BTC Sessions - Trump Picks First PRO-BITCOIN VP! ep426

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Welcome to this week's Simply Sessions - the latest and greatest in Bitcoin news! Post-assassination attempt Trump chooses the first ever PRO-BITCOIN Vice President, Michael Saylor outperforms NVIDIA, Jamie Dimon changes his tune on BTC, and much more! BOOK private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted. https://bitcoinmentor.io/ 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: BITCOIN WELL My favorite self custody bitcoin platform in Canada and USA! They offer KYC free accounts, 1% spread, no on-chain fees and tons of other incredible features. Check them out at bitcoinwell.com/btcsessions https://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessions COINKITE offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions HODLHODL is a NON-CUSTODIAL, ANONYMOUS solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION Speedwallet - your one wallet to send, receive, shop & earn. Simple, fast and convenient! Download now, use code this link & get 5,000 SATs on your first transaction. https://www.speed.app/sweepstakes-promocode-btc/ DEBIFI is a non-custodial Bitcoin backed lending platform with institutional grade liquidity providers and no rehypothecation of your funds. Find them at: https://debifi.com/

So what is going on? Everybody, welcome to this show. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. Nico is waiting in the wings to bring us the latest and greatest in everything Bitcoin. It has been a moderately interesting news week, hasn't it? So we'll be chatting about that. No shortage of stuff to be touching on this week. I hope you guys are all doing well. If you are, make sure. you jump in that chat and you get chatting us up, there's going to be plenty of spicy morsel 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'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. And if you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share. All of those things, they really help a ton getting this content.

in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC Sessions. This is your simply session. Before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. I am pulling up timechain calendar.com simultaneously. I'm going to bring up that live chat. Everything you say into the chat will be live over on the right hand side of the screen from here on in for better or worse. Over at time chain calendar, we're sitting at 63,812 dollars per a single US dollar will snaggy 1,567 sats. In terms of fees, low, low, low, six sats per byte to get into the next block. Anytime four sats per byte, loving these.

Take advantage of it while you can when we are deep into the Bull Run may not be quite as cheap. And then in terms of Bitcoin mined, 19.72 million of them, that is 93.94% of the the total supply. We're going to give a quick shout out to sponsors of the show, and we will be right back. The is 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.

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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. And we are back in. We're going to bring in Nico to join us here. Yo, buddy. How you doing? Yo, dude, absolutely nuts. Okay, I got to tell a story. I'm going to tell a story real quick. I was sleeping on Saturday because I'm an old man and I partied really hard in my early 20s in Miami and now I'm 30 and I feel like I'm 60. So I take naps, you know, on Saturdays. And Ben called me, video chatted, whatever. And I answered in the dark and, you know, he was out in about like a normal person on Saturday at rodeo.

and it's like yo nico um they just uh almost killed uh trump and i was like what the and uh and i just started like kind of looking into it and holy cow so trump so ben actually broke the news to me that uh they almost killed trump and then i was like gathering all these thoughts and instead of writing it at my note to self on my signal i was sending it to ben directly I was like, holy Nico's deep already. And then I caught myself halfway through and I'm like, I get like, you know, I get a self-conscious. I'm like, oh my God. I don't know if Ben seed that side of me.

But no, I was preparing for Monday show. And of course, today's show. But what a, you know, what a turn of events, dude. You said it yourself. I think your words was like, this is like a Hollywood movie. Yeah. Unbelievable. Like what an insane.

And just, again, like, at our lifetimes, we haven't really seen anything of that weight. So, like, directly, like, in the past couple of decades, the most recent thing that would have held that amount of weight would have been, like, 9-11, right? Obviously, that was a massive tragedy. But, like, in our lifetimes, it's not many times that you see something that crazy happen in front of a captive audience. Yeah. And that picture, and it was, it was, you know, it was, it was the, the picture, the reaction from the legacy media versus the reaction from X and Twitter was night and day. Yeah. And it was, you know, and I think it was, it was just a testament to what's going on. Like what, where are we in history? What's happening? What are the opposing forces? and without getting to conspiratorial, there's been a lot of open questions

in regards to the security that Trump had at that speech, and the excuses coming from the head of the Secret Service, which are just absolutely insane. So, yeah, I mean, it definitely made quite a buzz. But anyways, I do want to start with the, with I think the biggest as well for anyone who's not in the know and for you Canadians out there

and I was just there by the way my daughter's first international trip was to Canada. It was absolutely awesome. Ben took us to Disney World. I mean a national park and we had a great time. Really appreciate it Ben. But yeah so for anyone that anyone doesn't know international audience this week is the Republican National Convention

that is when they officially nominate the Republican presidential candidate, and that is when the Republican presidential candidate picks the vice president. So that happened this week. Now, the reason that was such a big deal is for a couple of reasons. There was the first time a Bitcoin media outlet was invited to cover the event. So it was Nick Hoffman and Mike Germano of Bitcoin Magazine that were invited to cover the event because, of course, Trump is making an appearance at the Bitcoin conference next week. in Nashville, but they also announced the VP, and the VP is someone called J.D. Vance.

