BTC Sessions - What's the Real Reason Amazon Is Suddenly Interested in Bitcoin?

Starting point is 00:00:45 What is going on? Everybody, welcome to the show. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. We've got Nico, of course, in the wings waiting to give us the latest and greatest in everything that's been going on in the Bitcoin space. We are also going to be hitting up our regular tech updates and, of course, showering you guys with some sats. So make sure that you stick around for the middle of the show or we do so.

Starting point is 00:01:11 Share to Bitcoin well. Of course, this is live. anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. We'll do it live. Do it live. I can, I'll write it and we'll do it live. I'm a fucking thing. If you have not already, like, subscribe, share all those things.

Starting point is 00:01:36 They really do help a ton. Do them now. It'll get the content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your Simply session. Before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. I am pulling up timechain calendar.com. Get myself in the corner here. There we are.

Starting point is 00:02:13 We're currently sitting at $100,390 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will snag you 996 sats. It's still weird to me seeing triple digits when it comes to a single U.S. dollar. Sad. It's bittersweet. Sweet. In terms of fees, next block five sats per V-byte, and in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.79 million, that is 94.26% of the total supply. We're going to give a quick shout out to sponsors of the show, and we'll be right back into the news. So stay tuned. Bitcoin Well is one of the best places to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. And now with the advent of Bitcoin, well, infinite, high net worth individuals can enjoy an OTC desk with white glove experience tailored to transactions of $50,000 or more.

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Starting point is 00:03:59 Collateral is held in a three of four distributed multi-sig with trusted parties. It provides institutional liquidity providers, loan periods of up to five years with flexible conditions and the best rates. And best of all, no rehypification of your funds. If you want to check them out today, head over to debify.com or hit the link in the show notes down below. All right, we are back in. It's time. It is time to bring in our wonderful news-filled co-host. Buddy, how you doing?

Starting point is 00:04:33 I'm doing good, bro. I'm doing good. It's never a dull week in Bitcoin. So many things going on. So much breaking news. I feel like we're winning, man. We're winning. That's how I'm doing.

Starting point is 00:04:44 I feel like I'm winning. I'm winning. But we still got a year of the bull market left. I think maybe we hit the top already. Maybe it's all over. Can you imagine 103 top? Backs me. Oh, that would be terrible.

Starting point is 00:04:59 but a Bitcoin does take the path of mass pain. So, you know, maybe it takes another 40 years to hit a million dollars. But, you know, we'll see. We'll see. I'm personally optimistic. Yeah, yeah. I think we'd all have a rough time with a 103 top. I'd be a little, just a tad disappointed with that.

Starting point is 00:05:23 I posted before we dive in, I got to, I'm giving myself a meme problem. here because I was very satisfied with the meme I posted earlier today in and around in and around how desensitized I am to to price at this time and so I had to post this my entitled ass as Bitcoin dips below 100k again and it's just like the eye rolling Robert Downey Jr. like oh but that's legit I see 99 I'm like oh Come on. No, it's true, bro. It's true.

Starting point is 00:06:04 I mean, like we, I feel like, but it's part of paying your dues, you know? An American Hoddle, I think, writes some great epic pieces on Noster about this, right? About the journey of the hoddler. And like, it's so easy on paper. It's so easy in concept. It's so easy in theory. But, you know, like, I've been in this eight years. I know you've been in this for a couple years more than me.

Starting point is 00:06:26 And it's like, it changes you as a person, bro. Like spiritually as a man, as a person, like you get beat down, you know, realistically, most people get in in a bull market. So you get absolutely wrecked the next year. And then you feel bad because you're just like, dude, I could have bought so much Bitcoin if I would have waited, you know, but it's like it's all part of paying your dues, man. Yeah, it is. It is what it is.

Starting point is 00:06:51 And, I mean, it's hard not to be bullish with all of the winning that is happening here. So, I mean, I'll just defer to you. What's been going on this week? What's exciting? What winning has taken place? Yeah, I mean, if we're going to speak of winning, we have to talk about the Orange Man first because it's just a perfect segue to, you know, he did promise at the Bitcoin conference.

Starting point is 00:07:15 You guys are going to get tired of winning. He did take credit for Bitcoin breaking 100K. Let's be real a little bit. Bitcoin was always going to hit 100K. but it's pretty, when you look at election immediate pump by like 20K afterwards, it's pretty clear that like he gave it a little, at least. Facts, 100%. He definitely gave it a little nudge.

Starting point is 00:07:46 There's no debating that. But it's just such like kind of Trump style. Here's one of the latest videos. He gave a, he rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. and also he won like Time Magazine of the Wii, whatever. None of that is important. The important part is he had something to say about our industry, one of his latest press conferences.

Starting point is 00:08:09 Let's check it out. Meantime, how about a crypto, really? We do need, I think, to some, your embracing of crypto, very different from the previous administration. Strategic Petroleum Reserve-like for crypto? Yeah, I think so. We're going to do something great with crypto because we don't want China or anybody else.

Starting point is 00:08:24 Not just China, but others are embraces. embracing it and we want to be the head. Meantime, how about a crypto? Really, we do need. That to me, like, tells me that, like, you know, that to me tells me that he, like, he's serious about it. And then his son was actually a Bitcoin Mina. Bitcoin Mina was a conference organized by Bitcoin Magazine that was thrown in Abu Dhabi. And he actually had a speech there.

Starting point is 00:08:54 I'll share the screen. It's about three minutes. I don't know if we'll play the entire thing, but the reason I want to play this speech is we heard Trump's speech at Nashville, and we kind of heard him talking about it in this interviewer, and it just doesn't feel like he actually knows what he's talking about. Like, it's like, this Bitcoin thing is cool. It's amazing.

Starting point is 00:09:18 100K, that was all me. Have fun with your bitcoins. But, you know, and then it doesn't help that he's selling, like, you know, sneakers for Ethereum, right? Like this doesn't help. However, his son gave this speech at Bitcoin Mina. And I mean, you hear this and you know that he knows what he's talking about. Let's check it out.

