BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Ayelen Osorio, Eric Yakes, Justin Orkney ep334

Episode Date: April 1, 2023

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What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish. We've got a killer panel going on today. Very excited to have them all. We'll do some intros momentarily. I got to give a shout up before the show even gets going to number one fan, David Wong, in the live chat. If you're not already in the live chat, if you're watching this somewhere else, you're not on YouTube and you're not in the chat there, you've got to get in there because David's dropping the fight. If you're unfamiliar with David, he's here every single week, watch the show all the time, hates Bitcoin, but he's always here to tell us how wrong we are. So David, I salute you, never change and keep coming back. One day we'll get that orange pill over to him, although he assures me right now that it doesn't work for him. So nonetheless, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay.

We'll do it live. Do it live. I can write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. Yeah. If you have not already, like, subscribe, share, all those things really, really help in getting this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC Sessions. This is your daily session. Tuddle the BitTor Before we bring in our guests, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is

chain calendar.com. We're sitting at 28,472 U.S. dollars per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 3,512 sats. 92.07% of all Bitcoin I've been mine. That's 19.33 million of them. And in terms of fees next block, you're looking at 20 sats per byte. Even you're willing to wait a little bit. 16 sats per byte is kind of your lower range. And the Mampool, obviously, backed up. JPEG fever has taken hold, it would seem, but less so compared to late last week. We had like a gig of backup in the mempool, meaning that a lot of stuff was just being purged from the mempool. Not the case currently, but, you know, most people's mempools are around 300 megabytes. So just keep that in mind, sit your fees high enough, use RBF, do what you got to do.

Use lightning. All that good stuff. shout out to sponsors of the show hoddlehottle.com. If you are stacking sats and you have a few priorities in mind like peer-to-peer trading, being able to get instant self-custody and no K-YC, not having to give up your ID and your identity and all that important stuff in the process, well, hoddle-hottle, could be for you. Very easy. You can get there, hoddlehottle.com and sign up in minutes with nothing more than an email address

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So you can reserve it now. Head to coinkite.com. You can use code BTC sessions for 5% off, everything in the. the store. Now, if you do want to go beyond single-sig and get into multi-sig and you're looking at inheritance planning and all that stuff, Nunchuk has this badass setup known as the Honey Badger account. And so you can get an assisted multi-sig where they'll hold a Justin Case key. And it's got baked in inheritance planning. So your sats get to the next of kin with no worry whatsoever. The flow is super easy. It basically walks you through.

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I actually set up my kids and hair and his plan last night with my wife. Very excited for it. And now the stats just get to accumulate and we know that it's going to be safe. So very excited for that. Check them out. Nuntruck. I have a full tutorial as well. And finally, last shout out, start 9, your sovereign computing solution.

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Start9.com. If you're looking for something really basic, get the Embassy 1. If you're looking for something really beefy to host your entire life on the Embassy Pro can do you no wrong. So check him out. And with that, enough of my rambling. I need to get my guests in here. We've got Island. We've got Justin. We've got Eric. Welcome to the show, everybody. So happy to have you all. I believe we all have some beverages going that we're going to be sipping upon this. It's already shaping up to be a good one. the banter, as it was before the show was fun. So let's do a quick round of intros.

I'll just toss it down the line a quick, who are you and what do you do? I'll go to Ireland first. Go ahead. Ben, thanks so much for having us. I feel like I made it. Is this the pinnacle? Yeah, the pinnacle. This is where you want to be, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my name is Ayelan Osirio. I had to get creative over the years with how to say my name. So you have two options. You can either think of violin without a V or the letters I-L-N and say very fast. Hey, that makes it so much easier, I'll-N. There we go. I got it.

I'm thinking the letters one, personal. Yeah. Yeah, and I write a newsletter called The Misfit. And initially I called it the Misfit because I felt like I was a Misfit and I felt like all Bickwinners were Misfits. So I thought the name was appropriate. And I accidentally recorded a conversation. with Stacey Herbert to do a newsletter feature.

And then I thought, why don't I turn this into a podcast? So now I have a podcast called The Miscuit as well. And it's just been so much fun to talk to every day people about Bitcoin and hear their journeys and why they're excited about Bitcoin. What other names were you considering? Sorry? What other names were you considering other than Misfit? Well, you know, that one came into my head and I thought, this feels right. I'm going to use it.

But I also felt like for a lot of people, it doesn't mean anything, right? If you hear the misfit, you're like, I have no clue what this is about. So I've been thinking a lot about how to rebrand it so that it's more inviting. How do we supercoder? I don't like it. I think it's good. I was just kind of wondering. I like it through.

I like that. It's got a good ring to it. It's, you know, it rolls off the tongue a little bit better than the psychopath or the, what was the ones? Oh, yeah, what was the one that came out today? So, oh, the, the, the, the cartel. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I think you're doing it, right.

Awesome. Well, Eric, I'm going to toss it down to you as well. Give a quick intro for anybody who's unfamiliar. Yeah. Eric Yakes. That's why A.K. Yes. I got three Ks in there down there.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a finance guy. I jumped into Bitcoin. I wrote a book, The Seventh Property. And currently setting up a fund. right now and I shit post on Twitter a lot and that's that's kind of the 101 dude um and and anybody who hasn't read the seventh property you you should probably do that immediately jump jump over

on amazon or or you know anywhere and grab it it's fantastic uh you gave me or well you told me that I should read it uh in 2021 at the Bitcoin conference in Miami and I I went on Amazon right away grabbed it and glad I did because it was awesome and and a lot of people have picked it up since which I'm very happy to see. So yeah, good job, man. Yeah, he was just walking by me and I was just like, oh, dude, BTC sessions like, you should read my book and then he just like bought it on the spot and I was just like, oh shit, he's actually going to read it. And then he actually read it and he started like tweeting about it and everything. That was kind of like how I first got visibility. And yeah, then I came on why we're bullish. Ah, crap, I already forgot to see how to say.

The violin. I.O.N. Yeah. So I felt like I was peeking, too. And then it turns out I did peek. And yeah, this is kind of where I plateaued. It's all down from here. It's right. Yeah, this is the pinnacle. I just get to stay at the pinnacle because I host the show. eventually. They're all going to fall off from here. So yeah. Well, Justin,

welcome. I think also you should give yourself a little intro, let people know who you are, what you do. Me? I'm in my prime. So, and I'm an energy guy or an electricity guy,

maybe better said. And if we dial in even more, I'm a new technology on the grid, demand response guy. And so I've been, you know, working with some of the largest electric utilities in the country and focused on Bitcoin mining as a technology, as an industry.

You know, obviously I love Bitcoin for all the other reasons as well. But that's where I'm at right now is just really focused on mining. So we can talk more about that later. Awesome. Well, I am very happy to have you all. This should be a good time. This is always the best part of my week getting to hang out with awesome Bitcoiners. So we're going to get this show rolling.

Anybody that's watching that's unfamiliar with the show, this is why are we bullish? And so every person here on stage comes with a reason why they're bullish, something that is currently top of mind, something they're excited about, something that they're interested in. And we each get our chance to kind of share what's top of mind for all of us. And so the flow of the show is really simple.

Somebody's going to drop a reason why they're bullish first, and that's their chance to rant and tell us what they're things. thinking about. Up next, we're all going to riff on that reason together. And then finally, we're going to rotate to the next person until we each get a turn. So reason, riff, rotate, simple. I'm going to get us started today. And my reason for being bullish is actually a little pet project that I've had going on this past week. Very excited about it. And it's currently humming away in the other room. So what I've been working on, if anybody is, familiar with crypto cloaks.

Are you guys familiar with crypto cloaks? Oh, yeah. Perfect. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah, they are awesome. And so they, Rick, in particular, he put together this guide on how to use an S9 miner, which is pretty much, it's like very unprofitable run one, especially your home mining right now.

But you can use it for a second. Indiary purpose, initially, like, they're very loud, right? Like, plugging in an S-9, just plugging into the wall. It's going to be loud as hell. However, however, what you can do is you can actually swap out the fans and you can ramp it down in terms of like the amount of wattage going through it. And you can use it as a space heater. And so what he did is he put together this guide and basically experiment.

experimented around and like took full on data through the whole process of him taking an S9 miner and basically getting rid of his old space heater. And so he put together all of these pieces and also 3D printed this case. And so, you know, with just the upgrades, like in terms of like getting the case, it's like 150 bucks. But if you have an S9 sitting around already, then, you know, you don't have much to deal with. If you're buying an S9 or sourcing one, it might vary. But pretty much, you swap out the fans, you plunk it inside the case, and then you can, you know, put it together with Wi-Fi. You change up the settings. And then you got yourself this fancy little space heater at home.

And so I've got mine out there. there's my my kid uh poking around at it curious about it um but yeah so i've got this out running in the living room right now um here's a little video i don't know if the sound's gonna come to all right but nonetheless there's not a whole lot of sound coming through it it's actually quieter than my other space heater that i normally use um so it's it's pretty awesome um so i'm i'm pretty excited about it and I actually you know this has this has my my my my my brains OS right now running so I can basically monitor it right now I've got the fans at around 55 percent I've got the wattage a little bit down but basically you know I'm what would have been an instance of me having a space heater on

in the living room anyways because my wife is always cold so she just always has always has additional heat going, instead of just outright paying for that, you're still paying for the power, which, by the way, it's using less power than my original space heater as well. But you're getting reimbursed for part of the power that you're using. So an instance of, oh, that mine is unprofitable, well, if you can use the, you know, the heat that comes off of it in some way, shape, or form, then really you're just negating a cost or at least being reimbursed for part of the cost. And so I can, you know, I can watch this and I can adjust it and I can go into my configuration and fine tune it and I can say, well, maybe I can get a few more watts in

there. Or maybe I can target the temperature a little bit differently or change the fan speed a little bit differently to kind of tune it to get the temperature to what I'm, what I'm happy with. And right now this seems to be doing the trick, the living, rooms at a good level. I've been filming kind of the process throughout the week of building it and figuring it out. Funny enough, the Wi-Fi was the most difficult part of it, like trying to, I'm terrible with networking, but it just wasn't showing up. Anyways, now it's there, now it's

working, and I'm, you know, you can see where I'm turning it off and on here, but this is my, my brains pool. And while I haven't stacked many sats yet, because it's been so intermittent as I'm playing with it, I'll be, you know, leaving it on all week and kind of seeing what happens. And like, really getting any amount of money back from power I would be using anyways is fantastic. So why not do it? So I'm very excited to put this video together. I'm very excited for all the interesting ways that people can use home mining to negate costs that involve generating heat.

I see in the comments right now, brains have. has dark mode. Thank you. You're 100% right. It does have dark mode. I actually detailed this in, I actually detailed this in my setup video where I was like, well, obviously you got to turn on, turn on dark mode. I haven't done it yet on my mining dashboard. But, but hey, we can all be perfect. Anyways, so yeah, this is what I'm excited about right now. The idea of being able to, you know, heat my home and get reimbursed in sats for money that would have been effectively wasted anyways and all of the other cool ways that people are using Bitcoin mining to heat things like hot tubs or their hot water tank or their home or whatever it may be.

You know, I'd love to, I've got a black box outside and I've got an M30 plus, which is like quite a bit beefier than a than an S9. And so I would love to have a greenhouse outside and extend like Calgary just has no summer. And so the idea of being able to maybe extend the amount of time in which we could have stuff planted and be able to like grow some of our own food and stuff like that. I love that idea. So, you know, that's something to experiment with in the future. So anyways, that's where I'm at. So I'm going to open it up to you guys.

and yeah, I don't know, thoughts. I just got to say right when you started, David Wong comments, ha, ha, ha, poor man's heater. Yeah, right. I've been trying not to laugh the whole time. David's a plant, Ben. Come on, come clean. You know David.

David's a total plan. It is so funny. I don't believe it for a second. I love the sentiment of poor man's heater when my heater is actually paying me back. Right, right. It's so funny. And it's quieter than your other one, you said. Yeah, it's a better, it's better here.

It's fantastic. Yeah. That's great. Anyways, I don't know. What do you guys think about this? Have you, have you dabbled? Like, what are you thoughts? I haven't dabbled.

So like on the noise cancellation of it, and you might have said this when I was laughing at David's comment. How does that work? How do they get it so quiet? Yeah. So the fans that come with it normally are, are super loud. Even so like out the gate,

you basically have to get two replacement fans for either side itself. And then the power supply, so there's like kind of two main parts to the ASIC itself. There's the ASIC with all the hashboards that's actually doing all the computation. And then there's

a smaller unit that's basically the power supply. And that power supply also has a little fan in it. So you just buy replacements that are just better than what's attached, which are like Canadian dollars. It was like 30 bucks a pop. So, I don't know, 20, low 20s in US dollars.

