some of my insane bills, but funnel that heat back into my home or whatever I need into my water tank, then that can help. It's a win-win for Bitcoin miners. But the days of setting up a rig in your basement and just running it and not utilizing it in the most efficient way possible, not utilizing that heat, I think are basically gone. Yeah, man. It, it,

like I would say, you know, and I forget, it was actually a Bitcoin company that I met when, bet you invited me up to Calgary. And there was this really, really cool Bitcoin company where they were like, they were basically selling an all home system where you can, basically you can mine stats and you could also mine your home at the same time. And I thought it was super, I thought it was super freaking fascinating. I forget what then they put the A6 in a like in in the mineral fluid so it doesn't make that much noise. Yes. I'm trying to I'm trying to find who they were. I can't quite remember. I'll have to I'll find it later. I'll bring it up in our next in our next show when we come to it. It was so cool. But anyways, I guess what I'm trying to say is like I think we're going to see a rise of that. I think you I think you're 100% right.

I think that just like running the S-9 in your closet, driving your ex-girlfriend crazy, your ex-girlfriend crazy. So yeah, probably X. Exactly. Those days are over. But if you're using that to heat your home and potentially lowering your electricity bill in the process, I think those days are just beginning. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've got my space heater.

Yeah, I saw it. I saw it. We're getting into fall again, and so it'll be, it'll be pumping back up. So, yeah. It was so cool. I saw it. I saw it. It's in Ben's living room.

He is telling the truth. His wife approved. Wife approved. Thanks to crypto cloaks. Oh, man. Okay. All right, guys. So we were just talking about BlackRock and how they can't resist incentives.

And I think there's another, you know, more evidence of that. This is an article by Finbold. BlackRock is a major sharehold. in four of the five largest Bitcoin miners. Goes on to say BlackRock, one of the largest investment companies in the world, is positioning itself in the Bitcoin mining industry. The investment giant is already the second largest shareholder

in four of the five biggest Bitcoin miners by market capitalization, riot platforms, Marathon Digital Holdings, cipher mining, Inc, hut eight, and Terawoff. Dude, like, I mean, at this point, like, you're, I think you're, you're, you're, I think you were reading that bit with Preston Pish and Gary Gunzer in the SEC. Like, it looks like Black Rock is trying to take over Bitcoin, bro.

That's what this looks like to me. Can I give you an inside line on something? I'll be delicate because I don't want to like docs anybody or anything. But like recently, I do a lot of one-on-one sessions with people. And recently I was doing a one-on-one session, just like general Bitcoin security stuff, with somebody who used to work at BlackRock. And they were like, oh, yeah, I used to work there and everything. And that's kind of like what drove me out of that region and towards Bitcoin and kind of what I'm doing now. but this person mentioned how they noticed a shift in Larry Fink's vernacular, the way he talks about stuff.

And they said explicitly, oh, yeah, now he started to sound a little bit more like what Bitcoiners talk about in terms of like generational wealth shifts. and like building for future generations instead of stealing from future generations and stuff like that. So like I think behind the scenes a little bit, obviously like Larry Fink wants to own the world as well, but I think a little bit of that Bitcoin ethos might be seeping in somewhere that is maybe shifting a mindset over there as well. Bitcoin doesn't care if your everyday average Pleb or if you're a person that owns most assets on the planet, it will make its way into your brain. Yeah, dude, it's, it's crazy, you know, Max Kaiser's famous quote, just like, it literally just sticks with me, right? It's like, you don't change Bitcoin. Bitcoin changes you. And I think that could like, you know, you could never

have imagined these people because I think a lot of people like inherently think that Larry Fink is evil, right? I really think that. Like, I think you see these central bankers and you see these people when you're like, these people are evil. Like, I, I, maybe, make, maybe Klaus Schwab. Like, maybe that was like the only exception. Yeah, if anything, that, that would be the one. And then like, Opti's ex-girlfriend, Christine Lagarde, like, maybe them too. Like, maybe them too, like, maybe they're evil.

