BTC Sessions - Trump To Speak At Bitcoin Conference ep424

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Date: July 11th, 2024 Welcome to Simply Sessions! Today, we cover Trump speaking at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference, Metaplanet buying more Bitcoin, top U.S. hedge funds increasing Bitcoin exposure, Republicans prioritizing Bitcoin, and Jack Dorsey's first mining chip. Subscribe for the latest Bitcoin news and insights. 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: BTCSession10 & 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/

Yo, what's going on, everybody? Hope you're having a good week. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. And if you're wondering why I'm donning a tank top, it got hot here and not a common occurrence in Canada, but here we are. And yeah, it's nice in summary. I'm enjoying it, finally. But we have Nico waiting in the wings to give us the latest and greatest in everything, Bitcoin.

And I will be, of course, following up with all of your. tech updates and all of the exciting goings on. Of course, this is live. 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 fucking thing sucks.

If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share all those things super important getting this content at front of my 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'm pulling up timechain calendar.com and simultaneously I'm going to need to bring up the live chat. Everything you say in the live chat from here on in is there for the world to see for better or worse. Over at timechain calendar.com, we're sitting at $57,483 per coin.

I feel like we're playing yo-yo between people gobbling up the dip and the German government just being absolute ass hats, dumping sats in exchange for something they can print for free. But I digress. A single U.S. dollar will snaggy 1,740 sats in terms of fees, low. Single digits, nine sats per byte, next block, anytime six sats per byte, and in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.72 million have been mine. That's 93.92% of the total supply. We're going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors, and then we will be right back. It's on a mission to enable independence by being one of the easiest and quickest ways to purchase Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S.

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Check out my full tutorial on how to use them. And you can check out the links in the show notes down below and sign up today. Tom 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, block clock and much more. If you head over 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 in and we're going to bring in our lovely co-host. Yo, buddy, why are you so small? There we go.

We fixed that. How's it going, man? Good, bro. Rocking the tank top two, representing. You got consistently better weather than I do. So I feel like that's a staple for you. Yeah, I wear this. I wear this pretty often. It's very comfy. It's very comfy. It's the way to do. But I saw you with a tank top earlier in the show and I can't be out Miami'd by the Canadian. So I pulled it out.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you were just here and we were doing a hike and it was like cold in the morning. And I recall you going these crazy Canadian children in T-shirt running through this like mountain canyon. It's pretty crazy. Like you guys have Disney-fied the great outdoors. You know, there's like, you know, there's a beautiful trail. And then there's little children on it. And then what was really crazy is I saw like a one-year-old that was like learning to walk on a mountain, which was nuts. But I felt really proud at one point because I did take off my sweater. And I was in my long-sleeved shirt.

So I felt like I upgraded a little bit. bit in Canadianness. Yeah, you're on your way. I got you some maple syrup as well. That's going to help. That's for sure going to give you a tick or two up there. And you saw a bear. So I think that counts for something too. I did. I saw a bear on the side of the road. I have the Canadian maple syrup. The journey, it was quite a trek. I forget what was the name of that game where you like trek like the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail. I felt like it was like the airplane. I felt like it was like the airplane 21st century version of the Oregon Trail to come back. But I made it back. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad you're your home, save it sound with the fam. It was great having you

here. And hey, no sleep for us. We're just going to keep on rolling through it, man. So I guess let's just dive into it then. What's been going on? What's top of mind? HoneyBadger Media, don't stop. So Metaplanet, this is Japanese company, Japanese public company, continuing to follow in the footsteps of Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy. So now you really have like two other companies, Selmer Scientific, and this company called Metaplanet that is following in the footsteps of Michael Saylor, and they continue to build up their Bitcoin holding.

Now, it's nothing, obviously, compared to Michael Saylor's, like, stacking strategy. But obviously, the more companies do this and the more they start to benefit from number go up, it starts to become, like, this domino effect. And there's rumblings also that Michael Dell might be the next domino to fall. That would be massive. He's been kind of hinting it. Like, he's been talking about Bitcoin on Twitter for the last couple. of weeks. I would be very surprised if that just died, but it would be absolutely massive if

Dell Technologies followed in the footsteps of Michael Saylor. Now, here's the thing. Dell's a much bigger, bigger company, number one. Number two, Michael Dell's like worth 15 billion with a B versus Michael Saylor is worth like a couple billion, right? So like there's levels to billionaires, right and uh michael dell just he has a massive massive bag slash stack right anyways so here's the news that come out oh by the way not to mention i'll i'll show this actually when i when i show the website so meta planet boosts bitcoin stack to 203 bitcoin japanese public company metaplanet has made another significant investment in bitcoin purchasing an additional 400 yuan 400 000 000 worth of the cryptocurrency This move has increased their total holdings to 203 BTC acquired at an average price of 10 million yuan per Bitcoin.

The company's strategy of investing in Bitcoin has been linked to that of micro strategy. This investment comes amid a broader trend of institutional interest in cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, as a hedge against economic uncertainty. So it's pretty bullish. Now, if you take a look at this company, first of all, first observation is it looks a little shit coining the website, but they do emphasize Bitcoin. So I'll give them credit for that. So Metaplanet, secure with Bitcoin. What is Metaplanet?