And basically you unscrew the originals and put on the new ones. And so that already reduces the sound a ton. And then this operating system that I'm using is called Brains OS. So what Brains OS does is it allows you to, basically change your settings so that you can say like normally your fans are 100%. So what you can do is you can say, well, I, you know, a maximum I want, you know, this number of watts. Normally it's like 1,400 and something watts. You can ramp that down. And then you can also say, all right, and then run my my fans at like half speed. And so with less

watts and less speed, it still maintains kind of an equilibrium in the temperature. of the unit so it doesn't overheat. But it allows you to basically fine-tune the sound. And so what Rick did is he actually went through and he just spent, I don't know, how long tinkering with this stuff saying, okay, all right, the fans definitely reduced all of the sound. So now how do I tinker with this and fine-tune this? And I'm basically using his exact settings.

He said 650 watts and fans at 55%. And that seems to be working pretty well. for me. My, the, the, the unit itself, like the chips inside get around 80 degrees Celsius, which puts off enough, kind of a, you know, it blows up enough heat into a large room that my living room's like, you know, just like a nice equilibrium. So yeah, yeah, it's, it's pretty sweet. Like when you see, and this is my first experience mining. So I've never mined before. It's like a huge blind spot for me. That's surprising. 30 in the black box, you said. Well, I have it, but I have my my father-in-law is an electrician, so he's got to, like, you can't just plug this one into a wall.

It's like, you need a stove plug for that bad boy. It's a serious. So I got to update my circuit breaker and all that. And then we'll see where I can funnel that heat. I don't have a garage yet, but when we get a garage, I'll heat that with it. But it'll be, it'll be like a sauna in my garage unless I kind of divert some of the heat. heat. Yeah. Well, maybe I could just jump right in because that's a perfect segue to what I had in mind. You know, I think, I think just to maybe sum it up, we're all going to look back in a few years and kind of chuckle at ourselves for how, how silly we were to be heating our, heating our water and heating our spaces by just passing electrons through a resistance coil. And, you know, without providing property rights to the global south or however you

want to think of Bitcoin network. And, wait, wait, wait. Hertz, I got to double check. Is this, are you going into your reason here? No, I'm not. No, I'm just about space eating. Thanks for the check. I've been thinking about it.

Last week, I was telling you. You were going into my reason. Last week, George, I was like, before the show was like, nobody say your reason early. You know, I'll cue you up. And then in the side chat, I was like, George, did you just like blow your load early? Like, did you just drop your whole.

And he's like, oh, no, I thought. But he was quick. Anyways, continue. I'm sorry. No loads have been blown. I will focus specifically on space heating. And, you know, I think, you know, I actually have an S-9, a naked S-9 down in my living room right now. And I can tell you exactly how warm your garage is going to get with a couple M-30s in a black box.

You know, and it was heating my three-story town home over the winter. But it's too much now. so it's on the rooftop. But I love it. You're absolutely right. Like stacking those values, right? Like I would have had the heat on anyway. So now I don't need to turn the heat on all winter. And at the same time, you know, I'm mining those Satoshis. And, you know, the other thing I throw out there too, I love, I love crypto cloaks. I think that that product that you just, I mean, it's amazing. And, you know, but the other, the other company I think that I would just, is it okay if I just chill another company real quick?

go ahead you know i think i think heat bit also we probably all heard it heat bit or most people have you know their their space heater is very similar concept uh you know less less DIY more like a product that you buy and there i've heard so so many great things about their version two that's coming out here probably later this year that i'm really excited you know whether whether you do it through the crypto cloaks kind of DIY version or you want to buy a more like you know a product that's already put together from from a company like heatbit these are just going to become commonplace there's not going to be a reason why you would ever want to buy just a standard dumb space heater from home depot or lows you're going to want to get these and and i think the price points are you just

mentioned ben that those price points are very very competitive to like a good space heater yeah that you would get anyway. Money heaters. Money heaters. There you go. That's right. I want a money heater. Well, there's so much you can do with it too. Like, again, I know somebody who has a hot tub heated by like a minor. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. It's awesome. Like it's incredible. And like heating garages is like a pretty normal. But it's, it gets really hot in there. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a lot. If you have something that requires heat, yeah, yeah. Like your wife.

I reached out to mint green and I said, you know, I know nothing about mining. Can I come over and just check out what you, you know, the mining situation you guys have going on? And they were so gracious. And they said, of course, come in. Are you ready to go in? I was like, yeah. It's got to be very loud. Do you want some headphones?

I was like, no, I'm fine. How loud can this thing be? And they had so many minors and we went in. I was like, what are you saying? And I was like, this is so cool. And I get closer to them. And you could see Colin go, no. And my hair just got sucked into the miners.

I lost so much hair that I was like, oh, no. And I'm pulling you back and Colin is helping me. And I'm like, oh, my God. Okay, their health has. Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry to hear that. They're so powerful. They're so loud, so powerful.

So yeah, if you're going to go in. and see some minors be careful getting in you might get sucked in you might lose some hairs is that is that i wonder if that's why breed love like chopped his hair that's that's what happened hey and and steve yeah yeah i know right like i feel like uh well you know i i was personally i was a fan of the man bun so you know maybe he'll grow back one day and just avoid the a six but yeah yeah so anyways i you I'm very interested to learn more. I got to give a shout out to, again, first, Rick, who's been, like, helping me literally anytime I DM him,

I'm like, yo, dude, what the fuck? I can't, like, how does this work? Or this screw doesn't go in the right place? And, like, just the whole way through. And it's very much, it's very evident, like, how early concepts like this are because, like, so much of it. He was like, yeah, I don't know, man. I like, I screwed around and then I got it to work somehow.

You just got to jimmy it. Yeah, pretty much. He's like, it's like, this is the fun of it. I guess just, you know, here's what I tried. It didn't work half the time. And now it does. So yeah, like it's, if anybody out there is watching this and they're like, I don't know if I have the know how to do it, neither did I.

And I just. I got my S-9 sitting on a milk crate downstairs. So, you know, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, it's, it's small. And the whole point, like, for those that are looking to learn, this is a fantastic way to learn, right? Like, all you're doing is you're basically trying to hodgepodge together your, like a space heater.

And it does away with the, you know, previously like an S9 is a good thing to learn on anyways because you can get it from sheep and just play around. But like now it'll actually have a use afterwards other than just learning. you can now plug it in and just like, you know, have, you know, warm your home and or like, you know, bump up the heat in certain rooms. But I think it's a fantastic way to learn. And I'm really glad this is going to be kind of my first focus on mining in terms of tutorials because it's a practical way that people can get started. And then when they learn, they'll be like, okay, so this, but with a higher end machine. and I've just got to make sure that the cost basis makes sense. But I think, again, like to kind of break into how do I home mine and make it worthwhile other than just the learning part?

I don't think you can go wrong here. So, yeah. Hey, Eric, totally unrelated, a bit of a segue. Yellow wants to know, why so many whiteboards? Okay. What's written on it. Okay, so that's old faithful right there. And I got that off Craigslist for 20 bucks.

And it's a total piece of shit. It's all like wavy and it kind of like pokes in when I'm writing on it. And then my sister was moving and she was just like, she had this like super fancy whiteboard and I was just like, give me that. And she gave it to me. So now I got to, I can't get her to old faithful.

We've been through some good times together, but I don't really use it anymore. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can you can draw fun pictures on. it or something, I think. Yeah, exactly. I could do a little yellow meme on it. Yeah, perfect. I love it. Is it a ping pong table? Yeah, it is. It's a Cornelia ping pong table. That's right. Yeah, I got a lot of shit back to my college days. Yeah. Oh, are you a good player? No. Neither is Eric.

It's just in between like planning sessions for the fun. He's playing flip cup. I peaked in high school all my ping pong skills, got to the semifinals and the school doubles tournament. That was fun. Cool. I'm terrible. I can't. I don't have the control. That's awesome. All right. Well, I guess I'm going to round out this topic. I'll probably be dropping that tutorial early next week.

I just got to kind of film the Wi-Fi portion of it. But yeah, if you're curious, just head to CryptoCloaks.com and you can see there's like a home mining section and they've got like a little how-to there. if you want to get an early jump on it. But yeah, pretty awesome. Very excited to dive into my blind spot. But with that, we're going to do a little rotation here. First, I'll give a shout to, again, everybody in the chat. I'm going to start pulling up more comments here as the show gets in

and I'm not actively unloading my own reason. But also give it a share, like, all that good stuff, get more eyeballs in here. And I'm going to toss it to ILN and I'll just cue you up with a simple question. Why are you bullish? God, there's so many reasons. But, you know, I sent out, I'll start with kind of sharing a little trend that I'm noticing. I sent out a newsletter earlier this week. And I was trying something different and it was like, okay, I really love to do these profiles on Bitcoiners or just people whose life is changing with Bitcoin.

But there are a lot of work, and I've been taking some time off to think about the podcast and the newsletter. But I really have this edge to write. So I'm just going to share these articles that I found interesting. And one of them was, I think McKenzie from CNBC published an article called, I haven't written down. It's called Bitcoin is Poised to Blow Up Africa's $6 billion banking system. It's really interesting, you know, because that's really such a lot. powerful headline. And I remember also just seeing in Forbes, seeing a few of just these like different articles coming up and they're about like, I'm going to read them because I wrote them

down. Regardless of Price, Bitcoin is a lifeline for African refugees. That one was written by Farida Naburama, who is a human rights activist. There was also, yeah, that's the article. That was an amazing article. If you got a chance to read it, you should definitely read it. Yeah, and then the other articles from Forbes is like the Nigerian election and our crisis are fueling Bitcoin adoption by a car, Bitcoin developer. And then how Africans are using Bitcoin without internet access. And I'm like, this is so interesting because I remember going to Forbes a year ago trying to learn about Bitcoin. And it was just, no offense, not very exciting content. And it was very much XRP, Ethereum, the price, and they didn't post it often.

But now for the month of March, you're seeing it. that kind of content, but now more how Bitcoin is changing the global South in Africa. And they're also going into the banking crisis and trying to explain what's going on there. They even had an article called, if crypto keeps up its momentum, more people will be interested in pivoting their careers towards the space. So I think that's mind-blowing that they're kind of shifting a little bit and kind of exposing the Fiat system and the banking system while also talking about Bitcoin as money and not an investable asset and how it's changing people's lives and it's not a scam, but it's life-giving and

it gives you opportunities. And then also talking about job opportunities in the space. So if you're a Forbes reader and you're going, and you're like, you will notice that there's a shift in content in the narrative around Bitcoin. And I think that's fascinating. It kind of begs the question, why is this shift happening? I'm trying to think about it. You know, could it be that, I don't know, they hired somebody in the management team or the editorial team and their Bitcoiner or maybe, I don't know, their numbers are down, like their views and revenue are down. So they're trying to think, how do we talk more uniquely about this space? Or maybe they're like, oh, my God, this thing isn't dying.

We better get on board. Yeah. It's really, I find that so fascinating that this change is happening within the last month. And I'm really curious to see where it goes for the rest of the year. And, you know, I think smaller media outlets will follow suit if they can. continue down this path. And I think that's huge and that's going to open people's eyes to the actual power of Bitcoin. So I'm really excited about that. And I think it's awesome. I love that. So the Africa stuff is such a great thing to highlight. Right. Like it's it's it's it kind of plays to

the the whole Alex Gladstein check your financial privilege kind of mentality of you know, in the West, it's so easy for people that. that aren't already interested in Bitcoin to just dismiss it and be like, oh, it's, it's useless. Because, yeah, you know, you've got access to the greatest banking infrastructure on the planet, which apparently still isn't that great as we've been seeing. But nonetheless, like, you know, for the most part, you can, like, you can move your money around fairly easily. You can access a lot of things that the average, you know, average person on the globe cannot. And so it's so easy to be dismissive of it.