Now, J.D. Vance has been extremely pro-you know, sorry, guys, this is the reality. He's been pro-Crypto, right? I think a lot of people feel disappointed in a way that it's not Bitcoin, it's crypto as a whole. My response is let Bitcoin win on the free and open market. I think it will. It has better incentives. It's superior money. I think the government picking and choosing what cryptocurrency has special privileges versus the others is like crony capitalism. And it's like so anti-Bitcoin in the first place. Right. So that being said, let's check out a little bit more about JD Vance. So J.D. Vance is Trump's VD. Vice President pick and likely nice vice vice president. Also, remember, Trump only has one term. So if Trump does a good

job. It's a high probability that this is the guy who's going to be running for president on the Republican side in 2028. And once again, he's very pro-Bitcoin. Not only is he pro-Bitcoin, he actually owns $250,000 worth of Bitcoin back in last time I was reported was in 2022. He slammed Gary Gensler in letters. There's videos of him just going absolutely bananas on Gensler. saying basically he's a political hack. He kind of F things up. But, you know, like Ryan Adams pointed out, further evidence that Trump's White House is pro-crypto,

which is absolutely massive news. Now, just to kind of give you guys an idea of how serious this is, like how serious they're making this part of the Republican platform, this is a Business Week article hosted by Bloomberg, and this is a legit interview with Trump. This isn't just, you know, Trump going on a podcast on YouTube or whatever. No, no, no. This is Bloomberg Business Week.

This is like the top echelon of financial news and interviews. And guess what? He mentioned Bitcoin and crypto multiple times during this interview. Just to kind of give you an idea of how forefront and center this has become, as part of the Republican ticket, as part of the Republican platform. So not only has Trump come out and said it, but also the Republican Party has come out and said it as well.

And I just want to remind everyone, Bitcoin is apolitical, but the Democrats created, and this article actually points that out, the Democrats created an opportunity for the Republicans to capitalize on it by taking an anti-Bitcoin stance because such a large portion of the population

population owns Bitcoin. Now, another thing I'll say before I kind of read some of the quotes from this article is like, I completely forgot what I was going to say. So let me just read those quotes. Okay, it goes on to say it's late June and Donald Trump is plotting his next presidency in the gilded offseason isolation of the Mar-a-Lago Club. The adoring club members may have decamped to cooler climates, but Trump is still in a good mood. The whole length of the article, takes about 35 minutes to read just to kind of give you idea of how long this is but of course i found the parts where he mentions crypto because this is this is his entire policy right this isn't just uh just bitcoin of course this is a bitcoin show so we're just going to focus on the bitcoin side of things

so this is the first quote he said he unleashed he would unleash the crypto industry and rein in reckless big tech companies in short he'd make the economy great again such a trump thing to say now it's kind of buried. Like, check this out. We have to scroll all the way down here before we start to get to some of his things as it relates to Bitcoin. Now, he says some really obvious things that makes me suspicious as to whether Newsweek has been watching simply sessions because this is, a lot of these things are things that we've been saying over the last couple of months. So it goes on to say his reversal on cryptocurrency has been marked by similar dynamics. Not long ago, he criticized Bitcoin as a scale.

and a disaster winning to happen. Now he says it and other cryptocurrency should be made in the USA. He frames this about as a practical necessity. This is the key point, right? If we don't do it, China is going to figure it out and China is going to have it or somebody else will. Like that that's the key point. He realizes that, look, you can't ban Bitcoin. It's not going away.

You're just creating an opportunity for another country to be pro-Bitcoin. they bring all the bitcoinsers, they bring the extra tax revenue. Jack Mahler said it best during the Bitcoin Policy Institute summit in Washington, D.C. He's like, do you want Bitcoiners to be paying taxes in Texas, or do you want Bitcoiners to be paying taxes in Dubai, right? And I think that perfectly summarizes it up. And here is Trump basically common sense. Like, we want this to develop in the U.S.

Anyways, not coincidentally, the crypto industry spurred by the demonstrable. Democratic Party brimmed with cash and eager for friends in Washington has now found its way to Trump. Quote, thanks largely to the actions of the SEC, the Biden administration has stumbled into becoming anti-crypto. Given that about 20% of Democrats own crypto per polling, its ownership skews young and non-white, this was politically unwise. What have we been saying over the last couple of weeks, right? Like, it was such a bad move by the Democratic Party because such a large part of their

constituents own Bitcoin, and we are all single-issue voters, I would say. If you're a Bitcoin or you're like, dude, I just want the guy that's going to leave me and my stack alone. Anyways, it goes on to say, quote, stop Joe Biden's crusade to crush crypto. The following month, he reaped the benefits raising money from Bitcoin miners at a Mar-Lago fundraiser. Trump's campaign then announced it would, quote, build a crypto army, and it's now accepts crypto contributions. So I mean, like, it tells you everything you need to know. It's almost as if they've been watching Simply Sessions. This is incredibly obvious that this was going to happen. Like, yeah, you're creating an opportunity for your political opponent by taking an anti-crypto stance. A big

