BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Alex Leishmann, Lisa Neigut, Kent Halliburton ep395

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS: https://twitter.com/Leishman https://twitter.com/niftynei https://twitter.com/khalliburton BOOK ME for private one-on-one sessions on my website! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more. https://www.btcsessions.ca/ 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Nunchuk Wallet and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted mutisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ SEEDOR is one of the most robust metal backups on the market today. Get your SEEDOR starter set today! Use this link for 5% off. https://www.seedor.io/discount/BTCSESSIONS?redirect=%2Fcollections%2Fprodukte For US based customers: https://www.seedor.io/btcsessions Canadian customers: https://link.thecryptoboutique.ca/BTCSessionsSeedor Start9 is your Bitcoin & lightning node, and full personal server - enabling you to take back control from the gatekeepers of your money and data! Grab Server Lite,One or Pro today and become truly self-sovereign! https://start9.com/ Coinkite offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions HodlHodl is a NON-CUSTODIAL, NON-KYC solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show, another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish? All-Star panel today. Very excited to have them all. We'll do some intros momentarily. I hope you've all been having an excellent week. Of course, this is live. Anything can happen.

So I defer to my friend Bill here. Live. Okay. We'll do it live. Fuck it. Do it live. I can, I'll write it, and we'll do it live. thing sucks.

If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share, all those things. They help with time getting this content in front of more eyeballs. Hit that little like button just below the screen here. Share this on whatever socials you're on. And of course, subscribe. I am on the warpath to 100,000 subscribers this year. So please do help me get there. I am Ben with the BTC sessions.

This is your daily session. Before we bring in our guests, let's take a quick look at where we are on the market, right? And now I'm bringing up timechain calendar.com and simultaneously I'm bringing up the live chat. Everything you say from here on in will be live for the world to see for better or worse. I already see Yellow and J.C. and Jdub and everybody in there. Thank you guys for being here at Uvis. So we'll be chatting throughout the show. But back to time chain calendar, we're sitting at $43,188 per coin.

A single U.S. dollar will snag you, 2,315 sats. in terms of fees next block 32 sats per byte anytime 26 and bitcoin mine 19.62 million of them that's 93.41 percent of the total supply if you guys need additional help you're sorting through some of the tutorials on the channel but it's not quite cutting it you need that personal touch that one-on-one time you can reach out to me on my website btcsessions.ca and book me for one-on-one private education sessions. Shout out to sponsors of the show hoddlehottle.com. If you're stacking sats and your priorities include peer-to-peer trading, instant self-custy, and no K-Y-C. You can sign up here with nothing more than an email address. All you do is you choose your currency, payment method,

and an amount, and you can start browsing offers immediately. Also, eyes out. They've got the Baltic Honey Badger coming up in August. I will be back for the first time in years. Very excited. But check them out. Links are down below. Of course, when you get your hands on some sats, want to secure it with some of the best hardware on the market. I love everything Coin Kite's doing. My cold cards, my go-to. I have all their goodies, tap signers, Sats cards, blog clocks. I pre-ordered the hell out of the queue, which should be coming soon.

So if you want to pre-order it as well or pick up anything else I mentioned, add to coincide.com. Code BTC Sessions gets you a pretty good discount at checkout. Backups are important. Shout out to CEDOR. They've got an awesome disc and capsule design steel backup. It keeps your seeds safe from the elements. fire, water, corrosion, all that.

They have full backup kits, where you have everything you need to stamp one or two seeds, depending on what you need. If you ever need to switch it out, you can just simply get some more discs on the cheap instead of actually having to replace an entire plate or something like that. And yeah, it's super robust.

Check them out. Links are down below for the best shipping for you. Last couple here, shout out to Nunchuk and their assisted multi-sig, their Honey Badger program, basically on your mobile device, you can set up a multi-sig quorum, which they hand hold you through,

use things like tap sign or cold card and plenty of other hardware options. Once it's set up, it has baked in inheritance planning, so your stats get to your next of kin, and the whole thing can be done K-YC-free, so you don't need to give up your private information in order to set it up and have it working for you.

So check them out at nunchuk.com. And last shout-out, of course, the awesome guys. Over at Start 9, your sovereign computing solution, They have plug-and-play devices to host not just your Bitcoin stack, but your digital life. So things like Bitcoin Core, Lightning Node, Mempool, files, passwords, photos, Noster Realizing clients, AI tools. There's just endless amounts of cool stuff you can play with here.

They've got everything from entry-level devices up to what I'm running, which is the Start 9 server pure. So be sure to check them out. They did sell out of damn near everything over the Christmas season, but they're back in stock with the Server 1. The Pure should be back by March. So if you're looking at that one, you can use my code BTC sessions with a plus sign. That'll get you 18% off. So anyways, enough of my rambling.

Check out all the sponsors down below, but let's get our guests in here. So I want to welcome to the stage, Kent and Alex and Nifty, aka Lisa. Thank you guys so much for being here. Very excited to have you all. Let's do a quick round of intros for anybody in the audience that may be

unfamiliar. We'll just go down the line and say, who are you and what do you do? I'll toss it to Kent first. Can you give yourself a little intro, man? Yeah. So I'm Kent Halliburton, CEO and co-founder here at Saz Mining, joined the mining industry in 2021 and had a career in rooftop solar before joining up here. Awesome, man. I'm glad to have you. And we averted a crisis. There were power issues and you're tethering from the phone. You're a trooper. You're still here. Yeah, thank you, man.

I think I have actually the distinction of being the only Bitcoin or running a node here in the Amazon. It's an odd location. Unfortunately, it's not running right now since we don't have power. But, you know, thank God for batteries, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, you'll sync right back up as soon as you get that connection going. So no worries, man.

Awesome. Toss it down to Alex. Dude, can you give yourself an intro? Hey, I'm Alex Leishman. founder and CEO of River.com. We're a Bitcoin brokerage and Bitcoin app and wallet in the United States. Then working in Bitcoin most of my career, class of 2013, started River five years ago and still love every minute of it. You guys have been killing it. When Canada, man? What's going on? Good question. We still have a lot to tackle in the U.S., but maybe soon TM.

Hmm. Interesting. I want those features. I want those fancy lightning things that you've been shipping lately. So think about it. We've got some cool stuff. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Well, cool. Awesome. I'll toss it over to Nifty. Thank you for being here. Can you give yourself an intro as well? Yeah. Hey, y'all. My name's Lisa. I also go by Nifty. I am a Bitcoin developer located in Texas. I've been working on the Lightning Network for a long time, pivoted to doing Bitcoin Dev Education and Dev-focused Bitcoin conferences about, oh gosh, I think like two years ago now. So getting ready for our next big Bitcoin Plus Plus Conference down in Buenos Aires leader this month. I'm super excited about that one. And working on shipping some really great content for Bitcoin developers.

So, yeah. You've been killing it with those, too. You've got signups from around the globe, don't you? For some of your online? Yeah, I have a map. I was going to hold it off for something I'm bullish about, but I can flash the map up. We'll say, I want to save it for, because if you're going to go into being bullish about that, I want the supporting materials when it happens. Okay.

Yeah. That's awesome. Okay, well, great. Well, thank you guys all for being here. Again, I really appreciate you coming to hang with me on a Friday, get bullish, get excited about different things. So I'll get us started, but before I do, again, for anybody watching that is unfamiliar, this show is, why are we bullish? Simple premise.

Each one of us has come with a reason for being bullish in and around Bitcoin. That can take many different forms. It could be a personal experience or maybe an app or device that you're currently really hyped about or maybe a piece of news. It really could be anything. The format of the show is, number one, somebody's going to drop a reason for being bullish. That's their chance to rant and get whatever. they have off their chest.

