BTC Sessions - US Govt STEALING Bitcoin — $13.9B Reserve Plan EXPOSED | Bob Burnett, George Bodine, Halston Valencia

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

The U.S. government’s secret $13.9 billion Bitcoin reserve plan has just been exposed. Bob Burnett, George Bodine, and Halston Valencia break down what’s really happening behind the scenes—and why it could be the biggest Bitcoin land grab in history. If true, this changes everything.FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS:https://x.com/boomer_btchttps://x.com/Halstonvalenciahttps://x.com/Jethroe111FOLLOW BTC SESSIONS on X/Nostr: x.com/[e-mail] 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/—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL - BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://qrco.de/bfiDBVAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCp#btc #bitcoin #crypto

The U.S. government has just been shown to have been seizing hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin. And while this is the largest seizure in history, that's not the biggest part of this story. What they're doing next with all that Bitcoin could mark the beginning of something Bitcoiners have been looking at and anticipating for nearly a year. Some are calling this the early stages of our U.S. strategic Bitcoin Reserve. And if that's the case, this is a move that could be sending shockwaves throughout the financial world. So today we're going to break down how much was seized, where it came from, and why this could

be the first stages of a coordinated digital land grab that's about to spark a new monetary arms race. Now, while this was going on, one of the richest people on the planet just made clear in a message that he finally gets Bitcoin. maybe. A sign, however, that retail might be just about to line up at the gates at last. And in the background, a massive Bitcoin short position that seems to have turned October into October has finally been unwound by a major and seemingly well-connected player. So could all this be the spark that brings October screaming back to life?

We're going to dive into all of this and much more today on Why Are We Bullish? We've got an incredible lineup of guests. We've got Bob Burnett, CEO of Barefoot Mining, Halston Valencia, marketing and strategy at Bitcoin Well, and George Bodine, Navy fighter pilot, top gun grad and hardened Bitcoin Maxi. You're not going to want to miss this one, so make sure you smash that like button and stay tuned. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your bullish session. All right, I want to welcome to the stage, George, Halston, and Bob. Thank you guys so much for being here.

I appreciate you guys coming in to get bullish with me on a Wednesday evening. And George, I know that this leans very much into the topic at hand that you wanted to chat about. You have a lot of thoughts in and around this. As I tee you up, I did just want to kind of highlight a couple little bits here that I I came across as it pertains to this story at hand. So I'm just going to pull up here a couple quick things, and I'll put us off to the side. So we can be pretty over here. Yeah, so U.S. Treasury seizes 127,000 Bitcoin.

And where did this come from? This came from this scam coming out of Cambodia. And this guy, Chen Z, also known as Vincent. He's the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group. And this business was basically charged with wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, all this other stuff. and they were basically running a forced labor scam compound or multiple compounds around Cambodia. It's crazy.

And these are all like long cons. So they call it, what do they call it something like pig? Pig butchering. Pig butchering, which I had actually never heard that term before. George, can you enlighten me on pig butchering? Yeah, it's not, I just love that term.

I love this headline. I mean, how many times, life do you get to wake up the morning and says you know u.s has seized 127 000 bitcoin from a big butcher and you know basically it's the same idea first off let's have a toast i've got a really cool beer here it's garage beer you see that that's for guys like me it's just the plane it just says what kind of beer says it's garage beer we're going to have a toast to that well cheers george I appreciate it. So, you know what was pretty interesting.

Vincent Z, you know, obviously on the run now, they're going to catch him. I mean, he's already got an Interpol warrant outside as long as an arm looking for this guy. They'll get him. And, you know, they've been operating for years now in the Far East and Cambodia, but they also have, they've been bribing different countries, Vietnam and such officials around the surrounding area to try and stay clear of the law. And, I mean, it's pretty awesome.

when you think about it you what you mentioned the compounds they really were compounds they had barbed wire around them and people were kept there against their will and often beaten or tortured and basically the whole goal is to try and fleece people including a lot of north americans out of their money and they did they were successful obviously they must have thought that bitcoin was a good investment because they had a lot of it so this i think this is actually the biggest seizure ever and i guess if you were to say i'm bullish how would i approach this Well, I'd say to, you know, Vincent Z has gifted the U.S. finally with an actual strategic Bitcoin reserve. Because let's face it, how much Bitcoin has the United States government purchased in its history?

Zero. Zero. So they haven't bought a damn set. And in fact, if you look on the other side, the flip side of this story, what does it really tell you? Yes, we are going to start an SBA. based upon. In fact, I'll tell you right now. Hold on just a minute. I can pull up the executive order. The executive order that established the SBR originally says that it will be capitalized with BTC using Bitcoin. And it mentions right in there forfeited and criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings.

They are taking, they are taking, seizing Bitcoin. That is how they're funding the SBR. Now, why should that give you a pause as a bitconer? First off, again, they haven't bought any Bitcoin. So how much Bitcoin do they actually have? You remember after Trump took office in January? They had 30 days. They were going to release an audit. That audit was going to determine how many Bitcoin we actually had.

They were going to put it out, was going to be published, clear, perfectly transparent. Have you seen any audit released? Nothing. Zero. So no audit, no audit of Fort Knox, no goals. no gold on it, no, no Bitcoin purchased, not one single set by the U.S. government. So now we can speculate and we can say if they continue to hold this, it's, you know, Department of Justice was originally the actor here. And it'll probably transfer, I guess, to the Treasury.

I don't know. But if they seize this and continue to hold it, we are speculating they have about 325,000, Bitcoin. And that is huge. So on the one side, am I bullish? Very bullish to think that the government actually has Bitcoin now and an SBR. But I really am pissed off. I'm not pissed off. I'm, I'm concerned. I'm really concerned because what are they saying early? They're saying that, hey, how are we going to determine, how are we going to get our Bitcoin going forward? What if we want to become the world's superpower and Bitcoin is going to be part of that, that treasury, that neutral reserve of asset. How are we going to go about getting it? Well, they've already demonstrated that seizure

seems to work really well for them. And, you know, we could go down the rabbit hole. You know, Michael Saylor has talked about how the only reason that gold got in the way of the U.S. government was because it was being based. Our currency was tied to gold. And so he makes a valid point. And you can't say that about Bitcoin. So if you're concerned about seizures in the future, like 6102 attacks, ETFs, whatever, maybe strategy itself

as a company holding over 640,000 Bitcoin, it's something that people should put away on their back burner. I will tell you right now, this is what this has done to me.

You know, everybody knows I am like a Bitcoin Permable. I mean, I am a hardcore, toxic Bitcoin Maxi. I don't get it. Who knows it?