But when you're presented with these types of pieces of content in the mainstream, all the sudden it becomes, you know, if you're shitting on it, it's like, well, why are you being such a dick? Like all of these people that are less privileged than you are actually being rescued by this kind of global network, why, you know, why would you look down upon that, you know? And, and not only that, but you don't have the firsthand experience. There's people from these places that are telling you, this is my lifeline and you're still being dismissive. So like, who are they to believe? The person that is saying, this is helping me, this is rescuing me, or the person

in the first world country with a J.P. Morgan account that's saying, it's not useless. Like, Totally. It's going to be so ironic in years to come too, not only for like the financial privilege aspect of it, but also on the energy side. It's kind of funny how like much like in particular like leftist type media too is pushing narratives to support these types of concepts while shitting on Bitcoin and they're completely shooting themselves on the foot and they're going to have egg on their face because of it. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And you know, it's just maybe rescuing them from what right like they take a look at what they're dealing with right you have hyperinflation you have money that they have no control over i mean if we're talking about the continent of africa i mean

just just look it was in the headline right the continent of africa or maybe even sub-saharan africa the banking sector is 86 billion dollars like that's it i mean it's and not to not to poo-poo i mean it's just is an example of, you know, what this, what these people have been struggling with for so long. And, you know, I think the good news is that Bitcoin is going to be their lifeboat. It is going to be their rescue, their escape hatch. And, and, you know, just maybe the last thing I'd say is, you know, they have the youth and the youth are making it happen over there. And that's really exciting. And just in general, I think, Ile, you mentioned the brain drain. And, you know, I'm here to, I'm here to tell everybody, the brain drain is real. And I'm, I'm an example of it, like, in the,

in the flesh. And I know others and everybody knows others. But, but absolutely the brain drain is real in any sector that you're looking at. And, you know, it's just, I'm constantly impressed with, you know, just meeting you people, but then also everybody, you talk to in this space, the level of intellect and compassion and, you know, just insight is incredible. Yeah. And on that note, like, so for the podcast, what I'm trying to do is talk to everyday people. Like, I think the big names are awesome, but, you know, I'm more excited just about everyday people. And I recently recorded a podcast with this gentleman called Gary Jordan, who goes by the blind Bitcoiner on Twitter. And I was like, I've got to talk.

to him and just learned about his story. And he was just saying how there's so many obstacles and challenges when it comes to online banking in general and that he can't just do anything easily. He's got to call up his bank to get things sorted out, even if they're very simple. And he was also talking about how challenging it is also to be on Bitcoin, that he can't really self-custody. And there's no braille for a lot of these apps. There's no sound for these applications as well. and so on wrapping an offer and being can be difficult. But he's still so excited about it and he's still so bullish about it

that he's telling his, he was saying, I'm telling my friends who are blind about Bitcoin because we don't just have to depend on the government. We can be independent and we can have this asset that's going to last and allow us to build wealth and become more empowered and independent. And I thought that was so amazing that even for people that are typically disenfranchised and pushed out to the margins are feeling empowered enough to be leaders in their own communities

and teach Bitcoin, I think that's just like super, super cool to see. Yeah, there he is. It's awesome. Yeah, that bio is badass. Yeah, I am blind. I am currently researching the Bitcoin economy to see if this might help disabled people

have a better life than receiving a government begging bowl. That's a great profile. Awesome. It was bad. Yeah. I mean, it does bring up an interesting line of thought and like one that again because Bitcoin is still in a global

sense so niche that we've yet to really like come across and grapple with the accessibility issue of like well if you're if you're blind like how do you how do you self custody and like verify and all of those things that you're used to, how do you interface with with things like that? And so, you know, like it'll be cool to see Bitcoiners hopefully rise to that challenge and create solutions for people like this where it's like, I mean, even just you see examples of, who is it, like Joe Hall going down to El Salvador. and being like, you know, seeing the practicality of certain things that we're used to here at home is very different from like you're out in the sun at like a street merchant with a cracked screen and you're trying to scan QR. And it's like, shit, you know, maybe we need to have more optionality like NFC and stuff like that to enable different ways of transacting in situations where.

where it's difficult to do even just things like that. And so again, to have an individual who's blind that, you know, is interested and wants to benefit from what Bitcoin can offer. But, you know, those these hurdles to kind of get over in order to be able to do that. Yeah, it'll be, it'll be great to say. And if anybody's going to do it, Bitcoiners are going to do it. Bitcoiners are going to help. 100%.

I think the Bitcoin community is going to hear him and be excited to help or just at least network. and I learned from him. I believe in the Bitcoin community. Yeah. Unstoppable. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, again, like voice, somebody was saying like chat, chat GBT interface for blind, for the blind and like having like the ability to speak

and get commands and get information. And yeah, there's a lot of interesting things that can be done. I'm sure we'll see them. I'm sure we'll see them coming down the pipeline at some point. So I don't know. Eric, Justin, do you want to tag in any other thoughts around this topic before we do a rotation? Yeah, I can, yeah, I think going back to the Africa piece, that's, and look, guys, I'm so bullish, right?

It's definitely something where I think, like, Bitcoiners need to also have, like, a boots on the ground understanding, too, of how a lot of that's going to work out. It's not as if, you know, it's just some quick fix to everything. And I think it's kind of interesting, just how different the demands are for the purpose of Bitcoin and different regions of the world. And down in Africa, it's like the, the huge value add is a lot of what the Lightning Network has to offer. And, you know, they need a medium exchange. You know, we're all pretty familiar that they're interested in things that have more stability and you just can't take on that kind of risk. But it's really cool how a lot of that's

actually being applied over the Lightning Network. And, and I think that like, you know, so like this economy, like the majority of it runs off of mobile money systems. So there's a lot of people working really hard to take these mobile money type systems and basically apply a very similar thing via the Lightning Network and then implement microfinance through that for some of these communities. There's an entrepreneur named Radois Stoyanov, who I've been talking to, and he's building this protocol called the grower protocol that's trying to do exactly that. And it's really complex. It's really hard. When you get into the weeds, on how they're actually going to be implementing some of this stuff.

It's definitely no small order. It's a tall task. And then the regulatory risk that comes into play that these people have to deal with all the time just to get these solutions down there. But we're fighting for it and we're pushing it hard. And I think that there's a ton of value that's coming from it. And they're starting to realize it. I've talked to a lot of different communities down there and had some conversations with people.

And yeah, they're very excited. But we need to make sure that we're bringing. them what they want, not just talking about things that are going to make number go up, too. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Justin, do you have any final thoughts before we rotate? No, no, we can go ahead and rotate. All right.

I love that. Again, I love the topic. Again, watching the African Bitcoin Conference, you know, seeing clips from that, seeing how passionate everybody was down there. was awesome. I'm very sad that I didn't get to attend that one. It just wasn't in the car. But it would, you know, I think I will make a concerted effort to get out there soon.

There's so much coming on. There's so many conferences now. It's trying to get up. It is. It's insane. I think, you know, it's almost like you need to, like, you know, set, okay, well, I'm going to, I'm going to go to X number of places, just, you know, this year. Totally.

If I can make it and then be like, you know, if I go here this year, I have to go somewhere else next year because, yeah, how do you juggle? There's so much now. And then like pairing that with personal travel too. I'm in my late 20s and I'm kind of in, you know, wedding season. All my friends are getting married. And it's like I got to start telling people know this whole Q on this year. I was basically young.

I can't make the comment. I can't make the wedding. That's conference day. Yeah, Bitcoin Miami, man. Sorry. Yeah, getting the keynote.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. All right. Okay, so we're going to do a rotation here. Again, shout out everybody in,

uh, in the chat. Apparently yellow tweeted out that he's, he, everybody come watch because he's naked. Uh, but it turns out, wait,

uh, it turns that it was a rug pole because he's always naked. Uh, so, so, so yellow, thank, thank you for the,

uh, the, the extra shout out here. Nonetheless, we're going to do a rotation here. I'm going to toss it down to Eric, and I'm going to cue you up with a simple question. Why are you bullish? Oh, okay.

I think, yeah, I'm pretty bullish right now. I think that there's just, you know, there's a ton of crazy shit going on in the world. And this whole U.S. banking system deal is, I mean, it's honestly not quite what I expected. I think when we saw like Silicon Valley Bank crash and all of that, I was thinking it was going to be a bit more contained. And then now that a lot more information has come out, you know,

things are really wild. And I kind of would have expected Bitcoin to crash more. And it's done really well. And I'm not as much like a short term price guy. But nonetheless, I'm still pretty surprised by that. And, you know, I think like that said, like the NASDAQ's up and people are starting to invest in more riskier things too. So it's important to not really get ahead of ourselves. And so like, oh, the banking system's crashing and people want Bitcoin.

And, you know, that's the narrative. What I think I'm most bullish about and what I think is going to spread very far and wide is this is this is all over the headlines. Bitcoin's getting a lot of attention. And the key narrative that's really spinning out of all of this is that this asset doesn't have counterparty risk. and everything else that you do does. And that's huge because I think during some of the prior cycles, it was, you know, Bitcoin's an inflation hedge or, you know, stock to flow bottle or things like that.

And they were never really like, I think like fundamental narratives that say, no, this is an alternative financial system where the risks are different and people aren't in control. And it's just completely decentralized. And I feel like through this cycle with what's happening in the world right now, I think we're actually going to get to a point where that nimb, narrative starts to spread. And I feel like we're going to start building on that pretty significantly this year. So I'm pretty bullish. I think that when you pair that narrative and how I think that's going to start to emerge throughout Normie World with everything that's

getting built on Bitcoin right now too, there's a lot of people that are realizing that there's actually a lot of cool new technologies for scaling and for programmability and all these other things that are going to allow like basic financial services to start to emerge on Bitcoin and be much more practical at the consumer level. And I think that's coming in like the next few years. I think we're kind of at this major inflection point right now where we're going to see a lot more direct to consumer financial services start to emerge. It's going to be built on Bitcoin. And we're not going to be having tokens issued and we're going to be using one form of money and it's going to be pushed into different layers of technology.

And I think that all of that together with this narrative, I think things, you know, I was a little worried during the crash for last year. I was like, oh, it's going to be a few years before things turn around. And with what started to come out with technology and what the traditional financial system is showing to people and being, you know, the best marketing resource that we have in the Bitcoin community, I don't know, man. I think shit's going to get pretty wild by end of year. I think that I think we might start to see some pretty cool shit happen. it's it's a unique moment for for bitcoin because through through the rest of bitcoin's existence we were basically always kind of in the perpetual like money printer go burr you know everything is you know the stock market's always up like there's there's always been this

as a backdrop. And we're now, you know, in the midst of, again, some of these like banking liquidity crises and collapses. And again, as you said, the counterparty risk thing. And the narrative right now is, I mean, kind of, there's still a lot of caution, but like you said, people are starting to dabble back and to risk your assets again. But it's just a very unique time to be going into a halving, I think.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it. I'm, I'm very curious to kind of see what that narrative looks like, especially in the face of, you know, obviously that, you know, you can't, you can't, you can't turn off that printer for long before shit starts to break, right? And, and, and we've, we've begun to see like, they basically, undid how much of the was it like half or more of all of the the QT that they did in the past

year they undid in like two weeks uh yeah it was uh maybe more yeah uh hundreds of billions but um yeah i don't know what the final number is but yeah it's it's totally crazy and people are realizing like there's two options here it's either we crash our financial system or we push ourselves into inflation. There really isn't an avenue out of this. And like, you know, that narratives existed, at least in the Bitcoin community for some time. But it's kind of coming to ahead now. And people are realizing with this, you know, Fed effectively pivoting from prior policy within two weeks that they don't know what they're doing and things are getting pretty wild. And I think we're going to, yeah, to your point, going into a halving, we're going to start to see a lot

of this get realized. And that's pretty bullish. So to, to, given we're talking about your ping pong table, here's my metaphor. So, so you've got two people on either side of the ping pong table.

One is inflation. And one is, is collapse. And, you know, the beginning of a ping pong match is, boing, boy,

you know, kind of like, you know, lightly, bang, you know, and then all the sudden things start to intensify and that, that ball starts,

flying back and forth super fast. And that seems like where we're at now. Before, it was like, oh, shit, everything's blowing up. Cool, we're going to print a bunch of money. Cool. The ball is slowly coming to the other side of the table. We'll swat it back. Oh, shit. Stuff's starting to break. Maybe we'll end it's going back and forth.

And now it's like, all right, print trillions. Raise rates. As fast as possible. Oh, shit. Stuff is breaking. Undo, like, half of that QT in two weeks. All right, lob it, like, it's boom, boom, boom. And now it's like, people are realizing, do you guys, you know, like, everybody's going

to be like, do you guys have a handle on this? Because it kind of seems like you're not quite sure. And like, you get yelling. And she's like, well, no, it would, in order to, for any other banks to get the same treatment, it would have to go through this and that. And then, like, dialing it back literally 180 degrees the next day within 24 hours totally different pages. And everybody's like, oh, fuck, nobody knows what they're doing.

