BTC Sessions - Trump Campaign to Accept Bitcoin ep416

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

May 23, 2024 In this episode of Simply Sessions, we cover Venezuela's Bitcoin mining crackdown, Jack Mallers on the ETH ETF, Brad Sherman's FIT21 meltdown, Trump's campaign accepting digital donations, the passing of FIT21, Tom Emmer's warning on CBDCs, and Julian Assange's extradition appeal. Stay informed with the latest Bitcoin news! — BOOK private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted. https://bitcoinmentor.io/ 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: BITCOIN WELL is the quickest and easiest way to get Bitcoin directly into self custody. They also offer non-KYC sells and bill payments. Transparent 1% spread, no additional fees and no withdrawal fees. Check them out today! https://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessions COINKITE offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions NUNCHUK WALLET and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted mutisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ HODLHODL is a NON-CUSTODIAL, ANONYMOUS solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION DEBIFI is a non-custodial Bitcoin backed lending platform with institutional grade liquidity providers and no rehypothecation of your funds. Find them at: https://debifi.com/

Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to this show, another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions back home after a wonderful time at the Canadian Bitcoin Conference in Montreal. Happy to be back. Hope you guys have been having a good one. We've got Nico in the wings here waiting to give us the latest and greatest in all the Bitcoin news, everything that's been going on this week. Of course, this is live.

Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Do it live. I can write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share all those things. Super important getting this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions.

This is your Simply session. Before we bring in Nico, let's take a quick look at where we are in the market right now. I'm currently bringing up timechain calendar.com. And simultaneously, I'm going to be bringing up the live chat. Everything you say from here on in will be live for the world to see for better or worse. We're currently sitting at $67,771 per coin. A single US dollar will snag you 1,476 sats in terms of fees. Next block, 11 sats per V byte.

Anytime six sats per V byte, it's been low lately. So, you know, do those UTXO consolidations, whatever. you need to do. And in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.7 million of them, which is 93.82% of the total supply. Do a quick shout out to our sponsors and then we'll dive right into the news. On a mission to enable independence by being one of the easiest and quickest ways to purchase Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. The best part about it, every buy goes directly into your own self-custody. they never hold your coins. You can add a Bitcoin address as part of onboarding. There's a transparent

1% spread, no hidden fees, no withdrawal fees, plus they have KYC free sales and bill payments on their website. They're also a publicly traded company under the ticker BTCW on the TSXV. Check them out over at Bitcoinwell.com. Check out my full tutorial on how to use them. And you can check out the links and the show notes down below and sign up today. Kynkai.com has some of the best hardware on the market today to secure your Bitcoin. The cold card queue is an absolute powerhouse and is my daily driver. And on top of this, they have plenty of other goodies including the Mark 4, the tap signer, open dimes, the block clock, and much more.

If you head over to their website, make sure you use code BTC sessions at checkout to get a nice discount. Links are in the show notes down below. All right, we are back. Let's get Nigo in here. And yo, buddy, how are you doing? Yo! What's up, dude? Happy to see you.

Yeah, man. It's been way too long. I just like, I feel like I haven't seen you in years. I know. It's just been forever, like, at least a few days since we were in-person touching tips. It's been wild. Dude, I still haven't tried Canadian maple syrup. And I've been back twice.

And I still haven't tried it. And I'm highly disappointed. Yeah, man. I mean, you'll be back. You're coming back for more. Yeah, okay. So what we're going to do is we're going to go, I'm partial. I'm not like a pancake guy, but I'm a French toast guy.

I don't know about you. Have you had French toast? Is that a thing you've had? Yeah, that sounds delicious. All this sounds like a really good idea. Okay, well, we're going to do it. I'll make you French toast in the morning. Nico's going to be staying at my house.

It's going to be great. Is that a date? I think so. French didn't bet. So he's like, what? What the F are you doing? Yeah, I think our wives are going to have a very serious conversation. I think so.

It's coming. It's coming. Look, the tip is fading out and everything, bro. I know. We're going to fix it. Yeah, I see Bitcoinologists saying French toes with five pounds of butter. Yes, absolutely. That sounds absolutely delicious.

I got to give a shout out to Deb Zilla that's in the chat right now. because so with Bitcoin mentor, my new company, we've been doing spaces. We've done a couple of them, past couple. We're starting to do them, I believe three times a week now. But anyway, she was in there asking some good questions in and around UTX, so consolidation and management and all that. And, yeah, it was cool to chat with her. So, yeah, if you're on X on, I believe Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, we're starting

to do Bitcoin Mentor spaces. pop on by and ask your Bitcoin related questions. Very fancy. Yeah. We're living the dream. So what's going on, man? What's been top of mind? What's been exciting?