Number two, altogether, we're going to riff on that reason, comments, questions, rabbit holes that we go down, whatever happens, happens. And number three, we're going to rotate to the next person until we've all had to turn. So reason, riff, rotate, simple. So I'm going to get us started here. My quick reason for being bullish is in and around an event that's actually coming up in around a month here, a little shy

I have a month, actually. I'm very excited, and I think Lisa you're going to be there. I'm not sure of Kant or Alex are going to be, but out to go to Madeira for Bitcoin Atlantis. And very excited for it. It's a, I mean, the location looks spectacular, and I've heard amazing things. But one of the reasons I'm excited about it is, is in and around kind of. the educational piece at Bitcoin Atlantis because it seems like the organizers are are really working to kind of take what I think comes across as like a large, lots of eyeballs

on it, kind of exciting Bitcoin conference that will draw people from kind of, we'll say, quote unquote, from the mainstream, but also to thrust educational content front and center as well. Not just, you know, let's talk about the macro and like how, you know, how many digits we're going to add to the Bitcoin price, things like that, but more like the how of Bitcoin. And there seems to be a concerted effort to inject that, not just onto like side stages in all instances, but like get it in front of people. And it seems like on on day one, um, a bunch of the content is going to be kind of focused for some of the locals there as well to get them onboarded and familiar to really build up Madeira as, as a, a familiar hub for Bitcoin.

And then support that kind of main stage content with, uh, additional content where people can actually not just go and listen to a talk, but actually get hands-on experience with stuff. And I'm very excited. I'm very excited to be working with them in concert. I know that, I mean, I don't know if like through the grapevine, Lisa, you've heard, but there's a bunch of stuff happening. And I think that we may be crossing paths more often than not throughout the conference, which is very exciting.

And I will say that one of my favorite experiences at any event ever was going through your Bitcoin LARP session. It was absolutely spectacular. Learning how, you know, like I felt like I knew how stuff worked. And there were a number of things in there that I was like, wow, this is actually how things work under the hood. And I guess it just goes to show that even the most. seemingly well-versed Bitcoiners still have plenty and plenty to learn. And that was one of the things that really stood out to me in the past few years of attending so many different events. So number one, if you're in Madeira and Lisa's doing anything ever, go to it. But number two,

if you're in Madeira, make a concerted effort to come out of that event. with a new skill or a homework assignment to gain a new skill immediately thereafter. So go with a mission, go with a mission of, hey, I'm going here. I'm going to learn some general stuff about Bitcoin, but I want a new skill in Bitcoin. I want to try something I never tried. I want to use an application or I want to try a security method or I want to try something with lightning. I want to build a new Bitcoin skill.

And it really seems like they're trying to do that. So again, like, if you haven't already looked at going in and it's potentially close enough for you, then check it out. But I don't know. I'm getting quite excited for it. So nonetheless, I just want to give a shout out to some of the people that are there. But there's, again, like, I mean, Jeff and Lynn and Jack and Sailor and, you know, the usual suspects are all there. And it's going to be super awesome. But like the content and everything that is going to be going to be happening, I think is just going to be absolutely spectacular.

So what I'm most excited about is the people on day one that are going to be walking in the door maybe unfamiliar that are local and will come out of this event having leveled up further than some some Bitcoiners maybe do in their first year if they're not. not, you know, holding their own feet to the fire. So anyways, that's what I'm interested in. And, and I guess tangentially, as a whole, I'm interested and excited about Bitcoiner events that are trying to give educational content the main stage, because I think that's needed. I think it's more than deserved that somebody should be able to go and, yeah, have the exciting, like, hyped up, you know, fun chats and everything about the ethos of Bitcoin and how it could impact our world going for and so on and so forth and how broken Fiatland is.

But it's also very important to be able to sit down and in a newbie-friendly and also engaging and exciting way, present to them, hey, try this, try this, there's all these cool things that you should try and actually give actionable advice, go home and do this and learn something. I think that's going to proliferate more because I see more events beginning to incorporate that and not just say, well, we'll just put some education stuff off in the corner here. No, it's starting to get a main stage and that makes me happy. So I'll open it up to you guys with a general question. I guess what do you feel Bitcoin events thus far have excelled at?

What do you think that they're deficient in? And what do you think about the direction that things are going? So whoever wants to dive in with thoughts in and around those general questions. Well, I'll jump in here and just say that I'm excited to go to Madeira for multiple reasons. So first and foremost, it seems like an incredibly high signal event. But secondly, I am a Portuguese citizen, lived there for six, seven years. My wife's Portuguese. So up until last year, Portugal outside of Lisbon was home for me.

And so coming back to Portugal, my family's coming, had a new daughter in the last few months. And so using it as an excuse to get to introduce her to the Portuguese side of the family is exciting. And like you, I have already given myself a homework assignment. I'm really keen on learning a lot more of the lightning layer two applications and kind of that cutting edge that's there. And then I'm also pumped because, you know, I had a buddy that I talked to about Bitcoin. He never quite bit on it while I was living in Portugal. But he's in Madeira.

And I just mentioned, hey, I'm going to be in Madeira. And he instantly went and bought a ticket and going to be there. So I know the locals are are planted to come out in force, which is pretty stellar to see too. Yeah, so I'm just wanting to chime in and say how pumped I am to be in Madeira and get to experience that. As far as the direction, I think that from what I see on paper, the direction of this event is pretty ideal as compared to other events that I've been at. You know, the focus on Bitcoin only, you know, as opposed to letting in some of the other ancillary activities and businesses, you know, it seems to have caught the attention of some pretty influential people

in our space as a result of that. And the education component, I mean, you put those together and it just seems like, hey, is this a model for where we're going with events in the future? I certainly hope so. I think, yeah, you're right. I'm happy to see events that are, you know, kind of filtering out some of the riffraff. and like getting down to, I guess, again, and it's kind of subjective depending on what your interests are, but not having too much noise. Another shout out I guess I would give is

I was very pleasantly surprised with Prague last year. They did an incredible job of not having, like even just like, you typically go walk like a trade room floor, And you're like, well, there's going to be some questionable things out here. I was pretty impressed. Even like there's a handful of, I think there's one hardware booth that I went up to. I was like, oh, what's this? I started talking to the guy.

The guy basically, he was laying out how the hardware worked. He more or less apologized that it also supported shit coins. It seemed like he knew who the audience at the event was. He's like, well, we do have shit coins on it. But, you know, like he was. So at least, you know, it seems to me like there's a definite honing of this signal at some of these events, at least it seems to be. But yeah, I'm curious, Alex or Lisa, if you want to dive in, thoughts and around this. Yeah, I can chime in.

So I think that it's a pretty good signal that high-quality conferences seem to be proliferating. I would say it sort of indicates that there's growing demand from a larger and larger group of people who want to, go deeper and connect with others. I think for me actually, the, what conferences really, the value of conferences to me, and I think to most people actually, is that you're in a room and you're in a venue with other people with similar interests, and you make connections in person, you make human connections. The content is great, right?

But you could also learn something on the internet too. It's really the human connections is the differentiator for these things. And so the fact that the global population of bitcoinsers continues to grow. And to me, the fact that these conferences are continuing to grow in size and number shows that the population of people deeply interested in this space continues to grow. Yeah. Speaking of that line of thought, making connections with people and again, like being in a physical space with like-minded people.

I have like an internal goal for every event that I go to. And it is that by the end of any event, I want to come out of that, having made a meaningful singular connection with one person where I feel like I've actually gotten to know and am like now kind of close with that person. Like I want to come out with like a at least a single important connection with somebody where I feel like I've understood them on a deeper level because it's it's very easy to just

do the you know intros three days of intros and and small talk and not not go deeper than that and I think it's important that you break away from the group and just have whatever whoever that person is it doesn't matter but come out. of it with a potential actual friendship and deeper connection than just the, you know, surface level. I think that's a good goal for just about anybody to have at one of these events, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah, I think I would, oh yeah, I think I would just echo kind of what Alex was saying about the real value, you know, being meeting people in person. I kind of look at conferences, especially like, you know, so I run the developer kind of conference series. I think of

it is really like, you know, I'm also a programmer. So I think of it is like the interface. It's like the API for people that want to get into the space. Like, you know, it's like a portal. It's like, okay, you've like participated online. Maybe you like started getting involved in Bitcoin Twitter. You're like participating in debates. You're taking online classes. But if you really, and I, like, I've seen it again and again through Bitcoin plus pluses. Like, you don't really make it to the next level, like in terms of being involved or meeting new people until you actually come and you hang out with people person, like in person and they get to know you. There's like been countless people that I've just seen like especially Bitcoin Plus Plus hackathons like just kind of like they

went from being like a person that a developer, new dev who really wanted to be in Bitcoin to someone that is now working like full time and has like lots of industry contacts and cool new projects pop up from the hackathons. Like it's just it's such an accelerator. I really hate this term when like other people outside the space use it. And they're like, We're doing like a hack accelerator or whatever. Except I realized a few weeks ago that that's actually what's happening. Like, you know, conferences I think are acceleration, you know, accelerators for both for Bitcoin adoption. And a lot of that is, like, comes from those personal connections that you make at conferences.

