BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Andy Flattery, Mike Hobart, Adam Simecka ep227

Episode Date: January 8, 2022

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Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Friday, another edition of Why Are We Bullish? All new guests this week, very excited to have them all. We're going to get chatting about a ton of different topics. And yeah, I'm always happy to have you all here on a Friday. Yeah, let's just get into it.

As always, 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'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks.

If you haven't already, please do hit like, subscribe, share. All of those things really do help get this in front of more people. And start dropping those comments in the chat, all that good stuff. I am Ben with the BTC Sessions. This is your daily session. All right. before we bring in our guests, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. Don't panic, guys. It's fine. We're sitting at 41,549 bucks per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 2,407 sats.

90.1% of all Bitcoin have been mined. In terms of fees, not too bad right now. Six sats per byte will get you into the next block if you're willing to wait any amount of time. One sat per bite should do you. You know, people panicky about these little dips, you know, stack stack the dip stack the pump stack the crab walk stack it all yeah i don't know when in doubt zoom out hit all and relax uh shout out to sponsors of the show shake pay dot com if you're buying bitcoin in canada one of the simplest ways to do it no deposit fees no withdrawal fees thin spread when you go there if you sign up with the link down below after your first hundred bucks they'll give you 30 bucks for free that's a lot of extra sales. Also, you get the same deal if you refer a friend.

And once you do refer a friend, you get sats every single day when you shake your phone. I'm on a 100 day streak. I hit my 100 day streak today. So yeah, check them out. Also, they've got their visa card now. So you can tap and earn sats back on all your purchases. Check them out. Links are down below.

Lenn.io. If you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services. For me, personally, it's been if I'm in a pinch and I need dollars and, and it's a cash flow related thing. And I don't want to sell my Bitcoin because that's a taxable event. And I'm worried about buying back in at a higher price. Well, I can deposit Bitcoin here, get a loan of dollars to my bank account within 24 hours. And when I pay that back, I get the same amount of stats.

So that's the important number to me. They do have savings for Bitcoin in USDC. And they also have their B2X offering. Check them out on the links in the show notes. Now, I do live on Bitcoin. Bitrifill helps a ton with this. you can get just about every gift card, your little hard desires in a ton of different countries. You can pay on chain with Bitcoin or via the Lightning Network.

And also, you do earn stats back as you shop. All kinds of great stuff here. So check them out in the show notes. Keystone, you know these guys, one of my most used hardware wallets. I love it. It's 100% air-daped, meaning you don't plug it into anything internet connected. It's all offline via QR code, keeping the keys to your money, safe and away from internet connections. On top of this, Bitcoin-only firmware, highly recommend you upgrade to this, and it works with a ton of different wallets,

Blue wallet, Wasabi wallet, Spector, Sparrow. I just did a video on Nunchuk, and it's really badass in a multi-sincter. So check it out. And finally, if you're backing up any important hardware wallet or software wallet, for that matter, anything with a meaningful amount of funds, you want that seed to be secure, get it into solid steel, paper doesn't always cut it, you know, fire damage, water damage. You might discard it if it's just a slip of paper lying around. Steel can help you mitigate those risks. This is how I back up all my shit.

So check out the bill, follow at Privacypros.io. And that's enough of my ranting. I want to get these guys in here. Let's start chatting. We've got Adam. We've got Andy. I've got Mike. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Let's do a quick round of intros. Let people know who you are, what you do. We'll start with Adam. Take it away. Who are you? What do you do? Yeah, it's going on, everybody. A little bit about myself.

Adam Semeca. I was a firefighter in the Air Force for six years, went on to become a hardware security consultant, helping people build safe and secure buildings. And I'm the founder of Hands Free Bitcoin. We make consumer-friendly at-home plug-and-play Bitcoin miners. Nice. I might have to chat with you about that. It's interesting. Hmm. All right, let's keep going around the circle. Mike, how about you? Who are you? What do you do? what's up guys um i actually also had some prior experience in the military i was a aircraft new drollics specialist which is just a really fancy way to say that i worked on hydraulic systems for helicopters um did six years the national guard with them and then after that well that's actually

where my whole bitcoin journey started while i was overseas on deployment and then um came back and got a degree in exercise science and now I write for Bitcoin magazine. So it's a lot of fun. Damn, dude. That's a hell of a journey. Well, glad to have you. And let's do one last, Andy. It's all up to you. What's going on? Who are you? Amen. Great to be here. My name is Andy flattery and I am a mere Pleb. I'm a class of 2021 Bitcoiner and I'm learning all the time. I'm a certified financial planner by trade and I do a podcast called The Reform financial advisor where we talk about Bitcoin as it relates to personal financial planning. And Ben, you don't know this, but you're the guy that taught me how to use a hardware wallet.

So I have you to thank for that, man. That's awesome. Well, dude, I'm glad to have you. And I always love seeing class of 20 or 21 that are coming in. And they're kind of getting in in a way that kind of allows them to kind of, bypass a lot of the noise that a lot of us were subject to in like 2017 or so when people came in. I feel like the signal is a lot stronger these days than it was back then. And so that's cool to see.

So welcome to all of you. And welcome to everybody watching. This is why are we bullish? And so pretty basic premise to the show. Everybody brings a reason why they're bullish. And we go by the three R's. This is how we run the show. somebody's going to give a reason why they're bullish.

Then we're all going to riff on the reason together. And then we're going to rotate to the next person until we're all through. Really easy, really simple. So I'm going to get us started. I've got a simple on its face reason for being bullish this week. And my reason this week is wallets. And I want to elaborate on that a little bit. I'm bullish on Bitcoin wallets because of the evolution.

that I've seen over the past five years of making videos on the topic. And I've seen the kind of rise of all-in-one solutions for software wallets. And what I mean by all-in-one is, I mean, I can manage just about damn near every aspect of my Bitcoin from a single piece of software. And there's multiple options for this. So what spurred on this reason for being bullish was I did a video on Monday for God, now I'm going to forget, for Nunchuk wallet. So Nunchuk, it allows you to do a whole bunch of different things, but it's not alone in this aspect.

So a couple of things I've noticed over the past few years. The user interface and the user experience has gotten a lot better and a lot more more intuitive. Now, it's nowhere near perfect, but there's a lot of solutions out there that are starting to nail down those moments when people would go, what the hell do I do now? And really making it simple and intuitive to just say, oh, obviously, I go here or make it relatively simple for a newcomer to come across. The next thing is, is kind of features and functionality. And so what I mean by that in terms of features is things that you may not realize you need, but eventually do need, are just there now. So things like replaced by fee. You know, you send a transaction,

the fee is too low and it's taking too long and there's a spike in the men pool and you're like, oh, shit, I need to bump my fee and you can just do it in a lot of wallets now. Not only that, but automated and manual fees being default and everything where you can either do like the fast, medium or slow option or default to setting your stats per byte. On top of that, you get stuff like the option to connect to your own node and a lot of great wallets lately. You get some of the UTXO management, so like taking the individual bits of Bitcoin and designating which ones you want to use, which can be privacy preserving. You can also label them so that you know where they came from and where they've gone to

and what is commingled. And so you can kind of form a picture of who knows what you own. And on top of that, you get things like batching transactions, coin join baked into some of them. So some of the wallace that I want to shout out, Nunchuk, I just mentioned, Sparrow Wallet. Spector, Wasabi Wallet, Blue Wallet, a lot of these things, they just have so many of these features. Now, not all of them have everything, but damn near. And on top of that, you have the ability in a lot of them to create hot wallets that are on a device that is connected to the internet, connect cold wallets or watch-only wallets that are connected to a piece of hardware.

do multi-sig in a good number of these. And now with the Nunchuk one that I just did, do collaborative multi-sig across multiple parties where you have multiple people, all part of a single multi-sig, and there's like a baked-in chat messenger to coordinate a transaction. It's crazy.