I know a lot of people are like asking that like what the fuck is Metaplanet? We'll talk about that. So it's a publicly traded company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. And they're planning to utilize excess cash flow and implement a creative corporate governance, including financial management strategies such as debt and equity financing to further its Bitcoin accumulation. The strategic pivot is driven by Bitcoin's unique attributes, including its absolute scarcity and apolitical monetary policy.

Metaplanet boasts over a decade of diversified business engagement. With deep roots in Japan, our dynamic team compromises seasoned professionals with expertise in finance, trading, real estate, and Bitcoin. in response to the pandemic-induced investment landscape, Metaplanet comprehensively restructured its diverse assets and businesses paving the way for a strategic pivot towards a Bitcoin-centric vision. So if we kind of scroll down a little bit and you check out the team, you know, a lot of these people, I'm sure they're, you know, very, very accomplished and respected.

But take a look at the bottom. You have Mark Ustco, right? He had that like kind of Bitcoin, investment thing with Anthony Pompeiano and then take a look at the right we have we have the young zoomer Dylan LeClair himself and his title is director of Bitcoin strategy so you know obviously you know this is this is kind of a big deal in terms of their investments I believe UTXO management is there UTXO management is list is linked with David David Bailey's company BTC Inc so yeah I mean this is this is a big deal i hope you know i hope this continues this trend continues uh you know

more companies holding bitcoin the better so uh you know this is awesome pretty cool yeah yeah i mean it's uh i i think it's inevitable that more and more companies go down this path um i uh yeah i i just kind of wonder who we're going to see next i i feel like that the del thing is more you know, if it comes to fruition, I think that's more of like a unique, it's like somebody came to Bitcoin on their own. This, I'm wondering what happened in the background. It seems like there's definitely involvement on behalf of like BDC Inc. And, you know, there's some, some fingers in that cookie jar. But I wonder who came to who or I wonder if Metaplanet was like, looking at Sailor's Playbook beforehand and then went to somebody, I'd be curious to learn

kind of how they arrived at where they're at now. For sure. That's a good point. It seems like, you know, Bitcoin Mag and Dylan obviously had something to do with it. They definitely, you know, pointed them in the right direction. But I think that the company, being a public company, like, I think that they have to take it upon themselves a little bit to, you know, all kind of vote and agree that they are taking this Bitcoin strategy. So that's bullish. Obviously, Metaplanet is now has the cheat code, as Peter McCormack calls it. And, you know, any company that doesn't adopt any type of Bitcoin strategy is at a competitive

disadvantage. I saw someone in the chat talk about Michael Saylor's stock split. So I feel like I would figure, you know, let's pivot talking about that. So yeah, micro strategy to split stock 10 to 1 after share price triples in a year on Bitcoin rally. So it goes on to say NASDAQ listed software for a micro strategy, the largest corporate holder of BTC, announced a 10-for-1 stock split on Thursday. The split will be effective on August 1st, and shares will be distributed after the August 7th market close. The company set in a press release. Holders of Class A and Class B common shares will receive nine additional shares for each share they own. The company said, that the split will make the company share more accessible to investors and employees.

The announcement comes after Micro Strategy's share price more than tripled over the past year, hitting an all-time record of $1,900 in March as BTC rallied past $70,000. The shares rose 6.8% to $1,300 today. Micro Strategy led by executive chairman and widely followed Bitcoin proponent Michael Saylor is often viewed as a leverage play on the price of Bitcoin. The company regularly issues corporate debt to raise funds to buy more Bitcoin for its treasury. After its latest purchase last month, the company held $226,000 Bitcoin worth over $13 billion. So I got a couple like kind of observations on this.

Like one of the reasons as to why I see a lot of people not like they're not so much interested in Bitcoin the way that they were. during the 2017 rally is because of the unit bias, right? I think unit bias plays a huge role in people's perception of Bitcoin. And, you know, but you can't do a stock split. I mean, if you understand Bitcoin and you understand that you can buy bits and you know, you understand that you can buy Satoshis, that's great. But everyone prices it in one Bitcoin terms, right? Yeah. So, you know, they're going to split this stock and all of a sudden, you know, it doesn't cost you $1,300 to buy one share of micro strategy. It costs you a couple hundred dollars or whatnot or $100.