So yeah, totally bullish on. And there's so many of them. There's so many Bitcoin conferences this year. I'm in a chat group with like a bunch of other Bitcoin conference organizers on Telegrain Signal. there's like over 50 people in the chat and I think if you look through the list of conferences there's probably one not every week but like definitely every other week for this entire year like all over the world so it's like yeah it's real it's kind of wild to think that we're at that place where you could you could be in a different locale every week of the year and be at

an event that is actually pretty well attended as well it's odd I think to your point, it does accelerate things, but you do need to walk that tightrope. You need to go, make those connections, but you also need time at home to then build the things based on the connections you've made, right? Yeah. I think it's easy to conference hop. And at a certain point, there's diminishing returns. Yeah.

I think pick the ones that you want to wisely and then spend the rest of the time being productive. Yeah. There's no shortage of high signal ones. It's just, yeah, where the only thing more scarce than Bitcoin is your time, right? So how are you going to allocate it? Yeah. Either way, I'll put a ball on this one, but I'm very excited about this upcoming event in Madeira. It should be an exciting one.

And, and again, more so just the direction and focus that seems to be there and how some of that seems to be seeping out to other event organizers recognizing that people come away from those types of events actually seeing value. And yeah, so I hope that I think the time is right to thrust educational content in an accessible way onto the main stage. and get people learning, not just, you know, you know, getting pumped about potential price action. So with that, we're going to do a rotation. Everybody in the chat, again, thank you for being here. I do have a quick question. It came up earlier, but we were already in,

we're already into our chat. But we have a very, very serious question from the audience. I'm just trying to find it. Hold on. Here it is. Okay. So other Barry is in the chat and he wants to know. Have you done your 100 pushups yet today? Because it's 100 a day until 100K you guys. If you haven't hit your 100, then you know, you hit the floor. Yeah. I'm sure right after the pod, right? Of course. I'm going to toss it to, to Kent first, actually. And I'll just cue you up with same question everybody gets. Why are you bullish? So I got to first respond to Barry and just say, hey, I'm on day six, man. Power backup issues did not let me get a couple reps in before, but I wanted to.

They'll be happening after this. But why I'm bullish, you know, I think is really seeing the game theory of Bitcoin. And, you know, I play out, right? So I bought my first Bitcoin into 2015. And, you know, 2016, 2017 started to go deep in the rabbit hole. You know, of course, got sucked into shit coinery as many of us do before coming out the other side. But, you know, the game theory dynamics discussed then are now playing out. And so specifically, you know, there's a few, a few of those that I want to. touch on. So the first is just watching hash rate, you know, since the last all-time high, hash rates increased about 3.4x. And that's happening because a lot of people are committing their capital to acquire Bitcoin at a lower price than going to an exchange. And so to me,

that is incredibly bullish for the security of the network and for our grids and infrastructure in general. Past that, you know, I think Bitcoin just tagged in a sales and market. team with the Bitcoin ETFs. You know, Bitcoin has no marketing budget, but now Wall Street has aligned incentives with the Bitcoin network and it's going to be selling the Vajibis out of their ETFs. And we all know that's not the ideal way to hold Bitcoin, but it's going to assure a new cohort. And then there's a sales team that got tagged in with that through the RIAs, registered investment advisors. So having a sales and marketing force to push Bitcoin adoption, maybe not the ideal way, but that is an incredible alignment of incentives.

And then the third one that I see is, you know, because of the grid integration with the energy companies, now energy companies have an alignment to support the Bitcoin network. Now, that's still in play. But I think having them as a political force because they've got skin in the game also lessens the ability for political attacks. And then last, because I've got to talk to my local. situation here in the Amazon motive is an NGO that has set up about 16 circular economies throughout Peru. And, you know, those circular economies wouldn't exist if the alignment of

incentives weren't there. And so I've got one in my hometown here. And it's pretty doggone cool to go down and participate with a local circular economy. So yeah, just seeing the game theory action of Bitcoin and the incentives actually play out. Having studied it so many years ago, It's just like, you know, it just makes me double down on what it is that we're doing. I'm very interested in around this because I'm curious about your thoughts. I think you're right with the game theory in and around the energy infrastructure. What do you think about this recent survey slash demanded response that was sent out to all the U.S. miners? What do you think maybe like if you're familiar with it,

maybe give us like a cliff's notes. But what do you think the end game of that would be if it goes in either direction, like they lighten up or they clamp down? Yeah, that's a big one. So I haven't studied it deeply. I haven't read the documentation. So it's been filtered through other people's perspectives. But what I can say is that it is very clear to me that the incumbent financial system

is on the ropes as Bitcoin's adoption rises. And so I do expect the most strong attacks to come in the very near future. And this does seem like one of those. And to me, this is Executive Order 6102 cloaked in another guys. Because if you can register and tag all the Bitcoin mines that are in the U.S., you now have the ability to come in and seize those, nationalize them for whatever reason. that you desire. And so from where I sit, you know, I'm glad to see the industry in almost instantly pushing back on this idea. And I hope to see, you know, some legal challenges to it

because it seems to me quite unconstitutional and a form of almost energy censorship, if you will, to be, you know, trying to step in and and have this level of knowledge. I mean, I don't know a single other case of this occurring for any other energy user on the grid. And in fact, the only other country that has done something similar that, as far as I understand, again, not deep research on it, is Venezuela that did come in and wind up nationalizing as many of the ASICs they could get their hands on. So, you know, the precedent here is not particularly bright. But I think that we've been here before in the Bitcoin community. And we, We know how to fight, and so pick up the shield, pick up the swords, and let's get after it here.

We've got to fight to fight. Do you think that that would be the tactic, like if they were to go hard, do you think the tactic would be the eventual endgame is they nationalize it? They take the actual A6 and then despite the initial fearmongering being around how much energy they use, they then go in mind with them? Or do you think it would be like a China style, you know, like let's steamroll the A6 and then they shoot themselves in the foot because like that could have helped prop up or or subsidize the entire grid and help build a better energy infrastructure. Whereas countries that are friendly to it will have very many billion grids because of it. Like where do you think they go with it? Yeah, I think I think first of all, having this ready to be. industry then creates an incentive, right? And how that incentive is played out, I think is dangerous,

whether it goes either direction. Now, my personal bias is towards them actually mining Bitcoin and beginning to utilize it. But I don't really know. I'm just worried about them having that incentive available to exercise. And I don't want them to have that optionality on their plate. Interesting. I'll open it up to the rest of the panel in terms of comments, questions in and around, again, the incentives and around Bitcoin's energy use and how it's affecting different jurisdictions and how they're responding to it. Any thoughts? So I think we've come a long way. And it's been, I think it's, I think it's yet, it's TBD, sort of whether the institutionalization of mining in the U.S. and the professionalization of it is an overall. positive or negative because it kind of depends on what the government ends up, you know, doing. That said, I think the likely scenario, if the U.S. government tried to ban Bitcoin mining somehow would be one, I think some states would fight it. I mean, a lot of it's in Texas, and I think

Texas is shown they're willing to fight the federal government at this point, and they have an independent grid, so it's unclear that there's any federal authority there. I'm not an expert on that. But overall, I think the double down an investment in the bare market, the capital investment in the Bitcoin mining industry, and the fact that we're seeing hash rate continue to skyrocket is an indicator that there's a lot of money that's still very bullish. And people are willing to invest a lot to secure the network. and they clearly expect the Bitcoin price to substantially increase post-having. Otherwise, they would not be making these investments because their revenues are about to get cut in half in Bitcoin terms. So overall, I would say it's a very strong signal.

Lisa, how about yourself? I'll toss it to you. Yeah. I mean, so whenever I think about mining and like investment in mining, I'm going to flip over my favorite. Does this work? My favorite way of talking or thinking about mining is like as like victory bonds. So like every time you buy Bitcoin is kind of like buying investing in like the energy grid, if that makes sense.