That's kind of where we're at right now. Right. Oh, no, we shouldn't have 12 people controlling what happens with the world's money. But I should put a side note. David Wong says, my checking account is earning 4.5% risk free. Right now. No risk. Damn, risk is free.

It doesn't have over 250K, I guess. That's good for him. I want that risk free 4.5. Yeah. It's to quote the great. Raoul Paul, it's practically risk-free. Wait, what's inflation? So, but so here's, here's, here's, here's, I think the, the part that, I don't know, like,

we'll see, is it over or is it not? Like, has, has the tide been stemmed or not? Like, because I had, I had a friend who's in the banking industry when, when Silvergate went down. And he's like, well, you know, it just, it just goes to show you that it's all about banks having, you know, solid, solid fundamentals and good balance sheets. And I was like, yeah, like US treasuries and mortgage back securities, you know, like, you just, like, that was the problem.

And now you just described basically every bank. So don't, you know, I think people, if they, if they take the message that this was just, you know, risky lending or consolidated depositors or what have you, that they're, they're going to be missing the forest through the trees because this was this was the fact that the banks let it up on long duration assets treasuries and you know i learned everything i know from greg boss and but uh you know and then and then they just got railed with the interest rates and all their all their liquidity got devalued and and then people went to get their money back so you know it's the fact that now people are recognizing this counterparty risk right like and and maybe maybe

your funds are insured up to 250k probably or maybe they're even insured over 250k like what is what is insurance anymore what is the fdic right like everybody just gets what they want at this point or maybe it's not right like there's your counterparty risk right there um and so the fact that bitcoin is is holding strong here and that and it's it's part of the narrative i think is just incredibly bullish you know, and some people are going to get it and they're going to make the, you know, and it's a one-way door and they'll learn along the way. And some people won't. They'll transfer their money to J.P. Morgan or Wells Fargo.

But, you know, they'll learn at some point. But, you know, is this maybe a decoupling? Maybe not. Is it risk on or risk off? It's hard to tell. But it's more than I had on my bingo card for 2023. I'll tell you that much. And we're, you know, we're discussing this in the, you know, kind of systemic, you know, grander picture kind of mindset.

But like, you know, for the average person, how this is playing out is pretty unprecedented as well. Like, you know, I'm in Canada. Eileen, or Eileen, you're, you're West Coast, right? I am. Yeah. One of the most expensive cities in the world, I did not know that when I moved here. Yes. Well, you found out.

Yeah. Ficked around and found out. Yeah. So I saw something the other day because so anybody in the U.S., you know, Canada's interesting in that we had our central bank more or less giving advice, giving financial advice to individuals on, you know, what they should, where they should put. put their money. And in 2020, I shit you not in 2020, early 2020, the governor of the Bank of Canada said publicly in a press conference, listen, if you are looking to make a large purchase and, you know, add debt, whether it be buying a home or making a, getting a large loan to start a business or whatever it is, like now is a good time to do it.

you can go and you can buy a house and you can expect that interest rates are going to be very low for a very long time. And so a ton of people went and did that. A ton of people went and bought homes in Canada in places like the West Coast where it's the most expensive real estate, some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. And again, record low rates. And then they printed a ton of money, inflation. went up like crazy.

And so everybody's already being pinched by like, oh, I can't afford groceries. I can't afford to fuel my car. I can't afford this, that, and the other thing. And then the Bank of Canada, like just like the Fed increases interest rates at breakneck speed, the fastest they've ever done it in such a short period of time. And then, again, I shit you not, the Bank of Canada, like two years after they told everybody to go out and buy a house. comes out and says, hey, if you bought a house in 2020 or 2021, like, and Loki, exactly

when we told you to, effectively you're fucked because what's going to happen is if you had a variable rate mortgage, you can expect it to go up in, you know, by like 45% your monthly payments. And if you have a fixed rate mortgage, the way that it works in Canada is every five years you renegotiate your rate, even if it's fixed. So it's fixed for five years, and then you renegotiate. So they're like, oh, if you got a fixed rate mortgage then, then, you know, by 2025, 2026, you're going to renegotiate. You could probably expect it to go up by like 30% or more. Well, the rates will be zero by then. Yeah, yeah. We won't even But like the, you're seeing some of them come to fruition now. I saw a picture of somebody's breakdown of their

mortgage. And, and so what the banks are starting to do is they're saying, because they're like, oh, shit, we're going to have defaults. We're going to have, we're going to have foreclosures and all this other shit. And there's not going to be buyers because the rates are so high. And we're going to have to sell it much lower. And so what they're starting to do is they're just lengthening the term. And so this person, this person had their mortgage. And it showed that they had a monthly cost of, I think it was like six grand Canadian and it was for 72 years. Like literally you're in debt for the amateurized over 72 years. You will then die and then your kids can take over the mortgage payments on your house.

Like this sounds like a nice house. Like yeah. Like so so this is kind of where we're going because the banks are like well I guess and and in Canada's the banks kind of do it. what the hell will want, I suppose. But, like, it's, this is kind of where, where it's going. It's either foreclosures and losing money and, you know, throwing in the towel or, like, stay in the house that you want and just know that you're effectively renting.

That's what that's what you're doing. You're just renting for the rest of your life. It's, it's crazy. Well, I mean, that, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, no, you go ahead. I was just going to say, what you just described, Ben, is like, it's exactly what happened to the banks. You know, Powell said we're not even thinking about thinking about raising

interest rates and they said okay well we'll load up on these long duration assets yeah and then boom they get their faces ripped off the next year and and so you know do they go bust like do we just let the banks collapse or does the fed just come in and say oh don't worry we'll just uh we'll just buy those at par like we'll just you know i wish i could sell my bitcoin well no one wants to sell their bitcoin but if someone offered me 69k for my bitcoin right now i might i might think about it you know You get $69K and then you go buy two. Then I go buy more. Yeah.

I buy three more. Yeah. I'll send you one Bitcoin and I'll go buy three. Exactly. Yeah. So it's crazy. It's crazy. I wonder if any banks like got, got lent at par.

And I go buy more. And I went bought more U.S. Treasuries 10 years. I wouldn't put it past them. Yeah. Yeah. Good times. I don't know.

Eileen, you were going to say something as well. Yeah, so again, I'm in Vancouver, the West Coast, really expensive city. And you almost have like two groups of people. There is a really wealthy. And then there's a really outdoorsy, adventurous person who's not that wealthy. And they're poor. Like not poor in the global context, but like if you live in Vancouver, you're effectively poor. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Living out of their forester on the curb. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And it's just insane to see. I've had coworkers ask, do you think like 60% of your income going to your mortgage is a lot? And I was like, oh my gosh. I was like, I didn't want to be like, are you insane?

You know, but there's also that like a lot of, I'm kind of like Eric where a lot of my friends are getting married. And then what comes after is buying a house. And I was dead too. I hurt for them. But it really is insane for it to see just young. adults get in feel the pressure to buy a home, be in so much debt, and then figure out, okay, I can get my groceries. If I get milk in this grocery store, it'll be cheaper than this one. And so then you're spending energy trying to figure out where else you can, like,

save money and save gas. And they're not realizing just that mental cost, that's psychological tax, that wear and tear that it's having on their life and their self-esteem. And it doesn't matter, it almost doesn't seem like no matter how hard it gets. I'm like, what about Bitcoin? They're like, oh, I don't have money for Bitcoin for a scam. And I'm like, oh, it's a hard sell sometimes when somebody is just so stressed and in so much debt that they can't think clearly. And so it really is a sort of like marathon to tell someone about Bitcoin, to be patient, to send them a few sad just to show them the way. But, you know, I think it can be done if you have a lot of love and patience, you know, a lot of people need that help. It's unfortunate because a lot of people, they learn most effective.

through, you know, pain and through the mistakes that they make. And so, I mean, the beautiful thing about Bitcoin is, yes, like 100%. I want the people that I love and care about to understand it as fully as possible and get there before they have to experience that pain. But for the people that kind of, you know, refuse to go down that rabbit hole or maybe aren't even presented with the choice to begin understanding. it when when they experience that pain they can still immediately switch over and immediately be benefited by bitcoin like it's it's just whatever point like again and we we don't we don't

want people to go through that pain of of oh my god i've lost so much but at least we now know there's an outlet like there's there's an escape valve uh you know much to the chagrin of people like Christine Lagarde who used the term initially. But there is an escape valve that exists for those people that when they hit that wall where it's like I've experienced the maximum amount of pain and I need to find that outlet, it will be there and it will become more clear the more people are experiencing that pain. And they can instantly swap over and be like, all right, I'm out. And they can start moving down that path.

And the more quickly they do it, the less pain they'll have to endure. But they have their out. Totally. Yeah. It's so I don't know. I hope to see more people clue into that over time. I think more are. It's really, it's really exciting to see individual people.

Like I get people all the time, you know, calling, you know, asking for like one-on-one sessions and learning and everything and the speed at which people are learning. is incredible. But yeah, I can't wait to see more of it. It's just when you watch movies like the Titanic maybe or something else, and there's the lifeboat scenes. And at some point when you're in the lifeboat and you have the people you care with you that you care about with you in the lifeboat and you're pulling away,

like at some point other people trying to get in the lifeboat becomes a risk to everything. And you're almost like kind of chewing people away, you know, because you don't want the boat to. like flip over or whatever but i feel like bitcoin is almost the exact opposite i mean it is the exact opposite right we're like the more people that we get in the lifeboat the quicker that they come to the lifeboat like the stronger the lifeboat's going to get and so i think that's kind of a an interesting little um nuance there and and there will literally always be enough space in the light bulb right yeah it's like it's like it's like the light boat just grows as the titanic thinks

It's like, oh, yeah, there's another seat back here. It's fine. Bring your mom. You know, some people are going to get a little cold. Some people are going to lose a few toes. But like, pretty much, you're fine. We're going to make it. That's beautiful.

Yeah. I got to give a shout out to Siva in the comments. Good quote from Henry Ford. It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. Yeah. And it seems like a lot of people are, you know, not enough, but a lot more people are kind of understanding that. They're starting to, they're starting to clue in. And, you know, that's all we need. We just need a few people at a time to grasp what, what's happening and to

grasp how kind of incorruptible or like as close to incorruptible as possible Bitcoin is. And that's, you know, that's all we can hope for. So with that, we're going to do another rotation. Quick, just in, just in on the donkey from David Wong law. Whoever own Bitcoin pay $1 million and 20 years in jail, everyone would sell. Yeah, right. Thank you, David. No, I'd move.

I would jump in a boat, have a boating accident, and then move it. Yeah. Nonetheless, yeah. So we're going to do a rotation. Again, shout out to everybody in the chat. Keep the comments coming. And Justin, I'm going to toss to you. Simple question.

Why are you bullish? Yeah, yeah. Why am I not bullish? But, you know, I think, so I can, I can blow my wad now. I got permission. Okay. Wad shall be blown, yes.

Speaking of blowing loads, I really got a pee break. Sorry. Do it. Fantastic. Keep that phones on. Okay. You want to hear this? And I'm just kidding.

So I think, you know, if I was boiled down, I'd say hash rate, right? Hash rate has me bullish. And it's one of those weird, almost. like masochistic things where you see it going up and you know that your share of the fixed supply daily issuance is getting you know getting smaller and smaller you know someone's drinking your milkshake uh but it's still just so exciting to see and you know i just i mentioned the brain drain so i recently started with a new a new infrastructure company standard power and just seeing the the infrastructure that is is behind that hash rate, you know, it's easy enough just to look at

the chart of, of it climbing to all-time record highs. But when you have an understanding of the, you know, the transformers, the cables, the hatch huts, the A6s, the machines, like just this, all this industry that's going in. And we don't know where it's all happening. It could be in oil fields in Oman, West Texas, wind farms. It could be at the site we're setting up in Ohio. It's just when you recognize what that line really represents is like this energy infrastructure that is being built out. It could be in a national park in Africa

that's setting up a little microgrid to fund their operations. It's incredible. And it just has me, out of the United, me so excited. And I think where I really start to get bullish is with the, you know, recognizing all the strategic integration of A6 mining, you know, and Van, you already mentioned earlier, one of them being reusing the heat for space heating. But, you know, when it comes to the electric grid, there's just so much opportunity that I think electric utilities and Bitcoin miners are are recognizing and taking advantage of.

We've all heard about, well, if you haven't, I'll tell you right now, the winter storm in Texas over Christmas, when upwards of 1.5 gigawatts, that's 1,500 megawatts, that's 1,500,000 kilowatts, was shut down almost exactly when it needed to shut down, and they avoided blackouts. And it was probably like the single largest demand response event in human history, like by one particular industry.