Starting point is 00:09:38 But now more than ever before, now after everything I've witnessed, having maybe the greatest look behind the curtains of anybody on earth into what the systems truly are, how the systems are manipulated. Bitcoin is actually proving to be the greatest compliment to the hard assets. Our family loves so much. Just like real estate, obviously, Bitcoin's scarce. There's only $21 million.

Starting point is 00:10:05 I don't need to tell anybody in this room that. Name another commodity that's capped. Name another commodity that as prices go up, it's not further exploited. Guys, if gold ever went to $20,000, you'd be tearing down this building, You'd be looking in the concrete pillars over there. You'd be trying to mine gold.

Starting point is 00:10:24 You'd be changing the supply dynamics. With Bitcoin, you can't. You know, with Bitcoin, Bitcoin's supply is capped. That scarcity, that hard limit. It makes it incredibly valuable, especially as these assets are being purchased in the billions. That's why you see the price skyrocket the way it is. But unlike real estate, Bitcoin's not tied to geography.

Starting point is 00:10:51 It's global. It's instantly liquid. Try selling this convention center to a REIT right now. You know, I'll see you in two years. Try going out and selling a big office building. You know, it will take you 18 months to do at the end of it. You're going to want to shoot yourself in frustration. You know, think about the complement to hard assets that Bitcoin is.

Starting point is 00:11:13 Right? It's instantly liquid. You can buy or sell it while literally having dinner with your wife or your husband or whoever it might be. It's borderless. You know, it can be transferred. It can be sold. It can be, you know, moved with a click of a budget. Okay. It keeps going. But you get the point. That is the president's son. Okay. That guy's father is about to be sworn into office next year. He wished Bitcoin happy birthday. Promise the free Ross on day one. And he congratulated Bitcoiners for Bitcoin breaking 100K. I mean, bro, like, That's why we had the fucking pump we did, man.

Starting point is 00:11:55 Everyone is so excited about the regulatory environment that's going to be happening next year. This is insane. I cannot believe that this guy's father is going to be the president of the United States. And then not to mention, of course, the talk of the strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Dennis Porter dropped news today regarding Texas announcing that they're looking into making a strategic reserve as well for Bitcoin. So, yeah, I mean, this is, it's happening a lot. lot faster than that I anticipated six months ago. I was looking to move out of the United States because the regulatory environment was getting so hostile. So yeah, this is, this is, this is, this is amazing. This is pretty cool. I, I've got to say it. Like, I heard, I heard a clip of this

Starting point is 00:12:37 previously, like the first portion of it. But getting further into it, I've got to say he, I mean, this guy's done his research. Like he, he, when he's talking about supply dynamic, and how he was referring to the difficulty adjustment and how that contrasts with gold, right? You know, that gold doubles overnight. Gold mining production doubles overnight. And so while you can't push gold production super, super far, you can increase the amount that you're mining and certain mining operations that would have been unprofitable before, come online.

Starting point is 00:13:19 And that's true of Bitcoin mining, yes, but there's the difficulty adjustment. And so inside of, now I'm losing my, what's the number of blocks for the retarget? 6,0,000, I think. Something like that. Yeah, it's on average. It's roughly like a two-week period. But whatever the number of blocks is, you know, like if all of a sudden hash rate doubled, we'd get, faster blocks for, yeah, for like a week.

Starting point is 00:13:54 And then all of a sudden it would, the difficulty would readjust. And it would go back to 10 minute blocks. And it wouldn't impact the total supply at all anyways. So we'd have a brief time of slightly faster issued Bitcoin for a week. And that's it. But yeah, like he's clearly like he understands what's up. I still think obviously like, I mean, Trump is 70 something, right? Like he he doesn't understand the technicals of Bitcoin, but he's got young, you know, he's got his kids in his ear basically telling him this.

Starting point is 00:14:31 He understands that there's something there. You know, there's shit coining that's going to take place. That's inevitable with everybody new. But more so just the friendly environment of like not having to matrix your way around like people throwing devs in jail is going to be a welcomed change for this. next four years and hopefully enough shit can get done in that period of time that were that much more resistant to bullshit that comes down later. 100%. Yeah, they have four years.

Starting point is 00:15:00 Realistically, policy-wise, they have two years before the Republicans probably lose the house because that's what happens. Like, and just historically presidents lose the house. The incumbent party loses the house in the midterms. So he has two years to do his thing. and then he has four years in the executive branch, right? And then I think all Bitcoiners are asking for is just to be left alone. Hopefully by the time we get to 2028, it just becomes unfeasible to have an anti-Bitcoin stance

Starting point is 00:15:31 because of the amount of people holding Bitcoin in the population. And I think that should really be the target of Bitcoiners. It's not necessarily that we want help. We just want to be left alone. If we're left alone, we're going to win, right? that's my take on all that. Now, other bullish news, I did say we were winning really hard. Michael Saylor, and I wish I had time to play this last episode, but we ran out of time.

Starting point is 00:15:56 Michael Saylor gave a presentation to the Microsoft Board of Directors and CEO Sata Nadela. Now, before you guys all get excited, they did have a vote on it, and Microsoft on December 10 decided to have fun staying poor. They said no. But what's also interesting is Amazon shareholders also push for a 5% Bitcoin allocation. So, you know, this is happening. Also, another company. I know this is a company within the field. Okay, fine.

Starting point is 00:16:33 But Mara, which used to be Marathon, decided to follow in the footsteps of Michael Saylor. and they started offering convertible notes in order to follow the micro strategy strategy and of course Sailor in the beginning of the month about 10 days ago announced that he is acquiring another 15,000 Bitcoin like absolute savage man but he's winning.

Starting point is 00:16:59 I really want to play you guys this clip in three minutes and 19 seconds it's just so much information you guys are probably going to have to watch this a couple of times let's check it out Microsoft can't afford to miss the next technology wave, and Bitcoin is that wave. Bitcoin represents the greatest digital transformation of the 21st century. It represents digital capital. The global wealth is distributed across assets that provide utility and

Starting point is 00:17:30 others that preserve capital. But risk is destroying trillions of dollars of that capital every single year, and investors are turning to digital capital in the form of Bitcoin in order to avoid that risk. Digital capital is economically and technically superior to physical capital, and it represents a revolutionary advance in capital preservation. The asset class itself is growing from trillions to hundreds of trillions of dollars, and it is backed by digital power, along with political and economic power. It makes sense for Microsoft to be powered by digital capital. Bitcoin's the best asset you can own.