So like I think that more people like this focus on mining and like seeing mining grow. I think it's really cool because it's like every additional dollar kind of spent on Bitcoin one way or another is like investing in energy infrastructure of whatever ecosystem is like investing in mining. I mean, that's a little bit of a stretch. but I do think that it's I'll like turn that off I do think that it's I do think that like mining growing and people like mining as an industry

like really being more competitive to the point where they're seeking out like cheaper and cheaper energy is great so I'm like I don't know whenever I hear that mining is just getting more competitive I feel like that's like net net good for energy production as a whole because it means that people who

can produce cheaper energy or just at that much more of an advantage. As far as like this whole like, oh, let's like, I don't know, it's like, I feel like the central agency in the U.S. It's the energy. I can't remember what the name of it is, but they did this like survey, right? Like, hey, show us where the mines are. It's interesting to see like them wanting to do accounting about mining in America. I think, and I've said, I think, I've been thinking for a long time that like,

Like, one of the things about Bitcoin and one of the reasons why its energy usage was able to become such like a political, like, entity, so to speak, is because of how transparent it is. Like, Bitcoin is one of the most transparent systems that is consuming electricity that exists in the world, period. Like, it is, it is the reason that you're able to have conversations and the real, the reason that, like, I want to say back in 2017, 2016, Bitcoin really got vilified is because they were able to take, like, I'm going to call them academics, or able to take numbers from the Bitcoin network and produce these, like, eye-popping statistics. You know, a lot of those were kind of drawn out of a hat, making assumptions based on certain things that they knew, et cetera. So whether or not what the numbers they came up with were accurate or not is a whole separate question. But the fact that they were able to do that at all,

The fact that they were able to do that at all, I think is like such a testament to how transparent Bitcoin is. None of the other like systems, like industrial systems in America that use electricity are nearly that transparent. And so they don't get nearly the scrutiny or politicization or like focus that that Bitcoin gets. They don't end up like doing, you don't end up like all these GPUs that are going out. It's interesting to me that there wasn't an equal thing that's like, if, you're running GPUs, please fill out this forum, tell us how many GPUs you're running, et cetera, probably would have seen a lot more on the West Coast if they had asked that, you know, like, I don't know if you saw the graph, there were like literally nothing, I want to say

west of like Nevada that popped up on this survey that the energy industry put out. But like, yeah, so I mean, and if you look at Ethereum, you know, when they did the big move to proof of stake, they really touted how much they, they really, really, really touted about how they were going to reduce the amount of energy that they're using. When in reality, what they really did is they remove the transparency of the energy that they're using, if that makes sense. So I don't know. Anyways, that's like sort of a long-winded wine through like nifty thoughts on energy consumption of Bitcoin. But I like it. I like it. So, you know, you were, you touched on, you know, finding cheaper and cheaper sources of energy and, and,

and monetizing previously, more or less completely wasted energy. And I'm just about finish Lynn Alden's book, but there was a great, kind of in the final chapters, there's a great chapter on energy usage in and around mining and how it's likely to, almost shift the dynamics of society in terms of where people settle. And previously, you would settle around, when it was more difficult to travel, you would, you would settle around, you know, rivers and, and port, you know, good ports and stuff like that so that you could ship stuff in. And then in terms of energy, like, you would have to go out and get the energy sources in terms of like fossil fuels and bring them to, or the coal or whatever,

whatever it was, you would get the energy and bring it to the place where the convenient port was. Whereas now, travel is a lot easier when it comes to like air travel and everything, you know, rail and all of this. And energy can be stranded and completely useless if it can't be efficiently brought to grid. So does that begin to shift where people begin considering settlements? Like, do people migrate to the energy sources because immediately you can build out a grid and have demand for it? And then people build their communities around these energy sources and that's where industry goes. That could be a very interesting shift in kind of how people think about where we settle. I don't know if there's something there, but it was to me, I mean, Lynn put it infinitely better than I did.

If you haven't read the book, then you should broken money. It's quite good. Anyways, Kent, all, again, I'm cognizant of time, but I want to, if anybody has any final thoughts in and around kind of the energy piece in around Bitcoin, or if anybody wants to tap on the secondary, you know, new marketing team that we have in the ETF, maybe if you want to touch on that briefly before we cycle through. But what do you guys think about our new suit-wearing marketing team? I have some thoughts on that.

I think it's a very interesting development and promising development for Bitcoin. I think that really, though, parking back to the interface analogy that Nifty had with conferences, is Bitcoin now fits into the interface of Wall Street. It's now in a securitized wrapper, and it fits into the interface of all of these legacy systems that allow people with lots of money to do the things they want with it. And so now all of a sudden Bitcoin can be used by private banking clients to, they can do all of the financial engineering that they're used to being able to do. whether that's just buying and holding, borrowing against it at really cheap rates and leveraging it,

doing option strategies with the asset. All of the trading strategies and financial engineering they do with all of their other assets, they can now do with Bitcoin. And that's very interesting. And the distribution of Bitcoin now, all of a sudden, when those ETS went live, the distribution flipped to anybody with a, the ability to trade securities. So I think it's pretty bullish. It's true. Nifty or you a suit fan?

Do you think they'll do some good things? I'm so agnostic. I don't give it. I don't care. I mean, I guess it's cool. My audience, the people that I like, you know, consider like people that I kind of care about in the Bitcoin ecosystem tend to be on the more dev side.

So in terms of, is the ETF going to bring more devs into Bitcoin? I don't know. I have yet to see that play out one way or the others. So I mean, I think, you know, like going back to that energy bond thing, like more people investing in Bitcoin, I don't think is a bad thing necessarily. But like in terms of like, oh, there's an ETF. It's like, oh, yeah. I mean, I guess for me, it's like, okay, I feel like the Bitcoin ETF, or as I was kind of jokingly calling it around the week it happened, the Bitcoin IPO. is like, it's like we were like, I think like there was like this whole narrative around like what would happen after the ETF happened. And we get to like let go of that, if that makes sense. Like it's like, okay, like this like narrative in question that Bitcoiners as an ecosystem have had for like I hear over a decade, right? Like for a long time now. It's like ETF, what's going to happen to the price and the ETF happens? It's like, okay, well, we don't like have to wonder about that.

Now we just get to live in the world where it's happened. And I think that's bullish. Yeah, it's nice to not be constantly saying, well, they, won't they? And just that's all anybody can worry about. Now it's, well, they're here. We'll see how it progresses over time. But like, I don't know. It's interesting because I, to a degree, I feel, and I was talking about this on the show with Nico the other day,

but I feel we haven't had our, you know, we've had bull and bear markets in a very concentrated group of people, but we haven't had our dot-com bubble moment. And I kind of feel like we're still in store for that. Like there's, yeah, they'll be the Bitcoin ETS, but there's going to be a whole bunch of riff-wrap that if those things start to go up, that pumps alongside a bit, but it will be everybody and their grandmother will think that just because Bitcoin got the ETF, this thing and this thing and this thing will be next and they're all just as legitimate, but it'll be on like a much larger scale. So like I'm a little bit, again, I'm somewhere in the middle where I'm like, oh, in the

long run it'll be good, but the most effective teacher is pain. And I think that there will be a good amount of pain at some point. in the future for a lot of people because they're all going to have to learn the same lessons that we learned of, you know, there's Bitcoin and then there's all the riffraff and you've got to sort through that and you've got to parse through all of the whys of that. It's not common knowledge. It takes a while to be there. Luckily, I will say that people can get there quicker than they used to because there's excellent material around why Bitcoin and why it's different. but people actually have to ingest that material first.

And nobody has, right? Like 99.9% of people on the planet have not ingested that type of material yet. So we got a lot of, we got a lot of fomo and a lot of a lot of wreckage to get through before people figure this stuff out. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Either way, Kent, great, great topics here. I'm going to do a rotation though, and I'm going to jump down to Alex in a second. I will say everybody in the chat again, thank you guys for being here.