I don't know what it is. But it's significantly less. And all of a sudden you feel like, oh, I can buy 10 shares of micro strategy, right? Even though like the things don't, like the pie doesn't change. The pie has just been cut more, right? So like the size of the peaks that stays the same. But instead of it being cut, you know, like one line down the center and one line line down the middle. It's like cut, you know, in a bunch of different kind of directions,

even though the pie stays the same. But human psychology, bro, people really, like, they just believe. They're like, okay, cool, I can get more pizza. It's like, no, you can't. You can get more slices of the same size. I don't know, bro. It's, it's, it's smart. It's smart by sailing. You know what we should do is we should just, like Bitcoin should announce that we've done a stock split by a hundred million. And now we have these magical new bitcoins that are that are much smaller. And what would have cost you, you know, $58,000 for one, it's now $58,000 for a hundred million of these things. So true, man. It's, it's, it's, we should talk to yellow so he can announce it publicly since he's the Bitcoin CEO. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. He, he, he, he

needs to be informed. I'm sure he'll be on board, though. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, we got to talk to the Bitcoin board about this decision. Yeah, we'll do it. Anyways, in other news, this has kind of been like a saga, and I'll kind of connect this with the Germany stuff. Germany continues to sell more Bitcoin. And of course, you know, you have Mount Cox. Mount Cox, you know, if you were around, I wasn't around back then, but it's the OG, the original Bitcoin exchange. They got hacked. A lot of people got absolutely wrecked. And a 10-year long wait, and some users are going to get some of their money back.

And on top of that, too, like, you know, at that point, Bitcoin didn't fork back then, and it's forked since then. So you actually might get all these forks of Bitcoin, which were quite popular back in 2017. I think Bitcoin Cash is worth something, right? It's a 10% now. Right. So, like, I know it's on a downward trend, but it's still, for some, whatever reason, people are still buying Bitcoin cash, you can sell some of that.

So if you're around since Mount Cox, you know, it looks like you're seeing light at the end of the tunnel. In other news, it's another trend. And I see that's happening. First, it happened with Arthur Hayes of kind of bitmex. Then it happened with Binance. Then it happened with like just countless examples of exchanges, changing their policy, or pulling out of the United States altogether. But it seems like it's always relates to AML. It always relates to money laundering. It always relates to KYC. So here's, Axel co-founder Arthur Schabach pleads guilty to conspiracy to fail to maintain an effective AML program. This is very similar to what CZ pled guilty to.

This is very similar to what Arthur Hayes pled guilty to as well. It goes on to say, according to court documents from July 2015 to June 2019, Arthur Shaback used Paxville to operate Paxville and online peer-to-peer virtual currency platform and money transmitting. business where customers negotiated for and traded virtual currency for a variety of other items, including fiat currency prepaid cards and gift cards. During this time, Shabak allowed customers to open accounts and trade on Paxville without gathering sufficient KYC information. Marketed Paxville as a platform that did not require KYC, presented fake AML policies to third parties that he knew were not in fact implemented or enforced at Paxville, and failed to file a single suspicious activity report, despite knowing that Paxville users were perpetrating suspicious

and criminal activity. Shabak pleaded guilty to conspiracy to willfully, fail to establish, develop, implement, and maintain an effective AML program as required by the Bank Secrecy Act, right? Shabak faces up to five years in prison and other news here. Bitmex pleads guilty to Bank Secrecy. You hear it again. There it is again. Bank Secrecy Act offense.

At Bitmex founders and longtime employee admitted in federal court in 2022, the company, one of the leading cryptocurrency derivatives platforms in the world from 2015 to 2020, operated in the United States without any meaningful AML program as required by federal law. Bitmex opened itself up as a vehicle for large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion schemes, posing a serious threat to the integrity of the financial system. Today's guilty plea indicates, again, the need for the need for, cryptocurrency companies to comply with U.S. law. The BSA charge is old news. This is the same charge brought in 2020 against our founders relating to Bitmex operations up to September 2020. Our founders accepted this and were sentenced back in 2022. Bitmex has long since fully

remediated its operations. There is nothing new in this charge. We accepted the BSA charge. We will seek an expedited sentence hearing and argue that no further fine should be imposed, given the substantial amounts already paid by our founders under the BSA charges brought against them under our no admission slash no denial settlements with the CFTC and FinC in 2021. The company added. So I mean, what I got to say about this, bro, is rules for thee, but not for me. The banks, when they, because the banks are the biggest proponents of money laundering and all these, you know, regulations that are supposedly broken, they get fines.

They get slap on the risks. But when it's anything outside of the existing system, there's criminal charges. So why is that? I think it has to do with making an example saying, listen, you can't escape, you know, U.S. sanction policy, and you can't escape this KYC AML laws. In my opinion, U.S. sanction policy and the way that Bitcoin works as an open monetary network is not compatible whatsoever. I think the two do not mix and match.

I think that's an illusion. But it's not going to stop them from trying to enforce this on centralized platforms. That's why I'm so bullish on peer-to-peer exchanges. I mean, I don't want to associate the two, but there's people that are having these markets where you can have peer-to-peer exchange for goods and services, And is that against AML K-YS? Do you really need to know someone's name in order to exchange a good?

If they're providing value to you, if they're doing work for you, do you really need to know their name in order for that to happen? I don't think so. But under the existing system and the way the taxation works, you do need to know their name. You do need to have a paper trail. Because if you don't know their name, if you don't have that paper trail, then taxation becomes much less effective.

And I think that's what it fundamentally boils down to. I don't think it has to do with effective AML program because they just find the banks a shitload of money for that. There's no criminal charges. I think this has to do with the fact that, you know, people could potentially circumvent taxation. And I think that puts governments in a bind, right? It reminds me of the quote from the sovereign individual where governments see citizens as their tax cattle, but now with information technologies, the tax cattle now have wings, right? And I think that this is their attempt at shooting down the cattle with wings. So anyways, that's my take.