Starting point is 00:18:15 The numbers speak for themselves. It makes a lot more sense to buy Bitcoin than to buy your own stock back or to hold Bitcoin rather than holding bonds. If you're going to outperform, you're going to need Bitcoin. And those bonds are undermining your options market and your equity liquidity. Luckily, you have an alternative. Public support for Bitcoin is surging, as is political support, as is support for the US Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, as is Wall Street support.

Starting point is 00:18:50 And the President of the United States says, Never sell your Bitcoin, that's why we're entering year one of the crypto Renaissance, and you have a choice to make. to the past or embrace the future. Divest billions of dollars and slow your growth rate, invest billions of dollars and accelerate your growth rate. You've surrendered hundreds of billions of dollars of capital over the past five years and you've just amplified the risks that your own shareholders face. If you want to escape that vicious cycle, you're going to need an asset without counterparty risk. What if you could buy a hundred billion dollar company?

Starting point is 00:19:34 growing faster than Microsoft for one-time's revenue. What if you could keep doing it every single year? It's time for Microsoft to evaluate its Bitcoin strategic options. We've created an open-source model. You can plug in your own assumptions. You can convert your cash flows and your dividends and your buybacks and your debt into Bitcoin. If you do that, you'll add hundreds of money. of dollars to the stock price.

Starting point is 00:20:08 You can create trillions of dollars of enterprise value. You can strip away risk from your shareholders. And you can prosper on the Bitcoin standard. So do the right thing for the world and adopt Bitcoin. I mean, drop Mike. You know, do you have any commentary? He just, it's so much, so much noise, so much, not noise, so much signal in three minutes. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:42 And he wasn't even reading the full slides. He, like, one of the things that, like, he would just say, like, drop everything else, just Bitcoin. Like, it was, it was, it was very well done, my opinion. Well, there's, yeah, I feel like he realized, okay, I got three minutes. I'm going to cram as much information as possible. And each, I mean, each slide was like a couple seconds. and you'd be like, here's the general idea here. And probably anticipating later,

Starting point is 00:21:10 somebody's going to look through these slides and be like, oh, holy shit. It's wild to me. I love also that my favorite thing was at the end, the tiers of like the maxi like tiers of like a triple maxi versus a double maxi versus a single maxi. It's, yeah, which is awesome. But the thing that blows my mind is,

Starting point is 00:21:39 it's kind of funny that obviously Sailor, you know, he says like you've got to study hundreds, if not a thousand hours, to fully understand Bitcoin. And Microsoft, like I posted a meme about this earlier, but this basically like the pawn stars meme where the guy's like, the best I can do it. And Microsoft is like, best I can do is three minutes and get the fuck out. Like, that's basically how they handled it.

Starting point is 00:22:05 And to me, their decision, because, you know, they'll inevitably revisit this and change their tune. But the opportunity costs between now and then is going to be so great. And Bitcoin isn't that far from eclipsing Microsoft in market cap. Like, if Bitcoin goes to 200, it will be, I think it needs to go to 157 or 167. or something like that to eclipse the market cap of Microsoft. So that'll be an interesting moment to see in light of the decision that they ended up having. Yeah, dude, it's, it's, you know, and again, you know, the Sailorverse, which is everyone gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve just applies here. So it's like they're going to say no, right?

Starting point is 00:22:55 But you're, you bet they're going to eventually go down this path. It's inevitable. This isn't an inevitability. This isn't a choice. And this is something that Bitcoiners understand fundamentally because like you, you not only see Michael Saylor outperforming everyone, but, you know, Ben, I'm sure for your company and just for what you do and me as an individual for my company, I've adopted a Bitcoin standard. And I'm telling you, it is a freaking cheat code. Your runway just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. It just gets longer on a Bitcoin standard. And the, and that's something that Michael Saylor is trying to explain. And if you take a look at the amount of cash that Microsoft holds, they hold about $80 billion in cash, you trust the government's number for the inflation rate, which is 2.5%, 3%. That's your trusting their number. Now multiply 2.5% times 80 billion. They're losing billions of dollars

Starting point is 00:24:01 in purchasing power on a yearly basis. Now, the reason that Microsoft can get away with that and Amazon and Google and whatever is because they make so much profit, they just kind of write it off. They're just like, oh, whatever. But could you imagine what would happen to those companies without that hindrance?

Starting point is 00:24:19 Like, $2.something billion is, it's the market, cap of most companies on planet earth. It's an absurd amount of capital that is literally just being it's a melting ice cube like Michael Saylor says. So yeah, I mean, they could take an ideological stance like Vanguard. Look how that ended up, right? But eventually you're going to start to see more and more pressure from shareholders because these are publicly traded companies to say, hey, you know what? What are you doing, bro? What are you doing? You know, like, why is it in cash? And they don't really have a response to it.

Starting point is 00:24:57 You know, they, they, they, they, they, they don't really have a good response to it, you know? Yeah. It's, what would be poetic if, uh, Microsoft said no? And then in a surprise sneak attack, Apple was like, we'll do it. Yeah. Exactly. And then, and then they would be like, oh, my God, we're fucked. Because what, and a lot of people, you know, crap on Elon.

Starting point is 00:25:17 And there's a lot of things that I don't necessarily agree with Elon on. However, Tesla owns 10,000 Bitcoin. And, uh, SpaceX owns Bitcoin too. So Elon might be like a Doge fan publicly, but he probably doesn't own the equivalent of 10,000 Bitcoin in Doge. All right, let's be real here, right? So, you know, there's already one of the tech companies,

Starting point is 00:25:41 because Tesla is a tech company more than a car company, in my opinion, that already owns Bitcoin, right? So it's like, I just think that it just takes this next domino to fall. And I think that's going to be proved in this cycle. I think this cycle is going to happen. The bare market's going to hit. Micro Strategy is going to go down. And then micro strategy is going to go even higher the following cycle.

Starting point is 00:26:03 And then that's really when they're going to be like, oh, my God, this thing isn't going away because that's been the story of Bitcoiners' lives the last 16 years. The first five something years they called us crazy. They said it wasn't going to work. Then they called us criminals. And then all of a sudden Larry thinks like, you know what? I love this Bitcoin thing. And then all of a sudden you have the president of the United States saying, you know what, Bitcoin's good.