I'm seeing all the messages. Also, thanks, Simmer, for the dollar or the Canadian moose shekel that you sent over. Much appreciated. But everybody else, make sure you give that like button a tap and give this a share. But Alex, I'm going to toss it down to you. I'll queue you up with the same question. Why are you bullish? So I'm going to pick something that I can have a little bit of insider knowledge in.

So I run a Bitcoin brokerage slash exchange in the United States. So I see our numbers. And I'm also friends with people who run the, these version of my company, Bitcoin apps, and other countries. And what's become very clear to me, you know, running, running my business in the U.S. and then also visiting a lot of international places. I'm actually currently in Latin America, visiting some friends down here who are founders, is that, you know, in the U.S., Bitcoin is, you know, seeing parabolic growth among just normal people

as a store value. Bitcoin does not really have strong product market fit in the United States as a medium of exchange. Power users do use it and like to use light. and things like that. But really, the narrative of Bitcoin is a place where I can store my wealth safely for the long term, continues to quickly grow. And that's very bullish. Internationally, it's sort of the other side of the coin. Bitcoin is a very useful thing to help solve my needs when I live in a country that doesn't have a stable currency. And the Bitcoin apps and more broadly crypto apps because stablecoins are also very popular, continue to see extremely strong growth, parabolic growth across Latin America, Africa, Asia, all of the developing markets. And so we're seeing strong growth in businesses that span the spectrum of the problems Bitcoin solves for people worldwide.

And that's a very bullish trend. Awesome. I like the idea of Bitcoin is different things to different people. And we get in our Western kind of, we've kind of pigeonholed Bitcoin as being one thing or a lot of people have. Well, it's generational wealth, long-term savings. I'll spend my dollars because we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, got access to easy ways to pay, at least as long as you're in line with the establishment. But outside of that, you know, your average Westerners is not going to see a whole lot of

use in Bitcoin from day to day to replace their current rails if they're working as anticipated. But yeah, it's a very different, it's a very different experience elsewhere. And there's some grappling to be done with that as well, because like the reality of on-chain transactions is, you know, they're going to be expensive. And, you know, how do people, how do people use Bitcoin in a sovereign way or like what tradeoffs are acceptable in line with being able to transact cheaply internationally? Like, we don't know what the perfect answer is when taking into context the I guess the technological realities of how tradeoffs work from layer to layer.

And so, yeah, I think it's super interesting seeing how people are using things differently. And again, I know that a lot of bitcoins are not super keen on stable coins, but the reality for a lot of people elsewhere is I don't want to use my local currency. They're very maybe unfamiliar with Bitcoin or not wanting to hold Bitcoin because, because it is still volatile. And they say, oh, I can, you know, they weren't letting me have U.S. dollars before, but now I can use them in some way. And to me, it doesn't really matter because the value is pegged to what I want.

They don't necessarily see the counterparty risk because it's spending, right? It's day-to-day spending. They're not putting away a lot of savings or anything. It's just purely transactional. So yeah, I'm curious to get other people's thoughts. Maybe I'll toss to Lisa first and then up to camp. But I don't know, Lisa, how do you see things in terms of you've traveled around? What do you see out of behaviors using Bitcoin based on where you've been globally?

It really depends. I mean, so running Bitcoin Plus Plus is like a very international project right now. Like we've done this will be like our sixth conference, I think, in Buenos Aires. Um, half of those have been outside the U.S. The other half have been inside of it. And I can't tell you how how incredibly useful Bitcoin has been for just like paying for conference stuff, getting sponsors to pay me like holy cow. Like it would not, Bitcoin plus plus like in all these different places literally would

not be possible if I could not like accept Bitcoin for payments or send Bitcoin to pay for things. Right. Um, a lot of that is like, you know, I'll have a friend locally that will help pay for the thing and then I'll just send a Bitcoin to pay for things. cover it kind of thing. But like, oh my gosh, can you imagine if I had to like, I honestly, like, I don't know how to send money to Germany. I don't know how much to send money to Buenos Aires. Like I hear there's this thing called Western Union. You know, like it's, it's been really,

really such a huge like time saver, honestly, from that perspective. And I can't, like, it's hard to imagine international businesses, like international operating, even like human, you know, number of humans that actually operate internationally is only going to grow, I think, as the internet makes it easier for us to hop around. I think Bitcoin makes it that you can run a business and have business,

like legitimately accept business from anywhere in the world, like, so easily and you don't have to like pay someone like stripe like 3% to get that access to that global market. You know, I also think like the I also think the, um, hey, hush, sorry.

I also think the, you know, like one of the things that I'm really bullish around like payments of Bitcoin, you know, I know Alex was saying in the U.S. it's mostly store of value. We haven't really seen medium exchange usage. But I am really, really bullish on this e-cash stuff in terms of building like for the real microtransactions. Like I do think lightning is going to be a really crucial piece in terms of I'm going to call it like the connective tissue of like tying a bunch of these services together. But, you know, for Base 58, like, everything that we do is on Udemy. At some point, it would be amazing to have our own platform and have it, everything like pay for Bitcoin, et cetera.

And I can really see a really great use case for building out, like, you know, almost like anonymous as possible user experience using eCash kind of primitives. And so that's both like, you know, the cash-you projects doing a lot of cool stuff, the Fetamint Projects doing cool stuff. Like, yeah, so I'm bullish on, I'm bullish on micropayments and international payments in terms of media and exchange. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's, it's, it's interesting as, as we kind of begin to feel out what these layers will be and what they'll represent. Like, this connective tissue idea of, you know, what does the average person interact? with when they're using Bitcoin 20 years from now, right? Like what what does lightning represent then versus now?

Like it's odd because basically everybody in this call and everybody in the chat are are likely amongst the few people in history that will as an individual use the equivalent of an international settlement to do tiny transactions on, Again, just day to day. This is a very fleeting moment. And not only that, but we're basically in real time going to work our way up the stack and use each part of that stack as like, okay, well, now we're on the layer two that everybody will use.

Oh, shit, no. We're not because it's going to be the layer three that everybody, oh, wait, no. And so like, I feel like we're basically just, we thought, we were on, you know, we were on top of the mountain and then we got over the first peak and then we see the next one. And it's like, oh, shit, we got to, we got to climb up that next. And then, and so it's just, again, like a series of false peaks as we discover, like, what is going to be the mix of how people actually use this. So, yeah, Kent, I'm curious your thoughts here too. Yeah, you know, I have a unique perspective. So I left the U.S.

about a decade ago, you know, circa 2024, or 2014, excuse me. And haven't traveled pretty extensively and seen monetary issues in multiple locations. You know, I used the blue dollar in Argentina and got to hear the horror stories there, for example, and in Turkey. And it's very clear to me that the skepticism does not exist in a lot of countries that you experience. in the US. And I ultimately think stable coins, you know, I buy into the theory that everything's good for Bitcoin. And I think stable coins are as well because they are the new euro dollar, right? And having more euro dollars out there actually sort of helps the incumbent system to sort of like placate them a bit so they can't be totally against this technology. While at the same time, it helps get people

past private key management. And I think that that's a huge stumbling block for a lot of people. So what I see in most of my travels is in Western nations, technology is not a problem. The monetary aspect of Bitcoin is the problem versus it flips in most other locations like here in Latin America where monetary issue, no issue, instantly get that. So happy to adopt, the issue is actually the technology. So having better tech, better, smoother, easier, more intuitive user experiences, which I think we're starting to deliver on. But it mays to be seen, as you said, about like the layer two, like really what is the best way? It seems like we're still an experimental phase there. You know, lightning is great, but how do we deal with the channel

management in a high fee environment and all these sort of issues? And that's why I'm really keen to dig into that when I'm in Madera so I can figure out how to better support that here in my local community because I do want to help drive adoption. Because I mean, there's lines around, the block here for people to use banks and there's so many people that are on banks. So as soon as people see like, look, I can transact between my friends, family, neighbors without having to deal with the banks, like sign me up. It's, yeah, I think that obviously everybody that has experienced baseler Bitcoin transactions are so used to it over the years and then came to terms

of, okay, like lightning will be the thing and then and then is now coming to terms with, well, lightning is a thing and it's definitely useful, but we've got to figure out in what way and how and to who. And again, to that connective tissue kind of thing, is it a communication or like an interconnected web that links together eCash systems or whatever? I think the interesting part of it is that, there are like the the reality is it's just expensive at the end of the day if you want a truly

decentralized layer for settling value and you want it to be secure and you want to have a certainty that your your transaction will not be reversed there's a cost to that and so like yeah you can absolutely go and do that. But like you also, you know, what tradeoffs are willing to make for what use cases? You don't need your like 10 cent zap to be, you know, settled for all time on a global ledger necessarily. But you may want your life savings settled that way. So like we'll see how it develops. But I do.