Yeah, man. Again, all of this, you know, a lot of these AML KYC laws came about, especially like the, AML $10,000 limit that came about at a time when the purchasing power of $10,000 was far higher. Like, you know, you're looking, that's like a significant chunk of buying a house back when, back when it happened. Now it's like, it won't even buy you a crappy new car. And so like, you know, they set these, these fiat benchmarks of where this is going to apply, but then they're not updated into the future. And so, you know, what happens, when $10,000 is your grocery bill, you know, every time you go and stock up the house.

Well, you're going to need AML, KYC. Every bit of identification has to go through. Every agency that does it has to, you know, like it just becomes so onerous, but they build so many systems to make it seem convenient that, you know, you're just in this pen opticon. and it doesn't get easier and easier. And you're right, Bitcoin is incompatible with that. The only reason that these entities are able to be clamped down upon

is because they are indeed centralized. And so, you know, somebody can point a finger and say, get them. But as Bitcoin becomes a true peer-to-peer phenomenon where you can just, I mean, we had the sat market here. And that's just people transacting. It's people going to each other and buying eggs or, you know, getting goods and services or whatever it is. And, you know, reaching that point and building systems that allow us to scale and do that, that cannot be easily shut down, then that's how we went, in my opinion. I think that we're heading there.

I think that it's not perfect yet, but it's already possible with what we have and it will only get back. better from here on end. So looking for it. 100%. 100%. I think that like they based the entire system on basically intermediaries, like hoping that intermediaries were always going to exist. But this is peer to peer technology.

Like, you know, now you don't have a handful of intermediaries, which could act as, you know, an arm of law enforcement. Now you have individuals communicating peer to peer. And now when individuals are the ones communicating and transacting peer to peer, good luck trying to convince them to, you know, enforce your laws upon that. Like, like, it's like, like, you're trying to tell me that, like, I can't use a lightning wallet and pay for someone for something at a store. And I, like, you know, like, are you trying to tell me that's somehow dangerous? So yeah, I mean, it is a big shift for governments and, you know, they're going to have to adapt. And I think it's going to expose

incentives in the process. I think a lot of people are going to be, is this really about AML KYC or is this really about controlling money flows? You know, Bitcoin has a funny way of exposing incentives like that. Anyways, in other news, Jack Dorsey, one of the things that he was working on in the background was his hardware wallet, which I heard from a lot of people is pretty good. I think it's the two of three. I forget what the name has been. What's the name of his wallet? That one is called the, oh, God, now why am I forgetting it? But it's like the little, it's the little stone thing, a stone looking rock thing. It's called the big key.

Yeah, the big key. So, yeah, so he was working on the bit key, and he was also working on a new miner, which is great. Why is it great? because the vast majority of Bitcoin manufacturers are centralized in country that isn't necessarily friendly towards the industry. So it's awesome. I don't know where they're manufacturing this,

but it's great that it's a non, and again, it has nothing to do with Chinese companies. It's just like China hasn't necessarily been the friendliest towards Bitcoin. And also there's like a centralization component to it. So I like the fact that you have a, another American company, I believe Bitfury, if they still do it. But this is great that a non-Chinese company is manufacturing A-6. And again, nothing against China in particular is just centralization of anything is bad in Bitcoin.

So I think this is a positive. Here's the no BS Bitcoin article has a little bit more information. So it goes on to say Block to supply Core Scientific with 15 XAHs worth of its three nanometer ASIC. Block announced an agreement to supply Core Scientific with its three nanomino mining ASIC representing approximately 15 XA hashes. So it goes on to say, Core Scientific will become our first customer to leverage our ASIC and a unique mining solution. The choice of CoreScientific is intentional, as they are among the most predominant leaders in the

Bitcoin mining industry, managing one of the largest mining operations in North America. Our strategic agreement with Core Scientific is about more than just some. supply and demand. It's about exchanging expertise and collaboration. While supplying approximately 15 X-ahashes of our mining ASICs with an option for significant volume increases, the Proto team at Block also co-designed a modular platform alongside Epic blockchain technologies with input from core scientific. We are already actively developing the new system, which will be operational from the outset, using an older generation ASIC to verify the system design. The modular design flexibility will allow straightforward upgrades to our three nanomedia ASIC via

a swap-swappable hashboard. This ensures the system will easily adapt to newer generations of ASICs as they become available. So yeah, I mean, I would say the signal out of this because it sounds just like a product launch is just, you know, shout out to Jack Dorsey for his continued, you know, support of the Bitcoin industry. and this further decentralizedes mining, which I think is a good thing. Yeah.

I mean, for me, it, again, you're right, the decentralization piece of it, the fact that you've got another chip manufacturer out there, which there weren't many, to have another horse in the race is always good, and I hope we see more. Yeah.