Like, maybe. I don't know. But I just think that you have a system of misaligned incentives. And I think Larry Fink is just, he, he generally thinks he's doing good. And I think that, you know, I love that phrase in the white paper because it perfectly summarizes it. It's like you're more incentivized to do good in Bitcoin, right? And that doing good by the network is better for your bottom line

and is therefore better for everyone else. And I think we've lived in this world of misaligned incentives for so long that that concept is so alien to people that you're like, Larry Fink, like, is on my team? That's, that's impossible. Well, that's Fiat. Like, you're describing Fiat, but Bitcoin, it's a system of aligned incentives. So could you imagine Larry Fink on your, on your, on, on the same, which is so crazy.

I can't even believe I'm saying that. That would be such a weird dynamic. Because if you think about it, like this entire time, I've kind of been saying that, that the, the people at the fringes are the ones that that understand the incentive mechanisms first. The most disenfranchised, the ones where their currency is so broken. for them that they must move, right? Either hyperinflation or extreme censorship and debanking and all that kind of stuff. But at the other fringe is the people that are the wealthiest, the ones that have the most assets to protect and understand how to protect them, they're the ones that are cluing in as well.

And so does it get? And the crazy thing is the ones that are most wealthy in Fiat land are the ones that largely are the cause of the most disenfranchised people's woes, but they're the two groups that are getting it the most, and their incentives are becoming aligned. So it's kind of wild to think that the people that inflicted the most pain on the most disenfranchised are beginning to have their incentives aligned to help the people that they've been used to hurting. Yeah, I 100% agree. And like, I can't wait for like the Why Are We Bullish episode. And you'd be like, hey guys, welcome to Why We Bullish.

Today's guest, Larry Fink, Bill Gates. It'll be like, it'll be like, uh, Jamie Diamond. It'll be McCrone from France and somebody from like the, the, the secret zone. Oh, man. Like I do like, yeah, right? Oh, and Alex Gladst did. Yeah. Oh, man. Like, so why are we all bullish? Oh, man. Sorry about the whole, you know, monetary colonialism thing. Anyways, isn't Bitcoin great?

Dude, I'm just like, this is so crazy. This, the idea in itself is just so ludicrous to wrap your head around, but we're witnessing it. Anyways, speaking of evil, Google Cloud to open office in El Salvador in seven-year partnership. It goes on to say Google Cloud and the government in El Salvador announced a multi-year agreement on Tuesday that will establish an office and deliver Google distributed cloud services in the Central American country. Google Cloud said in a statement, the seven-year strategic partnership pending legislative approval will focus on the areas of digital government, health care, education. Now, this has to do with El Salvador's law that, um, that basically made it so that tech companies, um, didn't have to pay, uh, you know, they didn't have to pay any income tax. That could possibly be it. Um, does this have anything to do with Bitcoin? No. Uh, but I think that this has, you know, this has to do with, uh, El Salvador, which is a very poor country, uh, you know,

very very uh it was it is better said it's a developing country um you know five years ago you you would say google entering the country i would have never have imagined that and i think that's a testament of of nine bukele's leadership but most importantly i think nine bukele is leading well because he's incentivized to lead well because he's leading a country whose base layer has aligned incentives. And I think you're going to see more news and you're going to see more big companies go until El Salvador and see, you know, opportunity there. So this is this is absolutely bullish. And then connect this with the news that was coming out in regards to the bonds, how El Salvador's bonds are the best performing in the region, even though, you know, two years ago, they thought

that, you know, everyone was claiming that this country was going to go under because they made Bitcoin legal tender. Yeah. Yeah. What was the Steve Hanke? He was like, oh, the tweet from like literally late last year where he's like, it's the El Salvador is now the number one country said to ready to default on his debt or whatever the hell else it was. And yeah, man, like a year later, just, just wrecked on that call. Like, hilariously wrecked. Yeah, dude, it's, I never hear from him again. Like, he doesn't even pop up on my feed. Where is Steve Hankey?

You know, like, He's crying harder. Completely disappeared. Anyways, Ben, could you pull up that comment by Randmore? Oh, yes. Where is, oh, there we go. This one here. So I did suggest this to Ben already.