portion of your voter vases pro-Bitcoin, like you're going to lose the election by taking that stance, right? And then the also part that I love is, again, the common sense aspect of it. Like, look, if we don't make this in America, if we don't have these companies develop in America, they're going to develop overseas, and that's a bad thing. We want this to happen here. So overall, incredibly bullish stuff. The vice president, so even, you know, if something happens to Trump, his legacy continues. And also, of course, this Newsweek article is a big deal because most of it is just talking about his policies, right? And the fact that, that a big portion of his policies are, you know, centered about creating a pro-Bitcoin

environment in the U.S., I think is a massive, massive deal. So this election, 2024, is going to be the first Bitcoin election in the U.S., and I'm incredibly excited for it. Yeah. It's, again, it's wild to see. We keep on saying this from week to week, but like, had you told me this was going to be a centerpiece of the 2024 election just two years ago, I would have thought you were crazy. Hell, if you had told me that, I don't know, six to 12 months ago, I would have thought you were crazy. You know, Trump had previously said that he wasn't a fan of it, that he didn't really like it.

And but I guess times are a changing. And I think he's more than anything, he's just incentivized to be friendly towards it. As you said, like the other side of the aisle took a stance. And so it made sense, given that there's a large portion of the populace that, you know, is interested in this stuff to take the opposite stance and he's reaping the benefits from it. And like, obviously, you know, we always talk about how you don't want to necessarily put all your trust in politicians. In fact, as little as possible, I would say. but you can treat this as a mechanism to get a longer runway. And when you have a binary option like this where it's like, well, one side hates it and the other side says they like it,

are you going to go with the person that for sure hates it or the person that may be favorable towards it? And at the end of the day, it's a mechanism to defund the state anyways. So if you get some favorable treatment and Bitcoin is a lot of it. allowed to grow unabated for a longer period of time, it siphons off power from the state in that their money printer is less and less effective over time as less and less people utilize said currency. Absolutely. Yeah.

So that's that's kind of where I stand. And yeah, very interesting. Yeah. No, and you absolutely hit hit the nail on the head, man. It's, it's, it's, it's very interesting. And it's the game theory. Right. And there's a couple people that we're going to mention today, notable people, right? You have Trump, you have Jamie Diamond, and you have Mark Cuban that have all bent the knee, right? They've all had negative takes on Bitcoin in the past. And it seems like they're kind of changing. And again, it's not because they want to do this, but it's because it's a testament to the power of our movement. Trump isn't doing this out of the kindness of his heart. Like they're not making. this the Republican Party isn't making this part of their you know part platform

because they believe in it they're doing it because they want the donor money that's how politics works right it's just our movement is getting powerful enough where now we're starting to not only become a powerful enough voting block but our donor base is starting to become powerful enough too so now all of a sudden we have the ability to influence politics right it's unbelievable You could never have imagined this, right? But it's pretty crazy. Anyways, so getting to the Trump attempted assassination, there's a very famous quote by one of my favorite broad broadcasters, but it basically goes along the lines of there are no coincidences, but there's also no coincidences.

So I'm just going to kind of lay out some facts. I'll let you guys be the judge, not come to any types of conclusions. But check out the timeline. 48 days after Trump promised he would free Ross and protect the right to self-custody, he was almost assassinated. That's a hell of a coincidence. Here is some of the footage. And also shout out to Ben, because he's the one that let me know.

Let's check it out. Here's Trump giving his speech. And look what happened to our country. probably 20 million people. And you know, that's a little bit old that chart. That chart's a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened. That's crazy.

And if you take a look at some of the pictures and stuff, the bullet literally missed his head by an inch. And this was absolutely iconic after he got up. Elon Musk endorsed him. other very popular people that previously did not endorse Trump publicly came out in support of him. But this was insane. This was like, what a photo. So dude almost gets assassinated. First Bitcoin president, first president to say, I'm going to free Ross, almost gets assassinated, goes up on stage and literally says fight, fight, fight, with a bullet hole in his ear. That is absolutely insane, absolutely crazy. Now here's Nikol,

take. This is my opinion. It's not the opinion of the opinion of Simply Sessions, but this is just my take based on just, you know, maybe just kind of reading into things. Maybe they're not real. Maybe they are. But this is my kind of opinion on the matter when it happened. I said the party of Fiat, which fuels the administrative state, is desperate. The propaganda isn't working anymore. The lawfare isn't working anymore. Today showed their desperation. They want to retain their godlike power of being able to create money for free that the rest of us have to work for our unstoppable movement is ascending freedom is winning bitcoin's role in these historic times has just begun to surface but my instincts tell me that it will be a crucial tool that we will need to finally defeat them

without it victory's impossible no more endless wars no more central planners no more mass scale theft via the basement no more slavery we will not stop until the federal reserve is no more we're going to win. I don't think, like I said, I don't think it's a coincidence that the first pro-Bitcoin president that is anti-war that wanted to free Ross was almost assassinated. I don't think that's a coincidence. Here is Ross commenting on it. He said shock, fear, sadness, but eventually great relief as I watched the man who pledged to free me from prison nearly die. I am praying for President Trump and the other victims. I hope something like this never happens again. Now, this is where things get interesting okay and this is why you know i i i said what i said in this statement

because if you take a look at the response from the legacy media ladies gentlemen this is real this is these are these are actual headlines from the media outlets that they would want you to consume from and then you tell me if you're getting to a point where you're like dude i don't believe you guys anymore like the trust and institutions is already in an all-time low. And this is just a legacy media. And then I'll give you the response from the head of the Secret Service.