I don't care. I need nothing to me. You know, any Jacket? that's not happy with it, I just don't care. So for somebody like me, I look at this and I think to myself, if I'm a bitcoiner out there and you're listening to this or you're watching it, whatever the hell you're doing, this is a clearest indication to you going forward

that you need to get off your ass and no matter what, you need to be holding your own Bitcoin in cold storage. When you hold it in cold storage and you hold the key in your hand like this, Nobody can fuck with you. They can't take your Bitcoin. Anything other than that, even when you start talking about, even if you start talking about multi-sig or different institutions holding keys, there's always a counterparty risk.

Remember if the US government wants something, they will take it. They've seen, we've seen it over and over again in the past. And I'm telling you right now, I think that this particular news story, Although kind of a funny story in a way should be a good indication to people going forward that guess what hold storage hold your own keys that's the way forward going out of this. Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, I'm going to bring up a couple quick things. Then I kind of want to, I mean, Halston, given that you're working with Bitcoin well and they're all about like take self custody and it's kind of designed in a way to ensure that you do that right away. I want to get your

thoughts here but um you know in regards to the the seizure aspect of this um from further down in the article uh and and just to kind of indicate again yeah they're they're not going to be accumulating it um through outright uh buys or at least we've not seen that there's there's no proof that that's going to be happening anytime soon uh but here um just to you know my initial thought was well hey those Other people were scammed for that money. Shouldn't they get that money? But they've filed for this forfeiture. And in the article here,

according to federal regulations, victims of the scam may file a formal claim or notice of interest and apply for so-called remission once the forfeiture is final. But getting money back from civil asset forfeiture is not exactly easy. As the Cato Institute explains in a 2020, article titled, The FBI puts victims of civil forfeiture through bureaucratic hell. Civil asset forfeiture is subject to perverse incentives, which often lead to egregious violations of constitutional rights, that place the burden on victims to challenge forfeiture

orders, often at great cost. According to the Stanford Law Review, the government rarely returns forfeited assets to people in 2022, only around 3% of all forfeited assets were returned, and only 1% of the value of total assets forfeited. So oftentimes, the amount of legal expense to pursue getting your property back is far larger than the reward of actually getting it back. And Francis Puglia here put pretty well. Bitcoin's were stolen from victims worldwide conned by professional scammers. Miraculously, the coins are found and now can be returned to victims, many of which, I'm sure, had lives ruined. And the first thing the SBR proponents think is, we can steal those

coins too. Yeah, I mean, it kind of sucks. It's going to suck for people that, whose Bitcoin it was, it sucks for people that were forced to do the scamming. It sucks all around other than there's an SBR. But as you said, if this tactic works effectively, then you better start clutching those sats even tighter. So, Alston, I want to toss it to you. What's your general thoughts on the story?

Self-custody, the potential for individuals, Bitcoin, to be taken? Yeah. I mean, I think this story is a crazy one. I haven't really heard anything. like it since I've been in the space the last few years, but I am a strong advocate for self-custodying your Bitcoin. Obviously, I work for Bitcoin well, and they are a non-custodial platform. I just think that the purest form of Bitcoin is purchasing it non-KYC through a non-custodial platform

and storing it in cold storage. Anything else is an IOU, and it's not safe. It can be, you know, exchanges can fail. They can get hacked. you just never know. And personally, I'm not going to bash on any specific exchanges, but in my experience, when I've used various exchanges, I have purchased Bitcoin and you can't move it right away, which to me, that goes completely against the Bitcoin ethos. And so, yeah, I'm an advocate for Bitcoin well. I work for them, but even if I didn't, I would probably still use them because I strongly believe if you fully understand Bitcoin for what it is, you should be self-custodying. And I know for some, there's a technological barrier, but people like

Ben here have plenty of tutorials and videos on how to do it properly. And so thank you, Ben. But yeah, I think it's super important in an integral part of being a Bitcoin or is to self-custody your Bitcoin. 100%. 100%. Bob, I want to toss it to you as well. General thoughts. What are your takeaways from from looking at this. The first thing that came to mind was that this is blood money. And, you know, I am, we'll be really distraught if, like, that 3% number you talked about Ben and the, the note, if that turns out to be real, because it's just dirty, bloody money.

And I think it's, it's horrible. The sheer magnitude of it is amazing. I mean, it is one half or one percent of the entire supply. You know, if you think about it in those terms, which is just, it's a mind-boggling number, right? And I feel as though it's kind of analogous. Like we talk about the money printer, right, or the government has a money printer. Well, it's almost the analogy. Like, if they can't have the money printer,

printer, then they have this mechanism. Like, and, and that terrifies me. Certainly, the only answer is self-custody, because we don't know, we don't know the extremes to which, as the government has monetary shortfalls in the future, and its money is not valuable, then, you know, this will be the money that they want. And so, to what degree will they, will they go to it? And it's why I think all of us would promote, you know, self-custody, but there's trepidation about the ETFs.

There's trepidation about Bitcoin Treasury companies. I don't want to completely bash on those things because I do think they're a gateway drug for a lot of people, and they can bring them in. But I hope they don't stop there. I hope we can convert a lot of people over the next handful of years to real Bitcoin instead of, you know, illusionary Bitcoin. Yeah. So, you know, I, and, you know, I, I want the, the U.S.,

and I would encourage basically any country in the world to have a Bitcoin reserve, but I think just like anything else, you have to earn it, right? And you have to pay for it. And so I don't like this strategy. And maybe I'll save it for my topic a little later. I actually think the strategic Bitcoin Reserve is the wrong strategic Bitcoin initiative for the country, that what the country should be doing is investing in mining resources. And I'll explain why later.

Interesting. All right. Well, we will get into that then. Now, again, to the topic of self-custy and protecting oneself in those types of situations, I mean, historically it's happened. it was a legal to own gold in the U.S. and, you know, people were asked to come and turn in their stuff. So if anything, again, you got to learn the tools.

You got to learn how to protect yourself. I think how to hide your Bitcoin tutorial is probably an order sometime soon. So maybe that'll be coming in the next few weeks here. But it will say, like, these shows are awesome and fun to chat about, like, the news and what's going on. But if you don't also take action and actually go forth and learn the tools, then you've not really benefited. So I, again, throughout the show, I always bring this up. There's a Bitcoiner Zero to Hero page with some basic tutorials just to get you started. If you don't have self-custy, if you're brand new here and you're just kind of, you know, starting to get interested in Bitcoin, but you're sitting on an exchange, holy hell, please scan that QR code or go to BTCSessions.

dot CA slash learn. It's in the show notes and you can start your journey, you know, get a, get a wallet and just start to learn how to use it. So I'll parrot that throughout the show because it's super important. But before we do a little rotation and change gears here, I did want to get your guys quick thoughts on just the other couple things I alluded to off the top of the show. So number one is, does he get it? And what I'm referring to is, does Elon get it?