And we shall see. Maybe there'll be a karaoke moment in L.A. Dude, are you, okay, are you excited for, I mean, I, this, this, this, is our last, our last story. Yeah, let's do it. No, that was it. That was it. Okay. Okay. Are you excited for LA for Pacific? I'm so excited. We get to touch tips again. Yeah, man. Physically. It's going to be and we might, we might have something that works, right? We might do another, another live something or other. Yeah, we might have another live something or other and a refreshing of the tip. Possibly. It's just a rumor. But, but yeah, it's coming.

soon. I think this will be the third one, bro. Yeah. I mean, I mean to get people too excited, but Mrs. Sessions is heading down to L.A. for undisclosed reasons. I would not be surprised if there was a significantly brighter tip by the end of that. By the end of that trip.

The cold card workshops, that's all cover. Truly, it's the ceremony. Yes. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. There's got be. I love it the last one, how we literally had a chant in the room. Everybody's touched the I feel like they all came just for that. Like the rest of the show, they're just like, all right, whatever. Guys, come on, come on, whatever. Let's let's get it going here. Oh, man. It was a good time. I think I'm just going to touch my tips in person. I think I think that's the only way.

Like, I'm just going to let it. But look, it hasn't grown out. Like, my roots are kind of, you know. Yeah, it's your, it's, it's, it's, we'll say it's growing out gracefully, I think. But I'm going to say it here. I'm going to say it here. Because initially I was like, should I keep this? I think I'm going to keep it. Oh, you live in, living life dangerously. Oh, man.

Who's the third content creator to follow suit? I know. Well, last week we got it thrown out there, uh, that, uh, that the, the third tip should be, uh, heavy air, um, the lie. Oh, man. Dude, that hair, that Wolverine hair. It's so crazy. It's so crazy.

All right. Awesome. Well, Ben, love you, man. This guys, this was your Simply sessions. I'll see you next week, everybody. See you, man. Have a good one. Peace.

Awesome. Everybody, before we finish up, let's get to the tech updates really quick. I got a few things I want to run by you guys. Nico, thanks for being here. Always fills us in the best on the latest and greatest in Bitcoin. But let's chat a few more. things. This one came across very cool, something called Nucleus, capital efficient multi-peer lightning payments. So this is a draft proposal. So it's not, it's not active right now. It's not,

like, it's just very early stages. But basically, it would be, I'll read a little bit here and then, and then I'll explain the nuts and bolts here. But lightning payment channels are the only solution for blockchain scalability problems available for existing UTXO-based peer-to-peer networks, which doesn't require consensus-breaking changes. Still, existing forms of payment channels are capital inefficient and put high availability requirements on the participants, which reduces system, utility, and adoption. The current network proposes a new form of lightning channels named nucleus, which can be created and run by multiple participants, their liquidity fully available inside a multi-peer channel.

This significantly increases capital efficiency, improves liveliness, and doesn't require the creation or participation in an atomic swap routing network, like the Lightning Network. The solution can operate on top of any UTXO-based blockchain equipped with an N of M threshold signature scheme and time locks without introducing new consensus-level requirements of script operational codes. What the hell does that mean? Basically, it means lightning network, we're used to the idea of a lightning channel being between yourself and another individual or one node and another. So there's Bitcoin locked up. It's locked up between two nodes.

It's just there. And then you play this game of like bumping the beads down the abacus or whatever, however you want to refer to it. And then your peer bumps it down another channel and another channel. It's kind of like a singular line to get to a person. person. Now, those channels are multi-sig, right? So it's a two of two, one key, the other key, both keys allow the channel to be closed if you want to. Well, multisig can be more than two of two, right? You could have three keys. You can have four, five. You can have many, many keys in a multi-sig. What it's proposing is basically not so much a linear channel, but like a pool of

liquidity between multiple keys. And what that means is, let's say there were 10 people in a multi-peer lightning channel, that means you don't even need to do a hop to another channel in order to pay any of those 10 people. And if one of those 10 people was part of another multi-peer channel, say with another 10 people, that means that all 20 of those people could pay each other in at most a single hop on the Lightning Network. And you can extend and extrapolate this out where instead of saying, oh, I got to do six or seven or 10 hops to get to my intended recipient, it might be none. It might be one. It might be maybe two. But like all of a sudden, everything becomes incredibly efficient.