I haven't done the research, but it's hard for me to think of something that was larger and more coordinated than that. So that's happening, but that's just one example. And at the same time, we're seeing the Bitcoin mining provide value to the grid and increase reliability and any number of things. we also have this other side of the coin where we're seeing the opportunity for rural revitalization. You know, you could think of, or I've started to think of Bitcoin mining, you know, you see a flare that's stranded energy at a landfill or at an oil field. It's stranded energy. They have nothing better to do with that energy.

That's all the evidence you need, right, is that flare. They're lighting on fire. If they had a better thing to do with it, they would have. Okay, Bitcoin mining can show up and do that. Well, I see, I'm starting to recognize, you know, like, rural decay throughout at least the, you know, the continental U.S. and I'm sure, you know, obviously it exists all over the world. But, you know, if they had a better solution to what they were experiencing right now, they'd be doing it. But what we're seeing is that Bitcoin mining

has the opportunity because it's location agnostic. It can show up in these places where other heavy industry can't. And, you know, we're seeing, again, going back to the company that the team that I just joined, you know, one of our main missions is to set up these Bitcoin miners in these exact situations where we come in, we engage with the community, we help, you know, deal with whether it's just a physical like eyesore blight, you know, of closed down factory or paper mill or coal plant that was shuttered that's just sitting there, you know, just everybody can see it. It's just a reminder of how things are, you know, come in, make, you know, talk with the community, tell them it be totally straightforward, and then say, yeah, we'll,

we'll take care of this for you. And then we're going to build, we're going to build out these data centers. We're going to provide education. We're going to, you know, because we're going to need your local community to be able to work with us on our operations. And so we'll educate them, we'll train them, we'll provide them hope. And, and then we're going to do it. And then we're going to build out this infrastructure. We're going to take advantage of what was existing and abandoned. and then we're going to build out some more, and we're going to strengthen the grid. And, you know, it's just this, it's just this.

And now you have fans, right? Like, now you just came in and provided hope to a community that's been struggling for who knows how long. And now they're, now they want, now they're advocate, right? Now they want you there. They're going to fight for you because you're doing it. You're doing everything right. And it's the exact opposite of the FUD articles that you hear

in the news or the mainstream media, the corporate media, right, as maybe it's better termed, where, you know, oh my God, like a Bitcoin miner just plops down and, you know, is driving everybody crazy with the noise and everyone's going insane and they want to rezone them and take them out. And it's just, you know, maybe there are some examples of that. And hopefully miners as an industry are learning best practices so that those types of situations are not how it goes because the alternative is just so much better where you you buy all the Girl Scout cookies, you know, you sponsor the local teams, you set up education programs, shake hands, get everybody on your side, and then you follow through. And it's pretty incredible. And it can happen, you know,

in any particular, any particular rural situation where they've had, had some sort of industrial center that shut down and went away five years ago, 20 years ago, it doesn't matter. And you take advantage of the infrastructure and you bring it back to life. And it's incredible. So seeing that, that is like a version of what's behind this all-time high hash rates. And that's why I'm bullish. I love that.

That is so bullish. It's great. Like I picture one thing that comes to, of mind is, I don't know if you guys saw Pierre Richard was just testifying at the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce in Texas. And so they were talking about West Texas, which is pretty remote. There's a lot of rural areas that are kind of, you know, weren't doing so hot. And then a ton of Bitcoin miners moved in because there's a ton of renewables out there.

There's a lot of like wind and solar out in West Texas because it's so remote and it's just a lot of sun. and so Pierre Richard went and testified I don't know would you guys be I have the clip here

do you guys want to see it play it man it's beautiful I'd love to hear it again it's solid it's pretty short it's like two minutes I'll give it a play

but especially you know he brings in the Bitcoin or energy clearly at the end but all the stuff that you're talking about about revitalizing

rural centers and preventing rural decay, he touches on at the beginning. So here it is, Pierre Richard testifying at the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce in Texas. My name is Pierre Rochard. I'm the vice president of research at Riot Platforms, the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner in the United States, with our facility in Milam County, close to Rockdale. I'm a first-generation immigrant, and I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor and master accounting.

degree. Thank you, Senator Coldhors, for your work on demand response issues. I believe that the witnesses here have adequately represented our views on demand response. I would just add that there is already a 60 percent limit to prevent concentration in demand response programs, and that this bill would override Erkott's long-term study on large flexible loads. With regards to Chapter 3 temporary county tax abatements. These abatements have helped attract Bitcoin miners to Texas, and they've created hundreds of rural jobs. Bitcoin miners are the number one employer in Rockdale.

Bitcoin miners are also the number one taxpayer to Rockdale ISD. Bitcoin mining is good for rural education. Milam County has record sales tax revenue thanks to Bitcoin miners. Even if you are skeptical of Bitcoin, these abatements have been highly effective at revitalizing rural communities.

It is also in our national security interest to mine more Bitcoin here in the United States and take market share away from foreign adversaries like Russia and China. We should not add unnecessary regulatory burdens or raise taxes on this strategic and innovative industry. For these reasons, I recommend to vote against SB 1751.

Bitcoin is freedom money. It empowers people so that they can earn, save, and spend their money without relying on or trusting government central banks. Thank you. Mr. Rashard, any questions? Ooh, he gets spicy there at the end. It's freedom money. I love to hear it. I just add a little bit of context, sorry, to that, Ben?

Yeah. What he was doing is, unfortunately, that there was a bill that was put forward in Texas, despite how, how, favorable businesses for Bitcoin mining. Somebody got it in their mind that they wanted to come after Bitcoin mining and take away some of the tax credits that it currently has, but then more importantly, prevent it from engaging in the demand response programs, but then at the same time still requiring them to shut down, which is absolutely crazy. And they make a big deal. People are really into it, might hear people complain about the fact, oh, Bitcoin miners get paid to shut down. Well, yeah, every customer does. Like, that's what I've been doing in my career is coming up with programs

where I'll give you a $20 gift card so I can turn off your air conditioner, you know, a couple times a summer. I'm paying you to shut down. Like, that's what happens because if I didn't pay you to shut down, I have to build a new power plant or I have to start one up. And so the money's going to get spent no matter what. And so this was a very cynical play in terms of legislation in the state of Texas. I don't think it's going to pass. But, you know, I guess just real quick to do another little half thing of why I'm bullish is I'm also a senior advisor to Satoshi Action Fund. And what we are seeing is positive pro-mining legislation in states around the country, which is super exciting. States like Montana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Wyoming.

You know, they're passing the Right to Mine Act. they're passing these legislative bills that in the states that are very like specifically pro Bitcoin mining. And so, you know, we're on the offense in certain places. And every now and then you got to deal with something like this in Texas, but it'll fail and we'll move on. Yeah. You love to see it.

And this is something that I love so much about the U.S. that we don't get as much of here, is that from state to state. you have so much more kind of power over over you know a lot of the laws there and I mean federally obviously the the federal government is is trying to overreach as much as possible because government's going to government always you know they always got to try and govern as much as possible with you know with us heavy it's for as for our safety then yeah exactly yeah But in Canada, it's, you know, federal has a lot more power and control. And from province to province, a lot less power.

You know, I'm more confident in Alberta than I would be elsewhere. Sorry, Aylan. I am more confident in Alberta as well. Me too. of any place in the country I feel like this is the place where we'll be like hey fuck you we're not doing that but still like there's

there's so many hurdles to cross to get to a place like that but of any place of Canada this is probably where it would happen but nonetheless I do envy the idea of of being able to to you know whether it be

in and around this issue or like the past couple years if you didn't like how how your state was handling um just like general like oh you know i don't agree with uh certain restrictions and so and so forth i would prefer somewhere else well you you had the ability to go well you know what this this this too much for me i'm going to relocate to another state that that has a different way of doing things in canada it's it's pretty much blanket across the board for a lot of stuff. There's subtle differences. There's slight things that are different.

But you're getting just different flavors of the same totalitarianism, to be honest. And it's not, you know, I'm being a bit hyperbolic here. I mean, maybe not. No, you're not. Yeah, I don't know, man. We were up in Whistler last weekend. Yeah, that was my first time ever going to Canada. And then I'm going back to Toronto and Jim.

But yeah, it was totally different. It's like everywhere I go, it's just like, here, take a picture before you can come in or let us scan your ID. And I was just like, what is this? It was kind of like a running joke at our bachelor party. Like, oh, like, what do we got to show them before we go into that bar or something? Eric, shh, they're watching. Like, it's kind of crazy. Yeah, yeah, it's, it can be a little much at times.

yeah um i don't know man it's it's uh nonetheless like this is kind of what bitcoin is is building and hedging against right like bitcoin is is creating an alternative community and and both both i would say like both economic and ideological kind of framework um for people to live within regardless of where they are geographically. And so, you know, right now we're definitely in the vast minority of thinking like that. But that's the thing. There was a, I did up a clip or rather I, my wife will kill me. She's going to watch this because she does all the clips now.

Anyways, my wife did up a clip the other day from a previous Why Are We Bullish. And a dude named Mickey came on. And his reason why he was bullish was that Bitcoin has taken the American dream and made it basically has digitized the American dream and made it global. And that's that's kind of, I think, what is playing out here because regardless of what rules and when where you're kind of domicist. currently, Bitcoin, Bitcoin's unaware of that and continues to function as is. Now, like, it's completely aside the point of, you know, if you're in a country where they're like, hey, you know, using Bitcoin means death, then there's definitely going to be some consideration there.

But nonetheless, it still functions. And so when you're in a situation where it's like, I fully oppose, you know, you're under some tyrannical rule. and you're trying to fundraise. And I've talked with people like this at the Human Rights Foundation, the Ausloid Freedom Forum, people saying, you know, we're fundraising to basically oppose our government. And the penalty for that is quite severe.

And because of that, we cannot do it through banks. It's literally impossible. And so they're speaking to me about, well, how do we do this with Bitcoin? And so it becomes, well, the Bitcoin part is, Anybody can have a Bitcoin wallet and accept donations. You can do that in a variety of different ways. It's then it comes down to a localized. What do you then do with the Bitcoin?

It's a local issue of like, how do you get the things that you actually need for the Bitcoin that you have? And that's where it's it's up to the jurisdiction. It's kind of like what is locally available? how much of a community have you built, how much of a circular economy is there. What can you do that will plug into that that allows you to be part of this Bitcoin economy in a place that's hostile to it? So, I mean, we're seeing solutions for that more and more. And I mean, we're talking about Africa earlier.

Like, what a beautiful example is Nigeria. right like they it's banned sweet example yeah it's like you're you're literally not allowed to do that also cash get that the fuck out of here use this cdbc or else and they're the adoption rate i'll just take bitcoin that's fine yeah the adoption rate in the place that's like one of the most draconian on it is through the roof it's higher than it's ever been and on top of that there's a premium on the Bitcoin. Like, and I should, there's, there's a caveat there because the official rate for the Naira is like not the official rate. Like if you go, yeah, you know, you go black market and you try to get US dollars from Naira. It's like, I don't, I don't want this. So that plays into it.

But nonetheless, there's still a premium on Bitcoin when you try to buy it in Nigeria. So like the act of banning it doesn't, doesn't reduce the price is what I'm getting at. And So, yeah, I mean, I mean, again, and another example, China, you're not allowed to mine here, like 20% of hash still in place. Right. Like, like, how hilarious is that? Like, what was that? I said, and making their grid more reliable. Yeah, exactly.

Think of all those rural, rural towns, you know, out in, you know, the middle of nowhere in China with, with hydro. they're like, wow, there's all extra energy here. And we're just going to let it run through the dam. Why not, why not use it and like get a ton of money for our town or, or, you know, for our business? And then, you know, people come around, you better not be mining Bitcoin. Could I interest you in some free Bitcoin, good sir? Like obviously that's happening. So, yeah, I don't know.

the incentive structure is unique, we'll say. Totally. And yeah, and it hits from all sides too, because we have like the black market formation because of the nature of it. It's going to exist in that form one way or another as long as there's market demand for it. And then at the other angle, you know,

I'm really curious like in a few years once we see the outcome in El Salvador. And there's like tangible data where if we see El Salvador's GDP triple over the next few years, what that indicates to all these other countries, oh, do I, you know, use the dollar and keep dealing with that system? Or for countries that are starting to move over to the yuan, are we going to go use that and then get in bed with China and then we're subject to the whims of China and whatever they decide to do, which I'd prefer the U.S. over that.