I'll read the context here. There was a tweet from Zero Hedge. The money is not the problem. AI is the new global arms race. And CAPEX will eventually be funded by governments, US and China. If you want to know why gold slash silver slash Bitcoin are soaring, it's the debasement to fund the AI arms race. But you can't print energy. Elon replied true.

This is why Bitcoin is based on energy. You can issue fake fiat currency and every government history has done so, but it is impossible to fake energy. So my question to you guys, I know that prior Elon had accepted Bitcoin for Teslas and things like that. And then they stopped accepting it because Bitcoin, quote unquote, wasted too much energy or was you wanted to be more green. Is this an indication?

that he's done some reading and figured some shit out. And also, Elon's tweeting about Bitcoin, is this an indication that retail is around the corner too? So whoever wants to jump in? I think he's done some reading. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it seems like the energy piece, right? Yeah.

I think he's on his, we're all on a journey, right? And I don't know where it goes. but I think you, like you asked Ben, does he get it? He may have crossed the threshold, like, but, but there's still many, many levels of getting it beyond where, where I think he is. But he, he definitely is a, is a, a bellwether canary in the coal mine sort of guy. So to your thing about retail, I think it is an indication, right? I mean, we see this. I play golf today with some friends, older guys my age.

And I've known these guys for six, seven years. And one of them has bought in to haven't. But the two that haven't, they've called me Bitcoin Bob, by the way. That's what they call me on the ball courts. Because, you know, they're, they never like to bring the top. topic up because they know if I'm at the point now where I won't bring it up if they don't. But if they bring it up, then it's like free game, you know. And those two guys brought it up today.

Like they were asking questions. Oh, they didn't necessarily buy any. But, you know, when the boomers, you know, with George and Aaron, when the boomers are interested, I mean, they bring a lot of money and, and they don't go halfway. And I don't mean this in any way to make anybody feel bad. these are not $100 a month DCA guys. They're $100,000. I'll do a test kind of buy for $100,000 kind of guys, right?

So as they come in, like the market changes really, really rapidly. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, even in just dealing with like a Bitcoin mentor, dealing with one-on-ones and having people come in and wanting to learn self-custy, Our demographic is like 40 to 65 somewhere in there is like our typical customer. So it's somebody that probably understood gold and precious metals and why those were important. Now understands how Bitcoin has improved upon those things in terms of like the physicality and the transport and divisibility and all that. and then it just has a technical hurdle of like, okay, now how the hell do I do this properly?

And I want to do it myself because I don't trust another damn person to do it, which is a great thing to see. But I digress. George, I want to give it to you. Yeah, I wouldn't discount Elon for anything. You know, I've called him a lot of really nasty names back in 22 because I wasn't happy with his program. I wasn't happy how he was approaching Bitcoin at all. But you know what? The guy is incredibly intelligent.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but with fully self-driving, he made a decision that was really revolutionary. And at the time, again, I call him an idiot because he moved away from what was the common technology that was going to be based on that system, LiDAR. It's a radar type of a system. And instead, he went with cameras. And basically, you know, at the time, I thought, well, that's stupid. You know, being a pilot, I thought radar is the way to go.

You know, you know everything around you. But the bottom line is it's almost if he anticipated AI and the fact that Neurolink would be the model, meaning just think of a car that's almost like a human brain. So it's seeing the cameras just like you would if you were super intelligent and could look in all directions and basing its decisions on that visual field. So the guy might have been right to begin with. I think the big story that I read that tweet. And I think the big story here is just that the it's the coming of AI. We are in an arms race right now. I mean, it's us and China.

We are in a superpower race. One of us is going to win. One's going to lose. And it's going to be a winner take almost all type of a combat. And, you know, there are three things they're looking for. It's power, ships, infrastructure. And we have advantages and disadvantages in every one of those. But if Elon were thinking up.

ahead like he was with fully self-driving or perhaps somehow into it where this is going, then he should know that all these agentic AIs, every AI agent you can imagine the future is going to want digital money, digital money. And it's going to be Bitcoin. You could say, you could argue it could be a stable coin, but in the end, stable coins are going to be nothing but a almost like a fiat, uh, rebirth, if you will. It's going to be Bitcoin, something on chain that is provable, scarce, and I think that perhaps he's starting to explore Bitcoin just because he knows where this is going. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, there's always further down the rabbit hole to go, but encouraging, encouraging nonetheless to see his take there.

Now, I do want to give us a little change of pace, and we're going to share. shift from George to Halston in a moment here. But first off, anybody that's new to the show, welcome. Glad to have you. Make sure you drop a like on the video. We're going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors, of which Halston is employed by one. So good to have a fellow Bitcoin Weller in the room here.

But we're going to give a quick shout out to sponsors. We'll be back in one minute. And on the other side of the break, we're going to find out why Halston is so damn. So we'll see you guys in just a sec. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the US. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees.

You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC Sessions. to sign up today, and you can share your own personalized referral link to earn commissions. If you've been around Bitcoin for more than a minute, you've definitely seen something made by crypto cloaks. Since 2017, they've been the go-to for badass 3D printed Bitcoin gear, from custom home mining rigs to sleek hardware wallet bounce that make your setup look pro. I've been stacking cloaks gear for years, and most recently, I grabbed their gamma case for my miner. Let me tell you, it turns some heads. You can customize everything, and of course, the legendary Bitcoin grenade, yeah, that's them.

Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code to visit CryptoCloaks.com and stack your own custom cloaks gear today. Debify is the best and easiest way to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Funds are held in a multi-sig escrow where you hold a key, and the platform allows for excellent hardware like the cold card Mark 4 and the Q. You have access to flexible conditions, the best rates, and institutional grade liquidity. If you're looking to make use of your capital, don't sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it. You can head over to debify.com to check them out or simply scan the QR code on the screen. All right, we are back in and we're going to dive right over to Halston. And I'm going to tee up with the same question everybody gets.

Why are you bullish? Yeah, I mean, lots of reasons to be bullish, but I think today I am extra bullish because I saw a story on a small coffee shop in D.C. Let me pull it up. They were the first square seller in the world to accept Bitcoin payments integrated directly at the register. So I am immensely bullish on my generation and the future of Bitcoin adoption because this is, I mean, this is huge. Squares, they power millions of merchants globally. I mean, you think small businesses, food trucks, boutiques, everywhere you go, there's a square device. And so, yeah, I mean, it's not just like a future use case anymore.

It's literally live. And it's at, yeah, there you go. You pull it up right there. Yeah, I think this bridges Fia rails with Bitcoin. And I think for my generation, this is already something that we're accustomed to. You think Venmo cash up, you take the QR, you scan it, and you pay your friend or your hairstylist or your photographer, whoever. And so I think teaching that to Gen Z is super easy. It's more so how do we help my generation and the next generation understand why this is a

better monetary system and how it how it's a solution to the broken system. And so, yeah, go ahead. Now this is in D.C., you said? D.C., yeah, called Compass Coffee. I actually, one of my good friends in the space, shout out John Balkan. He was there this morning and paid in Bitcoin. So we know it works. And yeah, they've been getting some traction it looks like. They got the Jack Dorsey repost and everything. That's awesome.