Yeah, dude, I mean, it's been a pretty kind of like, you know, Ben, I really thought that we were up for this crazy fight and, you know, they're going to lock us in a gulag. And like, you know, it was like they're going to basically criminalize self-custody and all this stuff. And literally within a span of a week, you know, certain elements of the U.S. government and certain political parties did a complete 180 degree turn. And the reason for that is for, it's literally because of this gentleman right here. And essentially what happened was they realized, which was incredibly obvious, that there's a big part of, their constituents a big part of their demographic actually support bitcoin actually support crypto to

be fair to the article and that didn't seem like a a very kind of you know a very a very popular thing to support so uh not only did they do a 180 degree turn in terms of by doing biden not threatening to veto bills uh but also um uh uh uh you like it's it's calm down all of a sudden the bills are starting to pass uh you know things are starting to calm down uh i don't actually believe it's because of the regulatory reasons i just think that they realize that there's an election in november and uh this probably is not very popular this is probably not a good idea to run on an anti-b Bitcoin platform uh especially when the leading political opponent is running on that platform.

So this is the big news. Trump becomes first major party candidate to accept crypto donations. I just want to emphasize, though, that he's using Coinbase Commerce, which does not accept Bitcoin. You have to have a Bitcoin wallet. So kind of LARP right there. Can I just say this is pretty par for the course for Coinbase? Like, guys, like get your.

fucking shit together. I can't. I can't with this shit. I got to say like I, you know, I, I know a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy that knows Trump. And what I did is I sent him a Bitcoin mentor link. So hopefully,

you know, Trump gets his act together and just learns, all you got to do is use BTC pay, bro. Can I interject with one meme? Absolutely. Okay. I made this one the other day. I'm pretty happy with it.

Coinbase has a Bitcoin Pizza Day truck. Bitcoin not accepted. Doesn't matter. Deleted Coinbase ages ago. Yeah, isn't it weird? I don't even think they accepted Bitcoin at the Coinbase pizza truck. I think it was USDC or something. Yeah, you had to pay in like US dollar shit coin.

And yeah, you couldn't even pay in Bitcoin even through their like, you can't donate to Trump and Bitcoin. which is hilarious. I guess they're fixing it now because everybody's like, what in the hell are you even doing? The deprecated Bitcoin payments like a while back. And it was kind of funny because David Bailey from Bitcoin magazine was like, was like all stoked about it.

Trump accepting Bitcoin. It was like the only coin he wasn't accepting because Coinbase just accepts all of the garbage except Bitcoin. Like it blows my mind. how much Brian Armstrong must hate Bitcoin to go that far to make it that difficult to pay in the original Bitcoin that isn't the degeneracy that he offers. Yeah, I mean, and then he must be sour also because Coinbase could have had so much Bitcoin on their balance, like on their treasury.

And they ended up getting like outmaneuvered by the likes of BlackRock, the likes of Michael Saylor. You know, Michael Saylor has more Bitcoin than Coinbase. That's pretty sad, bro. Yeah, one dude. When did Coinbase start 2013? Like, they had such a opportunity. Oh, man.

Anyways. So the article for the audio listeners is Trump becomes first major party candidate to accept crypto donations. Goes on to say Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign on Tuesday began accepting crypto donations, making good on the presumptive. Republican nominees pledged to become the first major party to embrace Bitcoin, ether, and other digital currencies. RFK Jr., who is running for president as an independent, has been accepting crypto donations for months.

Trump's move comes weeks after the former president declared himself crypto candidate at a Mar-Lago gala that thrust crypto into the 2024 campaign. Trump's campaign said in a statement, they will build a crypto army to combat the infamous anti-crypto army that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has campaigned on. dude like what a disaster here's this article by finbold Biden campaign in panic mode as Trump accepts crypto donations here's this very famous kind of like SMS kind of it's apparently this has been going around and it's just here's Joe Biden folks this could this couldn't be any more serious cryptocurrency executives and oil barons are coming out of the woodwork for Trump They're rushing $800,000 checks at Gitzley events.

Now Trump is outraising us. He ranked in 76 million total in April, over 50 million of it coming from a single gala in Palm Beach. We know we say it a lot, but the goals we set aren't arbitrary. I mean, like, bro, like, here's the thing, okay? Here's the thing about Trump and this whole thing. This was never political in the first place.

But as soon as the likes of Elizabeth Warren starting doctoring articles, like using the Wall Street Journal to claim that Bitcoin was being used to raise money for terrorism. As soon as they started locking Bitcoin privacy developers in a box, like, bro, what did you think was going to happen? Like, they poked the bear, and then the bear said, look, enough is enough. Like, fuck this. I'm obviously as a bitconer. I'm not so kumbaya about, because essentially Trump's basically saying Bitcoin. shit coins, everything in one thing.