So it's like, or do we at least pick something neutral if we can't establish a currency because we're just going to hyperinflate it and people don't trust government money anymore. And a lot of the incentives of that, too, pair that with, oh, we could also increase our GDP significantly because of a lot of economies are going to start moving out down here. That's a really strong incentive at the sovereign level too. And you pair that with black markets and not being able to control it. It's really tough to compete against.

To your point about El Salvador, it's going to be super interesting, like you said, a few years down the road, both El Salvador and micro strategy. because you've got these two use cases of like, you know, reserves for a company and reserves for a country and and, you know, also using it as as legal tender. But those two things, those two, you've basically got like, everybody was thinking, oh, micro strategy is doing it. Everybody's going to jump on board. And then it was like, oh, hold on, guys.

just because you bought some Bitcoin doesn't mean your mom, your dad, your sister and your grandmother all bought Bitcoin. They were incredibly skeptical for an extended period of time. And now maybe you've got some family members and friends that have some stats, hopefully. But like, the reality is it takes a long time for people to be interested. And they're going to say, fuck no, for an extended period of time until it's so blatant and in their face that they're like, I can't believe I've.

haven't been. And even then, they still may be averse to it because they feel like they miss the boat. And they're going to have to feel like they missed the boat multiple times before they clue in that like the Titanic, you know, you never miss the boat. The boat's sitting there. You're just freezing in the water. Get out of the water now. That is that is the message. And so like I think we're going to see this play out with with micro strategy and with El Salvador where it's like, wow, these guys did incredibly well. What do they have in common? What happened here? And the thing that I really like, did you guys see, I can't remember who tweeted it out, but it was just an image of like Bitcoin accepting businesses.

And it showed El Salvador and it obviously dotted with like all the little pins in the map. But then the quote on the tweet was just contagion. And it showed El Salvador next to Guatemala. And Guatemala was just peppered with them. But Guatemala, interestingly enough, is not top down, right? Like the government is not saying, yeah, we're going to do legal tender. It's all ground up just like local initiative, like we're going to go do this. and and it's in and you're seeing a little bit of it in costa rica um i mean not

nostrika probably is helping but i think like you're right you know in a situation we're in a couple years el salvador is like you know going the route of singapore you know if we start to that trajectory of you know you know down and out to wow, you guys are doing quite well and you're rising. What is the rest of Central and South America going to think about that? And in particular, what is Argentina going to think when they basically took the IMF, here's a bunch more debt, make sure you promise to keep people away from Bitcoin. How are that going to look?

Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And like, I mean, El Salvador is in a similar situation with trying to get out of their debt as well. And that's another way that it could be signaling an option too is like, here's a strategy to get yourself out of the debt of, you know, this global centralized like debt slavery machine. Yeah.

Yeah, 100%. David wants us to know that the boat ain't going anywhere far before it sinks. He's currently treading water, but thanks for your advice, David. I appreciate you. I love this dude. This dude's hilarious. It needs to be on one day. Never change.

El Salvador is still down 50% on their Bitcoin. No. Their cost basis is not, not 54,000. I can promise you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yellow made a good point, though. El Salvador is up in GDP, incoming dollars, tourism, real estate, roads, schools, hospitals being built,

so on and so forth. Yeah. Like the, the, again, the brain drain is real. Like the, I think Max Kaiser promised,

Max Kaiser promised. the president that he would get 10,000 people himself to move to El Salvador. And so he's like, I'm at, I can't remember the number the other day, but it was somewhere, he was like, yeah, I'm at like, 2,500 or 3,000 people so far, looking, look, look, right, you know, basically projecting the numbers. But yeah, I mean, and even you had, do you guys know who Tim Poole is? Yeah. Yeah, like big, big YouTuber.

He was, he was my fear porn for the last couple of years, like in the middle. midst of lockdowns and everything. I'd be like, I'm going to watch some Tim Poole so I can reminisce on how everything is going to implode and it's the apocalypse. But he, you know, he's been pretty, he got orange pill by Max himself, but he's talking about El Salvador and he's like, you know, maybe we'll get a studio space down there, like from time to time pop it. Like he's a pretty, he's a pretty, set up a hub.

Yeah, yeah, he's like, yeah, we'll set up a hub there once in a while, go down, like, have a studio space and then you know and and you know Tim is is one of those guys that's you know he is a bit of a dumer he always like tends to lean on the side of where we're at the doors of basically we're basically just about to encounter the apocalypse at all times um in terms of like the government's going to shit and everything but those are the people that kind of clue in first that are like, you know, maybe all, you know, I think I'm going to prepare. And then everybody else is like, ah, shit kind of sucks. Maybe, maybe I should think about, you know, having some Bitcoin.

Maybe I should think about owning some chickens or, you know, things like that. Get your passport. Get your passport. If you don't have it already. Yes. I want to be waiting for on for that. Yeah. And shout out to Katie and Jessica Hodler with Plan B passports.

They're all about getting a second passport in case, you know, you worry that your Canadian overlords may not let you use your regular passport. I'm screwed because I have a Venezuelan in a Canadian passport. Oh. Does what does your, where does your Venezuelan passport allow you to go currently? Well, I was so, you know, I came, I came to Canada thinking, you know, Canada, it's just so many promises. I'm going to build my future there. And then I just slowly saw it a row and I was like,

oh, crap, all these years here. Now I got to leave. Okay, I got to ask you then. Okay, so how long, like when did you move? To Canada? Yeah. Oh, gosh. Maybe when I was 18, came by myself.

Wow. Okay. I'm going to go to Canada and, yeah. Sweet. What were things like when you left? Well, so originally I'm from Venezuela and Bolivia, but left Venezuela when I was 10, and we went to the Middle East. So it did my middle school and high school in the Middle East and then came here for university and sort of working here and struggled my way through and became a citizen just last year. Wow.

And that was a process and a half. I felt like Eric, I was like, how much more information do you guys want from me? I think of forever, you know everything about it. me. Yeah. It's like the world coin iris scan. Parents with AI. Yeah. Now you're in the system. You're finally, I was about to say congratulations. And then I was like, and now they know you like there are a lot of great things in Canada. I know it's really easy to point at Canada and say, look how much they're, you know, screwing with things. But there's, you know, there's safety, great food. There's tons of

natural resources, really kind people. It's not. all doom and gloom. Like there are some beauties and luxuries here that, you know, I don't take for granted. I'm very grateful for. Yeah. Yeah. Vancouver was awesome when I was up there, which is why it's such a tragedy that the government's doing what they're doing. Yeah. It's, it's beautiful and I think it's easy to get, I mean, because of, I mean, this is the whole Jeff Booth kind of thesis of like government has no. I love Jeff Booth. He's incredible. We all love Jeff. Yes, he's incredible. But, like, he's, he's the voice of, you know, this, this is the, the even-toned, like, comforting voice telling you that the world's going to shit is what you.

He seems like he's ramped it up a little bit recently. Yeah, yeah. That was him. Yeah. But the last couple of weeks, he's like, you know. Yeah, he's like, shit's getting bad. No more Mr. Nice guy, right? Yeah.

But, I mean, like, his thesis is like, of course this is going to happen. It, it's, you know, the fiat's. necessitates it. It's inevitable that you get increasing levels of totalitarianism. When the money is eroding, it's getting harder to control people's actions in and around that. So you need to exert more control to get things to function the way you need them to in order to kick the can down the road. And so we're looking at this, you know, when people say, oh, Canada is insane or Australia is insane. I mean, yes, but also everywhere is, but we're just at different points in that pathway. And, and, you know, a lot of the issues in a global sense come from the fact that we're all on a Fiat standard.

And so it necessitates this push towards totalitarianism over time. And so we're sitting, you know, you know, as, as Ireland said, if you're in Canada, in the context of like Western nations, there's a lot you can point to and be like, oh, damn, that that was insane. Like especially the last like last year. It's like that was insane and you guys are all totalitarian and you're screwed. When you zoom out globally, there's there's a lot worse. But I mean, it's the same argument when it's, you know, you're talking about when when the economist makes the excuse. for, wow, you know, the U.S. only had this percent inflation and look at the rest of the globe.

Yeah. You're all doing the same thing. It's just you're like benefiting. We exported our inflation. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're benefiting from the bottom of a totem pole, right? Like it's where you're at. So, you know, yeah, Canada is much better off than a lot of other places on the globe.

We're all on the same trajectory. And I think you can recognize. the beauty in the place of where you're at and also recognize the faults and also keep your eye out and your ears out to recognize the places that are on a better trajectory, even if they're starting from a worse spot than you're currently at. I think that's what Bitcoiners are doing a lot of. We're looking and saying what places, what little glimmers of hope are there globally where they're starting to go down a path that could be conducive to a Bitcoiners mindset. And like, you know, Al Salvatore is an example, but I, you know, I don't think we should just blanket give like, oh, they're on a Bitcoin standard.

Great. You know, I think people like Alex Glassstein being like, what about the erosion of civil liberties when you're, you know, rounding people up without due process? I do recognize that when you have one of the highest murder rates on the planet And they all have face tattoos Yeah, and a lot of face tattoos

Then maybe like Some crazy actions Are going to take place in order to quell that But, you know, I think scrutiny is needed in everything. I think you should always think adversarially You should always question everything. I think that Bitcoiners can be good and bad at that in different instances.

But yeah, I think we're just on the lookout like Madeira, El Salvador, the Bitcoin Island and the Philippines. There's a lot of places, even in Honduras, I think there's the Roatan, I believe. There's a little place on an island off the coast. There's a lot of little places, and Bitcoin Lake in Guatemala we met. mentioned Bitcoin jungle in in Costa Rica. There's all these little like ground up places and in some instances top down places where there's inklings of maybe they're on that right trajectory.

A lot of Bitcoiners are are really watching that. Some of them are jumping in headfirst. Others are dipping in their toes. But I think it's a good mindset to be in. I don't know. What do you guys think? Well, it kind of also reminds me of, did you guys watch the podcast interview between on what Bitcoin did between Peter McCormack.

Oh my gosh. Forgetting her name, but it was about why media is failing us or something like that. I haven't watched it yet, but yeah, Justin's nodding his head. So one of the questions she asked, because she studied ancient history

and she said, what's worse? A bad democratic leader or a benevolent dictator? Right. And she was making the case that sometimes when there was just such extreme chaos, a benevolent dictator can be good. but I don't know

I mean make of it what you wish listen to the podcast interview I just thought it was a really interesting question we shouldn't we I feel like we're getting to the point where we shouldn't just be stuck on our understanding of like what words mean and and

maybe it's just more important to think about like what's actually happening on the ground right and I mean first of all we're all just applying the label of dictator to someone like Bucheli which may or may not be appropriate. I don't know. But, you know, and then we're also applying the label of democracy to a place like Canada

or the United States or Western Europe. And that may or may not be appropriate either. And then like you were saying, Ben, you have the trajectories or the, you know, the vectors, right? Like one's going down and one's going up. And maybe you're starting from a higher place and falling down. And another place is starting from lower and ascending. upwards. And so I think absolutely we want to be paying attention to that. And I thought I agree. I thought that was incredibly interesting. And I think it's important for everyone to think and, you know,

challenge your comfort levels about what you think matters and what's important with how decisions are made, you know, in your government or, you know, whatever. Like, what is democracy if you want to go down that path? And, you know, maybe maybe other systems make more sense if the results are better. It's so so there's this line of thought and Sabadeen kind of initially brought it up. I thought it was interesting. He went down this path of

he basically advocated for monarchies. Citadel's right? I mean that's like where Citadel's go. But like okay so here's his here's his take. He was like when you look at a democracy, everything is inherently high time preference due to term limits. And so it's like, hey, can I just spend a fuckload of money and make people happy with the shit I bought them with money and time effectively borrowed from the future? And then I'm out of, I'm, you know, I've got term limits. I've got eight years.