I hope we see more, and Ben starts to do reviews. One of these days. Oh, man. So in kind of like, don't pay attention to what they say or say pay attention to what they do. This is crazy. I actually, I've seen, I think I've seen this before. Shout out to River for putting this together. But check this out. More than half of the top 25 hedge funds in the United States are now exposed to Bitcoin, which is crazy. So you have Citadel Investment Group. You have Millennium Management. You have Mariner Investment Group. You have Ball, You guys get the point. More than half of the top 25 hedge funds in the United States have major exposure to Bitcoin, which I think is a big effing deal. Ray Dalios is not included in that.

Not yet. I love how they put not yet. But the biggest one Citadel is a big yes. And it goes, you know, it goes down from there. Also, what's really interesting, too, is that this isn't ETFs. This looks like actual spot Bitcoin ETF, a spot Bitcoin. exposure, which I think is pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, this is huge, man.

Like, this is a big stamp of approval from, you know, institutional investors in the United States. Yeah. It's, it's only going to continue to grow too, right? Like, this is still, you know, when it launched, I'm trying to remember what month did the ETF officially get approved? January 10th, 2024, exactly 15 years after Hal Phineas running Bitcoin. I only know that because one of the panel had to do that at Bitcoin Rodeo. Right. Yeah, it's pretty wild to see. And so we're basically six and a half months into this whole thing.

And, you know, a lot of these companies, they take time to kind of make these decisions of, you know, where they're going to allocate and if they're going to change investment strategies and stuff. stuff like that. So I expect this list to be a lot more comprehensive by the time Christmas rolls around. Absolutely. 100%. All right. The big Kahuna news of today, I'm going to tie up two specific topics with this. But it seems like the, and I'm going to say in an inclusive way as much as possible, the Democrats, the political party in the United States, And also, this isn't just happening in the United States. I feel like it happened in Canada as well with Trudeau's party.

But they've taken kind of like this pro-C-BDC anti-Bitcoin stance. And when you take a stance like that, you create an opportunity for the opposing party, right? And they do that to get votes. Now, this isn't like an issue like abortion, which a lot of people feel divided about. Or, you know, one of those divisive issues where, like, literally there's like a 50-5. 50 split within the country, right? Like, you either are pro-Bitcoin or you just don't know enough about Bitcoin. Like, I don't think I've ever met someone that's out there saying, like, I love CBDCs,

F-B-Bitcoin, like, maybe government bureaucrats, but I don't see that as, like, a winning, like, issue. Like, whether you're a liberal, progressive, whatever it is, like, I just, like, we covered this on simply Bitcoin today. And, you know, one of the things that I said, and I had the progressive Bitcoiner guys listening to the episode, and they're like, thank you, Nico, for pointing this out. I said, like, do you have Democrat and progressive politicians

taking an anti-Bitcoin stance, but I don't think that's an accurate reflection to what their constituents want? I don't think that the vast majority of liberal or progressive voters are actually anti-Bitcoin. I would say a big portion of them are pro-Bitcoin. So I think that from a political perspective, you're creating an opportunity for the opposing political party. And also, you're not accurately representing your base, right?

And then that's something to highlight. Like, I think that you can go to the deepest blue city in the U.S. You can go to San Francisco and say, hey, man, are you anti-Bitcoin or pro-Bitcoin? And they're most likely will say, I love Bitcoin or I love Doge. I love like any type of the shit coin, crypto, whatever, they'll be like, yeah, this is dope. I don't, I don't, I doubt anyone there would be like, oh, I love CBDCs. Right. Like, you know, so like, I don't think that they're accurately reflecting what their base wants.

So that's something that first I want to emphasize that. Second point. Of course, the opposing political party, the Republican Party has capitalized on that. They've made it now part of their mission statement. Here's Katie Bieber. And she says, Republicans will end Democrats unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a central bank digital currency. We will defend the right to mine

and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their digital assets and transact free from government surveillance and control. They've officially made that part of their party platform. So they listed out a bunch of things that the Republicans would do if they are to win the election in November. And number five, it says exactly what I just said.

We will defend the right to mine, ensure every American has the right to self-custody and transact free from government surveillance and control. I don't care whether you're on the right or left. I think the vast majority of people agree with that statement. Like I don't see people saying, like, I want government surveillance and control. That sounds wonderful.

That sounds great, right? I think this is a huge losing issue for them. Tertamister actually wrote, like the way that he broke it down and that kind of leads me to my second part of this news is Donald Trump was announced to speak at the Bitcoin 2024 conference. This is massive speaking about moving the Overton window. This is the first time a presidential candidate and an ex-president is speaking at a Bitcoin conference. He's not doing this out of the goodness of his heart.

He's doing this because he truly believes that this can win him votes. That is literally the only reason he's doing this. But as Tertamister pointed out, an intolerant minority of 10 to 50 million American Bitcoiners will only ever vote for the pro-Bitcoin candidate. Trump about to capture the swing vote via Orange Man plus Orange Coin, Democrats could only play catch-up 2024 is turning into a Bitcoin election, right? And that's so true. I don't think it has anything.