Starting point is 00:26:28 Bitcoin's going to the moon. So I see that same type of hubris from these companies, like that same like snobbery. Like, nah, we're at Microsoft. We don't need that Bitcoin thing. And then before you know it, yeah, you do need that Bitcoin thing. It doesn't matter how much money you're making, you know. Speaking of people that have bent the knee or institutions that have bent the knee, the Chad sailor went to meet up. with Dave Portnoy in his office.

Starting point is 00:26:55 It's so funny kind of seeing them in Dave Portnoy as like live stream room. The juxtaposition is exquisite. Yeah, no, it's like, it's going up forever, Laura. You know, like it's, it's just so effing funny. It's a 44 second clip. I'll play it to you guys and we'll talk about it. You're the Michael Jordan of the analogy in which if you're buying Bitcoin, micro strategy, you're just buying forever.

Starting point is 00:27:22 You're never going to stop buying. Yeah, I'm going to keep buying. I joke. It's like you said, well, it's 100,000 too much. And I said, I say, look, Dave, I'll be buying it at a million dollars a coin. And I'll probably be buying it at the rate of a billion dollars a day at a million dollars a coin because that's what I do. Just like, you're like, you know, crap, Manhattan real estate's really expensive in 1930. It's a lot more expensive than 1830.

Starting point is 00:27:48 I'm like, well, you know, 100 years later, we'll still be buying it and we'll be paying a lot. more. The only issue is, can you hold it for that time period? Because people are going to want to buy it. You're the Michael Jordan. So, dude. And then the interview keeps going. And we don't have the time of play the entire thing, but it essentially keeps going another kind of two minutes. Michael showed up. Sorry about that. And he just kind of explains to Dave Portnoy. Essentially, do we have the time? Yeah. I mean, no, there's a couple other things. So essentially, he just takes the rest of the time to explain, you know, what Bitcoin is, what the Winkle I got wrong, why he should allocate a percentage of his net worth to Bitcoin. At the end,

Starting point is 00:28:32 you could tell Dave Porter, I was convinced, you know, but I wanted to play you guys that 44-second clip because, you know, first of all, like, I wish I had a billion dollars a day to buy Bitcoin. That would be nice. Just one day would be cool. Just one day. I don't need every day. Just one. Just one day would be nice. And I see someone in the comments, Luigi says, it took me days to figure out this Sailor Portnoy video was not AI generated. Yeah, because it's so true. Like, you can never a picture Sailor in Portnoy's office.

Starting point is 00:29:04 Like, it just feels so out of place, you know? Yeah, it's wild. It's, I mean, I hope in these, I know it was longer than these, these couple minute clips, but I hope this one visit for Sailor, and I'm confident it is, this one visit from Sailor does wonders more than the visit from the Winklevoss Twins. Because that show was a fucking train wreck. Let's be honest, like, well, if there's an asteroid full of gold and we start mining the asteroids, then, like, it was like just such a, like, I understand that, that in the scheme of the universe,

Starting point is 00:29:43 gold isn't particularly scarce, but at the same time, like there's better analogies to teach somebody how to use Bitcoin than the analogies that they came to Portnoy with. And I feel like Sailor, even just in that short clip there, articulated much better the case for it in a way that Portnoy can grapple with pretty well. No, 100%. And, you know, one of the things that I find funny is, because you mentioned the Winklevi, right? And it kind of reminds you like Brian Armstrong and Coinbase and all that, right? Coinbase now has a lower market cap, the micro strategy.

Starting point is 00:30:33 Yeah. Coinbase had a 15-year head start to buy Bitcoin. and Coinbase has less Bitcoin on its balance sheet than Microstrategy. And Micro Strategy has been doing this for maybe four years. And they have a higher market cap and they have more Bitcoin than Coinbase. Like that is effing hilarious. And the reason I'm bringing this up with the Winklevi is clearly the Bitcoin strategy, not the Bitcoin and crypto strategy, but the Bitcoin strategy is the winning strategy, right?

Starting point is 00:31:06 And eventually everyone kind of figures this out in the industry because you most people, right, some people make money, but most people, right, you know, they go to the cryptos and whatever and they start buying and this and this and that. But most people that I know end up with less Bitcoin than they would have had if they just bought Bitcoin and just forgot about it, right? So, you know, and this is the vast majority of people. Some people are good traders, right? But the vast majority of people that I've ever met, right? I've always hear this story. Like, I tried shit-coining, got my handburn a little bit, Bitcoin-only, and now I understand it's Bitcoin-only, and they're much happier for it, right?

Starting point is 00:31:45 So, you know, it was about having, putting Dave Portnoy in the right room with the right person to have that conversation. Yeah. Anyways, in other news, this is really, really important. I know we've covered some pretty important topics today, but elections have consequences. I can't, can't bring that up enough. We got so much crap on Simply sessions for. talking about the election and all that stuff. The reason of bringing this up is look at the change

Starting point is 00:32:12 in language from some of these institutions. And the reason that they're changing their language is because they're watching their asses now. It's because they want to keep their job. Here is the U.S. Treasury admitting that the primary use case for Bitcoin seems to be a store of value, aka digital gold. So they're admitting the United States Treasury is admitting that Bitcoin isn't a toy, that Bitcoin isn't fake, that Bitcoin isn't money. They're not admitting that it's money, but they're admitting that, you know what? This is a store of value. This is digital gold. And it's not only the U.S. Treasury that is parroting the same exact lines. You have the head of the central bank of the United States. It's called the Federal Reserve. And check it out. He says

Starting point is 00:33:10 almost the same exact thing as the Treasury paper. In the Federal Reserve itself, in terms of the system, what do you think of that idea? I don't think that's how people think about it. I mean, it's so, you know, people use Bitcoin as a speculative asset, right? It's like gold. It's just like gold only. It's virtual. It's digital. People are not using it as a form of payment or as a store of value, it's highly volatile. It's not a competitor for the dollar. It's really a competitor for gold. So again, right?