I'm out of here. And then the next guy will just have to deal out with the fallout of like all my excess spending, which is a effectively the system we've got right now. And then his reasoning was in some instances, you know, it could make sense where you have a person that is basically in power for an extended period of time. And maybe there should be like, I don't even know how it would work. But he's basically saying like, if that person doesn't want to revolt and people to

overthrow and hang them, then your interest is. in the long term and like making sure your citizenry is is taken care of and safe and and can live their lives as they see fit you know i'm not fully sold on the idea but like the term limits thing makes sense to me because that's we get so much of that we get so much of you know i'm in for this long you know it doesn't matter i you know i just want to make sure i get re-election for the last term after that who cares i'm out of here um you know i think we see quite a bit of that um i don't know i i'm i'm undecided on on that i think in a world where you had free passage from jurisdiction to jurisdiction regardless and it was effectively like here's the rules here and again that

sovereign individual thesis of like, hey, you know, instead of treating your constituents as subjects, you treat them as customers. Here's what you get for our tax rate. Come here. You'll pay this tax rate. You're going to get the following. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And then if you go there and it's not delivering or, you know, certain things aren't covered, you move jurisdictions. And there you go. you know i i think it's a long time before we get to that type of a world if ever um but maybe it's fun to imagine it might be better it might be a better place imagine yeah yeah there was this book called csteading that i flipped through one time because one of my buddies told me about it but they're talking about some sort of futuristic vision like that where it's like

whenever a population occurs a bunch of people are going to start moving out to these like artificial islands that are basically like puzzle pieces moving around the world, which is going to create this voluntary form of like democracy where you can go hop on and plug into an island with your real estate. And if you don't like whatever laws or whatever is happening, then you just move it somewhere else in the world. I was like, yeah, that is the perfect solution. That's going to happen. Are you talking about yachts? Yeah. Yeah, we all get yachts, right? Yeah, they can be yachts. I was thinking more like Waterworld with Kevin Koster and Dennis Hopper. Yeah.

Oh, that's the other thing. Get your passport and start working on your gills. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. Explosions, C-Dos and drinking pee. Let's do it. Okay, I have one more thing. I wanted to ask, I'm going to ask Eric this question,

just kind of our last line of thought here. So there was a lot of. lot of speculation as to, you know, how, if ever we get to like a full Bitcoin standard. And right now, U.S., there's a, there's a lot of, there's like an antagonistic stance, obviously, like Operation Chokepoint 2.0, we're seeing a lot of stuff coming down the pipe. Elizabeth Warren won't stop squawking. There's all kinds of stuff going on. Banks are getting shut down that aren't even, you know, about to collapse. There's all this stuff happening. at the same time, you've got a bunch of other countries external to the U.S. that are like,

we've been on a U.S. dollar standard for an extended period of time. We are recognizing the control that the U.S. has in two senses that they get to export their inflation. And apparently now that they can just freeze our reserves. And so there's this dual incentive to get off a U.S. dollar standard, or at least, at least begin that process. And we're starting to see that play out with Bricks. We're seeing a bunch of different countries announcing like, hey, guess what? We just settled oil in something other than the U.S. dollar or we've just settled trade

in something other than the U.S. dollar. And then we saw this announcement that that Bricks is, if I'm not mistaken, looking at creating a new currency. Did you guys see this? I actually didn't see that. I saw something kicked around where it looks like they're like, hey, we're going to maybe look at creating something new that would be commodity back with like gold. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's, yeah, the China or Russia driven. Okay, yeah, I'm unfamiliar. Yeah, because like that's the idea is that from a reserve sovereign perspective that, you know, there's going to be, there has been a shift and there's going to continue to be a shift towards commodity backing in some form of de-dollarization. that that takes like a really long time to do like the biggest thing because like you know there's a lot of talk about reserves and the dollarizing that's been going on on Twitter and you know that that's going to take a really long time to actually happen like once you're a unit of account and trade is denominated in your currency it's very that's such a deeply entrenched phenomenon and like I mean most of this goes comes down to like a geopolitical argument but there's kind of like

There is basically the, you know, we have the petro dollar system. We're entrenched for that reason. You have U.S. military support that's protecting trade routes in return use our currency. And we get to, you know, export our inflation to you and we get to have control over the systems that you're using for trade. And that has been going on for a long time. And now it seems like that's starting to shift a bit and the decisions that countries are focused on is, okay, well, if I hop off of a dollar standard, number one, that's going to be really hard. So if I'm a small country, then, you know, that's not really going to make sense unless I have circular, more domestic type economies where I'm trading with nations nearby me. But for international trade where your trade routes need to be protected by, you know, the water system, that's a lot harder.

So, you know, when they think about that, they're kind of like, okay, well, maybe domestically I can use some things. But if I even were to do that and try to go this very painful route, am I going to get in bed with China? do I trust them more than I trust the U.S.? Is it going to be any better for me to go that route with them and where is that going to put our country in 10 years? So it's just a question of the lesser of two evils for most of these countries, which is why the idea of a neutral currency is actually really appealing because it's like, okay, well, maybe I want to have my own currency.

I can't do any of my international trade with it. I can try to enforce it domestically upon people and then eventually those systems end up crumbling. or I can start opting into some sort of neutral currency over time. And it's one that I can actually custody myself. And it's on a permissionless payment system where I don't have to depend on China or the US or whoever it is that's implementing whatever system they're doing. So like that that's pretty compelling. But, you know, once again, in my original point, that's going to take a long time.

Like this commodity based system, gold's going to win out pretty big from a lot of this. And I see that a lot of the sovereign reserve assets are going to start shifting towards it as the eastern and western divide continues to sever. But I think Bitcoin does get a chunk of that market. And I think that Bitcoin will continue to get a chunk of that market. And it's slowly going to start to expand from it. So I think it's important to not get too ahead of ourselves as a community around like how quickly dollar de-dollarization is actually going to come to fruition. It's just like really hard when you are a, you know, X company. shipping, you're concerned about a quarterly profit, and, you know, there's government mandates on

what you're going to be putting in your contracts for trade. Getting that to become Bitcoin over time is something that has to occur at much more of a top-down level, and that's going to take a while. So I have one thing that I wanted to kind of get out of this topic here. And so earlier on, I thought that, you know, I saw the U.S. positioning itself and a lot of Western, like the, you know, the EU and everything very like anti. We need to stop everything that's happening with Bitcoin and like crypto and all that shit. And, and then I saw obviously reserves of Russia be seized and, you know, budding up. with China and all this stuff. And I thought like,

what happens if it's them first that recognize the value of Bitcoin? And they say like, hey, you know, this can be part. And we've seen like a degree of that rush of being like, well,

you know, like they're being a little bit more friendly and open minded to it. At least at a state level. Like if you're, if you're a citizen, fuck you, you're not allowed to use it. Exactly.

You know, like so, but what I'm wondering is, they're now moving, towards, you know, something that would be an alternative to the U.S. dollar. That's not Bitcoin that, okay, we're, you know, we're going to recreate the wheel here. Or we're going to recreate the square wheel here. And we're going to make another Fiat, you know, basket currency or whatever the hell

this frank and currency ends up being. And maybe we'll, like, back it with, we'll go, we'll go the Nixon route. We'll back it with gold. And then one day we'll rug pull that because we can't. control our printing, whatever it may be. And gold sucks. Yeah. And so like my question is I see kind of like three outcomes here.

One would have been the initial thought of, okay, people were shut out of the existing system and they start realizing that Bitcoin's useful to them. And then over whatever timeframe, they incorporate it more and more into their system as an alternative to the U.S. dollar system. Now I'm seeing a, they're going to try and redo the dollar system, but with their own system that they can control. There's a gradual but like noticeable flow of we're going from the US dollar system to something else over time.

And then the US dollar in a, you know, the US and Western countries in a defensive move, stop being so adversarial to Bitcoin and recognize. an open system is better than their system. Yep. And then the third scenario is just straight, ground up. Every other country that's caught in the middle of all this bullshit says, okay, fuck it. We're just going to go on the open standard.

Then we're kind of like we're basically unaffected by all of this. And then all of the superpowers realize like, oh shit. Like El Salvador is now a G7 nation. you know like something along that where like all of these like underdogs are all the sudden like rising up and and being much more prosperous they're going the way of Singapore and the superpowers suddenly realize like oh I guess I guess nobody wins and it's just an open system for all like do any of you have like something if you were to wager like in that one and three bet where would where you would where you would would put your money? The thing is, it's like, I don't think those scenarios are mutually exclusive. I think that we're going to see adoption come from probably all those forms in some sort of, you know, marginal or gradual way. If I were to put my money on anything as being like the most prominent form of adoption, I'd say bottom up from other economies. I think that that's probably

going to be what has like the quickest like inflection curve. But yeah, we'll see. I think it's going to come in all of those. And I bet the U.S. ends up becoming reaction. to it and start being more open to Bitcoin. I would love that. I know, what do you think? Do you have any thoughts on which country might adopt Bitcoin as legal tender next? Oh, I actually don't. I mean, like Panama is flirting with it quite a bit.

They're, you know, just word of mouth things I hear about what's going on in Mexico, potentially. I mean, I, yeah, like anybody who has the most to lose. So like if you're trading with the U.S. pretty frequently, that that makes it a bit of more challenging, those furthest removed from the system, the smaller they are, the harder it is to actually implement their own sovereign currencies. So that makes the incentive greater to want to probably have a neutral currency at a minimum. And the furthest removed you are from the system and, you know, the more trade you're conducting at least like, not domestically, but within like, you know,

geographic focus of your region, it's probably more likely that they would want to be opting out into a neutral system. I would guess it's going to be in Central or South America. Yeah. I think that's, that would be where I bet my money. Central or South America or Africa. Or Africa, you know, but I got to pick one. So I was going to go with the home team.

Yeah. I think you're going to see a lot more, a lot more El Salvador style countries where like, It's, you know, it's a country that was rarely mentioned, if ever, day to day where, like, most people were like, I've heard of it. I don't know. And then, but they're, they're like disenfranchised. They have a horrible economy, whatever it may be. They're dollarized in some instances or a lot of instances.

And they just say, you know what? Like, dual crudely. I don't know. Why not? Like, especially if it pans out well, like, if in a few years from now, like post-having, you know, Buceli seems like a fucking genius, there's going to be a number of countries that are like, oh, you had to sit through a couple of years that sucked and they're fine, you know.

It didn't even suck. It didn't even suck. They still had like GPP was way up. They still had tourism. They did like incredible press. Yeah. Yeah. Although that's great, though.

When I was in El Salvador for adopting Bitcoin conference, the taxi driver would be like, yeah, no, I accept Bitcoin. I like Bitcoin. I think that's great. I am just worried what if something happens to President Bucheli, if he gets shot or what happens if he's just no longer president? He's like, I'm not convinced that it's going to stick. Yeah.

That's a great point. Yeah. There's just that big hurdle when it comes to education and then also people aren't really, like they're like, even Salvadorans are like, okay, we'll, okay, we'll see where it goes. You know, and I think sometimes as big on us, we can get so excited about it and then just say, oh, it's good, it's working. But let's be cautious because it's still, you know, being tried out. It's still technically an experiment. I'm very bullish on it.

I've got my, you know, fingers crossed for it, rooting for them, helping out wherever I can. But there is a reality of, you know, chaos and corruption and people being invested in bringing it down if they can. Hopefully that's not the case. Julian, aka kinetic finance in the comments. He said it's baffling me that these island nations like Palau, Tonga, Micronesia, Tuvalu. I'm not sure of them saying that right, aren't getting on Bitcoin. They have nothing to lose very low debt to GDP. I got to say Tonga, you know, given given the like the hype that we had out of Tonga earlier on,

I'm surprised we haven't heard more from there. last little bit. He said, somebody to take a trip with me to Guyana, an orange pill, their president, they have a huge oil boom, fastest grown economy in the world, only English-Native-speaking country in South America. All right, I'll go. My hands are open. I'll do it, man.

I'll do it. We've got a party now. You've got a squad. We'll charter a jet. This is a cool video about Lake Bitcoin. Julian put together the best video. It was like a travel vlog, but like with Bitcoin peppered in all throughout, he went down to Guatemala. It was an incredible piece, like a 10-minute piece on going down to Guatemala, seeing what's going on at Bitcoin Lake.

It was amazing. You have to go and watch it if you have not. go look at it on YouTube and follow kinetic finance on Twitter as well. I should, here's your invite right now, man. Julian, come back on the show. We've got to talk about your film. Anyways, aside from the point, yeah, check him out. Yeah, anyways, guys.

Just how serious I am. Thanks for watching Jessica and Rebecca. It's been great having you in the theater. I love it. Yes, Jessica and Rebecca. Anybody who has no idea what's happening right now? Was it Mark? Mark Andre Russell.

Russel, his daughters are orange-pilled. I've got my two daughters watching the podcast with me, two future bitcoinsers. Can you shout out them? Hello, Jessica and Rebecca. Welcome to the show. I'm sorry I've been swearing a bunch. I feel really bad now. Sorry I've been drinking.

Don't repeat me. I'm a bad influence. but Bitcoin is not about influence. You got to, you know, don't trust Verify. Don't trust a single thing I say. There you go. But, you know, shout out to our young bitcoins. I've got two kids myself.