Like the 10 to 50 million American Bitcoiners, I don't think they give a false. flying fuck about all the other political issues. I don't think they care. I think they're just like, dude, like, you're locking us up in jail and the orange man is like, I'll protect self-custody, I'll protect mine to row. Like, that's all they're thinking about. Yeah. So I think that this is a massive drop ball from the Democratic side. I think that by 2028, they're not going to have a choice, but for both parties to be pro-bitcoin because of the percentage of the population that's holding Bitcoin itself. Also, shout out to Bitcoin Magazine for making this possible. I know they got RFK and Vivek and all these people last year, but the fact that they got a potential president,

an ex-president, is kind of a big deal. And I think it's also a testament to the power and the momentum of our movement. And I can't emphasize that enough. Donald Trump would not be speaking at the Bitcoin conference if he didn't feel that it would get him a significant amount of votes. And that is absolutely massive just in itself. Yeah. The interesting part about this is you, the, what ends up happening, whatever ends up happening in terms of the support that he gets from this and the effects that it has on the election, you've got to imagine that politicians the world over are a little curious about how this swings things. And I think as, as, as,

Bitcoins, again, I recognize there's a lot of bitcoins that are very, very non-political, but there's also a bunch of bitcoins that believe in getting involved in government and helping change, helping shift that Overton window and attacking it from a friendly regulatory side to lessen the damage and biased time. And so I kind of see this as the world's going to be looking at it. They're going to be saying, huh, well, he got a lot of support or a lot of votes or a lot of donations or whatever it may be. He got a lot of funding by taking this stance. Maybe it's in our best interest so that we don't bungle the next election to appeal to the same group of people. And I'm curious to see what that looks like in Canada because we're going to have an election here next year.

And, you know, Pollyev, he has previously spoken about Bitcoin, been very favorable to it. Obviously, he kind of, you know, stopped publicly saying a lot about it, given that it was just fodder for the liberals to toss at him. when the price happened to be down. Now anything that they would have to say would come with if you had listened to him when he first started talking about Bitcoin, you'd be up a whole bunch. So that's not quite the ammo that they used to have. But I've got to wonder if he's looking at this going,

hmm, that seems to be helping. And politicians the world over. I wonder if they're looking going. And the thing is, as Bitcoin continues to grow in terms of just purchasing power, that gives a lot more pull to Bitcoiners to influence stuff in where they live and they're part of the world.

And that includes politically. So we'll see how this all plays out. It's super interesting to watch regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum because it's such a large plow. I mean, it's basically the, the largest platform that you could possibly imagine for visibility because it's the U.S. presidential election and it's now an issue, which is wild to see.

Had you told me this the beginning of the last cycle, I would have said you were crazy. Yeah, 100%. I could never have imagined this. I mean, you saw our reactions doing simply sessions over these last couple of months. Like we were just like, oh, it's Ron DeSantis. Oh, it's RFK Jr. Oh shit. It's Donald Trump.

And then, you know, like, it just got progressively, you know. But again, like, I can't emphasize enough. This is my final thought because I know we're out. We're at time. Like, Democrats created this. Like, they single-handedly created this opportunity for the Orange Man and the Republican Party. This would, this should not be a partisan issue at all. because Bitcoin is in itself,

it's not even bipartisan. It's just, it's a neutral. It's a freaking technology, bro. You know, it's not meant to be political. They made it political. And then that created an opportunity for the other side to capitalize on it. And I'll tell, I'll say this.

And I want to be inclusive and I understand some people just hate the orange man because he's divisive. And they just, they don't like Republicans or whatever. I hope the Democrats lose this November because that's going to force the Democratic Party to look inward and say, you know what, we just can't take an anti-Bitcoin stance.

And when they do that, it takes the issue off the table completely. Because whatever side you decide to vote for, they're going to be pro-Bitcoin because they don't have a choice. So I hope they lose. And they deserve it. They've locked us in. They've locked the Bitcoin privacy developers in jail. they've proposed the mining tax

they've operation choke point two 2.0 like the list goes on bro okay so I hope they lose as a bitcoiner I could care less about the other politics anyways guys this was your simply sessions and see you guys later all right cheers man wait I've got one question for you

okay do you are gonna get to need a yes or no from you does Trump drop an ordinal collection in the bleach? Yes, he does probably. I think he already has. We have best ordinals.

We're going to win so big. NFTs. Oh, no. It's amazing. Quite like me. Oh, God. And everyone's going to buy it. People are saying the blonde streak.

Yes, the blonde streak will be back in Christmas. All right, everybody. See you guys later. Peace out, everybody. Cheers. Awesome. And everybody stick around because we are going to be doing a giveaway. Actually, you know what? Stick around because we're going to do it right now. We're going to do it right now and then we'll get to the tech updates. So really quick here, I'm pulling up my screen. You've got to get your lightning wall. It's ready, my friends. We've been doing this the last few episodes. This is the Bitcoin Well, the Bitcoin Well, if you will. And this is on Bitcoinwell.com. If you sign up there, you will get this too. And you will get this too. And you'll. you earn points for doing things like signing up or buying Bitcoin or referring friends. And for 500 points, you can throw a coin into the wishing well and win anywhere from 500

sats to a million sats potentially. So what we're going to do here is we're going to throw a coin in the wishing well, have those lightning wallets ready, hit receive, scan the QR code, and you can claim whatever comes up here. So I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to redeem 500 points. throw a coin in the well. I'm going to make it large so that you guys have a second to redeem your 500 sats. So have them ready.