Whoop-de-do, whoop-de-da, whatever. But that's way better than the alternative. The alternative is like, this dude's locking us in a box. He's being hostile towards the industry. The White House denied Caitlin Long's federal banking charter. Operation choke point 2.0.

The proposed 30% Bitcoin mining tax. The statement released by the FBI, basically like insidiously like like insidiously suggesting that self-custody is somehow illegal if it's not approved like like like they they made this political themselves we didn't do anything they ran into this

and it's not political this is not a partisan issue whatsoever they made it partisan and you know there's repercussions for that which is why i believe they did such a 180 with the ethereum METF and why they approved it so quickly because they realized how unpopular this was. Yeah. It's a little bit crazy because I feel like we're on the cusp of two paths and the latter will be more likely. The former being they fight us really hard and just everything is difficult to do or illegal and they start locking up devs. like the the inklings of what we've started to see and then the other path isn't like a reasonable like moving towards a bitcoin standard like let's let's uh get back to a sound money standard and no

it's like the opposite it's like shik coin degeneracy speculative fervor like all of the craziness like that's the trump path so it's it's literally the the uh um the meme where the guy's like so indecisive about it. And I err on the side of absolute freedom and people making their own mistakes and learning from them. It's just there's still a lot of people to learn from their own mistakes.

And if you thought that the shit coin cycles were done, we're just about to see it repeated on a grandiose scale through stock markets and ETF and all kinds of creation. Like, it's, if this is the direction it's going, it's going to be absolutely insane. But I'm wondering about the whipsaw back. Like if it goes absolute degeneracy and then absolute crackdown. And I don't know.

But if it goes absolute degeneracy, then the bitcoins need to, rather than going and trying to fight all that shit, let's just like put her heads down and like build the shit that needs to be built so that when there is a whipsaw back. and there's an absolute crackdown on stuff, it's bulletproof and we can survive without any approval from anybody. 100%. Yeah, I agree with your, I agree with your take because it just, it's like, it buys us time.

They're going to, it's now government-approved shit coinery, which comes with all the crashes and all the burns and all that stuff that comes with it. Then the people are going to get outraged. Like, why did you allow this? Yeah. Then they're going to be like, no, we're going to crack down on this.

But again, it buys us time. And I think time is our friend in the Bitcoin space, right? The more time that Bitcoin has to flourish without being interrupted, I think the better it is for Bitcoin. So anyways. Is this the, okay, you've heard of the accelerationists. You know, like accelerate like. This is definitely an accelerationist thing.

Yeah. Like maybe the accelerations. all along. We're like, yes, absolutely money printer go burr, like bad like top down regulation kind of stuff. But maybe the ultimate accelerationist thing is just like a shitcoin in government because shitcoins are peak fiat, right? Like it's it's fiat to the absolutely absolute extreme on 10 lines of coke. That's what that's what crypto and shit coins are. And so maybe that's the acceleration we need to to finally get people to be like oh sound money and like you know having reason and like a way to actually properly measure properly measure things where nobody can print money is a

good thing and so fiatas the elites can print money crypto is everyone can print money and bitcoin is no one can print money and it's going to take absolute degeneracy to make that point yeah 100 percent i mean sometimes bro look everyone has to pay their prices tuition and you know I think a lot of people are going to pay their price of tuition anyways so there was a 180 that I mentioned and I think that this is highlighted the most with this bill that was passed so US House approves crypto fit 21 bill with wave of democratic support which was very very huge guys I can't emphasize that enough because essentially it was on party lines before, right? The Republicans were like kind of like pro and then the Democrats were like

anti, but I think they saw the internal poll numbers and they realized, oh crap. So a big portion, I think it was like 79, if my memory serves me correctly, of Democrats actually crossed the aisle and actually voted for the Republicans. This is the biggest, it says it right here, the crypto industry recorded its biggest ever U.S. policy win on Wednesday when the House approved a wide-reaching bill to establish regulations for digital asset markets, recording a 279 to 136 vote that saw Democrats crossing party lines to support it. The Financial Innovation Technology for the 21st Century Act marks the first time a major crypto bill has cleared one of the chambers of Congress.

This issue now heads to the U.S. Senate, where its future is much murkier because there's no counterpart bill, a counterpart bill, support for such an effort remains unclear there. but the necessary committees haven't done the same level of work on crypto. The U.S. has fallen behind other global jurisdictions in establishing crypto regulations, and despite the win on Wednesday, implementing such oversight is far from complete. There's one representative that said, quote, we need rules for the road.