And I'll let you guys be the judge. Because it's just, something smells, okay? So first, a Washington Post. Trump escorted away after loud noises at Pennsylvania Valley. That's a real headline. They shot at him. That's what happened.

NBC News, Secret Service rushes Trump offstage after popping noises heard at his Pennsylvania rally. USA Today. Trump removed from stage by Secret Service after loud noises startles former president crowd. CNN, Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally. Newsweek. MAGA responds with outrage after Donald Trump injured at Pennsylvania rally. ABC News, Donald Trump escorted off stage by Secret Service during rally after loud noises

ring out in the crowd. Like, you know, this is not my words, this is Elon. The legacy media is a pure propaganda machine. X is the voice of the people. I completely agree. Like, that's insane. Look, they got so pissed off with that image because it was so iconic. They changed it.

Time Magazine has decided not to use the legendary photo of Trump after the recent shooting for their cover. Wonder why? Because it makes him look good. That's what that, like, you see this? This is insane, right? Now, okay. Now, this is where things get a little weird and,

Ify, okay? Here's an interview with the head of the Secret Service, and let's check out what she has to say in regards to security on the roof. When you saw the events unfold on Saturday. Shock and then concern, obviously, for the former president. Investigators now trying to determine whether roof access had been properly locked down. The shooter climbing up seemingly unimpeded, about 400 feet from the stage with a direct line of sight on the former president should that roof have been secure period that building in particular has a sloped roof uh that building in particular has a sloped roof here is a cow on a sloped roof here is the secret service detail at the event on a sloped roof okay now this is the crazy part

okay can i say i love the cow before thank you for that that really was That cow, look at that. It doesn't give a fuck that it's on a sloped roof. It's pretty dangerous for that cow. He better get down there pretty quick. People definitely can't do that. So here's the Secret Service on a sloped roof. Now, okay, this is where things get really, really interesting.

Okay? This is the security perimeter. Okay, right? Let's make this V-shaped cutout for the roof v-vees. vantage point that has direct actus to the president. Like, I mean, like, look, I don't want to get too conspiracies like, come. Yeah. Ben, am I fucking crazy, bro?

Like, I'll tell you one thing. All of the, all of the headlines that you just read when I was seeing them happen, like immediately after the like watching the video of it happening, I thought that they were pretend. I thought it was like the Babylon B and the onion and like all of those entities were like, oh, we got we got to capitalize on this and make these funny like satirical headlines. I thought they were all pretend, but none of those were. Those are all real headlines.

And same with the image you just showed of the perimeter. I thought that was pretend. I thought it was pretend. Dude, like, okay, I'm going to be blunt. Sorry, guys, Nico Jones. They try to JFK him, bro. Like, that's what happened, dude. Like, look, they tried lawfare, okay?

They tried lawfare. They tried impeachment. They tried everything. His popularity just continues to rise. Okay? What is the next step? I mean, Tucker said this. It was assassination.

Now, could you prove any of this? Absolutely not. that's the whole point. But I mean, you don't have to find a smoking gun. Like, what the fuck is this? Like,

this is pretty crazy. And then when you ask the ladies, sloped roof and, like, their own people aren't a sloped roof. Like, that's, that's a joke.

That's insane. 20 year old, 20 year old kid, unimpeded, brings a ladder. Like, clearly visible. Like,

it's, I'm just, I'm in awe because, like, your brain tells you, it couldn't, be this blatant, but you look at all of this stuff and you're like, I mean, come on.

How do you, I mean, I guess they're no stranger to gaslighting and just saying, you know, telling you, you know, something completely different as you're looking at the very thing that they're trying to disprove. So I just, I'm flabbergasted by it. And I don't even. even know what to say. I mean, bro, look, I think in the 60s, like when they did this to JFK, and by the way, it's RFK too.

RFK was also running for president. By the way, he, okay, check this out. I didn't include this in. They tried to, when they prosecuted Trump and they found him guilty, they tried to take away his secret service. You know who also doesn't have secret service? RFK, whose uncle was murdered, right? Which is JFK.

Okay, the difference, though, between then and now, and this is something that we've been talking a lot about on Simply Sessions, which is the whole idea of the disintermediation of information, which is like, now that you have social media, you have mass scale peer-to-peer communication, back in the 60s, they would have been able to get away with these headlines. Yeah. Because they had complete control of the media and the narrative. Now, like, when you have social media, people are like sharing the video and the Pac-Met. Like, this isn't media that did that, even though media should do this work, this was just someone doing research on their own, you know? And it just becomes incredibly apparent. Like, guys, what the fuck is going on? You know?