The cashew stuff is pretty cool. I've done a couple videos on one is called mini bits. I did another one called a wallet called E-Nuts. But all of the different ones, they're super neat. And like the integration with Noster where you can send e-cash notes. And like depending on the client you're using, it'll just pop up as a little thing. And you can claim it either into an e-cash wallet or redeem it as a lightning transaction. It's cool.

And it's moving fast. And we'll see. Again, it's like the trust tradeoff. Who's running the mint? Do you trust them? Like, is it just a single person? Is like a federation? Like, how is that work?

So we'll see how it plays out. But I don't know. Any other final thoughts in and around this? Any other rabbit holes we want to go down that direction as to how people use Bitcoin in different places? I don't know if Alex, you had anything. Because we kind of went on a bit of a tangent there, but is there anything that you wanted to add in there?

Well, there's one just theme, and it's sort of like it's both optimistic and pessimistic. And it's sort of, I kind of view Bitcoin as inversely correlated with institutional trust in the United States and then sort of the global order. And I think that trend is very clear at the moment. Institutional trust continues to decline for a lot of complex and sometimes simple reasons. And so, you know, I think Bitcoin is like this thing for humanity to fall back on. And every single person in their own country or in their own sort of locale is finding that they can fall back on Bitcoin for different types of institutional failures. And I find that very fascinating and very interesting. I love having Bitcoin as a backstop for that.

I think it's great. Awesome. Okay, well, I'm going to, I guess at this point, we'll put a bow on this topic. We'll do one more rotation here. And Lisa, I'm going to toss a deal. I'll say a quick hey to everybody in the chat again. Thank you guys for sticking with us and joining in the conversation. Keep the comments coming. And, of course, drop a like and give this a share. But Lisa, same question to you. Why are you bullish? Yeah, so I'm bullish because of how many amazing sign-ups we got in the Base 58 class last weekend. It was not even a week ago that I put this class out. I'm going to like do my little switch over to so you guys can see this map. So I run, again, I run this project called Base 58. We've been doing a lot of in-class, like in-person classes last year, done some like live instruction online. But I'm really trying to like, you know, scale the amount of people that have active.

to it and that really comes to like shipping classes on utami or like you know recorded classes with exercises so finally got my first class my online like utami class out in over a year and a half i want to say um so this is like the second half of this class i'm calling big bitcoin developer basics um and i gave away a thousand seats in the class i had five days to give those thousand seats away and i was really not sure that we would hit a thousand um we hit it and like it and like like, oh, so like it's inverted. I don't know how to uninvert it. I'm sorry. I don't know how to fix it. Sorry, y'all. Oh, it's fine. But the, what do you call it? Yeah, we got 36 hours. We had a thousand people and this is where they came from. I have no idea where they like, I have no idea where like how people

found it. I mean, I just tweeted it out. I put it out of Noster also. I think a couple people shared it in their communities, et cetera. But the big thing is the thing that really surprised me. and I actually, someone in the Vietnamese community wrote about it is like, number three on this map is Vietnam. It's kind of hard to see because I know the map is backwards. The U.S. came in with number one. I think it was like, let me see if I can't lift for percentages on here. No, this is just me opening up the image. But yeah, I think like, so yeah, the United States was number one.

Vietnam came in number three, which is just, crazy. Anyways, Argentina was number four right behind Vietnam. Yeah, Bitcoin is like internationally. We were talking about like international payments earlier. It's incredible to see that like the developer footprint is equally international, you know? Like it's like it's truly a global phenomenon and like I mean, I know it's true and like I'm so much of an American that I also forget that there's like I mean I also you know I rent conferences other places but I think I tend to forget that Bitcoin is like bought and sold outside of the United States. I know that sounds silly.

And it's obviously not. But then you see something like this and it's like, oh, yeah, like the world is using Bitcoin. Like this is not just like me and my friends and the nerds that I know in the U.S. It's like literally everywhere. Yeah. That's wild. Like that looking at that map, it makes you realize like the brain. Drain is real, right?

Like so many people, like they have their things that they do every day. But like, we all know as soon as you get exposed to Bitcoin and you get interested, it starts eating your time. And I mean, in my opinion, that's a positive thing because then you want to contribute and you want to help build a new world. But like, look at that map is everywhere. And that's like from a developer's perspective. like India it looked like there was a ton of people in India as well I love the I love the um like Southeast Asia that like Vietnam there's there's some cool people over there like building yeah apparently like so some I mean like the cool thing also is like you know like you put out a class and like

I said I didn't I mean I didn't expect it to hit a thousand I mean they're free signups but I didn't expect it to hit a thousand um it's not for those of you were listening it's it's half off still until like four hours from now. So it's a website. Where do people? It's a, I don't know, I can share the tweet that's got the thing on it. Does that make sense? Should I just post it in the chat?

I don't know how to do this. I'm putting in the private chat. Put it in the private chat and then I will all pull it up here. Hold on a sec here. Yeah, so it's half off for like a couple more hours. I think they said 8 p.m. Pacific time. So I think that's four hours from now. I'm retrading you right now.

So if anybody gross my Twitter, it'll be on there. I lost my train of thought. But yeah, like, anyways, getting a thousand people that fast is, like, incredible. And I'm excited about getting more classes out online. I think this is, like, good validation that, like, I need to start. I need to keep making more, like, self-serve kind of online accessible stuff. And I just I did just stick a link to the tweet in the chat so you can click on that and get to everything from there. But yeah, that's that's awesome.

It makes me excited that you had so much interest again on on like a developer's course because the amount of interest on that on that front. when I think of all of the amazing stuff, like just the thousand people, imagine if just like a fraction of those people go on to build incredible things for Bitcoin. Like how good is that for Bitcoin? And this is why, I mean, really like, you know, at some point it's like I have been contributing to like Bitcoin

and do like the late and expect process and stuff. And it's like you start thinking in terms of leverage though, right? Like it's like if I can get good educational materials out for developers. Like that's going to 100,000 X, you know, maybe when I'm able to contribute more so than like me actually spending all of my time working on lightning, which kind of sucks because there's a lot of really fun stuff. I want to keep building on lightning.

But in terms of like, you know, return on time. Yeah. Education is like such a force multiplier for the long term too, right? Yeah. It's, again, it's so striking. when again, I think a lot of people discount how far education can go, right? Because, you know, you, again, what you've done here is you've created something that it's like that butterfly effect where, you know, one person comes to this thing and goes on to do

something meaningful that impacts, like maybe they make an application or something security or the next new layer of Bitcoin. And that literally, depending on what it is, could impact the globe, right? Like the things being built are not just trivial little apps here and there in some cases. It's actual meaningful improvements to the entire global infrastructure of a new financial base. It's amazing. So, yeah, I don't know. Alex or Kanti, if you want to tag in here.

Yeah, I can jump in on this. So first off, Lisa, congratulations. That is phenomenal. And yeah, your success is, like Ben said, you know, wonderful for the entire ecosystem. To me, this reminds me about, of like, you know, education seems like planting seeds, except for their seeds where you don't really know what's going to pop out of the ground. And that excites me that sort of emergent creativity in action and truly as a force multiplier. So I love that.

I also see something similar. One of the things you get to enjoy here in the Amazon is dogs. So it's going to have that in the background. It's sort of inevitable here. But, you know, I see something similar. We have a platform to make Bitcoin mining easy, and we have no constraints to where people come from to purchase their mining rig. We get a ship delivered to the site, and people start mining directly to their own wallet. But, you know, I don't know because we're not a KYC platform exactly where all of our clients are from.