Another one said, well-reasoned, thoughtful bipartisan legislation. And another one said, it's fit to become law. if we work together. Overall, 71, so I was roughly around the number I mentioned. 71 Democrats and 208 Republicans voted in favor of the bill versus three Republicans and 133 Democrats who voted against it. President Joe Biden opposed the bill with a policy statement, and here's a signal, though he didn't say he would veto the bill, which is in stark contrast with that other bill that he took a more hardline stance on it. But again, I think they saw the internal poll numbers and they realized that it wasn't really going to be great.

Here's an image of the bill passing on the floor, HR 4763. Again, you know, 208 Republicans, yes, three Republicans no. Democrat 71, yes, 133, no. And then, you know, a couple did not vote whatsoever. Now, I think this is the cherry on top. This is Brad Sherman, our favorite House of Representative. representative from the House, and he had something to say in regards to this bill passing. And I just got to highlight Larry Lepard's response to this. Yep, Congressman, that is the entire point. So anyways, let's hear what he has to say, and let's check it out.

It creates a competitor to the U.S. dollar, which has one advantage. It's right in the name. Hidden money. hide your money from the IRS, from our sanctions and forters, from everyone involved in the U.S. government. And then finally, crypto declares that it wants to partially displace the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. The gentleman's time is expired.

You'll be a different second. Third additional seconds. The gentleman is recognized the 30 seconds. You have to understand how important it is. We, frankly, are not fiscally responsible in this House. We don't collect near as much taxes as we spend in benefits. We're able to do that without too much harm because of the role of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. We have fiscal policies that would make Argentina blush, but we're able to do it.

The crypto bros see the incredible amount of money and power the U.S. government has by being the world's reserve currency, and they say no, they want to appropriate them from themselves. real comparing the US government go ahead he fucking nails it he's a hundred percent right except for one point number one everything he outlined absolutely true it's like it's like yes we recognize that you guys are fucking horrible with money and the only reason that you're able to stay afloat is because you can print as much as you want and we think you're dickheads and we want to take that away from you but the crypto bros yes they want it for themselves but the big Bitcoiners want no one to have that power.

Yep. That's the point. Exactly. Man, you hit the nail on the head, right? Like, no one deserves a godlike power of being able to create money for free that everyone else has to work for. Bitcoiners fundamentally understand that, you know, and the shit coiners, when I say shit coiners, I include fiat money in there. You know, believe that they could just create money out of thin air. But look, it's not a winning argument, bro.

When you mentioned Argentina. Yeah. It's like, you know, we can do this because we're the world reserve currency. Like the Argentine government wishes they could do what we do. We can get away with this pretty guys. Oh, man. We can spend more money that we collect in tax revenue. Like, dude, it's crazy, man. They've lost their minds 100%.

And to defend that too, to openly get up there and be like, listen, man, we just want to be able to spend way more money than we're earning with no repercussions. And these guys want to take that away from us. Yeah, we absolutely do. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. 100%. It's literally in the Genesis block. And again, Bitcoin would not have been invented

if it wasn't the irresponsibility of central banks and governments and what the consequences of that fiscal responsibility has been to the younger generations where we can't afford homes. We can't afford our future. We can't afford a living. We don't have the same opportunity that our parents once had because of the situation that they created. And now he's complaining that we have found a sly roundabout way to their system.

And like, dude, go pound sand, bro. You guys did this to yourselves. You know, I think you just never, you never anticipated that individuals and people were going to figure out. a way to not use your system. I think Andreas Antonopoulos, not I think, I know Andreas Antonopoulos did this amazing speech back when he was like one of the only people talking about Bitcoin on YouTube. And it was called the golden cage of banking. And essentially they built a fucking cage that they thought they had everyone trapped in. People have figured out a way out of outside the cage and they're stuck within the cage that they built for themselves. And then

they're complaining that people are outside of the cage and they're having a much better time out there it's like dude you guys brought this a pran yourselves and now you're upset and you know go pound sand bro like you don't you don't deserve any sympathy from us whatsoever it's like the yvall harari video that i'm going to play in a little bit where he's like literally talking about how it's a good idea for governments to retain the power of like literally being able to just create money. It's so absurd. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean,

hats off to Andreas. Again, he was a huge part of me learning the why of Bitcoin. And, uh, yeah, man, it's wild to again see politicians get up there and with a straight face, be like,

yes, we're doing something that nobody else can do. That is incredibly irresponsible. And we're very upset that people are trying to stop us from doing that thing. Yeah, exactly. And I think it like kind of like highlights, you know, that they're, I can't say it. It's not appropriate. But you guys know what I'm thinking.