But if we lived in that previous time, or frankly, if Elon didn't buy Twitter, they would have pulled all this stuff down, which is crazy to think, you know? Yeah, well, it was literally what we saw 20. 2020 to 2022, we saw that exactly. Any refutation of what what the media outlets wanted was removed or flagged or throttled or whatever it was. And so, yeah, I mean, it was it was that close to basically being the same. Like you would have to a degree, you would have had, it would have been difficult to fully stamp it out because the internet is the internet. But it would be, relegated to, you know, the odd post that people would share around until it got flagged and taken down. And then it would be like, oh, the fringe websites are saying that there was an assassination

attempt. But, you know, there's no proof of that whatsoever kind of thing. 100%. Like, dude, like, the fact that Twitter is a thing and it's the most popular news platform right now at the moment, it just completely has changed the conversation. Because all of a sudden, All of this is acceptable. And now all of a sudden, like, the official narrative is, like, it's, it's like, forgive my words. Like, it's, it's ludicrous. It's insane.

Like, no one believes that. Yeah. You know. So anyways, bro. Okay. So that's the, that's what happened over the weekend. Anyways, bullet missed, bullish Bitcoin president, Bitcoin president, Bitcoin R&C. If the Democrats get wrecked during the election, really positive because that's going to force

them to change their stance. And then it becomes a bipartisan issue the way it should be. Bitcoin should not be a partisan issue because it's not. Anyways, moving on. Larry Fink, the Fink Pump in the beginning of the week. He went on legacy media. And once again, dude, like he's just talking Satoshi's talk. I mean, this is about a two-minute clip.

And this is what he was saying on Monday. Now, I know you have been a leader in willing to embrace crypto. You have made it so that people can be in Bitcoin. We hear that you are thinking about Ethereum. These are incredible things. Now, BlackRock is not known as a gun slayer by any means. So you obviously must believe that this may be as an alternative. Is this an alternative in order to be able because of a deficit?

Maybe something long term people should have? Absolutely. As you know, I was a skeptic. Yes. I was a proud skeptic. And I studied it, learned about it, and I came away saying, okay, you know, my opinion, five years was wrong, here's my opinion, say this is what I believe in today, I believe the opportunity today. I believe Bitcoin is legitimate.

I'm not trying to say there's not misuses, like everything else, but it is a legitimate financial instrument that allows you to have maybe uncorrelated, non-correlated type of returns. I believe it is an instrument that you invest in when you're more frightened, though. It is an instrument when you believe that countries are debasing their currency, debasing their currency by excess deficits, and some countries are. I believe we have countries where you're frightened of your everyday existence and have you an opportunity to invest in something that is outside your country's control. Then you can have more financial control. And so I'm a major believer that there is a role for Bitcoin in portfolios. I believe you're going to see that as one of the asset classes that we all.

I look at. I look at it as digital gold, as I said before, and I do believe there's a, there's a real need for everyone to look at it as one alternative to, I would say, the optimism that I have in the world. If you want to hedge hope, Bitcoin is not an instrument for hope, unless you're hopeful you're going to make a lot of money on it. But I look at it as a vehicle in which you're expressing your financial acumen in something that you're more frightened of the world, you're more frightened of your existence. And I believe there's a great industrial use for it. And I think a lot of people are missing that. I couldn't agree more.

I changed my mind about what you did. You would have been in my thinking. It was like, uh-uh, you unbelieve it. So I can't believe. I want to thank Larry Fink for the message of optimism. Thanks. And also for a great quarter, Larry Fink is the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Black Rock.

I think the most important investment company in the world. Thanks, guys. Carl. So, I mean, like, Bitcoin is hope from Larry Fink himself. How fucking crazy is that? Your saddest thing about this part is that Jim Kramer said something positive about Bitcoin, which means that we got to dump now. Oh shit, fuck.

The first frame or indicator is real. It's over. It's all done. I was going to be a bull run. Back it up. But yeah, man, it's pretty, pretty crazy to say the least. But yeah, I mean, dude, digital gold changes mine. And you're starting to see a trend, right?

Larry Fink, Donald Trump. The next one I'm going to read is Mark Cuban. Like, I forget who else we were talking about earlier on the show, but you're seeing a trend from various people and they're all kind of bending the knee. Here is Mark Cuban's kind of take on, again, Trump and why Silicon Valley changed their opinion on him. And again, I can't emphasize this enough. Like Silicon Valley historically has leaned ideologically left and they've supported kind of more left-wing politics and the Democrats. But what happened?

What made them change tune? Mark Cuban says it here. They took an anti-Bitcoin stance, right? This is the game theory playing out, by the way, for anyone who is not aware of it at this point. Game theory in the Trump sense, game theory on the Larry Fink sense. I don't know if we'll have time, but we'll try to get to the Jamie Diamond part. Jamie Diamond apparently is changing tune on Bitcoin. Why is all this happening?