Starting point is 00:33:40 What do you say? That's so dejoited, though. Like, listen to that, he said it, he compared it to gold, but then he also said, he also said there people aren't using it as a store of value. Like, I mean, that's literally what gold bugs say. They're like, oh, I need to store my value in something that's not being debased. and he just destroyed his own narrative in a single sentence. No, and again, it contradicts, right, what the U.S. Treasury is saying.

Starting point is 00:34:10 But you could tell that he read this report. You could tell that he's using some of the language with the report, but then some of the language is like, fuck, if I say it's a store of value, then, oh, my God. Right. But you can see the very institution itself, right, feel threatened by this Bitcoin thing. Like, you could hear it in his voice, but now they have to admit it that it's real. It's not going away because of the political situation, which full loop circle vindication. This is why I kept saying elections have consequences.

Starting point is 00:34:43 This is the type of consequences you get when an election goes your way. And I know we all want to live in the world of the sovereign individual, this Bitcoin utopia, where politics become irrelevant. And, you know, governments change their relationship with their citizens. to be more like business customer type of relationship. That's the world that we all want to live in. However, that world isn't real right now. Fiat politics are real and they could affect your life.

Starting point is 00:35:08 I mean, we witnessed this in the United States with Operation Shook Point 2.0, the arrest of the samurai wallet developers, the arrest of Roger Ver. Maybe we have time to talk about that today. And also, Ben, you lived this yourself with the Canadian Truckers' protests, right? And now you potentially have, like the United States, you have a conservative government that is potentially going into power in Canada. And that conservative government, I don't know if they feel as good on Bitcoin as Trump does, but they have a much better outlook on Bitcoin than the current government, right? So, yeah, I mean, elections have consequences.

Starting point is 00:35:46 And this is the type of consequences. It's not that we want privileges. It's not that we want special powers. It's not that we want to be treated better. It's just like we're real, acknowledge us, and at the same time, it's like, leave us alone. Or at least treat us with the same standards that you treat the rest of the system. Yeah, yeah, 100%. It's, as you've said in prior episodes, we're in that transitionary period and the early

Starting point is 00:36:17 innings of the transitionary period where, yeah, is that sovereign individual thesis going to play out, perhaps over time. But like, Fiat is still the majority of how the world works. And until that Fiat is gradually completely debased to the point of irrelevance, it still holds power. And unfortunately, what that means is those that control and are closest to the money spigot are going to have time to gain or at least protect their wealth through that fiat system until it's broken. And so, you know, like there's still influence that can happen through the fiat system. We're not fully insulated. You've got to weather that storm in the interim. So how are you going to do it? 100%. 100%. So moving on to also extremely exciting news, we went from Bitcoin being illegal in Russia to the president of Russia,

Starting point is 00:37:19 of Vladimir Putin basically saying, we can't ban this thing, to them essentially unbanned mining, making mining legal, to now, you're hearing this correctly. This is not clickbait or breaking on Twitter. This is an article from Bitcoin magazine. Russia state Duma, for anyone who doesn't know what the Duma is, is essentially the equivalent of the House of Representatives here in the United States or the parliamentary house in Canada, right, the lower house of the legislative body. So the, you know, the Duma deputy proposes a strategic Bitcoin reserve. He kind of goes on to give like what his, what his reasoning is. He goes on to say, quote, in conditions of limited access to traditional international payment systems for countries under sanctions,

Starting point is 00:38:09 cryptocurrencies are becoming virtually the only instrument for international trade. The central bank of Russia is already preparing to launch an experiment in cross-border, in cryptocurrency. So this is the game theory. It's beautiful. You have the orange man saying, I want all Bitcoin to be mined in America. You have a change in stance from China. There is a judge in China that ruled that it's actually legal for Bitcoin to be property for individuals. Businesses can't use it, but individuals, they can hold cryptocurrency. Then you had news from Morocco saying that they were going to unbanned Bitcoin. And then simultaneously, coincidentally, around Remember, this is all a coincidence, guys.

Starting point is 00:38:51 This all happened after the election. Total coincidence, right? You had Vladimir basically saying, Mr. President Putin basically saying, you know what, you can't ban this thing. We're actually going to unban mining. You know, we're actually looking at it as a strategic Bitcoin Reserve too. And, you know, they're looking at it like, we don't want to get left behind by the United States, but they're also looking at it from like, wait a second, the U.S. is sanctioning us.

Starting point is 00:39:15 Let's use Bitcoin to facilitate international trade. And then the U.S. is kind of like, how are they going to back up? Right. And this is the beautiful incentives. This is the game theory of Bitcoin kind of playing out. And actually, Max Kaiser coined the term global hash war for this reason. Because he knew that countries were inevitably going to get into a competition to accumulate and mine as much Bitcoin as humanly possible.

Starting point is 00:39:43 And because they're competing, the individual Bitcoin Hodler wins, right? Like if they make hostile Bitcoin regulation, all they're doing is taking themselves out of the game. They're not taking the individuals that live in their country out of the game. They're taking themselves as in the state, as in the institution, as in the government itself out of the race. Right. So it's this beautiful kind of incentive structure playing out the game theory. And dude, who would have thought? Like if I would have told you this was real two years ago, you would have been like, no, that's impossible, you know?

Starting point is 00:40:15 It's wild. then and I love, I love seeing this play out. And I don't want people to, I don't want people to confuse this as me cheerleading the state. Because that's not what it is. What it is is when you see governments that are in opposition of each other going at this and trying to like clause much for themselves and, and, you know, get Bitcoin strategic reserves and, oh, we want to mine all the Bitcoin here. and we're going to like loosen up and we're going to try and build a reserve and all these different things. What that does in the end, like, yeah, okay, so they use their Fiat printers and they buy some Bitcoin. And maybe they are able to get their hands on quite a bit of Bitcoin. Not fantastic. But how that plays out for the individual that also is able to accumulate Bitcoin and hold it over the long term is the opportunity for a nation state to,

Starting point is 00:41:16 exhibit some fuckery in and around trying to change Bitcoin, it whittles down to negligible. Because when you have global superpowers that oppose each other using Bitcoin and they're using it because the traditional money system has been weaponized, who on the globe is going to go along with the U.S. fork of Bitcoin that is compliant and can be censored again. Not the rest of the world that adopted it because that's what happened with the Swift system. And vice versa. Same thing. If like bricks got together and they're like, we're forking Bitcoin because we want a thing that we control. The U.S. isn't going to fucking go along with that either. So we want these guys to be budding heads and fighting tooth and nail to hash and to a little bit.