Anyways, so another 180. White House wants to cooperate on regulation as U.S. House passes market structure bill. The vote concluded on Wednesday with 279 in favor and 136 against with a significant majority of House Democrats supporting legislation. The legislation would establish a regulatory framework for U.S. crypto markets. It includes consumer protection measures, appoints, appoints the CFTC as the main regulator of digital assets,

taking it away from Gary Gensler, an overseer of non-security spot markets, and clarifies the criteria for determining whether a crypto token is a security or commodity. The next step is for the bill. The next step for the bill will be a vote in the Senate. President Joe Biden expressed opposition to the bill in a policy statement. He did not indicate that he would veto it. It goes on to say,

the administration is eager to work with Congress to ensure a comprehensive and balanced regulatory framework for digital assets building on existing authorities, which will promote the responsible development of digital assets and payment innovation and help reinforce the United States leadership in the global financial system, which is complete 180 compared to the first statement that the White House released in regards to taking the power away from the SEC, where he literally said, like, I don't care if this passes the house, I'm going to veto it. Now he's like, I'm actually excited to work with Congress for this. And why is this happening?

Well, once again, it's because of this guy. They realized that it was not popular with their base, so they're trying to do a full 180. But you know what's really interesting is that I don't think it's working and I don't really believe it. And the reason for that is the CBDC law that just passed also the house. but it was completely along party lines, which is honestly a little bit sad to me. And this is why I asked the question. And to give a little bit of context, right,

HR 5403 passed, and the bill would be to ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency. This was completely along party lines. 113 Republicans voted yes Three Democrats voted yes 192 Democrats voted no And my question is

Why are so many Democrats Pro Central Bank digital currency Why is this a partisan issue? Ben? Yeah, I mean I think it's as simple as The thing like the the Social and kind of like acceptable headspace has for so for quite some time now been leaning to the left regardless

of Trump getting into office there is still like a heavy kind of social pressure on the the majority of Americans to lean left or if you don't then you know you are lesser than you're you're like you know not intelligent or whatever and and when when you're when you're your side of the political spectrum isn't in a position of power for the narrative, then you tend to lean towards tools that can help you if you're at a disadvantage. So if you perceive yourself as being subject to potential censorship in one way or another, you're going to lean towards censorship-resistant tools. But I think this is just a mere fact of where the pendulum happens to be at the time. And had this been another time where, you know, if the right side of the

political spectrum or the, the Republicans had been in power for an extended period of time, and the narrative was with them as well in large part, it would be flipped the other way. And so, you know, the ones that currently are in power and want to retain power are going to want tools that give them top-down control. And the ones that are out of power are going to want to stay away from or even ban tools that give the ruling party top-down control. So honestly, I think that I feel like the political spectrum, that pendulum is in the process of swinging back the other way.

If this vote was held, say, I don't know, five or ten years from now, I'm not convinced that it wouldn't be the exact opposite. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, no, and I agree with that. I think Bitcoin is the money of enemies, right? So, like, you know, if you don't have the state, the full apparatus of the state backing you, you are pro-Bitcoin from a political standpoint. And then if you do have the full apparatus of the state backing you, you'd be anti-Bitcoin.

Because Bitcoin actually would be, you know, a threat to your power base. Anyways, here is Tom Emmer. and he was, I believe he drafted the bill. And let's take a look at what he has to say. House Republicans, as Blake just said, are going to take action to safeguard our American values by passing my bill, the CBDC or the central bank digital currency, anti-surveillance State Act. With this legislation, we're going to stop unelected bureaucrats in the Biden administration

from using a central bank digital currency, again, a CBDC, that threatens. to destroy the American way of life. Unlike decentralized digital assets, such as Bitcoin, CBDCs are a digital form of sovereign currency designed, issued, and monitored by the federal government. In short, a CBDC is a government-controlled, programmable money that, if not designed to be just like cash, open, permissionless, and private with a capital P, it not only could, it will give the federal government significant transaction-level data on individuals and the ability to suppress politically unpopular activity. We've already seen examples of foreign governments weaponizing their financial system against

their citizens. In China, the Communist Party actually has the digital yuan that is being used to monitor its citizens, and they are building social scores based on behaviors. Again, that's an anti-American approach. Close to the home in the Western Hemisphere, Canada froze the bank accounts of hundreds of truckers protesting the vaccine mandate in 2022. If you think it can't happen, think again. It has, and it will if we allow this to happen here. It's naive to believe that your government will not weaponize the tools that it has to control you.