That's cool. And then even beyond that is the compatibility of hardware. So you're getting things like default in all the ones that I just mentioned, you're getting some mix of most of Treasor, Ledger, Cold Card, Keystone, Passport, and Bitbox. And so I think the reason that we're seeing a lot of this is a focus on Bitcoin only, because if you're Bitcoin only, then you can spend a lot more time baking in all of these features and working on compatibility with all of these wallets and hardware devices.

and it just makes for such a robust experience for a basic user all the way up to a power user and I'm super bullish on what I'm seeing just with wallets. So with that, I know that was a bit of a lengthy explanation, but I'm stoked on that this week. I don't know what it is. It's just there's so much cool stuff happening. So I'm going to open it up to the floor here. I guess first off, I'll just ask a general question.

What are some of the favorite wallets that you guys are using right now? I'll go ahead and kick us off on that. Just to point out, I think it's kind of bullish just in the sense that there are so many of them out there now. When I first started using Bitcoin, there really weren't a lot of options. And so you mentioned some of the usability upgrades and the feature sets are continually expanding. I think that's awesome. My two personal favorite, at least mobile wallets that I use are Moon and Blue Wallet. I like Moon because of its interoperability between on-chain and Lightning.

And then Blue Wallet has a really great UI. But like I said, there's so many of them out there. I haven't gotten a chance to try them all. Those are my personal two favorites. Nice. How about Mike or Andy? I will have to say that I'm pretty boring with the whole wallet experience. When I first got into Bitcoin a couple years ago, I was on deployment.

I don't want to docks myself completely. I got like a stack of them off Amazon. Well, not off Amazon. That's an awful example to place. But I got a ledger and then I got two Trezer to try out. And I never got any more after that. like once I once I used one to test and use the other to, you know, be my, be my baby, my, my home spot for my Bitcoin.

I just set that up and never really dabbled. I keep a hot wallet, but I have moon and I've tried everything else out, but I don't know. I'm pretty boring that way. That's, well, that's kind of the beauty of it too, though, because that's fine for somebody to do. Somebody just steps in the room and is like, I don't know, what, I got a treas room. and then that's what they that's totally fine because the level of security that you get out of that and I know that some people are like wow if somebody gets a hold of it and they've got specialized equipment and they take yes there's there's that you know if you're thinking adversarially as a

bitcoiner absolutely but you know for the vast majority of people any hardware wallet you know with a backup stored elsewhere is is orders of magnitude more secure than what you're going to get on average, you know, holding your money under a mattress or, you know, and having it custody by somebody else. And I know that there's also going to be people that say, well, there's insurance and everything.

I don't know. I don't buy that. I think it's bullshit. I think that self custody is the way to go and that everybody can do it. And it can be as simple as I got a treasure. I'm good. I tell you what. I will admit, though, since the coin join function came on stage,

I've really just been waiting until a wallet integrated that, like the coin join function. So now I'm just like, okay, now I've got to go shopping again. Damn it. You know what? So for for desktop, especially for low value coin join, Sparrow is, it's just got everything baked in because you can have a hot wallet on there. You can link up your treasor to it.

And you can have a hot wallet that does coin join. And after a certain amount of coin joins, it will auto deposit into your treasurer. Oh, they swanified it. That's awesome. Yeah. So I did a full tutorial on coin join and sparrow. So if you're looking after, just go through it shows you how to do that. Perfect.

Yeah. Andy, I'm going to let you chat. Yeah. I'm with a good old blue wallet. And I've been using Breeze as my lightning wallet because it's got. got just so many little bells and whistles. And I love kind of the group behind that project because they seem so kind of interested in the Lightning Network in general. So, you know, as a podcaster, I can boost my favorite Bitcoin podcast right now. And actually they've added

the functionality where you can send a message with that boost. So I really love, love that function of the podcasting 2.0 stuff. And I just, I think of it as like, you know, how the internet has evolved. Like my my grandmother, my 80-some-year-old grandmother in Fort Dodge, Iowa, now uses Facebook on her cell phone. And 20, 30 years ago, she never would have imagined that the internet would have been that easy for her to use if she even knew what the internet was. And so, you know, Ben, I agree with you. You can imagine a future where wallets make it so easy that anyone is going to be able to use this thing. And I think we're moving in that direction. Dude, I love, again, I don't want to keep on pointing out that your class of 21,

but your class of 21 and you just told me that you're coming in, you're using Blue Wallet, but you're also using a Lightning Wallet and you're using podcasting 2.0. That's like, that's pretty astounding for somebody coming out the gate. And I think it speaks to one, obviously you've taken the time to look into and understand these things, but also to two, the accessibility that's being built by these teams like Blue Wallet and breeds. Like they're doing such incredible work. Yeah. I mean, it's so, it's so simple to get to get up

with these products. I got my own podcast up on podcasting 2.0 in a matter of like an hour. And, and they've made it really easy to use. And I frankly, I want to learn how to use it. So yeah, I totally agree with you three, four, five years ago that would not have been the case, which is probably one of the reasons why it took me so long to come around to Bitcoin. Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to pull up, we've got a quick question. So as a newbie, I've seen old fart in the comments many times below. So welcome old fart. I'm glad for you to be here again. He's just asking about so I got a hardware wallet. I moved my Bitcoin to it. He said if my exchange gets hacked, I can send my Bitcoin from my hard wallet to any other exchange, correct? I think he's probably alluding to the idea of if his current exchange that he's, he's, usually uses to like convert into an out of fiat is deemed no longer secure he can send from his self-custody back to any other custodian to exchange for dollars if he needs them and yeah absolutely like your once you have bitcoin in your custody you can you that's there's nobody to tell you no

you can send it wherever you like as long as there is a service that is available to you and your locale. So if you're in the U.S., you know, whether it be a strike or swan or cash app or whatever you're using for kind of your Bitcoin back and forth, it's agnostic to what wallet you as an individual are using to hold your Bitcoin. So whether it's a hardware wallet, whether it's a hot wallet, whether it's a Trezor, ledger, a coat card, keystone, whatever the hell you're using, it's all agnostic. It's all interoperable. You can send Bitcoin from any wallet to any wallet or any wallet to any exchange. So yeah, absolutely, you should not have a problem there.

The other thing that I wanted to bring up and ask you guys is, are there things in wallets that you feel are still missing? Like, what would you like to see? What is something that could either make it easier, a feature that you feel is missing in some wallets or in all wallets. What's next for you? What do you think is best? Well, I'll go ahead and start with this question.

I actually have thought about this a lot. Honestly, I think it's a spectrum because especially if I look at hardware wallets, it's probably a different conversation for software wallets. But when you look at the hardware options out there, I think that it's all about tradeoffs. You know, what do you want more of and what do you want less of? And so when I look at the different options out there, the different options that I have, you know, there are some aspects and features that I like more about some than others. Thinking about things like portability.