Starting point is 00:42:11 accumulate because we win. And I will jump back to a quote. I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, but from Jeff Booth, he was asked, what's the worst thing about Bitcoin? And he thought for a moment and his answer was something to the tune of, you have to be okay with the idea that your enemy being able to use Bitcoin makes it stronger and better for yourself. And that's what we're seeing right now. Mike drop moment at the end. Absolutely love it. Yeah, man. It's beautiful to see. It's happened a lot faster than I anticipated. But I'm so pumped for, you know, I think this is this is year one of this institutional nation state. 2025. I think it's going to knock people's socks off in a good way. But anyways, guys, this was your simply sessions. I'll see you next week, Ben. Peace. Hell yeah, man. See you soon. Everybody, stick around. We're going to be doing some updates, all the awesome new apps and everything that is coming down the pike for you to check out and play around with. And we're also going to be given away some sets.

Starting point is 00:43:21 So we're going to give a quick shout out to sponsors here. And we'll be right back momentarily with our giveaways and our tech updates. So we'll see you guys in a second. CoinKite.com has some of the best hardware on the market today to secure your Bitcoin. The cold card queue is an absolute powerhouse and is my daily driver. On top of this, they have plenty of other goodies including the Mark 4, the tap signer, open dimes, the block clock, and much more. If you head over to their website, make sure you use code BTC sessions at checkout to get a nice discount. Links are in the show notes down below.

Starting point is 00:44:02 Speed is one of the fastest growing Bitcoin lightning wallets out there. It is a fast and secure way to send and receive Bitcoin and Stablecoin payments. Instantly, you can even swap between Bitcoin and stablecoins directly in the app. Also in the app, you can buy gift cards for all the best brands and earn rewards in the process. To download speed, simply scan the QR code on the screen, click the links in the show notes down below, and use code BTC Sessions 10 to get 5,000 sats for free. All right, we are back in. We're going to give away some sats.

Starting point is 00:44:39 Get your lightning wallets out. First to scan. We'll get them. So I'm here on Bitcoin. Well, of course, an awesome place to be Stag and Sats. You can sign up very easily in Canada and the U.S. And also available for OTC orders around the globe. So check if they're available in your area. But pretty simple, the way it works, you can sign up when you do.

Starting point is 00:45:04 And by the way, maybe I'll bring up a QR code if anybody is not currently on Bitcoin well. And I'll put it off to the side for you guys. But when you sign up, you earn points. When you purchase Bitcoin, you earn points. When you refer friends, you earn points. And those points can be used to toss a coin in the Bitcoin wishing well, which can win you each time between 500 and a million sats. We just shared a clip the other day of one of the big prizes that came through on one of the episodes that's been shared on X. So worth taking a peek at it was pretty funny, my reaction.

Starting point is 00:45:41 But I'm going to click up in the top right corner here. We're going to toss a coin into the well. First person to scan the QR code with an LN URL Lightning Wallet will receive 500 sats. So scan and snag. Whoever snipes those sets, please do let us know in the chat or in the comments wherever you are taken in the show. We always love hearing people getting free sets. So congrats to anybody that does. And up next, that's a lot of.

Starting point is 00:46:11 not the only way you can earn some additional sats, this bull run. My company, Bitcoin Mentor, we are an education-based company, and we basically do one-on-one education sessions, video calls with people helping them set up hardware, deal with multi-sig, learn about lightning, run a node, name it, we can help you with it. And so Bitcoin Mentor.io is where you can go to do that. But more importantly, if you want to be earning some additional sats throughout this next bull run, I encourage you to become a mentor, not a mentor, but an affiliate of Bitcoin mentor. So there's a QR code on the screen right now. If you scan it, you can sign up, you get your own special link, you can add it to your profile descriptions,

Starting point is 00:46:57 you can share it out whenever you like repeatedly if you want. And the way it works is if somebody comes to us through your link and books a one-on-one video call with us, You earn $21 for that session, and not just the one, but every time they rebook, it will come to you at the end of the month, $21 paid out in Bitcoin. So it's a great way to stack sats while new bitcoiners stack skills. So scan that QR code, get your personal link, add it to your profile, share it on your socials, and sit back and stack some additional sats. With that, let's dive into our tech updates. So this is why KYC is not ideal. Bitcoin ATM operator, Byte Federal reports data breach affecting 58,000 users.

Starting point is 00:47:51 This is a U.S.-based Bitcoin ATM operator. In a filing with Maine's attorney general, Byte Federal disclosed that hackers potentially access the personal data, 58,000 customers. Customer personal information was subject to the attempt of at unauthorized access. It includes name, earth date, address, phone number, email address, government issue ID, social security number, transaction activity, and photographs of the users. That is fucking horrendous. That is awful. Oh my God. So some person that rolled up to one of these,

Starting point is 00:48:34 oh man, some person that rolled up to one of these ATMs and dumped in a bunch of cash into Bitcoin, put it into their wallet and everything, all of that information is up for grabs. So if somebody stacks at early on, somebody would see, oh, wow, this person bought three Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:48:54 And this is what they look like. And this is where I can find them in their name and their address and all of their, ID and all of that. And that stuff can not only be used to obviously track the person, find them, and physically attack them. That's all that obviously that's a worst case scenario. But furthermore, that information can be used to compromise other online accounts. So with that personal information, somebody can go and start social engineering their way into accessing other accounts.

Starting point is 00:49:27 So that's pretty rough. Yeah, I mean, if you can avoid providing this type of information, especially when it comes to, you know, Bitcoin companies, if you can go and you can do things in a way that is KYC free, that's great. You know, like for people, especially like in Canada here, Bitcoin well has their Bitcoin ATMs. and you can get a light account which does not require ID, and you can use cash that will be linked to a separate Bitcoin wallet for you, and you won't have to give up that info. So that's an option out there. There's other peer-to-peer ways of getting Bitcoin,

Starting point is 00:50:12 but also this pertains to hardware as well. I've got to give a shout out to CoinCite. Again, I love these guys because what they do is they regularly purge their customer data. And so if you're not shopping at regular intervals, they say, okay, well, this is sensitive data. And so we're going to get rid of it after X amount of time. I can't remember the threshold that they said. But they're trying to set basically set an example for the rest of the industry where, you know, you collect the data necessary, obviously to ship something to somebody.