I mean, I'm a big proponent of not only saving in Bitcoin, but using it day to day. I feel like if Bitcoin only becomes a savings mechanism or like a, a, Treasury Reserve asset, then we're missing out on so much of the freedom that it can enable. And the only thing stopping us from enjoying those freedoms is ourselves, right? Like anybody can, you know, I've been living more or less exclusively on Bitcoin for five years now. I started in 2020. So, I mean, don't get me wrong. Like, yeah, I'm jumping through a few hoops to make that happen.

It's not like seamless. I go over to the store and I can just immediately spend my Bitcoin. Although now, you know, that's becoming more of a reality. But I think there's definitely a mentality that, you know, in Bitcoin, it's, It's rightfully so when people still have fiat. It's like, well, do I want to spend my Bitcoin? And yeah, that's a trick you want to navigate because unless you're a crazy person like me that is like I'm going to earn Bitcoin and I'm going to live on it and I'm going to do these extra steps. Then yeah, like, I mean, you want to spend the crappier money.

You want to get that out of your pocket before you get rid of the stuff. sats. But there's a perspective that I really like from MADX, actually the guy who did my art here on the wall. But the MADX, awesome Bitcoin artists. And he talks about how we need to encourage the people that make quality items and quality goods and services that have low time preference. We need to encourage those people by paying them in a low time preference money, by paying them in something actually sound because then they can actually support themselves and continue making those goods and services and those products. If we don't do that, then just like a lot of other industries, just like a lot of other businesses, they're just going

to go tits up, right? And so I think that there's a case to be made for, you know, if you're a Bitcoiner and you have low time preference, you should be accepting Bitcoin 100%. Everybody knows that. If you can cut out a step that makes sense, you know it's better money. You're going to take your dollars in exchange them for Bitcoin anyways. You should be accepting Bitcoin. And you should speak about that often to other Bitcoiners. But if you're a Bitcoiner, I think you should really consider looking at people that do quality work and paying them in Bitcoin because yeah you're you're you're going to part with your sats you can always spend and replace but you're building a future economy and a relationship with that individual

who shares an ethos with you yes i think that's super important so yeah likewise yeah completely agree and uh isa from btc eastla comes to mind i love what she's doing there and yeah i just would love to see more circular economies like that. Yeah, she's great. I actually just saw her in Nashville. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, it was great. She did a great video I saw the other day, like a 10-minute clip, kind of on,

kind of fee out money and the whole thing, you know, so she's doing great work. I want to follow on what you said, Ben, about, you know, spend and replace. So I come at the world from a more technical, perspective often. And there is an amazing lack of thought process within the community about Bitcoin as a network versus Bitcoin as an asset. And Metcalf's law, which is fundamental to any emerging network, you know, it says that the value of a network is directly proportional to the square of the number of users of the network. Now, we could have a little bit of a semantics argument

about whether or not somebody that buys and holds and never does anything is a user on the network, but I would say that would be equivalent to somebody who owns a cell phone but never turns it on. And, you know, using cell phones as an example, I think it's a great example to illustrate Metcalf's Law, If I invent a cell phone, but I'm the only one with one, it's worthless. As soon as George has one and he and I can call each other and text each other, it's much more valuable.

When you and Halston join in, then, you know, now it's dramatically more. And so Metcalf's law would say, you know, mine is, a network of me is worth nothing, but a network of the four of us is 16 times more valuable. And Bitcoin only works that way. And I'll say something very controversial here. I think that the word hoddle has become a bit of a bane on the community, that people have taken it so hard. And I've said some of these things in different social media forums and at conferences, and some people really get angry about it. But I say, if you only hoddle, you're not an active member of this community and you're not helping.

Now, you may look at it as you doing the best thing for you and your family, but you're not, you're not doing anything beneficial for the community. And I frankly don't understand why the spend and replace mentality. I mean, I think all of us should have a certain amount of Bitcoin that, yeah, it's in deep cold storage and it's great, Benny. You tell people even how to hide it better, right? That's wonderful. But going to, like a lot of this. actually came up with steak and shake when steak and shake because i started going to steak and shake right at first day you know i go to steak and shake and i spend 21 or whatever i spent that day

you know to buy it and you know i had people and i posted my receipt and and in the whole thing i had people telling you you're an idiot i'm not an idiot my my stack's no smaller when i came home i bought i spent 21 i went and bought 25 dollars of bitcoin my stack's bigger and i i try to spend it as often as I can and I replace it. And I always replace it with a little more, right? You know, so my stack's actually growing. But we have to have, we have to support these merchants or artists or, you know, whomever.

I, George, I've paid George in Bitcoin before for things, right? And we have to use it. And I'm a minor, so I'll say that straight up front too. Like the subsidy doesn't last much longer. Like, without activity on the network, the fee market will not go up. And no matter where you stand on the whole spam thing, which we won't go there today. But the only way to really be sure that we get rid of spam is to make the monetary activity so great that it happens. And by the way, when you use layer two stuff, you're still helping.

You know, there's still opening and closing of channels and splicing and all these other activities that are going on. that help support that. So I can't stress spend and replace enough. Yeah, yeah. It's super important. And again, I often encounter a number of why people can't do that. And I don't want to spend my Bitcoin. I don't want to spend my Bitcoin.

I don't want to spend it or replace pain in the butt. Again, like we've kind of made the case for like supporting Bitcoiners and utilizing. You know, if if you. People say, oh, well, there's the opportunity cost of losing my Bitcoin. Technically, what I would argue is that if you have dollars left to spend your short Bitcoin. There you go. Oh, there you go. I love that.

Like, that's kind of where I'm at. It's like the only dollars that I have are pretty much the exact amount of money I need to sit in a bank account for the only things that have to come out of a bank. bank account. Everything else, all of my earnings is Bitcoin. And so this this flicks a switch in your head because rightfully so, people think, oh crap, like, do I want to spend my Bitcoin on this? Like, is this worth it? But when all you have is Bitcoin, every beyond your bills, every purchase is now a conscious decision because there is an opportunity cost. And so what that does to you is it makes you think, am I just frivolously spending, or is this something that I will actually enjoy and get value from? And what is the quality of the item or the service that I'm getting?