You know, I like the portability aspect of some wallets. But of course, the tradeoff there is, you know, some security risks. The other thing that I like about some of my wallets is the interoperability between something like my phone. whether it's connecting over Bluetooth or even something that's completely air-gapped. And so those are kind of two opposite ends of the spectrum. And I don't personally think that there is a one right answer and all the other answers are wrong. But I do think that we're kind of continually progressing to better and better options. So I don't necessarily have one that I would say or a specific feature that I think needs.

needs to be on a wallet. But as long as we're keeping user experience at the top in the design of new wallets, ultimately the market's going to decide, you know, what's best. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I would echo your interoperability, particularly on mobile. So like right now, mobile, like direct easy access across both types of, whether it be iOS or Android, you basically got ledger, which is Bluetooth.

You've got like Keystone and Foundation, which are air-gapped QR, right? Outside of that, then you're running into actually physically plugging a device into a phone if it will allow. So basically, if you're on Android, you can do that. Or air-gapping via SD card with hold card, which can be, you know, a little onerous. I do hear rumblings that cold card is working on their tinkering with NFC. I think they just released their GitHub. On GitHub, they just released their spec for NFC. Oh, damn.

That sounds like I will be doing some shopping soon in the near future. But that's exciting. Yeah, I think, yeah, that interoperability. And again, like so many of the wallets now, you can just, whatever you want to plug into them, especially like desktop, it's pretty much across the gamut. You can just use any any wallet that caters to Bitcoin only, for sure. You're going to probably be able to use. But I think that will continue to improve and we'll see more across mobile as well.

Mike, for you, you're like dabbling. You're going to start looking. you said now with all the coin join stuff. What are some of the things that you're looking for out of a wallet as you as you start looking around? What are the things that stand out to you? It's a little bit, again, more boring for me just because I'm not like a huge like, not a developer or a coder or like a huge like techie guy.

I mean, I am, but I'm not, right? When it comes to like the hardware wallets, one of the things that I enjoy. most is that kind of like what Adam was saying is that the the more simple that they are really the greater the security they're going to have in my opinion

because like as you add more features it basically opens like it opens up the possibility for attack vectors and all sorts of like all that other junk and that's just like when it comes to an asset like Bitcoin like I'd really I enjoy being able to sleep well at night

because I know where my stuff is. Yeah. But really that coin join function is what really excites me most. But the way I understand is you don't really want that in a hardware wallet, right? Because you kind of want it in a different area to be able to send it to it. So when it comes to, I honestly, I got to say, like, I don't know what I, it's kind of like the Steve Jobs thing. I don't know what I want until I'm going to see it. Yeah.

probably because I'm not a developer. So I'm going to have to say that there isn't really anything that I could say I suggest looking forward to. Because like even like I love Orolfo. Like I talked to him quite a bit. But honestly, like I could still like because I'm not a, I'm not a tech guy. Like I can still see the NFC function as being like a form of like an attack vector. But I don't understand the technology fully either. So that could just be my ignorance, which is.

you know, willful. So yeah. And it's, I mean, again, it's, it's everybody's comfort level. Like some people don't like plugging a device into a computer at all, right? Like that's to some that they worry about, oh, it's plugged in. For others, it's, oh, it has Bluetooth. Oh, I don't like that. Some people don't like the QR functionality because they're worried that they, you can't

fully, you know, unless you're checking every QR code on, on separate hardware and separate software, then you're never really sure. And all of those are valid criticisms. It's just, as we've been saying, tradeoffs. And you're right about the coin join versus hardware. It's basically it's not possible with a hardware wallet. And the reason for that is, is basically there's these rounds of coin join and you're waiting for enough people to join.

And then you create a transaction altogether. And then your wallet has to sign the transaction for it to go through. you're basically sending money back to yourself, but because it's joined with a bunch of people doing the same thing, it's indecipherable who owns what. The problem with trying to do that with a hardware wallet is unless you're there at the exact second with your device hitting approve, then you're not going to make the round,

and they're just going to go on without you. So it has to be a hot wallet, but that's where Sparrow kind of scratches that itch, where you can do the coin joints. You can say, hey, I want to do five rounds. and then after that on the fifth round, I want it to auto send to my hardware device. And then that just,

it sorts itself out for you. It's just auto deposited into cold storage, which is beautiful. I love it. So yeah, I think there's a ton of great things happening in wallets. I won't take too much more time regarding this topic. I think I'll keep us rolling.

But thanks for all your input, Jans. I think it's time we move on to our next. reason for being bullish. Everybody in the chat, thanks for the, thanks for chatting it up. I'm going to start trying to pull in more comments as we go. Of course, hit like, share all that good stuff, but let's jump down the line. I'm going to go to Adam and I'm going to let you have your little rant. What are you excited about this week? So the reason I am excited about bullish, excited about Bitcoin, bullish on Bitcoin. It has to do with the elephant in the room.

as I say. And the elephant that I'm referring to is actually the parable of the blindman and the elephant. And I'm not the first person, even in the Bitcoin space, to talk about this. But hopefully I can add some fresh, a fresh new take. But for anybody that doesn't know about the parable or what it is, generally speaking, it's a, it's a, you're laughing, Mike. Is that what you were going to talk about? Oh, no, man.

I just, I don't know it. Okay. Just the right of phrase B in here. Before the show, he was mentioning he was going to be getting to some philosophical stuff as well, just making sure we weren't going to be covering the same topic. No, you're good, man.

So the blind men and the elephant, there's a few different versions. It's a very old parable, but generally it's about these blind men that are traveling and they come across this object that they can't identify, right, because they're blind. And it's, as we know, it's the elephant. But as they're trying to figure out what this thing is,

they touch the different parts of the elephant to try to figure out, you know, what they just came across. And so you see one of the guys go up, you know, he just runs straight into the side of the elephant and he says it's a wall. Another one wraps his arms around the leg of the elephant, and he says it's a tree. There's another man that's on the tusk and he says it's a spear. One on the trunk says it's a snake.

a guy that's grabbing a hold of the ear says it's a fan and you know I think it's it's kind of you know funny because you know to a degree you know we all know that that they're wrong it's it's an elephant but on the same token you know they're also kind of right because those individual functions and you know parts of that elephant can function in that manner as well and I think in this case Bitcoin is the elephant and we're all the blind men

trying to make sense of this new discovery, you know, because we've never seen anything like this before. And it became, you know, really evident to me recently. And if you're spending much time on Bitcoin Twitter these days, you may have seen some bantering to put it lightly on the topic of Bitcoin and progressivism. So that's kind of been a topic that's been floating around lately. And I saw, the reason why I thought about this is because I saw somebody say, I think it was an article title.

I didn't read it, but I'm sure it was well thought out. But the title of their article was simply, you know, Bitcoin is good for progressives. And of course, you know, a lot of people, you know, spoke up on that and had their opinions, right? The blind men are, you know, fighting about what they see Bitcoin as. And I'll say that my perspective as a blind man myself, you know, I disagreed with it, but not necessarily for the same reason that other people were disagreeing. I disagreed with it because I think that, you know, Bitcoin is good for everybody. It's good for humans.