We have some pretty unusual names, phone numbers, and emails in our database. But from just having, yeah, we've got a couple of Nanya businesses. which is pretty funny. But, you know, from just talking with a lot of our clients, you know, it's clear to me that at least 20% of our clients are outside the U.S. And I find it like a very humbling prospect as an American to realize how global in nature this is. And that I think that, you know, it's hard to perceive. Like I didn't perceive it when I was living in the U.S., but being outside the U.S. as long as I have been, like that there is a certain. like station that we've been able to exist in in the U.S.

And I feel like that station is in some ways for the better like coming down to earth to merge with the rest of the globe. And this is like one of those aspects where you can realize like it within the Bitcoin network and ecosystem that we exist in that no, this is a global citizenry situation here. And Americans get to play a part. But who knows what amazingness is going to come out of Vietnam. and Argentina next that winds up benefiting us as Americans rather than us as Americans having to

lead in all aspects of the network. So I'm incredibly bullish for that as well, Lisa. Awesome. Alex, I'll toss it to you if you want to chime in. Yeah, same. So, and I think some people don't know this, but I used to run the San Francisco Bitcoin developer meetup for for years. And back then it was very much, there really weren't that many high quality ways to learn about Bitcoin outside of some major US cities, basically. And you kind of have to have that access, which obviously most of the world didn't. And it's extremely exciting to see the impact that Lisa has had with these global education efforts. and it's also awesome to see how much local meetups have really taken off. And so we've really come a long way.

And some of the most valuable applications and uses of Bitcoin are not going to be built by developers in San Francisco and New York. They're going to be built by people who've experienced the problems they're trying to solve in their lives and know their market well. You know, that's also gets to why a lot of people ask me, you know, when is we ever going to expand to X country or Y country? And the answer is, in most countries in the world, I can't serve people there better than somebody from that country. And so we're probably not going to be expanding, you know, our app to a lot of countries very different than the United States because, frankly, we just can't do it very well compared to people from those countries. And, you know, I see that firsthand in Latin America, right? People here have a very different problem set than our app solves for people in the United States. It integrates very deeply with their existing financial infrastructure, and it's built around their lives.

And so the more developers we have globally, the more problems we can solve for all the very different groups of people in the world. Absolutely. It's, yeah, I mean, different tools for different needs, right? It's, it's, I mean, even just on the, in regards to what you do in the U.S., I've heard from state to state, it can be very, very different. I've heard that New York State is effectively a snapshot of the industry when the bit license was passed and nothing has budged. since it seems i've got like one-on-ones with people and i'm like oh you know you can use the following i think i listed like i knew that you guys were doing lightning so it was like river and swan and strike and cash app i was like oh well you can just use that and then just withdraw via lightning

and everything and and my understanding is that like new york state is is effectively impossible to deal with when it comes to a lot of this stuff like are you guys like trying to grapple with that as well. Yeah, so we don't, we don't have a bit license. We're sort of, we've been chewing on it for a few years. The way, it's one of those one-way doors. It's sort of a hotel California situation when you get a bit license. Once you get one, you can't really un-get it.

And having one is quite a burden and you want to be pretty certain that you're ready for that burden. For example, you can't have a bit license and have lightning transactions to date. maybe they'll change that but like for example if we entered new york we'd have to like build all this conditional logic into our app like well if you're new york you can't use lightning but if you you know if you aren't you can um it has a lot of complexity and then also you know you basically the interesting one of the unique things about new york is the the companies that new york regulates pay the bills of the regulator so nydfs the more they can extracts the more they can extract

can extract from the companies they regulate, the more powerful they can get. So the incentives are just really perverse. It's kind of like a mafia, really. It's like a protection racket, basically. And so it's kind and, and you know, it's like, well, you know, do you want to have that restaurant in Little Italy? Well, you know, are you willing to put up with the, you know, are you willing to put up with, you know, Mario who shows up every weekend and asks for the envelope of cash? maybe maybe not right yeah so that's kind of the the situation there i don't want to influence your decision making but also fuck those guys maybe just don't comment no comment um yeah yeah it's

it's very interesting and even just like general like trying to plug into the legacy financial system um like here in canada we've got bull bitcoin and you can basically pay any canadian bill with Bitcoin. But the reason for that is because our payment infrastructure across Canada was so incredibly centralized that it's just as long as you can plug into it some way, then you basically have access to every biller in the country. So like because Bull Bitcoin has, you know, a few different avenues through which they can plug into the payment system, I can log on and be like, you, I want to pay my cell phone bill. Here's my account number.

And they're like, great, would you like to pay on chain or with lightning or liquid? And then I just like pay it. And within a business day or two, like my bill is paid. Or I want to, you know, I want to pay to somebody's bank account. Or I want to send, we instead of ACH transfers, we've got e transfers here, which is like an email, basically, that you link to your bank account. but like because of the centralization of our system it made that that integration easy so you could just kind of you only had to plug into one thing but like in the u.s it's like every state has its own different infrastructure and laws and everything and just it becomes more difficult to offer a similar service it seems i don't know if that's accurate um was it targeted at me yeah i mean anybody that's privy to that but like it it seems like that would be a very difficult thing to do in the US.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the regulatory system in the US is, in some ways, it's good. It's decentralized, right? So there's actually one example that is the inverse of sort of the NYDFS, which is Hawaii. So Hawaii is an example where the regulator actually is the reason there are Bitcoin companies in Hawaii. The Hawaii legislature tried to ban Bitcoin in Hawaii, basically. And the regulator said, you can't do that. I have the authority to have a sandbox program for companies that want to operate here. And so we're actually in Hawaii. We're actually one of the few companies in Hawaii.

Coinbase isn't even in Hawaii. So we're actually able to operate in Hawaii because of the regulator. So it's kind of a funny thing. Kind of a side is a tangent, but I thought people would find that interesting. That's interesting. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, I don't know. Like, Kent, I'll, like, I don't know if you want to tag in anything else in and around this.

I kind of want to, again, I guess maybe getting back to to Lisa's original, original thought here in and around, like just how many people around the globe are coming to Bitcoin and are just hungry for knowledge. And I'm almost wondering how this shifts power dynamics around the world. Just in the places that are more difficult to operate in, is there a brain drain? Is there just capital flight? Do people migrate to places that are friendlier? like if Bitcoin becomes what we think it can, does regulatory action actually have an impact as to, you know, the balance of power globally? I don't know. So from my standpoint, yes.

And I've seen it firsthand. I have friends in Portugal that have gotten residency elsewhere passports, ditch their U.S. passports. I've heard a lot of stories like that. And to me, I don't know if that scales. I don't know if a lot of people doing it actually occurs. But what I can see happening is that enough of that happens and enough publicity about it happens from some individuals that it sort of puts a check on governments, right?

And I think that's a healthy thing, right? The sovereign individual, I think, was one of the most impactful books that I've come across in my journey here because it was written in the 90s, predicted Bitcoin, predicted a lot of things that have since played out. And this whole idea of like a macro political force like Bitcoin where you move from being able to confiscate, you know, private property to being able to not being able to confiscate Bitcoin because it simply is just really impossible to do structurally. That changes the dynamic. between government and individual.

And it changes it so that ultimately governments have to be of service to the individual. And I think that we're seeing the early indicators of that with global citizenry programs for folks coming to El Salvador. Portugal's got a golden visa, for instance. I wouldn't be surprised if Argentina does similar. So I think that there is, governments need tax revenue to function. And I think that governments, you know, ones that are

in position to actually tackle this are are going to start catering to that to get more tax revenue to come their direction by having people vote with their feet and show up in their country so i mean it's it's very early days in this still but uh i could see that you know expanding pretty expansively in the uh yeah absolutely i uh i don't know if ken just froze there or not. Either way, it seemed like it was the end of a thought. So there we go. Lisa, I'm going to give you one last question here, I guess, in and around what you're doing. But in if, let's say, five years' time, where would you like, where would you like what you're working on to be at? Where would you like to see Base 58, like, what's, I don't want to say

what's the end game, but like, what are some milestones you'd love to hit? I have like, I think for me, it's like, you know, I'm kind of a pretty league, not creative, but I can like see. I'm a very like, you know, it helps when you're like as a programmer when you can kind to kind of just like see the whole map of the place in your head, right? So like for base 58, like the map I have in my head is like I have all this like course content I want to get out. So the first thing is like just like the complete, let's call like evergreen content about