Starting point is 00:50:49 But once you no longer need that, get rid of the info because it's a liability. It's scary to hold onto that stuff. So you'll get an email from Coin Kite saying like, hey, it's been a while. We're going to purge your data for now unless you tell us not to if you're planning on shopping in the next little bit bit bit. And you want us to retain the address for a bit longer. And I'll add a further note here. If you're buying hardware from a company, it's not a bad idea to have a PO box where that stuff gets delivered. Because, again, that's a link to a physical address where a device that is.

Starting point is 00:51:24 specialized built to secure larger amounts of Bitcoin is being shipped. So, you know, not not the best idea to have that type of data just sitting around everywhere. But I digress. We'll continue on. Bitcoin Keeper showed it to them. This update version 1.3.0. They've added Mnyscript support, Inheritance Keys and Remote Sharing. This is super cool. I'm super interested in Mnisccript. What this allows you to do is a lot of malleability in and around how you create multi-sig wallets. And you can have things like right now if you create a multi-sig wallet, maybe you say, I have three keys and I want to require at least two of them to be able to spend. That's a basic multi-sig.

Starting point is 00:52:16 But with Mnisccript, you can start to say things like, I have three keys that. will be in play right now and I require at least two of them to unlock the funds. But after a certain amount of blocks, I want this additional fourth key to come into play and now be valid to be one of the two signers required. Or you can designate that that additional key can only be used in tandem with maybe one or two of the other keys that you specify. The point being that you can get very granular and specific with how things work. You can even have it where, okay, it's a two of three multi-sig, but if I don't update the quorum after X amount of time, I would like it to degrade to a single sig where any of the three keys could be used

Starting point is 00:53:15 or perhaps just a specific one or just a specific two. You can set it up so that if you screw up and start losing things, then it becomes accessible again after a certain amount of time, which hedges you again against personal error. So this is awesome. Again, this version introduces the inheritance key vault, including securing inheritance keys with miniscript, the ability to convert any key into an inheritance key, sharing and signing keys remotely with any device, additional subscription to your options with better pricing, and accompanying UI-U-X improvements.

Starting point is 00:53:49 The inheritance key vault enhances the standard multisex. setup with an additional inheritance key that activates after a user-defined period of inactivity. This on-chain deadman switch facilitates easier recovery and inheritance of funds without relinquishing control or depending on third parties. Super cool. Love that. Again, you can extend the activation time at any point in the year through a process called revolting. And again, they've also updated desktop to version 0.1.4. This is a companion desktop app for secure use of hardware wallets. And yeah, super, super awesome.

Starting point is 00:54:29 Hats off to Keeper. They're doing some really cool innovative stuff. I enjoy what they're doing there. I'm actually just on my other desk over there. I've got a bunch of tap signers set up. And I'm actually covering this minisccript update for inheritance. that will be out for the next tutorial. So pretty cool.

Starting point is 00:54:46 Moving on, BTCPay server version 2.0.4 released. Of course, this is free and open source Bitcoin payment processor. What's new? QR code with link to invitation email, add rate providers for Norwegian exchanges, so currency support. And a number of improvements. Sounds like some basic fixes and UI and all that kind of stuff. more just like a maintenance update.

Starting point is 00:55:16 But of course, version 2.0 was their kind of overhaul where they're moving a bunch of the menu items and making things more streamlined. Everything is kind of left side of the screen, single menu, instead of all these submenus that they used to have. I did do a new video on BTC Pay Server recently laying out how to run it with Luna Node, which is super cool.

Starting point is 00:55:37 I encourage you to check that out in the tutorial list. Moving on, Zoo. wallet version 0.9.3. So what do they add? Improved channels UI, including reserves. So the channels list interface now lets you toggle between your open, pending, and closed channels displaying the count for each category instantly. Additionally, the individual channel view has been enhanced to better emphasize the channel

Starting point is 00:56:04 reserves. So if you don't know what that is, when you have a lightning channel, it saves a little bit of Bitcoin on each side of the channel and makes it not spendable. So that is reserved for if the channel is closed, you have the funds to help pay the on-chain fee. A lot of people don't realize this. And then they'll open a lightning channel and be like, why can't I spend everything? I needed all of that. And it's like, well, you need to keep a little bit there just in case the channel closes.

Starting point is 00:56:30 So invoice settings added to added the ability to display requested amount on invoice. Embedded L&D node now has troubleshooting menu. Bitcoin denominated amounts are now displayed with spaces. Zeus, pay, Ux improvements, and some bug fixes. So awesome, awesome to see. Wabi-Sabi. Okay, so this was an interesting one. So a vulnerability in the Wabi-Sabi protocol allows malicious coordinators to de-anonomize

Starting point is 00:56:59 users' coins and link inputs and outputs compromising the privacy of the coin-join participants. Users are urged to update their instance immediately. So this vulnerability affects Wasabi Wallet version 2.4. 2.1.0 or earlier. Also, if you're running Ginger Wallet version 2.0.13 or earlier, and BTCP, BTC pay coin join plugin version 1.0, 101.0 or earlier. So this is, this is something that you just want to update for. It says, given this attack can be carried out without raising suspicion and lack of client-side checks on previously issued events, the vulnerability is highly exploitable by any party running the coordination services. And so basically, you just need to update.