I think Bitcoin's like air, right? Air is good for us because we're human. We need it. air is good for progressives, air is good for conservatives, error is good for libertarians, error is good for good people and error is good for bad people. And in the same way, I think Bitcoin is good for everybody. It's good for us for being human. And as I'm kind of like going through this thought experiment in my head,

I'm thinking also about some of the things that Jason Lowry has pointed out recently. and not everybody agrees with everything that he says in all this points, but I think he makes a really good one about the fact that, you know, your adversary defending their position in Bitcoin and contributing to, to their vision in Bitcoin, actually really bolsters your defense. It's,

it's mutual assurance. And so it's like you got all these blind men, and they're all describing, you know, what this thing is, and they've got their own perspective and how Bitcoin applies to them and how they can use it as a tool. to as it means to their end, basically. And these blindmen, as they're fighting,

they're actually making the other person's tool stronger. And I thought that was really cool. So that's why I'm bullish. Bitcoin is an elephant. That's awesome. I love it. I mean, it echoes pretty, also, Narwhal tacos says,

Janet Yellen told me only perverts and terrorists use air. I don't trust it. It's also an awesome username. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, everybody experiences, Bitcoin in their own way, right? Everybody comes to it for different reasons. And particularly people in the in the West, at least their initial touch points with Bitcoin are as a number go up like their their initial thought is is to get more dollars is until they do dig deeper.

Whereas in other parts of the world, like I was it was nice enough for Gladstein invited me down for the Human Rights Foundation, the Oslo Freedom Forum in October. And there were people from all over the world where their first touch point is not at all related to that. It's I need to protect my assets from the state. I need to be able to pay my workers. I need to be able to survive and I need to perhaps flee with more than just the shirt on my back. I need to escape hyperinflation. I need to escape economic colonialism in the instance of a lot of African countries

where France gets to dictate how their currency works, gets to print more of their currency, and gets first dibs on all of their local assets and products before the rest of the world, which they can then print money and then buy those assets, basically for zero. And so people are looking for ways to escape different forms of oppression first rather than kind of the number go up first touches that we get here. So it's it's very true that everybody has their own experience. I'll open it up to Mike or Andy if you want to comment on anything Adam said. Well, that's a I don't mean to talk, Andy. You haven't had a whole lot of chance to talk here, but I'll make it quick.

I personally love that like kind of like along the same lines is that like I'm I've found myself often becoming the kind of like the balancing act in a lot of these spaces and other conversations is like we'll get like what Adam mentioned is like like someone who's taking the side of all central banks are going to be destroyed by Bitcoin and then someone who like takes a you know a competing stance and I'm just like guys like. the reality is that it's going to be a blend of all of it. Like, that's just how reality is. Like it's going to like conservatives and progressives and libertarians are all like kind of like at each other's throes right now inside Bitcoin trying to basically tell each other how it's going to end up playing out. And it's like Bitcoin's for everybody. It's not going to be any one of those extremes guys. So let's just calm down a little bit. Yeah.

I agree. I agree. You know, Gito Holsman made the point. I'm sure maybe he's not the first. but he made the point that inflation in the United States prior to World War II really only existed in those periods of wartime. That's when we had inflation here in the United States. Now, of course, since World War II, it's been an inflation bonanza because it's been basically wartime, not just wartime, but money printing for just about everything. But I guess if you're still one of these progressives that doesn't believe in immoral wars,

you are a fan of sound money. You are a fan of a disinflationary monetary system. So I agree with you. You know, Bitcoin is for everyone. You know, I'm a Catholic and I feel like my, you know, my Bitcoin journey is a reflection of my Christian faith. But I know that there are atheists that say that Bitcoin is a reflection of their atheism. And I want them on my team too.

Because, you know, at the end of the day, Bitcoin is truth. And truth wins out no matter what your ideology. is. So I'm with all you guys on this. Super interesting on the religion and Bitcoin kind of convergence. Because again, I myself, I'm not religious, but I did grow up in a Catholic household. So I went to Catholic school as a kid all the way through high school. And so when I initially came to Bitcoin, I kind of saw. saw them as as divergent religion and bitcoin but i think the more i'm around it i do get i do

get um a lot of the draw because it kind of gives almost like a moral framework to economics um it it takes away some of the deception and um and gatekeeping that we see in traditional finance. And so I get some of those draws. Like, are there, are there certain things that you line up for you, um, morally with Bitcoin and it mirrors your religious stance? I mean, the key to unlocking it for me was that Austrian economist Gito Holsman, he can't temporary of ours. Like he's gone on the Stefan LeVera podcast. I think he's friendly to Bitcoin. And he did a lot of work on a 13th century French bishop named, Nical. Orem, who was one of the first to recognize the kind of immorality of inflation or like the

kings clipping the coins, if you will. And he wrote a great book called The Ethics of Money Production, which a lot of Bitcoins are pointed to is kind of like a precursor to the Bitcoin ethos. And so that's been kind of my avenue into it. But, but, you know, a lot of people, you don't have to be a Catholic to believe in the truth of that. There's no doubt. Yeah, that's super interesting. Yeah, I'm interested in reading the book. It was written by a handful of Bikoners, but thank God for Bitcoin. Just because I want to kind of see the lines of thought and how they kind of coalesce.

I think that'll be on the list for me because there's a different framework than perhaps I've explored before. We should have another conversation about just on that topic. because I could talk for like a couple hours myself on just Bitcoin and religion. Yeah. I think that'd be super interesting. I did do a chat with Alex Svetsky and Knutz Fanholm. Those are opposing points of view. Holy cow.

Yeah. And it was on Alex's show. Although when I was on, it was, I mean, Alex did try to take the contrary. position to kind of where me and Canute were sitting. And I wasn't as extreme as Canute, I will say. I was kind of like, but I think I've gotten more of the alignment since then. I understand the reasoning more now than I did previously. So yeah, you're right.

That's a topic that we could have a powwow around all day and all night. we'll we'll put that one off but i you're a charitable man ben i appreciate that well i'm i'm excited for to maybe have that conversation in the future here um awesome anybody have any other final thoughts around around this topic here of the uh the elephant in the room anybody have anything they want to tag on before we move on well like the the the best part about it being an elephant in the room is that you really kind of just maximize adoption that way. Like when it has so many different facets of what would allow someone to find value for it. And in my opinion, like the more you learn about it,

you can't really use any of the other facets as a reason not to like another facet. They're all just bonuses. Once you grasp the one that gets, like gets your attention, and you just start like learning more and more about it. You go deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole. And it's an interesting rabbit hole because it's like when you think about it, you would expect the rabbit hole to get kind of more like tighter and darker, but it really just gets wider and brighter.

Like it's, I love the Bitcoin rabbit hole, man. I spend hours every day going down it. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, let's let's wrap this one here. And again, Adam, thank you for the topic. I loved it. And I'm sure we could riff on it for hours.

But I want to get everybody else. This topic's into everybody in the chat. Keep them coming. I do see there's a lot of just on the topics that we were just talking about. I just want to pull a few little comments before we move on. What was it? Hold on here. Of course, Narwhal, again, Jesus would teach us all to mine.

Shane was shouting out Jimmy Song and Robert Brie loved. There were two of the notable authors from Thank God for Bitcoin. Sister Maria was dropping some bombs in here. The Holy Book of Satoshi, First Timothy, Chapter 6, verse 10, those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. Jesus.

Yeah, getting deep there. Have you been on the? the clubhouse Sunday Satoshi Sunday service Oh yeah Yeah it's yeah I was around for its inception

Yeah it's it's pretty It's pretty intense and some people Come in there and they get pretty mad Because they don't get that it's It's just like a clap back to people Calling it calling it calling Bitcoin a cult It's more of like a play on that Of like hey if they're going to call it this

Then we'll just embrace it and have people get angry about it. That was basically the reason behind it or the justification. Yeah, exactly. And I dropped into one of those early on and I was like, what is this? What is good? Like it was a full sermon and every like there was no breaking. They had the dong.