Because if you spend your Bitcoin on something that's trash, you will never shop at that merchant again. But if you buy something that's quality and it lasts forever and it's amazing, you're way more likely to spend sats with that person again. Like it's, if anything, it did the opposite of what I was expecting. I was thinking like, oh, I just buy the cheapest thing. So I don't have to spend Bitcoin. But actually, I buy the more expensive high quality thing that I'll never have to replace. So I think we'll get back to a time where people actually save for quality items. And when something happens to them, they fix them instead of.

throw the whole damn thing out. George, I want to get your thoughts, too. I want to toss it your way. The only thing I'll do is I would reverse that because of the capital gains tax, that idea, you know, until we get a de minimis exemption through Congress. You know, for me, I fill and then I spend. I did that when I went over to Prague. And yeah, I've got one of the prints similar to yours that I purchased over there with Bitcoin.

And the model that I worked with over there, I paid her in Bitcoin. And then as Bob mentioned, the same thing. And I encourage people to do on-chain right now, if they can. Fees are low and we need on-chain transactions that we can get them. But the only thing I was going to say is I, you know, I put money into the wallet and then I spend it. And the reason is just because, again, you never have to worry about tax purposes in, at least in my idea. And I'm not sure. I mean, I have no idea how the damn government here is going to track these things or how they're going to somehow make a case that you had a capital gains on something.

But anyway, and the only other thing I'll say is I really like what Bob said there. I treat Bitcoin as two different things. Yeah, sure, you know, fill and spend. That's fine. It's like a liquid wallet. I use Aqua. I'm really happy with it. There are a lot of different great wallets out there to use.

But when you start getting into the Bitcoin that I have sweated and grabbed in my fucking fist, that is not Bitcoin that I'm going to release. I mean, I'm not going to be spending like CJ Constantino. So I'm not going to be spending 100 Bitcoin on a house. Just not happening. You know, I expect in the next three to five years, I expect us to have products built out on Bitcoin that will allow all of us. Everybody here on this screen right now is going to have an option and never have to spend your Bitcoin if you don't want. And that is coming. But if we don't use Bitcoin and getting back to Halston, you know, and what she was discussing with Jack Dorsey, what has he said?

you know, if we don't use Bitcoin, if it's not used as something other than a store of value, then in his mind it will have failed. And I think Bob's kind of pointed out that a little bit too in the past. And I'd have to say I agree with that. There has to be some use case for Bitcoin other than us going around and hoddling until we're old decrepit and gone. Yeah. Yeah. I want to also mention on the tax side of things, one argument that I do here is,

well, if I spend my Bitcoin, like say living on a Bitcoin standard, it's like, oh, well, I'll have capital gains tax. I think it's important to zoom out. And like, let's say you shifted over to a Bitcoin standard and you're using Bitcoin that has gone up in value. Yeah. Is there a gain? Like, did your purchasing power go up?

And then thus you had a gain and then you end up paying some tax on it. When you look at it from that perspective, you've seen. still experienced your money going up in purchasing power and you've had to give a portion of that back. It's a little bit like saying I don't want to win the lottery because I might have to give some of it back. You still want the lottery. You still want the winnings just because you have to give a portion of it back at that point in time doesn't forego the upward movement that you've experienced and the increased purchasing power. So, like, yeah, if you're tracking every single latte, is that a pain in the ass?

A hundred percent. And I would argue that you're not going to get your door kicked in for the occasion latte, but yeah. Yeah, I'm not giving tax advice, but I do a lot of small purchases. And by the way, I see, I really, even if they came after me on that portion of capital gains, it's going to be trivial because, you know, I think. throw a hundred bucks worth of Bitcoin into a wallet, usually into a lightning wallet, and then I go spend it. And I don't, I only do that, like George said, we were, George and I were in Prague

together this year. You were there too, weren't you been? I was. It was great. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm going over there. Maybe I had 500 or a thousand. I don't even remember what I did, but, you know, I was going to spend some, so I threw it in there. And a week and a half later, it was either spent or I moved it or I moved it out. Yeah. And so that that I spent, I don't know whether Bitcoin went up or down in that period, but it's trivial. You know, if I have a steak and shake, I try to eat healthy, but I still go there, you know, maybe once a month because I try to support them. And so it's usually like 20 bucks.

So if I don't have any Bitcoin in my wallet, I throw, you know, 20. $25 or so in there, and then I go get my lunch. And then so it's spent within, what I'm saying is it's spent in very short windows. I'm not taking Bitcoin from cold storage that, let's say I bought in 2020 and using it at stake and shake. So now, whether the IRS would agree with me or not and whether or not there's all this, you know, FIFO accounting and all that. But I believe those are two, and I've talked to my accountants about it, like I believe those are two, completely separate accounts tracked separately, much like a business has operating capital and reserve capital. And you can keep those separate.

And you can do this with, we do this in our mining business, right? We have reserve capital and we have spending capital. And as long as we keep them in separate locations and track them separately, the tax advice I've gotten is, well, you don't have to worry about it. So we almost never get capital gains in the operating account. And you have a more definitive way of, even technically speaking, within the same wallet, as long as those UTXOs are sitting there and are designated, oh, well, this UTXO hit this address at this point in time and it hasn't budged, then there's a case to be made there. You could.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, very, very interesting. So again, I'll try. trumping it many, many times. But yeah, make sure you guys are learning the tools, obviously saving your Bitcoin, but use it day to day. I think that's an important and valid thing to do. And also, I would be more than happy to invite all of you up the next time we do our local

market here. So we created a local Bitcoin market called the SAP market here in Calgary. And we do it a couple of years. Yeah, it's great. We usually get like 40, 50 merchants at it, something like that. And it's like, it's not just, yeah, we have artists and stuff like that, but we also have like local farmers and tradesmen. So like I've got a plumber. My kids like to shove stuff in the toilet. So I think it's been over here at least four times.

But nonetheless, there's lots of stuff. Our goal was to get stuff that you actually need day to day. So there's like, you know, again, tradesmen that can fix up stuff in your house. There's flooring. There's electricians. There's, you can get your beef and your eggs and all that kind of stuff. There's health practitioners. There's a whole bunch of different stuff on top of the unique artists and people that have apparel and all that kind of stuff too.

Anytime you guys feel like doing a mountain getaway and spending some sats in the process, then, yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Ben. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. We'd love to. Adam and I just put out some merch. I don't know if you guys have seen it, but we only accept Bitcoin, on chain or lightning.

So maybe we'll have to take you up on that and show up to that next market. Adam's been to the market before. He's not too far from me just a few hours drive. So he usually comes down and supports it and pops in. And we've got a good group of people here. So I'm looking forward. We've got a Christmas one coming up. in December and then we usually do one a little bit closer to the summer, which is great.

But either way. Awesome. Well, I think it's time once again that we do a little rotation. We're going to find out again, you alluded to it, Bob, while you're so bullish, but we're going to find out for sure. We're just going to do a final quick shout out to our last couple sponsors here. We'll be back in one minute. But everybody that's watching right now, thanks for being here.