And they are growing up Bitcoiners. And, you know, I'm hoping to impart some of the lessons that I've learned upon them. We have two happy girls here, by the way, Marcus Ruther. So that's great. So yeah, it's really cool to see kids being born in a world in which Bitcoin has always existed. And every time I say that, I get chills because I just think, like, you know, at one point, people grew up in a world without electricity and cars and the internet. And I can still say to my kids like, oh, yeah, like, I was born. And I didn't have the internet.

like I didn't get the internet in my house until I was in junior high school and they're like I didn't get the internet in my house. They're like it wasn't everywhere. It's like this whole. And so Bitcoin will be ubiquitous. People will it will just be everywhere always even even for the period of time where it's not denominated. and sats, it will still be a global network for commerce more so over time. And people will be, you know, we'll have, you know, A, B and and B.C. Like after Bitcoin and before the coin, I think we'll denote time periods in, like,

seismic shifts in the way that we kind of govern. I don't even want to say govern, but how we run our society. So it should be interesting, but nonetheless, bullish on Bitcoin kids. So guys,

I'm going to start to round out here. The way I like to finish every episode is I like to just quickly go down the line. Any final thoughts you feel like you couldn't get off your chest, feel free to throw them out or just like a summary of your thoughts for the episode. And if you care to, then a recommendation. And the recommendation

can be really anything. It could be a book, an article, a video, you know, a piece of news, an application, you know,

a device, really anything that you have found valuable in your learning journey that you think people would benefit from taking a look at, throw it out there. So again,

my general closing thoughts for the episode is things are happening incredibly quickly. It just seems very slow when you're on the inside looking out. And so it's very easy to be like, oh, God, why don't people get it? I mean, it's been 13 years. It's not been an extended period of time.

14 years? 14 years? Are we at 14 now? 2009. Yeah, 2023. Got it. Yeah. 14 years.

I'm losing track of time. Again, it seems to go slower from the inside looking up. But like, things are actually going incredibly quickly. It was 2017, nobody knew how Bitcoin was going to scale and lightning network didn't exist. A lot has changed in just a few years here. And so things move quickly in hindsight. things move very slowly if you experience them as they happen. We're going to look back, like 20 years from now,

you're going to look back and be like, holy crap, the entire system changed in such a short period of time. And realistically, you know, when you experienced it, it seemed to take forever because you saw the promise and you wanted it to happen quicker, but, you know, things happen at the speed they happen. in terms of recommendation how do I phrase this

I think my recommendation is going to be kind of like a life lesson and the life lesson would be in the ethos of Bitcoin don't trust verify so you can get into a mode of like

the crowd is saying one thing so I'm going to go along with the crowd even if it's Bitcoiners And there's a lot of bit corners that I consider to be very well informed. A lot of the, a lot of the plebs typically are right in a lot of instances. It's like the initial knee-jerk reaction ends up being like, you know, oh, this, you know, this person is such and such as a scam or whatever.

And then like down the line, it's like, oh, yeah, it turns out that they, you know, the entire thing was held up with twigs and glue and FDX has known none of your money. And it was all a big Ponzi scheme. So I will say like a lot of people in the Bitcoin space, like they don't trust, they verify and they go and they put that to the test. But continue to hold that ethos yourself. So if you hear a bunch of stuff, you should not just take the crowd out of their word. You should go out. You should take a look and be like, is that the case?

And if so, then great, fantastic. And the reason I say that is, despite the chorus of everybody being like, fuck this guy, he's a spook. I pulled the trigger and I bought soft war. So you understand it. Power projection, baby. I haven't read it yet. I haven't read it yet. It arrived today.

So here's the reason. Like, okay, a lot of, you know, I would have loved it was if it was a free piece. PDF, but that's not the case. So maybe I just sunk like a, you know, 40 bucks into, into something where I'll be like, ah, he was a spook. But, you know, I think, again, in the ethos of don't trust verify, you know, I've listened to some podcasts. I, you know, I get the general thesis, but like, I'm, I'm not, I'm not sold either way.

I think I need to actually like go and read, dig in and then look at it and be like, do the ideas have merit or not. Despite the fact that like a lot of people that, you know, I'm, I'm friends with that I trust their judgment are like, ah, you know, this is such and such a thing. And maybe it's bad ideas and so and so forth. I'd rather form the idea myself. I'd rather go, I'm going to read the full thesis and be like, do I agree with the essay ideas or do I think they're bad ideas? And I don't know what the, what my conclusion will be. But I've got the information here in front of me and I'm going to go about it that way rather than just trusting in the judgments of the crowd. And I think Bitcoiners as a whole should do this all the time.

And maybe because you're seeing everybody reach the same conclusion, it's because they've gone and they've not trusted and they've verified themselves and came to their own conclusion. But maybe in some instances not. And so I'm going to find out. I'll see. Maybe it'll turn out like everybody was trying to save me time. maybe not we'll see i'll let you know in a future episode so with that uh i'll toss it to to iren and uh any final thoughts any recommendations take it away um final thoughts it's just been fun to chat with you guys um i'm going to have to read the seventh property i'm going to buy it

right after this this conversation love it that was my recommendation yeah like shameless you took it but i think what last final words would be i think you know there's a lot of chaos going on there's a lot of negativity coming from everywhere i have been feeling burnt out if i'm honest and just tired overwhelmed and feeling like a fog and a fatigue i've made a conscious effort to pull away from that to protect my content diet because that affects my health turning that down and then just choosing very wisely the type of content I consume and that goes into podcasts or books, et cetera. And I feel like that's bringing energy back into me and, you know, restoring my excitement and love and hope and faith for Bitcoin. And it's making me want to work harder to bring

Bitcoin to the masses. So I would say if that's you as well, figure out if you just need to tune out of all the negativity because I'm not sure that we're wired to consume that much violent corruption negativity. It's too much for us to take in, tone it down, and just try and build a better future. And if you're going to do that, let me know because I want to hear about it. And then in terms of recommendation, I am reading the sovereign individual. I'm not done, but I am really, really liking it. So if you haven't read it, check it out.

and let's just share our thoughts with each other. I love it. Touch grass and be sovereign. I think that's a good encapsulation. I'm going to go touch some grass right after this. Is it sunny out, Eric? Yeah, we got kind of a warm weekend out here in Denver. Yeah, I'm sure it'll be even warmer as you touch that grass, hey?

Yeah. What did you? I might bust alone. Is that what you were saying? Okay. Okay, Eric, speaking of which, with your touching of grass, do you have any final thoughts and recommendations? Yeah.

Other than my book, going back to our conversation earlier, where we were talking about like geopolitics and sovereign reserves and stuff, there's this book by Marco Papitch called Geopolitical Alpha. It's more for like the investor perspective. but if you're trying to get like a crash course and how to think about geopolitics and apply that to Bitcoin, highly recommend reading it. It's really helpful for like forming opinions around, you know, how's Bitcoin going to take over the world?

That's awesome. I'm looking it up right now, geopolitical alpha. Not a Bitcoin book, just a geopolitics book. By Marco Papik, you said? Yeah, Papage. Papage. Okay, awesome. All right.

P-A-P-I-C for anybody looking it up. Awesome. Awesome. And I'll do a second shill. Seventh property. I'm, you know, not bragging or anything, but I seem to have a signed copy here. I do, my friend. You do. Yeah. It's almost as valuable as my stats. I'm jealous. Very scarce. I'm very scarce. Indeed. Awesome. Well, I'm, thank you for that. We'll toss it over to Justin. Finally, final thoughts, recommendations, to take it away. Yeah.

So, you know, I think kind of getting back to why I was bullish, if anybody ever is wondering what Bitcoin is backed by, you know, there's a few different answers that makes sense. But from my perspective, it's just backed by this massive infrastructure buildout that's happening all over the globe in any variety of innovative ways when it comes to energy and mining. And it's just incredible. and that's in my mind that's that's what it's backed by and so um that'd be kind of my my parting thoughts and then you know my recommendation would be that if if you have an inkling to to mine um you know

go go with it don't be don't be intimidated um maybe maybe it's not right to to mine it in your garage your house with your electric rate or your service or or what have you but you know you can always you there's there's plenty of hosting opportunities. You know, you can look at the space heaters. There's just, there's all sorts of ways to, to, to mine Bitcoin. And if you think it might be something you want to do, go for it. Yeah.

I love that. Great advice. Dabble, learn. Dabble, that's right. Just don't bring anything down. Right. No when you're, no when you're out over your skis and call a professional. Yeah, 100%.

Awesome. Well, I appreciate all of you coming on. This is a fantastic conversation. I always know when it's running two and a half hours instead of like the typical hour and a half. It's been a good one. So I really appreciate all of your time. Thank you for sticking around for so long and having a great chat and sharing a beverage with me on a Friday evening. The chat has thoroughly enjoyed it as well.

Showed it to everybody that's watching. And of course, thanks for telling me why you're bullish. and all of you are welcome back anytime. Thanks so much. You guys. It was so nice to meet you all. Good meeting you guys. That was fun.

Thank you, Ben. Nice meeting you all. All right. Thanks a lot, guys. I'll see you guys soon and hopefully at some events in the future. Hell yeah. Later. Let's go.

All right. Later, guys. We'll see you soon. Awesome. All right, everybody watching. Thank you so much for being here. Of course, like, subscribe, share. I know I say that every time,

but everybody that's been doing it, It helps the show so much. So continue as you please. Of course, if you want to help the show in another way, you can always hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. Those were hoddle, hoddle, coin kite, is they're loading slowly, Nunchuck, and Start 9. Also, speaking of which we're talking a little bit about Miami,

anybody that's going to be down in Miami, hit me up. No, I'm going to be trying to frequent as many things as possible, trying to meet as many plebs out there as possible, and just talk Bitcoin with every new person that I can. So that's happening. Miami Beach, May 18th through 20th. Caviot, May 17th through 20th, because I'm going to be there running a workshop as well.

I'll talk about that in a second. But nonetheless, if you're heading down to Miami, do let me know, show me out on Twitter, whatever you need to do. It's a hell of a time. This is my fourth time attending. I went to the one in San Fran in 2019. I did 2021 and 2022 in Miami, third time in Miami, fourth time to the conference.

So it's going to be a blast. So many speakers, it's the thing is massive. I don't know if I can fully, it's like a barrage on the senses. Get focused, choose what you want to see, do what you want to do, spend your time speaking with who you want to speak with. Like time is precious there. So use it to the utmost because there's so much to see and do. and it's very easy to get distracted by bullshit.

Don't let yourself do it. Get focused. Get out of it what you want to. You can head to B.tc slash conference. Their ticket prices go up in regular intervals. They go up a week from today. So if you're kind of like, I don't know if I, like I might be able to make it, not sure. You can always grab a ticket and sell it quite easily on Twitter like before the conference.

And because ticket prices are going up, you can always sell it for what you got it for. So nonetheless, yeah, check it out, B.TC slash conference. By the way, 10% off you can use code BTC sessions. Yeah. And in terms of the workshop, I'm doing a cold card workshop, a four-hour deep dive on May 17th. That's the Wednesday. It goes from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Basically starting from the basics all the way to the advance.

So if you're new to cold card, if you're like, I have a cold card and I've never used it, or I don't have one yet and I need to pick one up or I have one and I like I know the basics but I want to get a deep dive. There you go. Basically we're going to start from the very beginning, get you set up, get you doing air gap transactions, everything backed up, restoring it, all of that stuff, the basics that you want from a hardware wallet. And then we're going to go into the deep dive stuff, all the advanced stuff, BIP 85 parent seeds, all that kind of stuff, trick pins, NFF. NFC, all kinds of stuff. We're going to get into as much possible multi-sig.

So we're going to be touching on as much as we can fit into that. You're going to walk out of that thing, being a greater expert on the cold card than the majority of the world. I promise you that. So anyways, you can check that out. Head over to bTCsessions.ca. Over on the right-hand side, there's a fun

picture of me teaching a workshop. That's where it's at. In-person workshops. You can find tickets there. There's a few left. We're coming up on the conference, I think 48 or 49 days left. So snag them quick while you still can. It's right beside the section. You can also book me for one-on-one private sessions if the free tutorials online are not enough. And finally, if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip on my strike page.

You don't need strike to use it. Just head to strike. Dot me slash BTC sessions. Type in any amount you want. Hit the tip button. You will see a lightning invoice or if you tap the little arrow to the right, you'll see a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I'm out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. Thanks for joining me. I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.

We have BTC sessions. Bitcoin is after your money. You can't stop it. Get yourself some Bitcoin and hold it yourself. Pure to pure exchange. You know, people are going to organically come to it and gravitate towards it, especially in the world we're living in now. It's incredible. It's a great tool and I can't wait to see it proliferate everywhere. Total by Bitcoin