They had it was. It was what. But then you get in there. And once you kind of get what like the reasoning behind it and you're like, okay, I could roll with this. it's kind of almost just like a, it's a relaxing thing to like go there and just, just listen in and be a part of it. I think it's, it's kind of fun now. I enjoy it. And, and indeed, Tom Tom. Hallelujah.

It's like a public confessional where people aren't afraid to dump out their purse. Yes. And there's also, I love the shit coin confessions. That's a good part of it too. That's a good, a good segment. But I digress. Let's keep this thing rolling. Everybody in the chat. Thank you for being here again. Like, share, all that good stuff. Mike, you are up.

What has you excited this week? Take it away. I got to stop looking at the comments real quick. You guys are cracking me up. So my kind of topic was kind of just around accountability in general. And the reason for that is coming from, so I told you guys I got my degree in exercise science and exercise and movement sciences is the technical name for it. Um, but really, so I've spent about 15 years in really just in fitness between just like working

out and like kind of going down the personal training rabbit hole and all that stuff. Um, and this is kind of what allowed me to really get and get Bitcoin rather quickly is that just from a health and fitness standpoint, like we could talk. I'm going to really talk just like from America's point of view. Um, we have in my opinion, like a pandemic of accountability and responsibility. A lot of what's going on, barring like the health stuff that's going on in politics and everything, just around public health,

there's a huge aversion in the public to just responsibility in general around their personal health. And if you guys, if any of you guys have read like my articles, you could probably kind of pick up on that as you go through. I talk about diet and health with regards to the accountability of people not having Nice, Ramel. Is it Rameli? Yeah.

Already doing bench. Get those reps in, bro. But around like just personal health and diet, like there's a general, just aversion to accountability responsibility. But this goes a lot deeper. So really we can talk about how Bitcoin kind of, if you really want to protect yourself, it forces you into taking on accountability and responsibility. Like if you don't want to have to worry about the fact that if like Coinbase or Gemini do something stupid,

and for whatever reason, they get nationalized or something like that, and then you have, like, you're limited onto your access to it, like your funds or something like that. That's personally what scared me. And it forced me into accountability and responsibility with, you know, hardware wallets, keys management and all that stuff um but the accountability like once you get that in bitcoin you can help you kind of like and from my point of view really start to focus on like um hammering down and kind of perfecting your own accountability responsibility a lot of different other fields um and i think that the more americans that really take this on take on this philosophy of just

embracing accountability and responsibility, which really gets you closer to freedom. I think we would all agree. I think it will also help us fix the other plagues that are also going on in our society here, just within the United States. For instance, the pin tweet on my profile on Twitter is the article I wrote about the education system. Like the education system is awful.

And you can kind of trace that back through the accountability. thread where it comes back to like politics and unions or even just going straight back to like again the population like if more individuals in the population are more accountable and more responsible themselves you get kind of like a positive feedback loop of if the people are responsible and accountable then the institutions are more likely to be more accountable and responsible because that's all institutions are that's all countries are that's all companies are that's all churches and religions are. It's like they're managed by people. And if the people aren't accountable and responsible, we're going to get the situation we're in right now. So that's what makes me

bullish. Like I'm like price action is cool. Like I love, you know, getting more purchasing power. Like who wouldn't you'd be kind of stupid in my opinion if you didn't enjoy having like getting more purchasing power. But really I'm looking forward to fixing the kind of mind of disease. that we're suffering from right now because again off my tangent around accountability responsibility like there's also like that's coming out of all of these

problems because of like the aversions we've got issues with nihilism like really really bad nihilism and it's like contributing to the depression rates and the type two diabetes it's like it's all a part of the same system it's this tags on to a topic that

that I think John Valis explores this a lot is this this springing forth of kind of greater optimism amongst a lot of Bitcoiners. Yep.

And people kind of like turning around the way that they look at life. And rather than deferring, as you were talking about, deferring responsibility or placing blame elsewhere, it kind of forces people to look inwards because Bitcoin is a tool that can be used to kind of liberate yourself and to give yourself greater freedom.

And it's all kind of tied back to, you know, Bitcoin and any money is just a representation of your time. And it just depends how well that money actually represents your time. Is it equally finite or is it not? And so when you have those tools available, it changes your mindset because you can now say, I'd like to allocate my time to this and then save it for later because there's a mechanism to do that. And when you don't have that, your time preference shrinks to the point where you're not thinking, you can't possibly think into the future.

You can't plan for your future. You can't plan for retirement. You can only gamble and hope that it pans out. or you can blame somebody for your dire condition. And I mean, there is blame to go around, right? Like the system itself is inherently broken in that it doesn't allow us to do this type of planning. But in the presence of a new system, as people come into that, they will be able to plan. And even if you have setbacks, you'll at least know that you won't be spinning your wheels

trying to catch up to where you used to be, which is massive. And that's another thing, too, you brought up time. I wrote a piece on that, actually, coincidentally. And the funny thing is that we talk about, we all talk about time being finite, but we don't talk about the value of it. So, like, the older we get, and which typically the older we get, like, that our time value tends to go up almost exponentially, right? Because as we get older, you take on more responsibilities, more jobs.

maybe you have a family, maybe have a few kids. Like once you start getting up into there, the value of your time is going up exponentially, which means that you also have to be equally more like responsible with how you're going to, like, so like when you have a family, are you going to be spending that time continuing to like work on your business? Are you actually going to like value the memories you can make?

Like there's the, the nihilism in my, like I'm a millennial. The nihilism in my own generation for my own peers is just, it's disheartening man like i like and then like you said like bitcoin fixes like helps with the optimism and like i can understand the nihilism because like if you can't see a way out like that's where it comes from but then once you understand bitcoin and where we get back to the the religion topic adam um people think it's like culty from the outside and it like almost turns them away but then

once you get like once you give it a moment and you take the time to understand one of the assets of the elephant and you you kind of like see the bridge that's like the kind of little candle at the end of the cave then you get closer and closer and it grows exponentially it's dude i love it i love talk about this stuff it found not to be go ahead ben i was just going to say the the the the no coiners that think it's a cult they're they're at the butthole of the elephant and then and then the few of them might grab like a leg and be like oh there's more here journey. I was just going to add that I find that to be extremely evident evident when I'm, you know, trying to orange pill somebody. I've noticed that, you know, there's not a specific

formula and everybody, you know, is everybody opens up in a different way. Some people never do. But, you know, I've never seen, at least, you know, in my personal circle, everybody that I've seen that I know that has really, you know, kind of gone down the rabbit hole has gone down for a different reason. But I mean, it's just like, it's just like fitness and health. Like everybody has their own problems and their own justifications and their own goals. Like you have like, that's the thing. It's like most of my time and spaces, I'm just giving advice to people and how to like talk to other people because like everyone wants everyone like one of the most common questions is how do I orange pill my grandparent or my mom or my sister or like my cousin.

There's you guys like whoever, like everybody in the comments and that was watching is like, You're not going to have a cookie cutter answer for every conversation. You have to meet every single one where they are. And you can't meet them where they are until you ask them what they're like aiming for. Absolutely. I got some really good advice not too long ago. I don't remember exactly who said it. I think it might have been one of the Kansas City Bitcoiner guys.