I'm going to give this about 10 seconds here for you guys to scan. And if you need to scrub back through the video, you can do so. But if you do, if you do snag the sats, then of course, please do let me know either in the comment section right now or give it a tweet or wherever you happen to be watching. Let me know. And congrats on whoever ends up claiming those sets. And with that, we will be back in just a moment for the tech updates. We're just going to give a quick shout out to today's sponsor. So we'll be back in just a moment.

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So William Hill, co-founder and developer of Samurai Wallet, made his first public court appearance in the U.S. Department of Justice case against Samarite Wallet developers. Prosecution said that Hill had been arraigned the day before on July 9th and that it had seized 27 electronic devices from Hill in Portugal. It also stated that it will produce discovery for Hill once FBI has extracted and reviewed the information in those devices and that they already produced discovery for Keone Rodriguez. Hill will be released on bail on a $3 million bond. His bail conditions allow him to live in Lisbon, Portugal as the case proceeds, but he will need to return to New York when required to appear in court. He will also be required to wear an ankle bracelet while living in Portugal, which will be monitored by the FBI wild.

And then just to cap it off, the case will proceed on September 10th, rescheduled from September 4th. So, yeah, I mean, again, this is what Nigo was talking about, the clamping down on privacy and development and all of this by the existing administration is not something to take lightly and sets a scary precedent, absolutely. Moving on here, X and Coinbase users' data potentially exposed as KYC provider, AU10 TICs left admin credentials open. for 18 months. Holy Lord. Okay. So it's an Israel-based ID verification and compliance platform hired to verify users' identities at X. And last September left a set of administrative credentials exposed for over 18 months, according to cybersecurity researches at Spider-Silk, who broke the story to 404 Media. The admin credentials provided access to a logging platform

containing links to identify documents, including usernames and dates of birth, nationalities, ID numbers, and images of uploaded documents. The leak occurred in December of 2022, and it's believed that malware accessed the admin account. The account details have been shared in Telegram hacker communities since March 2023. Again, this is just, I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but this is just more proof that KYC is the illicit accent. when you can avoid it. And unfortunately, the follow-up to this is that relay, relay, I'm not sure how to say it.

Anyways, in the Swiss-based company, users must verify accounts by October 31st or stop using the service, a Swiss-based app for buying Bitcoin directly to self-custody. All users must verify. So, quote, starting now, all unverified relay users must complete a quick verification. process by the 31st of October. As of that date, only verified users can use the platform. Unverified users will need to complete the verification step to access all app features, including buy orders and wallet functions.

However, you can always retrieve your 12-word backup phrase and your Bitcoin will remain safely in your self-custody. Explain the service in a blog post. Again, an important benefit to this change is there our ability to fast-track the implementation of the new European Iban and Instant SEPA for all European users. I mean, wonderful, but that's unfortunate too. And then they said, we tried our best, but if we want to stay in business, this is the only way. And again, this is, I feel bad because I feel like they were trying to do, trying to do the right thing. And they were trying to fight against this.

But again, the reality is, depending on where you are and who you're, you're, you're serving as customers, you're just kind of hooped if you get stuck in this, it's either shut down or comply is kind of where it's at right now. And for users, what I would say is if this is the straw that breaks the camels back, then it's time to look at peer-to-peer options that don't require this. So there you go. That's unfortunate. You can maybe sort through some of my tutorials and find something. Moving on, Nunchuk, mobile, and desktop replace assisted multi-sig keys. So this is, I've done tons of videos on Nunchuk, but it's a wallet. Multisig wallet, premium features, inheritance planning, scheduled transactions, all those

types of awesome things that they're known for. They now support the ability to replace keys and an assisted multi-sig wallet and roll the funds over. Other improvements include health check history and the ability to show a transaction as an invoice and save as a PDF, which is awesome. So kudos to the Nunchuk team for continuing to pump out updates. Another cool one fully noted. And the main thing I just wanted to point out here that they have updated and implemented BBQR support, which is the QR standard that the cold card Q uses. And it's more efficient than typical previous standards that have been used.

And yeah, pretty awesome to see. So congrats fully noted. Moving on, we just did our Bitcoin Well wishing well. But Bitcoin Well users, awesome features soon to come. Here's Adam O'Brien from Bitcoin Wall tweeting out of a video here. Maybe I'll just make it a little bit larger. But what he's showing is the ability to basically pay any, any, what am I trying to say here, the ability to pay any bill with a lightning transaction just natively there.

Again, you type in the amount with a pre-set-up bill that you're trying to pay. It will give you a lightning invoice. You can copy it and paste it into any lightning wallet that you see fit. That's awesome. Stoked for that to drop. I live on Bitcoin. And so that will be super convenient for me. Moving on, Mutiny Wallet.