This may be why the Biden administration issued an executive order placing urgency on CBDC research and development. All signals point towards this administration developing a CBDC that can and will be used to surveil and control Americans. The Federal Reserve has even described it. You don't listen to them when they tell you that they're not doing anything. the Federal Reserve has already described CBDCs as one of their key duties in a document that was provided to my office. In doing this, the Biden administration is proven they are itching to trade Americans' right to privacy for a CCP-style surveillance tool. House Republicans are not going to let that happen. 165 members of our conference have co-sponsored our CBDC Anti-surveillance State Act, and it has garnered wide industry support. This bill ensures that Congress, not the administration or the administrative state more specifically,

retains the authority over the United States digital currency policy so that it reflects our American values of privacy, individual sovereignty, and free market competitiveness. If not open, permissionless, and private, again, with a capital P like cash, a CBDC is nothing more than a big government surveillance tool that will be weaponized to oppress Americans' freedom and right to privacy. I encourage all of my colleagues, Republican and Democrat, to support this bill which protects innovation and defense against an ever-expanding government surveillance state. that I leave yield to our majority dude talk about fucking completely shattering the

overton window dropping the Canadian truckers protest dropping not crypto but Bitcoin by name you know they're gonna have a hard time they're gonna have a hard time now that that has been out in the open it passed the house yeah they're gonna have a really hard time trying to use the backdoor to roll out a CBDC in the United States States. And this is all how, go ahead, Ben. I was just going to say, I'm so happy. That was quite good. I'm pretty impressed with that clip and that, that, like, it laid it out very well. And I'm, I'm, it gives me a little bit of hope that there's going to be enough pushback that, you know, maybe the draconian hellscape that we're all expecting in the West is, is not exactly at our doorstep. We still need to be vigilant.

but like glimmer is a hope like that make me happy 100% dude like it dude like it it's moved the overton window to the point where they can't just sneak it through the back door like it's like now front and center uh he said he's covered all the right things bitcoin the canadian truckers protest how this is being used in china as a surveillance tool and it's just basically shined light on this and now they're going to just they're going to have a hard time and in florida for example they passed a law that would make it illegal for a central bank digital currency so the only way for them to really roll this out in the u.s is to have actual legislative uh support for this it can't be done via executive action like they've been doing in terms of regulating you know bitcoin privacy and all

that that's all been done via executive action lawfare none of that has been done via the legislative process they're not going to be able to roll out the cbdc especially with the divided house especially the fact that this bill just passed the house this is a major major win uh for bitcoin and the movement because i cbdc would be the exact opposite of of what bitcoin represents so anyways um so in other news uh uh Speaking Venezuela, right? We're going to talk about Venezuela. Interesting. So Venezuela cracks down on Bitcoin mining. Now, it's pretty funny, dude. Like, I'm not going to lie. Just because of like the kind of excuses. I wish you could understand Spanish. But it's just hilarious.

The way that he was the way that he's describing it. But anyways, for audio listeners, Venezuela cracks down on Bitcoin mining. Venezuela has declared a ban on Bitcoin mining and pledged to disconnect all. mining farms from the national grid to alleviate pressure on the country's electricity supply. Venezuela's Ministry of Electric Power has started to disconnect Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining farms from the national grid. The local government claims the move will help regulate excess energy consumption. An ex post from the Venezuela National Association of Cryptocurrency states that cryptocurrency mining is now prohibited in Venezuela. We recommend that any person or company that has installed equipment, uninstall it, and store it to avoid.

inconvenience. We do not consider that this has a solution, the medium is short term. As part of the crackdown, over 11,000 Bitcoin miners have been confiscated. This follows another anti-corruption initiative in the city of Marrakeh, where 2,000 cryptocurrency mining devices were seized. And here's like the video of the guy, he's like the mayor or whatever, and like with the guy, literally the armed people in the back. And he's just like going around the mining facility. And he's like, it's so funny the way like his antics he's like you see this this whole uh this whole container this is full of machines and this other container it's just full it's actually like really impressive but they're full of machines too but now they're gone they're disconnected but you know

what the funny part is that as soon the funny part is that as soon as those cameras turn off those machines are just going to be turned back on again but they're going to be mining for the government instead like it's such it's so stupid this is just a PR move um here is kind of like some reactions to it from notable bitcoinsers i've lived in venezuela 99% of the people there do not pay for electricity they'll make examples of a few miners but because venezuela has been forced by communism into a culture of criminality disobedience bribes and murders will guarantee that bitcoin mining continues uh adam o from uh upstream data says moving our bitcoin mining operations of venezuela for cheap hydroelectric power turned out to be a pretty pretty terrible strategy