But he said, you know, when you're orange playing somebody, instead of approaching them and starting the conversation, just listen to them. Sit down and talk to them. Let them talk. Let them tell you what their problems are. And then you can find a way in. You let them talk and it makes them feel like their point of view is valued. And then, and then from that standpoint, you're not talking down to them, which is what most

Bitcoiners end up doing. Yeah. And back on the subject, Mike, I want to say that I do agree with a lot of what you said. And this is just my opinion. I'm just one blind man in the world of elephants. but I think the root of the problem is that the incentives without Bitcoin are broken. So the incentive structure, it's not, in my opinion, not necessarily a direct cause and effect from the lack of accountability.

I think it's a lot of knock-on effects. And I was listening to Orange Pill Addicts podcast recently, and they mentioned a lot of different of these knock-on effects that this causes in terms of agriculture and even education as you mentioned. And even Andy, Andy flattery here on the show here, he's even done a recent podcast on education. So sorry to put you in the spotlight,

but hopefully he'll talk to us a little bit about that too. But again, I think it comes back down to the incentives. I think over time, it'll work itself out on a hard money Bitcoin standard. But I don't necessarily think it fixes itself overnight. It's going to take some time. Oh, yeah.

I love that you pulled up agriculture because I'm actually working on a pretty big piece for Bitcoin magazine right now. I might have to split it up into a couple because I think from notes alone, it's eight pages long. So, yeah. That'll be a beast. I look forward to listening to that with the silky smooth voice of Guy Swan. Yes. Andy. I was going to say speaking of silky smooth voices, Andy.

Let me just add one thing to Mike. you're saying. And I think you did an art, I think correct me if I'm wrong, you did an article called something like Bitcoin is the revival of the American dream. Yes. Something to that effect. Yep. And, you know, a lot of times when we think about the American dream, we think about like getting, becoming wealthy or something. Of course, that's part of it. But maybe it's also like having a purpose. And you mentioned the word nihilism, which I guess, I don't know, we're probably all millennials here. if the millennial generation is suffering from nihilism, well, there's reason to believe, like living on a sound money standard could give you more purpose.

You know, for example, like if let's say like this is kind of post welfare state or even like, you know, in kind of like the bell of pock period or the gilded age where we actually did not have a welfare state yet. what would happen is people weren't dying in the street you know single mothers weren't starving what would happen is is the wealthy industrialists many times the local philanthropists you know they were the people that were supporting individuals directly um because frankly they had to like if it if they didn't do it nobody else would step in there was no federal government to print money and write checks. And I think some of these people probably did it out of ego, but they also did it because

they had, you know, they had a purpose and they had like this idea that like I've been given this wealth. I've earned it. And it's kind of my responsibility to support my local community. So as a part of kind of reimagining that American dream, Mike, I think of it that way too. Like it's not just becoming wealthy, but kind of reigniting that passion for like. serving your local community. Thanks for reading it, by the way.

Yeah, yeah. I love the way you think, man. So that's my little addition to that. Yeah. And just like before you get onto your riff, which I'm looking forward to, the hard money deflationary asset angle, if somebody, if an individual doesn't have like that calling or that passion or that meaning to live, it can give them the freedom to find it.

because it can get them off the flywheel to where they have enough time and energy to dedicate their mind and their body towards a passion or finding a passion because I was one of those individuals like when I was a kid I was always revered as being skilled so I grew up as an artist and I was generally pretty good in school um but I was a kid I didn't know like if if you if you guys might understand this, if you're like, if you're smart enough and skilled enough in a lot of different ways,

you don't know which way to point yourself. And then, um, I kind of fell into this rut where because of that, because I couldn't pick just one to hammer out that like I went down this nihilistic path. Um, and once you have something that gives you hope for a better future,

then you can start to like go down the whole, um, the whole finding passion and finding reasoning for, for life and all that other stuff. I was at a conference. It was Bitcoin Day in Kansas City. And I had actually a couple people come up to me. And they said, hey, I follow you on Twitter.

I noticed you have Jesus in your bio. I just wanted you to know that I came to Jesus because of Bitcoin. And I decided to give my life to Christ. I was like, that's really cool. So I gave them, gave them a reason to live where they necessarily may not have had one before. That's powerful stuff.

That's awesome. Damn. That's really interesting. Again, like to find, I guess it's just, it's been like kind of a different journey for me where I can, perhaps it was partly the environment and the school that I was in seemed. And maybe some of my teachers that were a little bit older,

a little bit more close-minded, a little bit less. Because I tend to lean on maybe not to, today's definition of liberal, but I tend to lean on the social side of, the liberal side of social issues more often than not in the context of like, you know, what would have been considered socially left in the 90s and the 2000s, maybe not 2022. but now I find myself in a lot of instances where I would have before identified as socially left and thus opposed to many views from a religious standpoint.

I'm now seeing my views not having on social issues not having changed a whole bunch, but being labeled as right, which I find interesting. Right as in right leaning or right as in correct? No, right as in right leaning. Okay. Yeah. So I found that my views on a lot of the stuff that I viewed in the 90s and in the early 2000s hasn't shifted a lot, but the labeling of the way I think has, which is an odd

feeling. But anyway, I digress. I kind of grew up in a school system that those left-leaning social views at the time were not necessarily kosher. And now in a lot of instances with religious people that I meet, that maybe is not the instance. And that's maybe not the case. And so I think that was kind of my aversion and my drifting away from religious institutions was kind of growing up in that and then saying it's odd. because the the Overton windows has shifted a lot

and the the definitions of things have shifted a lot. And so where I grew up thinking that the far right was kind of the anti-free speech clamped down on things, people can't say this, you can't say that. It's totally done a 180, whereas now I see it, now I see like a lot of the far left is like, you can't say that you can't do these things and i'm just in kind of in this odd space in the middle

and i feel that with bitcoin too just i just want people to be able to float ideas and and say whatever the hell they like and then the reality can bubble to the top um and i don't know if you guys have kind of experienced that as well yeah i mean that's one of my favorite things i have many favorite things about the bitcoin community but um one of my favorite things about the bitcoin community but one of my favorites is just regardless of political affiliation or religion, everybody's just interested in finding the truth and the right answer. And by the right answer, I mean the truth. Because when it comes to like all the stuff we're dealing with now and really anything else,

like when it comes to truth, you don't have to put effort into it. Lies require effort. Lies require like defending, defending the lie, pushing the lie, getting people to like buy into the lie. The truth is just like, you can believe it or not, it's going to come out eventually. Like, there's nothing you can do about it. That's proof of work, you know, can't be fabricated. Yeah. Hmm. Interesting.

Well, that was a fantastic little riff on that. Mike. Thank you for your contribution to this wall. And we'll keep it wrong. calling here. Everybody in the chat, again, thank you for dropping all these messages and everything. Everybody watching, like, sub, all that stuff. I'm going to move on to our last topic. And Andy, you are up. Take it away. What has you feeling bullish? Well, here's what I got. So I'm very bullish because financial advisors don't understand Bitcoin. And so I've been working in legacy

finance since 2010. I'm sorry. I know I'm kind of in the line. is done here. And I'm boldish because, you know, my peers don't understand Bitcoin. And before I get into it, it's worth pointing out that like a lot of us have come around, right? Like, like Ben, I think a few months back, you've had heavily armed clown on the show. And he made the point that like, this is stage two of Bitcoin right now, right? Whereas like stage one was like the weirdos and the anarchists and the libertarians.