It looks pretty crazy. Anyways, I'm stoked about it. It's still very early days, but this would be a huge leap forward and would also kind of dissolve all assumptions of the scalability of lightning itself. Oh, well, if everybody's got to have a channel and one channel connects you to one other person

and blah, blah, blah, it kind of throws that out the window. The math is entirely different and much more favorable for scalability. Anyways, let's move on. Okay, on next. Bit refill card is coming to EU residents. So if you're in the EU and you want the ability to be able to use your Bitcoin and basically get, be able to pay in Bitcoin and it does all the hard work in the background. You can basically get like a card that works with Apple or Google Pay and it would be on your card and you can just tap and basically spend your Bitcoin.

That's super awesome. I want it in Canada. Why is it not in Canada? Get it in Canada. But nonetheless, hats off to bit refill. Blink, they just rolled out something. So Blink is a lightning wallet. Full disclosure, of course. It is custodial. You know, okay for a few bucks, but, you know,

move to non-custodial if you start having meaningful amounts of money on it. Phoenix is a good option for that. But nonetheless, they just introduced something called blink circles. Circles help you track your onboarding efforts and get rewarded for driving a Bitcoin adoption with Blink. Basically, you can earn $21 and win tickets to adopting Bitcoin this month. When you welcome a new Blink user by sending them their first sats, your inner circle grows by one.

When somebody you welcome to welcomes others, your outer circle grows by one. You can also keep track of your monthly and all-time ranking. Your dashboard shows your all-time orange-pilling efforts with Blink, formerly known as Bitcoin Beach wallet. Tap, share your circles for shareable recap of your. your stats. You can share yours below. And yeah, they're launching circles with a September challenge. There are two ways to win. You can grow your circle by 21 and get $21 credit. Or you can finish in the top three and win tickets to adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador in November.

But anyways, it basically gamifies being able to onboard more people by sending them sets. And I think that's that's a noble thing to do. Great. Okay, cool. This is something, I found this through the Bent today. Marty Bent shared in his, daily news article or I guess newsletter that he sends out, but something called Frost. This is a private collaborative custody with Frost. So basically it's a way of making multi-sig entirely private when there's a company dealing with a key. So the trade-off right now is when you use multi-sig, the multi-sig company that's even just

holding one key, even though they can't move your money on their own, they still do know that it is part of a multi-sig. and they still do know the, basically the X-Pub of the multi-sig, they know the entire balance and all of the transactions that happen. What this does is it makes it so you could have an entity that does control a single key,

but they are not privy to the actual addresses, balances, transactions of anything to do with the multisag. And furthermore, if you do need them to sign something, you can get them to sign blindly so that they do not know, know exactly what they're signing. You obviously, like with your keys, prove credentials, but they would not be able to see exactly what's going on and would not gain knowledge of the balance or what's going

on within the multi-sick wallet. I think that's awesome. Can't wait to see more of this come down the pike. Moving on, Snort just did a redesign, which is awesome. They just deployed it. It's very massive. Basically, everything got redone. This is their version

version 2 design And as usual there's a few rough corners But we should get to them very soon Let people know But they've got a whole bunch of stuff They've got all the live feeds and everything Well this is live on Noster right now So maybe people will see it in the feed

At the top of snort as they're scrolling Awesome cool Moving on Robosats is decentralizing So this is peer-to-peer Lightning Bitcoin non-KYC exchange basically and it's free and open source. Robosats Federation is a set of rules that allow multiple robots Robosats instances to work together under an unified client app.

The federated client app joins the order book of every coordinator. Users can seamlessly interact with any coordinator, track the coordination reputation, verify transparently, dev fund, donations, and more. The goal is to release the federated app in version 0.1,000, 0.6.0 as the new standard rober sets client. So basically anyone can join the federation. It is a bit technical, but it's like a reputation based system and you can become part of the federation and basically help the Robosats network with connecting users and making sure that people can get their peer to peer Bitcoin, which is awesome. One other thing I wanted to bring up

here is Zap Locker, non-custodial Lightning Address server with base layer support. Basically, it's a non-custodial lightning address server. No node needed. Zap Locker supports Zaps. If you add Zapplocker address to your Noster account, you can zap. People can zap you on Noster-based social networks. And you can use it so people can zap you at normal Bitcoin addresses as well.