Alex Gladstein says Bitcoin does not mix well with dictators who try to control every aspect of their population. It also short circuits despots who try to subsidize cheap energy to avoid getting overthrown. So again, like I think once again, this is another example of, you know, the government blaming, and we've seen this worldwide. The government is blaming Bitcoin miner for their own mishaps. Like there isn't an energy crisis in Venezuela because of Bitcoin miners. Bitcoin miners have to go to cheap electricity, to stranded energy. If it wasn't cheap, if it wasn't stranded, it wouldn't be economical to use that energy. But they're using it as a scapegoat nonetheless so that people don't rise up and say,

yo, what the F is going on here? No, no, no, no, no. It's actually the Bitcoin miners's fault. Fiat collapsing. No, no, no, no. That has nothing to do with people like Brad Sherman saying, like, Like we're just going to print an excess amount of money and we can print as much as we like. It has everything to do with the fact that it's Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the cause of all your problems. But I just find that absolutely hilarious. And like China, if China, if the most totalitarian country, one of the most totalitarian countries on the face of the planet, if they couldn't get rid of Bitcoin miners, I don't think Venezuela is going to either. Yeah. No, not at all. Not a chance.

anywhere with a semblance of of of I mean again under the radar like if if China can't do it and they've got the resources to go after these people if they can't do it and just like some simple bribes under the table will do the trick then like what the hell hope does Venezuela have zero bro

it's he can't you can't stop the honey badger anyways all right bro well that was the news for today guys This was your Simply sessions from Nico's end. And I'll see you next week, Ben. Peace. Oh, yeah, man. See you soon.

All right, everybody. Stick around because we have the tech updates. Really quick shout out to our sponsors. And then we will get rolling. Multi-sig and inheritance planning. It's hard to beat Nunchuk.io and their Honeybadger program. On your mobile device, they allow you to set up a full multi-signature vault. And once it's done, you have baked in inheritance.

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And best of all, no rehypification of your funds. If you want to check them out today, head over to debify.com or hit the link in these show notes down below. All right, let's dive into those updates that we got for you. I'm going to bring up my screen here. A couple things. I just ordered a device to try out something called Crux. And so this is a hardware option, a solution that falls into the same realm of as something like Seed Siner. But very agnostic to hardware options.

And so you can see a whole bunch here. And so, yeah, you can basically, the idea is that these devices, I believe, are stateless. They rely entirely on air-gapped options, meaning like QR code or SD card and open source everything. So I've just ordered myself a device. And these are just run-of-the-mill devices that you can get from a variety of different places. And you can load up the firmware and it should work fine. And then you can use it with something like Sparrow or Munchuk or Spector or Blue Wallet or a variety of other things. So I'm looking forward to playing around with another open source, we'll say untraceable option so that if the hammer ever came down and you weren't allowed

to order your favorite hardware, well, now you don't need to. You just buy a run-of-the-mill device and you're off to the races. Metamask is working to add native Bitcoin support. So if you're unfamiliar with Metamask, it's your favorite shitcoin wallet. I know you guys don't have favorite shitcoin wallets. It's an ETH native wallet that's been ETH only, if I'm not mistaken. One of the most popular crypto wallets is reportedly working on adding native Bitcoin support. So it's familiar with the matter told CoinDesk.

We're excited about Metamask commitment to embracing the multi-chrefertil. chain world of web, oh, gee, I'm not even going to read the quote. I don't even care. So nonetheless, the reason I wanted to pull this one up is not because I think you should all rush out and start using Metamask, but we're seeing the Bitcoin, the ETH-only options or the crypto-only options that exclusively led that excluded Bitcoin, basically bending the knee and being like, yeah, I guess we better add Bitcoin. So that's a thing, but you should probably stick with Bitcoin-only options, so you're not as worried about the increased attack vector from supporting everything else. Phoenix ID version 0.1.5. This is a minimal specialized lightning

node designed for developers and businesses that makes it easy to send and receive lightning payments without compromising on self-custody. It's just like Phoenix for mobile, except it runs on a server. So this is kind of cool. I like this because, again, Phoenix pulled itself from the U.S. App Store, but this, to me, leans itself towards, oh, being able to self-host, and I would love to see something like this on Start 9. Moving on, let's jump to PushTX Privacy Focus Bitcoin Transaction Broadcaster. And so this is a Russ program that broadcasts Bitcoin transactions directly into peer-to-peer network by connecting to a set of random Bitcoin nodes. This differs from other broadcast tools in that it does not interact with any centralized