Drop a like on the video. Much appreciated. We'll see you guys in one minute. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua Wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin with secure self-custody. Aqua also supports lightning and liquid network, making fast, cheap Bitcoin payments and asset transfers easier than ever. Plus, it even supports stable coins giving you ultimate flexibility. Build on open-source code, Aqua is transparent, trustworthy, and perfect for,

beginner and pros alike. Ready to upgrade your Bitcoin experience? Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen now to download Aqua Wallet today. Securing your Bitcoin doesn't have to be complicated or invasive. With Nunchuk's Honey Badger plan, you get state-of-the-art multi-sig with built-in inheritance planning and no KYC required. Nunchuk is trusted by users to secure billions of dollars in Bitcoin. The Honey Badger Plan offers 204 assisted multi-sig guiding you step by step on mobile or desktop. It works seamlessly with hardware wallets like tap signer, cold card, jade, and plenty of others. So you're always in control.

Plus, with non-KYC inheritance planning, you can ensure your Bitcoin goes to your loved ones. No private info needed. Take control of your Bitcoin today. Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen to check out the Honeybadger plan. All right, we are back in. And Bob, I'm looking your way. and same question everybody gets. Why are you bullish?

Well, first I'll take a little personal bent on this and that a couple weeks ago, I had my sixth grandchild. Awesome. Thank you. And sometime between now and Saturday, I will have my seventh. Oh, wow.

Yes. That's great, buddy. Yeah. So thank you. And you know, what's especially exciting, especially for the context of this, is that, you know,

all my children, I have four kids and two stepkids. Every one of them is a bitcoiner. And they are reproducing clearly. And they're bringing bitcoins into the world. And, you know, I think about my granddaughter who was just born a few days ago. That's going to be a grandson, the next one. And thinking, well, they're being born in 2025 and, you know, given lifespans and things like that,

they're going to be around well into the next century, most likely. And, you know, care. this forward and their kids, if you think about their kids, their kids will probably be living like past the 2140 day. Right. And so it's kind of an interesting thing to think about like that we're, you know, we're not that far away. Like from my perspective, we're only two generations away from kind of this other side of Bitcoin

that, that, you know, I like to think a lot about that about, you know, where we're going in 50 years, 100 years or even 10 years. I think Bitcoiners, even though we are kind of low time preference people, I don't think we're very good at thinking strategically in the long run. It's very, very short term. And I think a lot more people should spend more time thinking about what does it look like in 10 years and 20 years and 30 years, especially. So that said, I also think we fail to understand like how.

how quickly the world will change. So I'll kind of move this to mining for a little bit. But even before that, I'll go back to my days. Those who don't know, I spent most of my career in the personal computer industry from the very, very early days. And what was interesting about the personal computer industry is if you looked at who were the biggest PC companies

in, let's say, 1988, 1998, and 2008, so take that 20-year period. Each 10-year period was like an 80% turnover in the top 10, like massive changes, right? And the same thing is going to happen in Bitcoin. And I don't wish ill upon anybody, but we're going to see, we're going to see a lot of big names fail. We're going to see a lot of mergers and acquisitions. We're going to see a lot of the motivations behind the companies involved and what are they after. And what are they after? And one, One of the things, this will be by my second controversial thing I'm going to say today,

it's my belief that the public mining companies have been a net negative to Bitcoin. That they have to. Yeah. Thank you, George. Yeah. You know, and I'll say this in two minutes. The first is they call themselves mining companies. They're actually not mining companies.

They're hashing companies at best. So what it actually means to be a minor, they only perform about 10% of what it means to be a minor. But largely, I'm not here to call out any specific organization or individual, but largely they are Fiat mindset organizations that are highly leveraging the Fiat system. and they don't carry forward the ethos very well. Well, so why am I bullish? Well, the reason I'm bullish is that what's happening is they're starting to show themselves not really trying to stay in Bitcoin. They're moving, I think rightly, if I was in charge of one of those companies,

I'd probably do the same thing, although there's a reason. I never took my company public because I don't want to be in that spot. But, but, you know, they're moving toward AI. George talked about AI. You know, there's this massive demand for energy. They're leveraging their position with advantageous energy into this new market. And I think what's going to happen is that we're going to see a lot less growth in global hash rate. and the growth that we do get will be less from really large installations,

100 megawatt, 200 megawatt, and a lot more from small, medium-sized commercial miners and individuals. And that's what we need, because mining is in a precarious position, highly centralized pools, too much hash rate and the controls of these large companies. and I think, thank God, I'm starting to really see these economic incentives, but on the Fiat side, pull some of these companies kind of out of our world into that world, which I think is where they belong. And we're going to have a more balanced, a better decentralized mining network as a result. Now, that said, and this part will probably scare people.

people, I think we are on the cusp of the nation state understanding the importance of mining. And I've done a fair amount of talking on this. You're going to see more from me. I'm writing a paper on it right now soon. But I think there's going to be a realization from the nation state soon. And I can only say certain things about it. Some people have talked to me that the control of block space, will be more important to nation-state sovereignty than owning the Bitcoin.

And so what a lot of people don't realize is, even though we were talking about wanting the network to get used, and the fact that there isn't a lot of activity right now, it doesn't take much for it to go on the other side. So we have a capacity as a network of about 200 million transactions a year. That's it. 8 billion people, 400 million corporations, 200 countries have to share settlement of 200 million transactions. That's it. And I think that realization will come. And as we see these kind of radical things happening geopolitically, I think more and more nation states are going to realize that they can't rely on the U.S.

letting them in the SWIFT system or China letting them in their equivalent of SWIFT, I think it's called SIPS, that the only way for them to have true economic independence is for them to have control over a certain amount of hash rate. And I think that's going to, and block template creation. And that's going to drag them in. This actually, you said it might scare some people, but I think that's incredibly. exciting. And I say it's incredibly exciting as long as countries that don't like each other are all going after, you know, hash rate. Because there's a stalemate there, right? It's, it's exactly. Exactly. So what, yeah, imagine this. Imagine 40 countries, we'll just say 40,

each with one to two percent of global hash. Let's say one percent, you know. So now you got 40 percent of hash rate divided up amongst these people all creating different templates we get this massive censorship resistance right because they don't they they might censor each other but they're not going to censor everybody and so yeah i think it's it's maybe the greatest path to decentralization ironically right that the states are the the final way now i think we still want to keep the plebs and the small and independent and ethocentric miners with a pretty good chunk of the hash rate. But yes, that's basically my hypothesis, Ben, is that this gets us where we want to be in a strange

way. It is, it is ironic to think, like, that the true decentralization comes when nation states just fully dive in head first, because again, there's just, you know, no one country get now it would be problematic if it was you know just china or just the u.s or something like that then then yeah they can dictate but like you can't you you can't preclude the rest of the world from using energy correct yep and that's exciting i i quite like that and uh i did want to say with the the home uh like the pleb mining movement ever i mean i've got a i'm You can kind of see a light over here on my shelf.