And like now stage two is like the might. Michael sailors, right? And like the institutional money, right? And I, I guess I represent part of stage two Bitcoin because I, you know, I'm a certified financial planner. I'm like a buttoned up kind of financial advisor guy, right? But what I have, what I've seen, well, first off, it's worth pointing out like I had Andy Edstrom on my podcast this week, right? And he was one of the first financial advisors to come around to Bitcoin. Colin Roach was on the what Bitcoin did this week. I don't know if you guys saw that podcast.

But like Colin Roach, like he's a guy who he said to Peter McCormick like he likes Bitcoin now. And I have always thought of him like he's a very smart guy. But I have always thought of him as more of like kind of like the status quo in legacy finance. Right. So I thought it was very telling that he told Peter McCormick that he likes Bitcoin. now. But most of my peers don't. Okay. So like Michael Kitsis, who is maybe the thought leader in my world, in the financial planning world, he went to the Coin Desk Bitcoin for Advisors Conference in the fall. And he told Tyrone Ross that, you know, he's more interested in like

the technology of blockchain and not Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, which is like any of us that we're around in 2016, 2017, we know that that's like the thing that that you say when you want to sound like you're well-versed, but you actually don't really know what you're talking about. And this is like Michael Kitsk, like he's a very intelligent dude.

And Adam and I's backyard, there's a fellow named Peter Malook, who's a pretty important guy in the RIA space. And his angle is like he said a few times that the dominant cryptocurrency of the future has not yet been invented yet, which also kind of sounds like a cop out. And so, so the reason why I'm bullish is because like as an investor, whether if you're investing in Bitcoin or anything else, if you want to be like an active allocator and make an active bet, you want to own those things that like the rest of the market doesn't understand yet or is misunderstood. And I can just tell

you like, if you're worried that everyone else is in on the trade and all of Bitcoin Twitter has figured this thing out. I'm telling you that that's not the case. They haven't figured it out yet. There's tens of trillions of dollars in the RAA channel and more in the rest of wealth management. And for a couple of reasons, like, A, they can't buy it. And B, they just haven't done the work yet.

I think there's still some resistance probably because, you know, Bitcoin has been kind of a movement that's come from retail, right? Like it hasn't come from like, you know, the smart financial people. Like really it started with kind of retail plebs. And so that's very bullish because eventually the institutions will figure it out. Eventually, you know, the financial advisors will, they'll take an allocation either because, you know, they're smart. They're self-seeking individuals that will figure it out, that will see the value in their clients merely, you know, saving money. or because their clients just want it,

like they keep talking about it and there's just a demand for it. Or because of, you know, career risk. A lot of legacy financial people will just look at this and they'll say, I want to keep my job, right? Like I want to stay in business. And so I need to make an allocation to this asset class. And so that's what makes me very bullish. Maybe bullish for the people that are holding Bitcoin right now, right?

Because if you're holding Bitcoin right now, it means you're still early. I don't know how long it will take for this narrative to play out. But eventually, you know, the rest of legacy finance will get in on the trade. But they're not there yet. Yeah. And it plays into everything we've been talking about, right? It's a combination of people have been deferring that responsibility, that research to other people. people have come to Bitcoin in different ways and are you know 90% of the world is still at the

butthole haven't grabbed a leg or a trunk or an ear or anything like that yet it's it's a gradual thing and it's going to take that slow shift of people realizing what's going on having that low time preference putting in the work putting in that proof of work and it will be a very gradual process, but for the people that are here now, and if you're still here, you've been through, I think he's just swapping out his camera or something, if people are still here through this year and, you know, we've been crab walking our way through 2021, other than like early in the year, we had some spikes and it was exciting for a little bit. And now people are, many are disillusioned.

But if you're still sticking around and you're, you're looking, at this and you understand it, then you've already done the work. You're already ready and raring to go. I think Andy is here in some way, shape, or form. He's with us in spirit, I think. But yeah, like people have done, people that are sticking around, they've done the work. And so I'll open it up, Adam or Mike, if you want to hang on. The funny thing about your comment around these individuals pushing off their accountability and responsibility. Did you see what J.P. Morgan did? It's around, it's around just like the kind of crypto space, which is like cringy. Yeah. But J.P. Morgan just completely ripped off. I think it was Blockworks's work on like the whole just like space.

Like they just literally plagiarized their work. It's just like it's like you don't want these entities getting into Bitcoin and not understanding it because they'll dump it at the wrong times. They're just people. They'll dump it up. They'll dump it for like the retail reasons if they don't understand it. Yeah. That'll be the beautiful thing too to see to see the equivalent of like who is it. Was it Jim Kramer that bought and then sold everything like the China Fud like at the very bottom like at 30? He was like well, all China Bandit, so I'm worried about that. So I'm going to dump it all.

And then there was another, there was like a family office or some institution that bought Bitcoin. And they dumped it all on the double spend fud that happened at the beginning of 2021. That was early. That was early. Like right after Elon, like the rise up to 69. Like they were like, oh, we took profits. We think Bitcoin's done. It's like, okay.

Yeah. And they were bragging. I forget how much they allocated like just a, they allocated. it had a fair amount of money. It was like $100 million or something like that. And then they had made, they were bragging, maybe it wasn't $100 million, but they were bragging about like $200,000 in profit. Yeah. That they sold it for. And then like they sold it like after some massive dip. And yeah, it's, it'll be beautiful to watch that stuff play out where as institutions start to understand and some of the people get like a, a,

deep understanding of it, the ones that hold through that fud and that reap the benefits of it, that'll be pretty telling. And also, I think as to the point that we're talking about in relation to Andy himself, how you kind of come in and there's a lot more signal now than there was a few years ago. And there's a lot more carefully thought out pieces like from you, Mike, and, you know, you have people coming out and kind of creating this narrative from a lot of different aspects of what this thing is. And the narrative is becoming clearer and more precise in a lot of different aspects. And I think we've just begun to see that play out on the institutional front.

Like you get Michael Saylor out there and he's making the case of this is hard money, the most pristine collateral asset the world has ever seen. Bitcoin is time. Bitcoin is energy. All of these messages that resonate. And I think that type of content will only continue to be built out and made more robust. So that as new entrants come in, there'll just be this plethora of information to sift through. that is concise and that is precise in its definition of what they're they're trying to say.

So that's what it's exciting to me. But I don't know. Andy, Andy's back. And I wanted to make a point when he was around because the thing that I'm also bullish about the institutional stuff is that we're like what heavily armed clowns said, we're in stage two. But within stage two, we're in stage one of it. Like we're like we're just seeing the risk takers and maybe like the smartest individuals within institutions are just now getting exposed. Like we're still waiting for the middle of the bell curve to come in.

And that's that's before the middle of the bell curve of like retail because we're still very much on like both ends of the bell curve within retail just right now. Like we got the dumbest of the dumb and we got the super smart people. I'm probably one of the dumbest of the dumb. Like I think we all probably argue that for our own standpoint. we don't want to like to our home horn too hard. But like guys because like retail stage two is institutions. Stage three is going to be governments. Like holy crap.

By the way, Andy shots fired. Sister Maria said that you must be on that Ethereum internet. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Sister Maria is just dropping bombs here tonight. So you're right, Sister Maria. I deserve that. That's great. Adam, did you want to tag in anything? Yeah, I can add some thoughts on that.