No address reuse. It's free, open source. It looks pretty cool, actually. So basically, you can have a lightning address. Somebody can say, hey, I want to send Bitcoin to this person. It does this something which was like Hoddley invoices where it would kind of like freeze a payment in the middle of it and then and then release it at a certain time. And what it can do is even if you're not online, it will then notify you when you have a potential incoming

transaction via a DM on Noster and then you can navigate to the proper place, log in with your Noster account and then claim the Sats either on Lightning or you can designate if you want them on chain and it'll say like, hey, here are the breakdowns of fees of what it will be, whether you do Lightning or whether you do on-chain. Looks really cool and shout out to Super TestNet for building this. It looks awesome. Okay, last few things. Of course, I dropped a new tutorial. Actually, just this morning, I had some last minute editing to do, but it is on the Blockstream Jade. I've covered it before, of course, but I covered the new air gap mode. It's been out for a while, but the new overhaul with the interface and everything I hadn't done it before. And basically

it allows you to much like a seed signer, create a new seed, create like your own scannable QR, QR private key and use that as like a login so that the device itself doesn't retain keys. It's just a signing device. And whenever you want to use it, you say, here's my private key. You scan it with the jade so it retains the keys temporarily until shutdown. Then you can sign and approve transactions via QR code like any other QR-based hardware wallet. You can also do it in a way that retains the keys on the device and then uses this funky blind oracle pin login thing, which I explained the video. Nonetheless, go check it out. New video tutorial on Blockstream, Jade. Also, tomorrow we got Why Are We Bullish.

I've got Jake Woodhouse. I've got Lisa Hoff and I've got Mickey Koss. And I'm very excited to have them all. It should be a blast. Make sure you don't miss it. And of course, I mentioned before. But Pacific Bitcoin, I'm getting super stoked for it. That's coming up October 5th and 6th in Los Angeles.

It was one of my favorite events last year, I think by far. Like it was awesome. It was such a cool vibe because it was like, it was a mix of like a big, a big conference with like high signal like there wasn't there wasn't riffraff milling about it was very focused and there was good stuff going on and and you just you didn't get the BS that can sometimes filter into some of the large events right and it was awesome so anyways if you're looking to go I will be down there of course you can head over to pacific bitcoin.com and you can use code sessions and we'll get you 21% off your ticket.

So yeah, very excited. It was also very unique last year because as we were there, that's when FTX imploded. And it wasn't somber at all. It was like a victory lap. Nobody checked the price. Everybody was just, you know, we're like, yeah, we told you so. Of course. Of course it imploded.

And also exciting. I am hosting my workshop series in L.A. The day after Pacific Bitcoin wraps up, that will be the Saturday. October 7th, I'm hosting two workshops. One workshop is a tap signer and Nunchuk multi-sig wallet tutorial. So it's going to be going to be a few hours. And we're basically going to learn how to set up Nunchuk, how to use the tap signer with it, how to use multiple tap signers and create a multi-sig wallet, how to do recovery. All of that stuff will be covered in the tap signer workshop. And then in the afternoon, I will be doing my cold card deep dive. This is an oldie.

but a goody. And the last one that I did in Miami sold out entirely. There was no space left in the room. Even if I wanted to bring somebody else in, it wouldn't have been possible. So if you do want to go, get in early. Already a couple, you know, I started chatting about it like in the less than 24 hours ago and tickets are already starting to sell. So you can find them over on btc sessions.com. S-Ca and over on the right-hand side, there's a portion for in-person workshops and you'd be able to find it there. And yeah, you can go and you can sign up for whatever workshop you want, one or the other or both.

You do get a discount. If you do both, you get 50 bucks off. Anyways, I'm going to wrap up there, guys. Thank you so much for coming along and being part of the show. I appreciate all you guys. If you haven't already, please do hit that like button right now. Do it. It helps a ton.

It really does. And of course, if you want to help in another way, you can hit up the previous mentioned sponsors in the show notes, hoddle, hoddle, coin kite, Cedore, Nunchuck, and Start 9. And, of course, hit up my website, BTCSessions.ca. But with that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening. I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.