Well, because of Bitcoin's incentives, because of Bitcoin's game theory, are all these people bending the knee. I think the only holdout, like, even when Bitcoin's at $10 million, like Peter Schiff is still going to be like, no, this is shit. But other than him, like, you know, you just see billionaire or very, very famous person, after famous person, eventually bend the knee to the king. Anyways, so here's Mark Cuban. He says, here's a contrary opinion on the emergence of Silicon Valley Supply.

for former President Trump, which, like all my opinions on here probably won't be popular. It's a Bitcoin play. Not because the former president is a far stronger proponent of crypto. That's nice, but doesn't really impact the price of crypto.

It makes it easier to operate a crypto business because of the inevitable and required changes at the SEC. What will drive the price of BTC is lower tax rates and tariffs, which if history is any guised, and it's not always, will be inflationary,

Combine that with global uncertainty as to the geopolitical role of the USA and the impact of the U.S. dollar is a reserve currency, and you can't align the stars any better for a BTC price acceleration. Now, what's really interesting about this, right? These two phrases right here, geopolitical uncertainty and the impact of the U.S. dollar, okay, the reason that the countries are moving away from the U.S. dollar is because they're printing it like crazy and they politicized it. Those two reasons. So it's like, it's like, oh, countries are moving away from it. You know what's responsible for that? The government. If the government didn't politicize it via the U.S. sanction policy, and if the government just didn't print like drunken sailors, then that wouldn't create an incentive for other countries to seek alternatives to the U.S. dollar in the first place.

Anyways, it goes on to say, how high can the price go way higher than you think? That's right. Mark Cuban, it went from this is useless to this is going to the moon. Remember, the market for BTC is global. The supply has a final limit of 21 billion BT. with unlimited fractionalization. Keep that in mind as you consider what happens if because of geopolitical insurgency and the decline of the dollar as the reserve currency, BTC becomes a safe haven globally,

which means that BTC could be what countries and all of us look to buy as a means to protect our savings. Crazy? It already happens in countries facing hyperinflation. And if things really go further than we can imagine today, and I'm not saying they will, just that it has a possibility, that the possibility is somewhat above zero,

then BTC becomes exactly what the maxis envision, a global currency. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Mark Cuban is a Bitcoin bull, you know? It's crazy, dude. Like, everyone eventually bows down to the king. It's hilarious because it wasn't that long ago that Mark Cuban was talking about bananas on the blockchain.

That was like a last cycle vibe where he's like, Bitcoin is useless. But for a supply chain, we could put like bananas on there. And he's like, no, no, no, totally wrong direction. Anyways, you know, credit where credits do. I would say that that is a fair stance to take. And it's not unreasonable. And yeah, I suppose that either Cuban is learning or he's just seeing the writing on the wall.

and it wants to align with the incoming administration. Absolutely. I think the incentives matter. Ben, I know that we're getting close to the top, but do we have time for another quick story. Let's do it. Let's diamond it up. Yes, you read my mind. All right. So check this out. When this news broke, I was not very happy about it.

So there's some rumblings, according to Fortune, and the article is hosted by Yahoo Finance, Donald Trump cozies up to Wall Street and eyes Jamie Diamond for Treasury Secretary. Now, the reason I don't like that is because I'm not going to play the entire thing, but let's just say that Jamie Diamond isn't really a fan. Care less about Bitcoin. I don't know why I said anything about it. I don't personally understand the value of something that has no actual value. Bitcoin hit a new high today.

I could care less what Bitcoin trades for. How it trades, why it trades? Who trades it? If you're stupid enough to buy it, you'll pay the price for it one day. So a tulip balls traded for $75,000 or something like that. So every day, you know, you have CNBC, nonstop Bitcoin. Who cares about Bitcoin? My daughter sent me an email saying, Dad, I own two Bitcoins. My formerly smart daughter.

But this is the last time I'm ever going to answer a question of Bitcoin because I really don't care. I didn't want to be the spokesman against Bitcoin. I don't really get that. That's the point, okay? And blockchain is real, it's technology, but Bitcoin is not the same as a fiat currency. I personally think that Bitcoin is worthless, but I don't want to be as both of it. I don't care. It makes no difference to me.

I think there's a good chance that when Bitcoin, when we get to that $20 million, Bitcoin. You guys get the point. Not a fan. And I'm like, okay, so if the Republican Party is going to take this very pro-Bitcoin stance, and they have Jamie Diamond as Janet Yellen 2.0, that's probably not a good thing. And then right, like, as soon as that news drop very shortly after this Forbes article came out, quote, he changed his tune. Trump reveals J.P. Morgan's CEO, sudden Bitcoin and crypto flip amid huge price surge.