I do agree, Andy, especially with the point that you made that we're still early. I believe that we're still very early. And I think the legacy financial system will probably be the biggest, the first biggest domino to fall. And, you know, Mike, you mentioned that, you know, you don't necessarily, want certain people like that, I think you said, you know, getting into this space. And I mean you're referring to like the JP Morgan stuff. Institutions that don't understand it.

Yeah. Yeah, institutions that don't understand it. And, you know, I would, I do agree with that to some extent. But, you know, I also am a firm believer that Bitcoin really is for everyone. I think that it could do some damage in the short term. And, you know, my selfish reason for not wanting them in is I want to get all the, you know, the believers, the plebs that my friends and family in Bitcoin before all that happens. Because once the legacy financial system, you know, builds that bridge where they start the mass migration onto the arc, I think it's the rest of the dominoes are just going to fall so fast. And when that happens, we're not really going to know what to do.

we're going to lose track of all of our, you know, our indicators and our metrics and everything's just going to go crazy. All of our signals are going to go haywire. But before that, I want, I want the right people there. So the selfish reason to me, you know, wants that to happen in a certain order. But ultimately, you know, Bitcoin, Bitcoin's good for humans, man, you know. So they're, they're humans too. It's good for good people and it's good for bad people. So, and then back to my point earlier, them being on the Bitcoin team ultimately benefits you and I as as hoddlers and as network supporters. So yeah, I think good points all around.

And Andy, I like, I like your take, man. Yeah, it's a good take. I love it. Well, gentlemen, I think what I'm going to do now, because we've kind of gone around, gone around the circle, we'll start rounding it out. I kind of just want to go around one last time and just kind of get final thoughts from everybody, whether it be on on any of the topics, anything that's, that stood out for you that you didn't get to touch on.

And also where people can find you, all that kind of stuff. I might even, even if you want to throw in something that has stuck out to you, like a piece of content or anything like that this week that may pertain, whatever you feel like throwing in at the end here. So Adam, I'll go to you. Any final thoughts on the day? Anything you want to throw out there? Yeah, something that I was thinking about bringing up earlier on your topic of wallets.

It's something that most people probably haven't even heard of, but it's probably been about two years now. But I got a hardware wallet and I really enjoyed it. It was called a Jupiter wallet. And the reason why I have been extremely hesitant to promote it, it is because there's some information, marketing information out there that's unrelated to the company, but there's some suspicious companies out there, to say the least,

with a very similar name. So for that reason, I don't think they have had as much success as I think they could have, but it was a really cool product. And, you know, if you guys are interested in checking out new hardware wallets, you know, I'm not necessarily, endorsing them, but I've used it, and it's really cool. I don't even know if they're still in business, to be honest, but they were developed

by a company called Faytien, as a parent company, and they make, they make like those physical two-factor authentication devices, kind of like a UBKee, basically if they're like a UBKee competitor. So they're kind of, they're a pretty reputable business, I believe, but just something cool that I don't think everybody knows about. I know that it's, you know, they don't have a lot of PR out there. And it was a cool product. So I thought I'd add that.

Ben, you got something? I was just going to ask, is that the one? It was like stupidly thin. And it was a tiny little. I remember I didn't really get to play around with it a lot. I remember getting my hands on one. And kind of like just testing a few quick things. I just, it was so busy at the time.

I couldn't even attempt to do anything with it. but it was so little and so thin. It was like two credit cards stacked on top of each other. I kid you not. I carried that in my front pocket on my keychain for over a year. Just to put it through the paces and see what it would do. But yeah, so small, so thin, and it worked pretty well. You know, there were some rough edges just like I believe there are with every product out there.

But if you're being really critical. And then obviously the marketing stuff is a challenge to get around. But anyway, that's my final thought. You can find me. My Twitter handle is at Adam Semeca. And that's where I'll be. Awesome. Thanks, man.

Andy. Thank you so much for having me on, by the way. Yeah, no worries. No worries. Andy, you're next on my screen because of your ETH Internet. So let's get your final thoughts. So my parting thought, my childhood next door neighbor, Brian Sandvig, in the comments and he said that

I need to make one final dig at Elizabeth Warren and Elizabeth Warren you guys she wants you to think that inflation exists because of corporate greed for example but in its essence inflation always starts with

money printing that's always the first factor involved and so Bitcoin fixes this those that's that's why I'm bullish and you can find me my podcast is called the Reformed financial advisor and I'm on Twitter just at Andy Flattery and Ben, thanks for having me on. Dude, I'm so glad that you joined. Thanks for being here. And Mike, you're going to round it out.

Any final thoughts that you may have here. Well, I'll join the train and thank you for bringing me on. But I did, I have fun doing this all the time. Like, you guys will be able to catch me on spaces. I'll just drop my Twitter real quick since I just mentioned it. On Twitter, you can catch me at the Mike Hobart. It sounds extremely pretentious, but that's because somebody took my name already and I had to think of something. So I apologize. But two things in my kind of like leaving comments, I would recommend to users that are in the comments or anybody that's watching this is to pay attention for two things. One in particular would be within the U.S. banks getting cleared for FDIC to custody Bitcoin on the reserve. that's going to be massive in my opinion.

Which this can be another conversation like at some different time or you guys will probably hear me in spaces talking about it with Magoo because he and I tend to be the only ones to talk about it. If and I'm going to say when, when that FDIC clearance comes through, it's going to be huge for Bitcoin adoption, but it's also going to be huge for the dollar. So I wouldn't be banking on the dollar going away anytime soon. But the other thing, and I mentioned that because that's a huge kind of push within the Bitcoin community thinking that, you know, all fiat currencies are going to blow up and go away. That's it's not going to happen. But the other thing that I would recommend everybody really pay attention to closely would be the, I'm a huge fan of geopolitics. I would be watching what's going on in Kazakhstan right now. Kazakhstan is one of the, I think it's, it might be the largest energy producer in Asia.

If not, it's like top three. With the politics going on around there, like we just saw 12% hash rate fall because of it. It was really quietly done, I believe, 2020, late 2020 or maybe even last year, but there was about 24,000 miners that moved to Russia. And now we've got Russian influence over a major energy producer that also has a lot of miners that just fled from China. These are very, very important dynamics to consider if any of you guys are watching price action like religiously

or if you're paying attention to hash rate, which you should because it's very important to the network. I would just, if you're not big into following geopolitics, they're super important. They help us decide like all these other machinations that are going on. Pay attention. It's very important. That's all I'm going to say. I love that.

The Kazakhstan thing is super interesting. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on that. Yeah, I'll round it out here. Guys, again, thank you so much for coming and spending an hour and a half on your Friday evening with me. It's, it's, uh, it was an honor. So thank you all. Have a great weekend. Thank you. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, guys. And, uh, everybody watching. Damn, that was a good chat. I thoroughly enjoyed that. Uh, again, everybody that came, uh, all of these guys, all of their Twitter handles are in these show notes. So I highly recommend that you guys go follow them,

check them out. Um, guys are backstage now. By the way, if you guys want to say it quick goodbye, I will be in there after we go offline here. So if you're around for a couple extra minutes, I'll be there. But everybody watching, please do hit, like, subscribe, share, all those things. They really, really do help and they help get this content in front of more eyeballs. I will always recommend everybody do that. If you want to help with a show in another way, you can always hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. Shake pay, lead and bit refill, Keystone, and Bill Fottle.

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With that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. And I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.