But I've got a whole bunch of the fun hobbyist miners at home, the bid axes. This one's like a big 3D printed like a nerd QX plus or something like that. But I did a thing with my daughter. And I was showing her these machines. I'm like, listen, these are now yours. And I set it up to pay out to her lightning wallet so that she could see. You know, now, and then she's like, oh, wow, and she gets like 50 cents a day or 50 cents a day. It's not jealous.

And the crazy thing, so the way that it works with her, she gets allowance each week, assuming she does her chores. She's eight. But she does some chores and everything. She gets an allowance. But every week it gets split in half. Half of it will be cash. And half of it goes into Bitcoin and is for savings. And the thing that I can't wait for is, you.

years down the road, she's got Bitcoin savings. She's like, holy crap, my allowance is enough to like, you know, for a down payment on a house or whatever it is. And I'll have the opportunity of saying, yes, it was. And technically, you could have had double that amount. You got in cash and you bought stuff. And so it'll, well, I don't want her to, you know, necessarily regret. It'll at least give that, that idea of like, oh, holy, crap, yeah. I, you know, the purchasing power has gone up this much. I could have had that much, but also I know exactly how many dollars I got over those years. And if I think of how many dollars that was and what that would buy me now, it's, it's trash, right? Like, it's nothing.

Meanwhile, my Bitcoin from the same amount is worth like orders of magnitude greater than that. I think that'll be a great lesson. I'm excited for it. Anyways, I kind of derailed stuff there, but anyway, she has her own Bitcoin mining. Well, whole mining, I mean, it is, it is, I'm so happy that this movement has come about. It's not really material yet, but I think, I think that could change with time. I think it probably will change with time. And I view it, I've said this a few times, I think that, I think of myself as a citizen of Bitcoin. And I think that, I'll go back.

to that thing. Like if you if you just hoddle and you you do nothing, you don't produce a show, you don't make art, you don't work for a custody company, you don't work in a mining company, you don't run a node, like you don't do all of these things. Like that's part of citizenship. Like if you're a citizen of a country like Canada or the U.S. as an example, like there are certain things you're obligated to do. You're, you know, you need to vote. You run for office. You do jury duty. You serve your country if you must, you know. And I think there are analogies to each of those in Bitcoin. You know, running, running a node is kind of like voting, you know. Being a minor is kind of like serving serving in the armed forces. Like there are these analogies. And if you don't

do them, then what you're saying, I view it as selfish. will probably piss somebody out. Like if you don't do any of that shit, you're selfish because what you're doing is you're asking us to do that for you. And you're going to ride the backs of all the people that are putting in the work and serving their cause and their community and you're not doing shit. That's spicy, Bob. I love it.

I want to get both George and Halston to weigh in here. So, I mean, George, maybe I'll go to you first. Any thoughts in around the topic here? You know, it's funny. I like that what you said there at the end, Bob. You know, when I was working underground as a minor in the valley that I was working in, I was a non-union miner. And I rode the back of every union minor that was anywhere around me.

Because no matter what they negotiated for and pay, I got their pay plus one nickel. And it was not right. I've often thought about it as the years have gone by. I want to get back, though, to what you said about this idea of mining and dispersion and where this is going. I don't think we're going to recognize this landscape in another five to ten years. You know, the idea that people, that these private companies are going to be mining Bitcoin for any kind of monetary reward will become, it just won't make sense anymore. And the reason is, because of something you mentioned earlier, it's that template creation. It's the block space.

to be able to get transactions in there. It won't just be countries. You're going to have JP Morgan, BlackRock. They're going to be wanting access to those damn block templates. And if they don't have them, they're going to get them. They have to. And what you're going to do is you're going to see a bunch of people like me with that painting back there that's mining Bitcoin right now. You're going to see a bunch of us band together because we're going to want to be able to get into a block.

It's going to be incredibly, it's going to be priceless. So those people that are concerned that, Bitcoin is going to not survive in the future because of either reduced subsidies or even the subsidies that will be so minimal and that the fees won't keep up. That's not where this is going. It's not going to be a monetary thing that we're looking at here to incentivize mining. It's not going to be that at all. And when you know, you talk about these countries, they will probably form alliances because, you know, if you get one percent, you're going to produce what, a block and a half, you know, a day. Half a day. Yeah. So what's that tell you? That means that they're going to probably make alliances too. There's going to be, you know, alliances form. There's going to be fighting within that, in those alliances. This is going to be a critical period. And, you know, I read a lot about history and warfare and different tactics or strategy. And I do not think people can, they don't, I just don't think people are really seeing where this is going to go over the next five to 10 years. And that's not even.

that's not even putting AI into that equation. If you stick AI into that equation, now it's off the charts. Now I don't even myself. I'm clueless because I'm going to tell you there'll be a demand. And there's going to be a fighting. You know, I mentioned there's three things. Well, the most important right now is power. You know, I don't know if I bet everybody here is using some form of AI in their daily life.

Sure. Did you know that you're not even using the best AI that's out there? No matter what you're using, no matter what premier level, no matter what you're paying for it, you're not using the best. Why? Because they don't have enough compute to actually release the best models that they have. And Alton has said this. So when that comes to fruition and AI is looking for a digital monetary system, we're going to have to fight with them too. Well, hopefully we can keep up, but I don't know about that.

We'll see. Awesome. What do you think of that? Yeah, I think similar sentiment to everyone here, I think, well, definitely the next three to five years will be drastically different. I think we'll see more floods mining. But I really want to touch back on the idea of us all contributing. I really like that. And I feel like that's part of the reason why Bitcoin speaks so loudly to me.

And when I first was learning about Bitcoin and how it differs from the various cryptocurrency. I think Bitcoin ethos is really what's set it apart. And I think, you know, if we're all claiming that this is the way to self-sovereignty, then we have to be promoting. We have to be, you know, I'm not going to tell you guys to spend stats on your daily coffee. But like Bob, you know, supporting steak and shake once a month or even a couple times a year, I think that's so important. And just doing the little things that we can, whether it be having the bid X or, you know,

I see the painting back there. I love that. are supporting Bitcoin artists. I think it's just also important that we all contribute the way, Bob, I liked your analogy of the voting and the serving and the armed forces, that kind of analogy. I think that's really important in this space. There's somebody that does a really, really cool kind of, they're the old like war posters, you know, like, you know, I want you kind of thing.

Yeah. And there's, he has a bunch of these old war. war posters that have been repurposed to look like Bitcoin, like rallying the troops type thing. Like, I'm doing a part. I'm running a note. I'm doing my part. I'm, you know, all these types of things. They're great. He does them on shirts and stuff, but I'm thinking I should probably grab a couple of them on the wall. You should. Yeah. And I like what you said too earlier, Ben, about spending stats on quality goods. And I think Bitcoin teaches that. You know, I have a necklace on here. I don't know if you guys will see it, but it's a, it's got a Bitcoin. Oh, there it is.