So here's more information. Now it goes on to say, now is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and amidst fear, over the future of the U.S. dollar, former U.S. president and 2024 Republican White House race nominee Donald Trump has revealed J.P. Morgan's CEO Jamie Diamond, an arch-bitcoin and crypto skeptic, has all of a sudden changed his tune. It goes on to say, Jamie Diamond was, you know, in Trump's voice, Jamie Diamond was, you know, very negative, and now all of a sudden he's changed his tune a little bit. Now, why is he saying this? Well, it's very obvious. right if trump is taking donations from the bitcoin industry if the rnc has now made it a pro they've

made it part of their platform to have a pro bitcoin stance you can't have the treasury secretary uh being anti bitcoin anti stance so what is trump doing here he's basically again i'm getting ahead of the curve and saying hey jamie uh if you want that treasury secretary role, you're going to have to change your opinion, my friend. And that's exactly what this Forbes article is doing. That's what Trump is trying to set up. He's basically sending a message to the donor class, which is us now, by the way. It's very strange to say that. That hey, Jamie's cool now. You don't have to worry about him. That's the message that's being sent. And I think that's another example of the power of our movement. I can't emphasize that enough,

that you get the CEO of America's largest bank to bend the knee to the industry that he's been vocally shitting on for the last couple of years because you know who the Republicans big donor base is now and potential voter base? It's us, baby, right?

So, you know, it's very interesting how the game theory is playing out and, you know, it's awesome that Bitcoin stays winning like this. Yeah. You know, and hopefully it all goes to plan. the only thing that could foil it is on the eve of the election if Satashi comes back and doubles the supply of Bitcoin suddenly. It might happen. Who knows? Who knows? Jamie's probably fearing that right now. But don't worry. I'm sure he's got some people calming him down.

Oh, man. Dude, so it's Satashi. But yeah, we haven't won until there is a why are we bullish of Trump and Jamie Diamond. giving reasons as to why they're bullish. Anyways, guys, this was your Simply Sessions. Ben, I'll see you next week. Awesome. Good to see you, man. All right, everybody, stick around. We have the tech updates coming right around the corner.

Also, stick around because I'm about to give away some sats. So get those lightning wallets ready. We're going to be tossing a coin into the Bitcoin well, wishing well. But first, we'll give a shout out to our sponsors. We will be right back. In lending, instant self-custody, and no KYC, Hoddle-Hoddle is the place to be. You can sign up with just an email address,

and once you're there, you can start browsing offers immediately, whether you're looking to buy and sell, or whether you're looking to lend or borrow. You can check them out today at the links down below. Coin Lightning Wallet built with simplicity in mind. Spend and receive with ease, claim your own lightning address, shop your favorite gift cards,

and even earn rewards when you spend. Head over to speed.app to download the app on your mobile or desktop today and use the link down below to get 5,000 sats for free and have the chance to win even more. All right, we are back in and let's get you guys some sats. I hope you have those lightning wallets queued up and ready. So this is bitcoinwell.com. If you're not already there, I encourage you to check them out. but we're going to be tossing a coin in the well. If you're unfamiliar, Bitcoin, well, you get, you earn points as you sign up, buy and sell Bitcoin and refer your friends.

And as you accumulate points, you can use them to toss a coin in the well and win anywhere between 500 up to a million sats. And so you've got a lightning wallet that can redeem LN URL vouchers. All you're going to have to do is scan the screen when it comes up. So I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to take 500 points. I'm going to use that to toss a coin in the well. And I'm going to make this a little bit larger for people to be able to scan. 2100 sats for whoever snags it or snipes those sats first.

So if you're the lucky person to get them, then please do let me know in the chat or shoot me a tweet or tag me on Noster or wherever you may have gotten these. but best of luck to everyone that joins in and scans these sats. Only one person will get them. And that is all the time I am giving you there. We're going to jump back in. But yeah, let me know on the chat if you snagged those sats and make sure you check out Bitcoin well. There's a link for them down below.

But moving into the tech updates, Bitcoin Keeper version 1.2.10 companion desktop app. That is exciting. So introducing companion keeper desktop app, Mac only for now, Windows and Linux coming sometime soon. Now you can also connect with Trezor for your multi-key setups. Inherence planning documents updated. Use file transfer for all signers, useful for devices not supporting NFC or QR scanning. And there's some bug fixes and performance improvements. So if you're familiar, I just did a video on Keeper. I think, two or three weeks back. I did a full tutorial on using them

in a self-sovereign way. They also have like an assisted multi-sig inheritance type deal baked in as well. Super awesome wallet. Really like the way that they're doing backups on this. Encourage you to check them out. Moving on, OpenSats announced fifth wave

of Nostar grants. And so they have given some grants to NOSVelty, NPUB.Cash, Nostr with two T's. Nostra filter relay. Mostro, which is peer-to-peer Bitcoin Marketplace. Citrin, which is an Android-based relay and database. DVM-Dh-M-Dhsha.