Starting point is 00:57:50 This will add in some checks that will indeed help with this. The way I would think about this is in general, I – so when – I guess I'll step back a bit here. When Wasabi originally announced that their dedicated coordinator that they used to run was going to do on-chain analysis before allowing you to coin join, I like noped the fuck out of there. I was like, nah, I'm not going to use this anymore. But then they ended up actually saying, we're not going to run a coordinator anymore after Samurai got shut down because they were worried about the same types of implications for them, obviously. But you can sub in other Coindrome coordinators into the software, which, again, obviously, opens up some vulnerabilities

Starting point is 00:58:46 here. And so the tough part is there's an ethos of don't trust, verify, of course, but when it comes to subbing in a coordinator, in a way, you want to know who's running it. But if it's publicly disclosed who's running it, then the coordinator is subject to things like what happened to samurai. And so you get in a situation where either way, there's some question marks up in the air into how effective or whether the thing is going to be able to continue running. Like, do you want it to run at all? then there's effectively going to be some trust involved. And so I think what we'll see over time is that there will be the period that we're in right now where you're going to have coordinators pop up and it's going to be a little bit like,

Starting point is 00:59:46 can you trust it? I don't know. And there will be a period of time where after X amount of time, people will see that there has been an extended period of time where with certain coordinators, nothing has gone awry. And so it'll just be like a reputation-based thing because there's not necessarily a better way of doing it other than like here building tools that can prevent certain behaviors from happening or help warn people if those behaviors are indeed happening. So yeah, that sucks, but also update your shit if you're using it. I kind of look at it like if I use a coordinator like this, I'm not going to consider myself perfectly private. I'm not going to be like, oh, I went through and did a coin join using Wasabi and this coordinator.

Starting point is 01:00:44 I'm perfectly private. Nobody can see anything I am doing. But I also think that if I was fully deanonomized, I'm no better off than before the coin join. And because I'm not paying for the coin join service and I'm just paying the on-chain fee, I'm like, well, maybe. Maybe this is just like a regular thing I do on top of other privacy preserving actions. And the sum of those things together may put me in a better place than where I was before. So anyways, that's a long-witted explanation as to my take on this, but also don't let Perfect be the enemy of better. Okay, a couple things on the personal front here.

Starting point is 01:01:30 Sat Market. I am so excited. We have our Sat Market here in Calgary coming up this weekend. It is a mere few days away. I'm going to put up this QR code for the Sat Market as well. I need your guys help if you can. We want to make this a big success, and it's already shaping up to be. This will be our fourth market that we've put on.

Starting point is 01:01:54 We have a record setting 40 vendors that will be joining us in Calgary this Sunday, December 15th, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the White Diamond Conference Center in downtown Calgary. And, yeah, we just want to get the word out. if you're not going to be able to make it into Calgary for the event, I would encourage you to go check out the website, share it. If you scroll to the bottom, you can follow our social feeds on Noster and on X. So follow us there. You can also check out some of the local vendors that we have here. This doesn't have everybody, but it has a number of them. So you can go and follow them and share around some of the stuff that they're doing.

Starting point is 01:02:45 And just get the word out, either to encourage other people to come or encourage other people to go to their own communities and begin building similar things. I love nothing more than seeing Bitcoiners come together and become more resilient by creating tight-knit communities. And so I'm super excited. A bunch of us are also going up to the mountains. tomorrow. We're going to do a hike. We're going to go enjoy the mountain air and everything and just kind of have some fun together. There's a Christmas party on Saturday night for the YWAC Bitcoin

Starting point is 01:03:23 meetup. And so it's just going to be a great weekend all over. And yeah, I'm just super happy and super proud of everybody that's involved. And what a great Christmas gift to have this event happening this weekend. So again, give that QR code a scan, share it wherever you can, follow our socials, and just kind of keep up to date with what we're doing. We're going to have a bunch of pictures and videos and stuff coming up over the weekend as we kind of have some adventures. It should be a lot of fun. Further to that, tomorrow we've got, why are we bullish? I'm going to be doing it from the mountains. So I'm going to be in Banff in my hotel doing this one. I might even have somebody with me to join in for the live stream. So be sure to tune in for that. That's tomorrow

Starting point is 01:04:09 at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. We got Alani. We've got Alex from Kaboomracks and we got Ralphus. It should be a good jolly old time. And that's not the only exciting show coming up. I've got to bring this up here. It's going to be an absolute banger. And I need to show you. I need to show you. This is the poster. for the Christmas show. In fact, I need to get myself off the screen here because you need to see Tatum as an elf in the corner. Hold on. I'm backstage. It doesn't like me.

Starting point is 01:04:45 I'm just going to do this. There we go. Okay. So this absolute masterpiece was put together by World of Rusty. What a legend. He has done three of the last Christmas specials. This is the fourth annual Christmas special. But he has just done so much good work putting these things together.

Starting point is 01:05:06 Like, look at, look at this thing. Like, we've got, we've got Mike Germano trying to catch up with the bulls. We've got Larry Lepard, Jeff Booth, Harry Suttick. We got Matt Cratter, all riding bulls behind me. I've got the Rudolph bull up front. We got, we got Dom Bay, we got Preston Pish, we got Greg. We've got Rockstar. We got Max.

Starting point is 01:05:29 We've got the sneaky flat top popping over with Sean. again, Katie the Russian riding up front. We got Nico up here on the bowl. We got Madex in the sleigh. We've got Peter St. Ange and we've got, oh my God. There's so many American hoddle on the bike here. Parker Lewis up there with Peter. We've got Becca with the new baby.

Starting point is 01:05:55 We've, of course, got C.K. Anna and Gladstein there. What an epic piece of art here. It's just incredible. Tatum. Incredible. Incredible. There's a bunch of Easter eggs in here, too.

Starting point is 01:06:10 I challenge you to find them all. There's a whole bunch. He even made a gif of it. So it's like the clouds are moving, the snow is being kicked up and everything. The fire on top of the, on top of the basket here.

Starting point is 01:06:24 Wild. What an incredible, incredible accomplishment. I'm just, I'm blown away every year. Amazing. So rusty. Some stats.

Starting point is 01:06:35 are coming your way. I think well-deserved. But everybody, I'm going to, I'll wrap it there. Again, very excited. I hope that you guys will again kind of keep up with us and the work that we're doing at the Sat Market coming up. I hope you'll join us for the show tomorrow evening and next week for the Christmas special, fourth annual. And yeah, what a great week. Thank you guys for being a part of the show regularly. Really do love. happening you here. And with that, I'm out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. We'll see you guys next time for your daily session.

BTC Sessions - What's the Real Reason Amazon Is Suddenly Interested in Bitcoin?

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