So there was some trouble with Fetamins earlier on. There was a DNS attack. that was happening, any server that was hosting stuff on a dot XYZ server, there were issues. And so at times, users couldn't access funds. Anyways, update from Mutiny Wall, a small hot fix has been deployed, restoring connectivity to all known Federation Guardians with this issue. A longer term fix is in progress and will probably be in the next major Fetiment release. So this, while you can look at it and say, well, that sucks.

you know, that's, it points out some of the centralization. And yes, a mint is much more centralized than full self-custody, less centralized than trusting a single entity with your coins, and could be useful in community uses. And I still think it's quite useful. But what I like that I'm seeing here is that the attacks have begun and systems are being built out in a more resilient way, to mitigate these attacks. So that's awesome. And yeah, I look forward to seeing that update come down the pipeline. Also in the realm of Lightning Wallets, Phoenix Wallet,

which recently added support for Bolt 12, has now added support for something called BIP 353. So what are these two things? Well, Bolt 12 just allows you to have a static lightning address that can be reused over and over and over again without having to create invoices. And BIP 353 is using that same code and being able to create a lightning address

that corresponds with your reusable payment code. So I created one today. Basically, if you want to do it, you just go into your Phoenix wallet, go into settings and then experimental features, and then it will say claim lightning address and or claim, I can't remember exactly,

BIP 353 DNS address. Anyways, once you do that, it'll give you an address. You can share that. Side note, bolt 12 is different than Bolt 11. So that's the standard that a lot of Lightning Wallets are using right now. So that is not cross-compatible. You've got to wait for other wallets to begin picking it up, which strike is working on that.

And I believe some others are as well. And so anyways, you can, between Phoenix users and soon plenty of other wallet users use bolt 12 lightning addresses as well. So be sure to check that out if you're a Phoenix user. Moving on tomorrow, there's going to be a Bitcoin mentor space, which I'm looking forward to. That is at 1 p.m. my time, which is mountain time. So 3 p.m. Eastern time.

And that is with the Orange Pill app folks, which are great. So if you want to join in the conversation, make sure you give that a listen to more. I'm going to try and pop in and have a convo as well. Art is an awesome dude. He helped me out with the sat market here in Calgary, and he has put together a free and open source software Bitcoin Table Topics app. So you can generate questions to ask others and basically kind of help with your Bitcoin conversational skills and orange pilling, so on and so forth. So check that out if you can.

Okay. The Bitcoin Bugle, if you're unfamiliar, is just like a satirical website and handle that you can follow. But they put together this, I believe, AI-generated music video called The Princess and the Podcaster. And it's hilarious. It's super funny. You should probably check it out. Obviously, it's not. I think some people thought it was serious.

Clearly, it's not. But you should give it a listen and follow at Bitcoin underscore Bugle over on X. They are doing the Lord's work. Finally, I did drop a new tutorial earlier today, actually. This is on the cold card queue using it as a password manager, which is actually pretty cool. I quite like it. So what you can do, you can manually input existing passwords that you have and usernames and all that. You can also randomly generate new passwords within the cold card.

You can also create new passwords that are utilizing BIP 85. And what that means is it's not linked just to the device. It's linked to your seed phrase. So if you were to destroy the device, then you could simply just restore your seed phrase on another cold card and then regenerate all of your passwords through BIP 85. which is super powerful. And it's also kind of cool how you can export them. You can export them via QR code so you can scan on your phone and just get that single

password and then input it where you need it. Alternatively, you can plug the cold card directly into your computer and hit send password and it will fill whatever your cursor is. It will type in the password for you. I would say if you're a fan of air gaping your cold card, then you may want to consider having a secondary device just for the password function if you're going to be using it. But nonetheless, super cool. And you should probably check it out and play around if you haven't already.

And then to round it out, again, I'm going to be at Baltic Honey Badger coming up next. Very excited for that. I'm also, so I'm going to be in Vancouver, I believe the evening of August 11th. I'm driving through there with the fam, but I think we're going to be doing a meetup. that night as well so if you're part of a btzee van uh keep your eyes open because it'll probably mention something about that soon uh but baltic honey badger is my next trip i will be in riga latvia this is a hell of a conference i can't wait to be back i haven't been there since 2019 but it was such a great experience and i really can't wait to to revisit uh so yeah if you're

going to be in europe for it please do let me know uh if you want to check them out baltic honeybadger dot com And you can use Code BTC sessions if you need a discount on tickets if you don't have them already. But I'll see you there. I'm very excited, excited to be back. And yeah, finally, if you are sorting through the channel and you're doing some tutorials and you need a little bit of help, be sure to let me know if you need some additional assistance because we've built a crack team of incredible educators over at Bitcoin Mentor.io. and they are ready and willing to help you through with anything you need, whether it be just figuring out key management, figuring out hardware,

multisig, running a node, privacy, all of that. We've got awesome, awesome people that I have hand-selected and trained to help you with your entire Bitcoin journey should you need it. So be sure to check them out again at Bitcoin Mentor.io. And with that, we will finish. up here. Of course, be sure to check back in tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern Time for Why Are We Bullish?

We've got some awesome guests that will be on the show then. And yeah, that is it for me. Have a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. We'll see you guys next time for your Simply session.