services such as Block Explorers. It's entirely self-contained, does not require Bitcoin Core or other dependencies. If Tor is running on the same system, connectivity to the peer-to-peer network is established through a newly created circuit, having Tor browser running in the background is sufficient. Torr-Demit also works. external dependencies, no centralized backends. Yeah, pretty cool. Love to see it. More privacy options out there. Silent payments as well, moving on. Silent payments, again, I've touched on this in the last couple episodes, but to reiterate, they allow users to share a single address without

sacrificing privacy by generating a unique key that only the sender and receiver can identify. The quote here by Seth for Privacy, I've built out a website with all the info and more to do that what I can speed up silent payment adoption. And so the key advantages, again, simple user interface users just need to worry about a single static address instead of generating new addresses on every receive. Address reuse with silent payments is impossible as no two senders can generate the same on-chain address. So that's pretty awesome. Better sender privacy because receivers have no way of connecting sends from the same receiver together, providing better privacy for even the senders. That's actually quite cool.

And no server required. Anyone with a wallet supporting silent payments can receive funds without address reuse, without communication, and without running complex infrastructure. You can use silent payments right now. right now using silenium and cake wallet so those are the two that have uh and on top of that keith from seed signer has been experimenting with adding support for silent payments on the seed signer and blue wallet looking at silent payments and silent payments uh being looked at by uh cdor underscore bl on twitter um psalson rubin looking at it

there's a whole bunch of people interested in this. And I think that's mega bullish. I love seeing the pushback from all of the crackdown on privacy lately. And this is a nice tool in the tool belt of Bitcoiners. And one more thing in the realm of privacy and non-KYC Bitcoin, Mastro version 0.12.0 orders with amounts by ranges. This is a lightning network peer-to-peer exchange platform on Noster. And so with this version, it includes orders by amounts with ranges and bug fixes.

So range orders are not yet implemented in the web client. To test them, you must do it in Maustral, CLI, or the command line interface. And so basically, this is, again, like peer-to-peer offers, being able to buy and sell Bitcoin with individuals, and you would be able to pay the user in whatever local option you have. so that the Fiat payment would still likely be through some sort of a KYC means. But the important part is there's no direct link between the Fiat payment and the exchange of Bitcoin. Those are totally separated out. And the fact that you can run this over Noster, meaning that it cannot be shut down, is absolutely fantastic.

So I love to see that as well. So, guys, a couple things. Of course, tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern Time, we got Why Are We Bullish, awesome round of panelists. You have to tune in to see who they are. They'll be dropped on Noster and on Twitter. Tomorrow, keep an eye out for the posts. Also, coming up, I'm doing some more travel.

I'm back home for a limited amount of time, flying back out. First up, this is my website, by the way, BTC.Sychos.coms. If you go to events, you can see where I'll be heading. So I'm going to be going to the Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway, which I'm very excited about, put on the by the Human Rights Foundation. And we're going to be doing some Bitcoin workshops for the attendees at the regular event. And then there's a financial freedom track on day three. And so that will be kicking off on June 3rd in Oslo, Norway. And then from there, I'll be moving on to Prague for BTC Prague, which is absolutely killer.

I loved it last year. Very excited to be back this year. I've got a keynote on the main stage. I'm also doing another talk on one of the side stages there about circular economies. The main stage thing, I'm going to be talking about UTXO management and other tools to navigate high fee environments, which should be a blast. I'm very excited that they're really just embracing the idea of putting educational content on the main stage. Not some side stage, but on the main stage.

So I'm going to do my best to make that awesome content that people can actually utilize and level up and learn to understand Bitcoin at a deeper level without getting too confused. So that's my goal there. And hopefully I'll be able to do that. So nonetheless, if you want to check out where I'll be headed, just head to bTCsessions.ca. On the main page as well, I got to give a shout out to all my mentors over at Bitcoin mentor.io, which you can find through the booking tab. it'll take you right over to Bitcoin Mentor.io. But this is my team that I've assembled, along with my co-founder, Mike,

and it's a team of people that can help you out on your Bitcoin journey if you're sorting through some of the tutorials on the channel. And it's not quite cutting it. You need some one-on-one help. You can head to Bitcoin Mentor.io, and you can book one-on-one sessions to help you through anything, whether it be hot, wall, it's cold, while it's hardware, multi-sig, running a node, home mining,

privacy stuff, obtaining Bitcoin through a variety of means, all that kind of stuff. So make sure you check them out. And as I mentioned, we're also doing our spaces three times a week. There should be another one tomorrow, I believe, at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. Don't quote me on that, but it should be coming up tomorrow. So keep an eye out. It should be a blast. Anyways, guys, I'm going to duck out here.

Thank you guys so much for being here. Please do like, sub, share. Hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. and I'll see you guys next time for your SimpleSession.