Nostr-P-HP. Shopster. Nostrmo, which is a client that's available on Android, iOS, MacOS, Windows, Web, and Linux. And Captain's Log, which is note-taking. application. So, congrats to the Noster grants recipients. On to Crux. Crux, by the way, I've built one myself. I still have to play around with it, but basically you can use a variety of different types of hardware to build your own hardware signing device. And pretty cool. Lots of different

options and versatility there. But the latest update, they have BIP 85. as well as BBQR support, which is what the Colt Card Q utilizes for QR signing. And then various speed and security improvements. It's awesome to see that project continue to build. Now, this one, I'm pretty stoked about Zeus Wallet, version 0.8.5, and version 0.9.0 beta released. The beta is the one that I'm particularly excited about. So these versions are now available. Stable release for version 0.8.5 comes out with Bolt 12 offers BIP 353 lightning addresses

and embedded node performance enhancement. So Bolt 12 is the ability to have a static QR code or string of text that can be reused over and over again to receive lightning payments. So you don't have to create an invoice every single time. and a BIP 353 lightning address is simply a lightning address that connects to your reusable lightning code. And now here's the cool thing, Zeus, the beta that came out. You have new Olympus purchase channels in advance from their LSP service, but on top of that, they also have hardware wallet and external signer support as well as watch-only support

and batch channel opens and transactions. There's a new layout camera and other improvements, all kinds of goodies. But that hardware support is massive. I am super excited because Zeus now, you're getting lightning and lightning that's quite up to date in terms of a lot of the latest features. You're getting on-chain,

and you're also getting hardware in a single place. That's really cool. The one thing that I would love, love to see from Zeus is, well, a couple things, but I would love with the lightning channels to enable splicing, meaning that you just have to have a single channel. And if you send on chain to your channel, it will just close the old and open a new one with an aggregate of all the funds. So you don't have liquidity issues. You just have one awesome channel and that's all you have to deal with. I would also love to see some integration with a mix of perhaps swaps for liquids, so like a bolt's back end so that you could swap from liquid into lightning.

So you could at least accept liquid payments if you wanted to. And I would love to see some more support in and around potentially like multisig and stuff like this. This is like pie in the sky. I wish I may. I wish I might kind of stuff, but love what Zeus is doing. So anyways, super, super awesome. Keep it up, Zeus. Moving on, Mempool Accelerator is now live. So you can basically go onto mempool. Space. You can pick any transaction and you can bump it with a lightning transaction, pay to bump up the fee, which is awesome. So I have yet to actually try this out, but it's pretty damn cool that you can go and bump a stuck transaction with just a lightning payment. You don't have to go back to your wallet and RBF, you don't have to do any of that.

If you're stuck, you can just go here. That's pretty sweet. Bolt's client, liquid rebalancing triangle. This just kind of, it connects to C LN and LND nodes and allows for full. unattended channel rebalancing using bolts. That's pretty wild. So this interplay of lightning and liquid and on-chain is getting very interesting in that you can use all these different mechanisms to rebalance and swap and basically be receiving

whatever it is you want to receive by utilizing different networks to make it more convenient for a variety of people. Moving on, Phoenix Wallet, version 2.3.3 and version a server, version 0.3. Now support BIP 353 DNS addresses. And so what this means, this is again, lightning addresses for Phoenix, Android, iOS server can all send both to BIP 353 and LN URL addresses. This enables people, their offers as DNS TXT records on a domain. So you can basically host if you own a domain, like a domain name like BTCSessions.C. You can host your own DNS text record and then basically host a lightning address so I could have like tips at BTCSessions.cai and just host it there, which is super awesome. So nonetheless, really, really cool.

We'll move on. If you didn't see it in the live stream, at the Bitcoin Rodeo handle on X has posted the roast of me. So I got roasted by Adam O'Brien of Bitcoin Well, JP Sears, aka Awakened with JP, Nico from Simply Bitcoin, Bitcoin Brains, my good friend, childhood friend, Dave Hardman, who's also here on X, C-Funk, I believe.

Maybe they just didn't have her handle. And Colin Sullivan from Mint Green. Anyways, they had a good time roasting me. It was hilarious, too. I recommend you check it out. I did retweet it, so it should be my feed there. And then finally, tomorrow, make sure you tune in for Why Are We Bullish. We've got TC creator of Timechain Calendar.com.

We've got Alex Thorne, and we've got... Also artist, Asanoa, and I'm very excited to have them all. So that's going to be at 6 p.m. Eastern time right here on the channel, on Noster, on X, on all those good places. So with that, we're going to round it out. Thank you guys so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Again, if you have not already, please do like, subscribe, and share and get this out wherever you can. That is always a huge help.

Finally, I'll just say that if you are sorting through the tutorials on the channel and you need a little bit of extra handholding, then I've built a team of awesome educators over at Bitcoin Mentor.io, check them out. They're all so beautiful, aren't they? But you can head over to Bitcoin Mentor.i.O. And you can book yourself one-on-one sessions to learn about wallets, key management, hardware, multi-sig, running nodes, lightning, all that stuff. Or maybe you just want to migrate.

Maybe you're still sitting on a ledger and you need to move to a cold. We can show you how to do that and much, much more. So hit them up over at Bitcoin Mentor.io and they will get you sorted. No problem. With that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening where you may, wherever you may be. And I'll see you guys next time for your daily session. Hottle by Bitcoin.