how like Bitcoin primitives work. So you can like roll into the basis. Also it would all be on like my own platform that you can pay with Bitcoin, um, cut you to me out of the picture. I mean, probably keep some stuff up there as like our outreach thing, you know,

so if you're on you to me looking for content, all my stuff would be there, but really like this whole platform. But I really, you know, I think this is kind of like a longer conversation. But I think, you know,

we're starting with all the Bitcoin stuff because I think that's the most fun and definitely, I think, like, highest impact stuff that I can get out right now, you know, just like in terms of like where I can spend my time. But I think there's a lot of, um, Bitcoin educate, like, not Bitcoin, but like engineering education across like the board. Um, I think education as a whole is kind of, um, at a crossroads, so to speak. Like, um, you know, I think this is a great time for like new institutions that are like really built for international, like internet based economy. to really kind of like get their foothold in and like start building an audience and like really,

you know, if you're a really great teacher and you can really explain how stuff works and really get people to understand it. I think there's like, you know, the sky's the limit in terms of like how many people you can reach these days and building a really great brand. I want people who come out of base 58 to be like you meet a base 58 engineer and you're like, you know that they went through base 58, not from like anything of who they are necessarily. but just like the depth of depth of knowledge that they have on topics. It's like, oh, yeah, like these people like know what they're talking about. Because at the end of the day, when you really understand it, you're empowered, right?

And I feel like that's like the most powerful thing that I'm really giving people through like the stuff that they go through. And like you experience with the LARP yourself, Ben, like the like that, like when you actually understand it, all of a sudden it's like it's both this like inspiring as well as like a hugely empowering moment. right? And I think whenever people figure out, like, one, that, like, these things that they thought were hard are actually understandable, you end up with, like, a totally different kind of, like, set of students and people that, like, suddenly are in the world as, like, not just consumers, but now they, like, understand enough about it that they can actually, like, impact it and build on it and, like, move all of us to, like, whatever that beautiful revolutionary future looks like. So, yeah, I think, like, end game for base 58 is that it's, like, this inspiration. like power tool that um really takes people from like being more of consumers of bitcoin and

interested in it to people that are like wait like I can I can touch this I can do it I can participate um and it's really just like that easy so to speak I love it well I'll give you one one more shill here everybody that's that's interested again I tweeted I did a retweet of the event and everything, but you can also, if you go on Udeme and you just search Base 58, it'll pop right up. You'll see it right there. So I highly recommend lots of awesome learning to be done. But what I like to do here as we begin to round out the show, I always like to end

with just a quick round of any final thoughts, anything that you maybe wanted to summarize or get off your chest before we round out. but also if you could give a recommendation. And what I mean by recommendation is something that you think if you would find useful, either in their Bitcoin journey or something tangential to that. But this could take many forms. It could be as simple as just like a piece of life advice,

something that you wish you had known when you started your Bitcoin journey. Or it might be something more specific. Oh, try this app, this device. check of this blog, watch this video, read this book. It could be something along those lines as well. So I'll kind of start, give you guys a second to stew on that, and then we'll go down the line. But yeah, final thoughts. I guess I'll relate back to kind of my original topic there.

If you haven't met any or many Bitcoiners in person, it is really, really valuable to. to have those interactions. Like I think it's, you've got to find a good balance of, you know, if you're contributing to Bitcoin in some way, you know, get the work done.

But also you got to interact with other people. You got to actually have, build those relationships and the ideas, um, and those connections, they, they bear a lot of fruit. So,

um, number one, if there's a local meetup, find it, uh, and go to it. it if there's not make it because if not you, then who? And number three, if there's an accessible event near you or that you'd be willing to travel

for, go do it. It's an incredible experience, especially if you've not been in the presence of other Bitcoiners before to suddenly be in a group of people that no longer think you're crazy. It's kind of refreshing. And who knows whether it's just that you're all crazy together. but one of the two, either way, it's nice. In terms of a recommendation, I briefly touched on it, but I'm just about finished Lynn Alden's book, Broken Money, really, really enjoyed it. I thought it was really well done.

So if you haven't, pick it up, if you prefer audiobook, if it's been read by the silky smooth vocals of of course, Guy Swan. So go and download that if you have not already. So either way, that's my recommendation. I'll toss it to Kent. Dude, final thoughts, recommendations. Yeah, I'm going to go off the beaten path on this one and give some life advice that I wish I knew in my 20s.

And that's do the work on yourself, right? This idea of sovereign, I think we get too focused on it being monetary, freedom. And I don't think that once you get to that point in your life, if you've not done the work on yourself, because all of us are unprocessed traumas and all sorts of bullshit from childhood, who knows what else. But if you don't do the work on yourself, you're not going to enjoy that monetary freedom. And I think that has been the most rewarding journey that I've taken in my life and is ongoing, you know, at a certain point, you realize it's a never-ending journey, but I wish I knew that when I was in my 20s.

That's, yeah, good advice as any. I love it, man. Thank you. I'll toss to Alex. Same final thoughts, recommendations? Yeah. Huge, heavy plus sign to what Kent just said. something that I would say is, you know, Bitcoin is a passion for everyone watching,

but that passion can manifest itself in many ways in your life. And one of the things I would encourage is to be very realistic about how it fits into your life. And what I mean by that is, you know, there are more people who love Bitcoin than there are opportunities to work in the Bitcoin industry. for example. Just because you love Bitcoin doesn't mean that's what you have to do, right? You might be awesome at something else and go do that, go build that industry and bring Bitcoin to that, right? There are other ways to help move this forward than only doing a Bitcoin job. That's just something I've noticed with some people. They feel this pressure to do that, but their skills and their background and sort of their calling doesn't truly align to that.

And then if you are going to build something with Bitcoin, don't forget business principles, right? We are all very ideological people. We are all very principled. But at the end of the day, you have to focus on real problems. So, you know, if you're thinking of starting a Bitcoin app or building things in Bitcoin, don't start with a solution. Start with the problem. Obsess about the problem and work backwards from that.

And be really objective about whether or not Bitcoin fits into. solving those problems. And that's how you'll actually find the right things to build. I like it. I like it a lot. Awesome. And again, to your point there, yeah, you don't have to work in Bitcoin, but you can live by a few key tenants, be really good at something, spend less than you earn, saving Bitcoin. Pretty good set of general rules, I think. I'll toss it over to Lisa. Final thoughts, recommendations, all you. Yeah, this is a little bit of a self-promotion, but I recommend everyone who, especially if you're a developer, check out a Bitcoin Plus Plus near you.

We're doing one in Buenos Aires in three weeks. There's going to be one in Austin in the beginning of May. We're in early talks to bring one back to Berlin in the fall. So, yeah, or like, you know, just like show up at a conference. Like show up, just like show up, you know. Because I think that's like, you really can't, like, do much you can do other things in life but it really you know was it wordy all in like 10% sweat 90% showing up or something like that I think it's just it is true and it continues to be true so

yeah um love it awesome awesome well thank you guys so much for being here uh I really appreciate you guys again taking the time uh to come and chat and hang out on a Friday evening um everybody that's watching the show all of their handles are in the show notes. You can give them a follow and see everything that they're up to from there. But yeah, I'll just round it out by saying thank you guys again for being here. And you're all welcome back anytime. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me for all right. Thanks guys. I'll see you later. All right. Everybody in the audience, thank you so much for being here as well.

Please do go into the show notes, give them all a follow, check out what they're up to. Great guests. Really enjoyed the Convo. I hope you did too. If you did, of course, smash that like button. Give this a share all over the place to other people that you think may also enjoy it. And of course, hit that subscribe button. Help me on my quest to 100,000 subs in 2024. I think we can get there. If you want to help the show in another way, of course, the links for all the show sponsors are in the show notes down below. Just a quick note, those were Hoddle Hoddle, Coin Kite. Cdoor Nunchuk, Start 9. And then up on the screen, there's a QR code. If you're going through all of the free tutorials, there's hundreds of hours of free stuff there, please do use it. But if you need some additional handholding

and you want to, you can scan that QR code on the screen. It'll take you out to a place where you can book me for one-on-one private education sessions. If you're listening on the pod afterwards, it's just BTCSessions.ca, that Canadian handle there. Anyways, guys, with that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be.

See you guys next time for your daily session.