Yeah. Beautiful. Cool. That's cool. This company, Bitcoin boutique, they were at the BTC and DC. I paid for this in Sats and this is real gold. And so, you know, this is the old me, maybe three years ago, wouldn't have seen that as a valuable purchase. But today, now understanding Bitcoin and the different concepts that it teaches. And I think, yeah, we'll see more quality goods be purchased with stats rather than the cheap stuff, the fiat decline. 100%. There's going to be a whole subset of people that wonder, why does this certain group, why are they

all so rich and healthy and have the best stuff? Yeah, they're not going to be happy for you, though. Just remember that. You know, people aren't going to, let's all be real here, okay? Yes, I'll tell you right now, in Halston, at her age, I mean, yeah, you know what, as you get older here, you are going to see that. You actually will get to witness it. And people are, you know, a lot of your neighbors are not just going to look at you and go, hey, you know, I'm so happy for you. It's great how you work so hard, kept your nose to the grindstone.

You did it. No, a lot of them are going to think you were lucky. They were going to say, hey, you were in early, you were fortunate, and probably not understand the amount of work that went in to get where you are. And you're going to have an incredible life, Paul. It's going to be awesome. Yeah. I hope so. It is.

It is. George, you may have experienced this. You know, I am through different stages of my life. Even when I found some success back in the PC world, like I experienced basically the same thing. And the first time I kind of acquired wealth. And I basically lost most of my friends, you know, not not a like a dramatic overt way. It was more of a like thing. And and it, I think you're right, Jordan.

I think it'll probably be very dramatic with Bitcoin though. Like, you know, and but I think. Well, I've lost most of my friends just by being a toxic. Bitcoiner or Maxi. But you made some too. Yeah, I have. And you know what? The friends like the people here on this podcast, you know, they're friends. I mean, I can go to Prague and I, you know, Halston, I saw you on there about two months ago and I thought, wow, what a cool story.

I immediately hit follow and I thought, this is so neat. Well, yeah, you meet people like this. And look at Ben. I mean, I've known Ben for years now. And I'll tell you right now, Ben, you've helped me more than just about, you know, anybody as far as understanding so many technical aspects of Bitcoin. It's been awesome. And so, yeah, you meet the best damn people. But those normies out there, they're not going to really be very happy for you. You'll see. Yeah.

Definitely not. Yeah. There's definitely, I think as you get down the Bitcoin rabbit hole does make you think about a lot of things very, very differently. And, you know, living in Theatland, you're taught to think a certain way. And Bitcoin tends to run counter to that. So it definitely creates some friction for those that haven't had that aha moment yet versus yourself. And, you know, people will get there. But, yeah, it's going to be tricky as that disparity grows because it will continue to grow.

I think about the trajectory of my life over the past few years versus some people that I know. And it's not good for people. It's continuously harder and harder to scrape by. And the lack of understanding about why it's happening and the inclination to like knee-jerk surface level, place blame. Like, oh, I went to a grocery store. It was more expensive. Blame the grocer. And without going deeper than that.

Yeah, it's hard for them because a lot of them genuinely tried hard. Yeah. You know, they just, it was a game they could never win and they, they, at least anybody that was in any of our circles, we tried to help, right? I mean, I've, I've given everybody that I sincerely care about in my life a legitimate shot. And, you know, family is one of the hardest. Obviously, like my kids and all that, I've got all them in. but my extended family, I'm almost like a zero percent. I want to ask something about Halston real quick because, I mean, I've often said I'm a really shitty orange pillar.

I mean, I just suck at it. I mean, I don't know what it is. But I've often wondered if it's just because of my age and the group that I'm in. So I mean, you know, in your group, no. Okay. So tell me. Tell me that. No, it's hard.

I think a lot of it too is like sometimes understanding, you know, you don't even mention Bitcoin. You just tell somebody that the financial system is incredibly broken and that everything that we've been taught in the university is false. That's an incredibly humbling experience that most people don't want to accept. And for me, I was a business major in business economics, minored in marketing and finance. And so I'm trying to orange pill my peers, my graduating class. And they're just like, no, no, no, no, no, no. two and a half percent inflation is key.

That's the metric. And they always go back to the textbooks, you know? And so I think it's equally difficult. I don't think it has anything to do with age. Wow. Maybe you should give another run at, who is it, that guy who did the commencement speech? Oh, yeah. But Ohio State, I think.

Yeah, he got booed. And meanwhile, just a few years later, all of the people, if they would have thrown some money into Bitcoin, they could have paid off their student loans. There you go. Now you have Harvard getting involved with Bitcoin. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Well, guys, this has been a hell of a conversation.

Before I wrap up, I was talking about those war propaganda pictures. I just wanted to quickly show some of these. I'm just going to scrolling through. But again, this is a guy's website, F-N-E-E-E-P-H-N-E-E-P. And he just has all these different like old school looking like again like all those are great. I love them. Yeah. Yeah.

It's. I love it. Yeah. Really cool. He's got so many different ones. Give us his, his address again. Yeah. It's P-H-N-E-E-P.com.

And you can do all these on like, you can do posters, you can do shirts. I've had a bunch of shirts. shirts that I've gotten from him that I really like. And yeah, he's just, he's, he's got awesome one. Awesome. Come on, delete coin base. He's Bitcoin well. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, anyways, love his stuff. Beautiful. Given the combo, I thought it'd be great. I want to thank all of you for joining me on a Wednesday, getting bullish. This has been a lot of fun. that joined us. Thank you guys for being here. If you're new to the channel, welcome. Make sure you subscribe and drop a like on the video and check out all the guests here. They're all listed in the show notes down below. You can follow them and what they're up to. Maybe

look at mining with Bob, look at stacking sats with Halston, and look at stacking art with George. All of those things would be awesome. But thank you guys. Have a wonderful rest of your evening and to everybody else that's been watching. I say it every episode. These are fun. The conversations are fun. But if you don't take action, you haven't grown. So I always play a clip at the end of the show. Make sure you head over to that learn page, start to learn self-custy. It is super important. Thank you guys very much. Have a good. Hi, good. Cheers. Thank you. Hey, you. Yes, you are watching the Bitcoin price movements and the latest exciting

news. It's awesome to stay informed, but the real power of Bitcoin comes from taking control. Don't just watch, take action. Head over to btcsessions.ca slash learn for free step-by-step tutorials that guide you through every major skill you need to know, plus full video playlist for deeper dives on any topic you like. And if you're ready for the ultimate fast track, scroll to the bottom and check out Bitcoin Mentor.io for premium one-on-one experience with my team of Bitcoin experts to ensure you get it right the first time. Don't wait, secure your Bitcoin future today. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen.