BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Bitcoin Changes Us ep179

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Monster panel this week, discussing all the newest developments in Bitcoin that have us excited.  Follow the panel members on twitter here:   https://twitter.com/milessuter  https://twitter.com/gladstein  https://twitter.com/LordFusitua  https://twitter.com/TheGuySwann   💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW:   Buy Bitcoin In Canada With Bitbuy - get $20 free! https://bitbuy.ca/en/sign-up/?c=BTCSessions   LEDN Bitcoin backed loans –  get $25 free https://bit.ly/397rlLN   Get Wasabi wallet for Bitcoin privacy https://wasabiwallet.io/   Keystone Wallet: secure your Bitcoin! http://bit.ly/KeyStoneSessions    BillFodl: get your wallet backups in solid steel. https://privacypros.io/btcsessions    Bitrefill: use Bitcoin to purchase gift cards https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/?code=O04UMic9    BITCOIN LIGHTNING tips: https://strike.me/btcsessions

Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's going on, everybody? We are back, back for another episode of Why Are We Bullish. It's been a couple weeks. I was down in Miami. I got to go to Bitcoin 2021. Some massive announcements out of there. Lots of international implications going on with some of the stuff that happened here.

And we've got a killer, killer panel today to discuss some of that, because that's largely the reason why everybody here is feeling bullish this week. So I'm very excited to chat about this. As always, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my good friend Bill here. We'll do it live. We'll do it live.

Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. Be sure to smash that like button. Give this a share. We've already got over 100 people in here watching live. and let's get this thing going. As always, I am Ben with the BTC sessions.

This is your daily session. Okay, before we bring in our panel, of course, let's take a look at where we are in the markets right now. One Bitcoin, $35,520, somewhere in that range. $1 will grab you at 2,815 sats. 89.23% of all Bitcoin have been mined. And in terms of fees, next block, a little bit higher than yesterday, 82 sats per byte, but if you're willing to wait an hour, a single sat per byte will

do you. So maybe just make sure you're not overpaying on your fees here. Of course, quick shout to sponsors of the show, lend.io, you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services. For me, primarily Bitcoin back loans. If I'm in a cash flow kind of pinched situation and I don't want to sell my Bitcoin, this is like my number one use case for them. I can debaise a Bitcoin, get dollars, pay back those dollars, get my Bitcoin back. And that's important to me. So be sure to check them out. Of course, they've got their Bitcoin and USDC savings accounts and their B2X offering.

If you're feeling mega bullish, links are down below. And moving on here, of course, if you're in Canada and you're looking to stack some stats and security and ease of use are top of mind. These guys have are going on their third year of doing full proof of reserves audit. They were the first in Canada to get and actually only in Canada have to have full one to one Bitcoin insurance backed by Knox security and, or sorry, Knox custody, they've got an easy to use mobile app and their web interface is badass. After your first $250, you get $20 for free. Of course, Keystone, one of my regularly used hardware wallets, formerly Kobo Vault, a little bit

of stuff going on there with the rebranding. I'm going to be interviewing Leishin about what's happening there. But again, air gap, secure element. I love it with. multi-sig in particular. I've done a ton of videos on this. So be sure to check it out. Links are below. Of course, I do live on Bitcoin. One of the ways I do this is bit refill. You can get any, any gift card you imagine for Sats via main chain and Lightning. Be sure to check them out and Sats back as you shop. And finally, don't put your seed on paper, guys. You know, fire, water, accidentally throwing it out. Steel is much better. Check out the billfottle over on privacyprose.com.io. They will hook you up. With that,

Let's bring in our panel here. We got tons of awesome, awesome guests here. We have Lord Fusitua. We have Miles Suter. We have Guy Swan and we have Alex Gladstein. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. I am going to go down the line really quick and let you guys introduce yourselves because a lot of you are brand new guests to the show.

And of course, Guy Swan is my most recurring guest. I was just telling before we went live here. But I can let you guys introduce yourselves and what you do because there are a lot of people watching that may not be familiar. So Lord Fisitua, can you please take it away, let people know who you are, what you do? Thank you, Ben. Firstly, it's a pleasure to be here.

I appreciate the invitation. My name's Lord Fusitua. I'm what's called a Lord member of parliament in the kingdom of Tonga. So similar to the UK, we have a House of Lords and House of Commons, so we've got it in one unicameral house. So I'm a barrister and solicitor by trade, but a politician by career now. So a policymaker and a legislator,

I do a lot of anti-corruption work internationally with the UNODC, a lot of human rights work with the British Commonwealth, the Commonwealth Secretary out of London. And so that's international work apart from my domestic parliamentary duties. But as you would have seen, I'm a Bitcoin advocate and believe that, as I'll speak about later, that Bitcoin, the network can benefit the developing world immediately and Bitcoin, the asset, will follow. So yeah, that's kind of what I'm here about. So yeah, great to be here. Great to be amongst

this, bostonary gentlemen. Awesome. And thanks for being here. I will say this is also a show first in that, Lord Svacitua insisted, insisted on making it to the show despite being actively in the hospital. He said, I will be here. It doesn't matter. I am going to do this from hospital bed. So what a trooper. I promise for my attire because, yeah, I've got medical cream all over my back, so I can't wear a gown or a shirt. So, yeah, hence my informal attire. All good, man. I think it's kind of badass. The dedication level is pretty damn high right there.

That's awesome. Well, thanks for being here, man. Let's go down the line. Miles Sujer, please. And you kind of look like, you basically look like the rock right now. There's no bad. There's no bad in this. Miles, take it away. Can you let people know who you are or what you do? Sure. Hi, I'm Miles Suter.

I lead Bitcoin product at Cash App. I helped found Square Crypto, which is the open source organization, supporting Bitcoin through 28 grants and in countries all over the world in a full time of developers, including Matt Corallo and Steve Lee, working on the Lightning Development,

kit, which is an open source implementation for the Lightning Network, also involved in our Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative, working on getting the global hash rate using renewable energy up. And we're actively looking for more investments in that space. And I spent about six months down in Elante starting in October of 2020. So just as it's all in the, I don't do many podcasts or appearances or anything, but as it's in the news so much recently, it's. It felt like it's important to have a voice that got to spend a lot of time there.

It was deeply embedded in the community and can add some context. So happy to be here. Awesome, dude. Glad to have you. First time guest, always welcome back, of course. Mr. Gladstein, can you take it away, let people know who you are and what you do? Yeah, hi. My name is Alex.

I am the Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. I've been working for civil liberties and human rights around the world since 2007. at H.RF. We run a lot of programs to help people who live under authoritarian societies and have always looked very closely at technology and its impact on human rights one way or the other. About five years ago, I started looking very closely at Bitcoin as a tool for human freedom and have spent a lot of time on the subject since. Recently, H.R.F. basically has decided to do three things in the Bitcoin space. We do a lot of education. advocacy. We do trainings and we work with activists. We help them understand how to use Bitcoin

as safely and privately as possible through workshops and through connecting them to experts. And we also have a development fund where we gather donations and allocate them to devs in the ecosystem. So great to be here and exciting to talk about many things. I'm sure nation state adoption of Bitcoin will be one of them. A hundred percent. Thanks for being here, Alex. And of course, course, I'll toss it to the man who I believe is the most recurring guest on Why Are We Bullish, Mr. Guy Swan, can you let everybody know who you are and what you do? I'm going to need to see data on this. I'm going to need proof. Don't trust, verify.

I'm Guy Swan, the guy who's read more about Bitcoin than anybody else you know, host of Bitcoin Audible. If you don't know it, it's basically where I read anything and everything, the research papers, the like, I don't know, like 10 of Gladstein stand pieces over there. And anything and everything that I can get my hands on with Bitcoin just to make it accessible, because

there's anybody got time to read all that shit. But there's gold in all of it. And also host of Shitcoin Insider. Used to be a filmmaker. And now I'm kind of slowly going back to filmmaking, I think,

as we unroll this production. company and really get into Bitcoin education more directly. And yeah, lots of, lots of fun stuff on the horizon there. I'm pretty excited about it. Awesome, man. Well, again, always welcome back. Glad to have you here. People in the chat already seeing how much they love you. So, let's get this thing rolling. Cheers. Yeah. Cheers, everybody. So everybody in here, of course, feel free to hit that like button. Give this a share. There's already 180 people watching live. So we're going to get rolling here. I'm going to start with my reason for being bullish this week.

And my reason does kind of play into the international aspect of things. And that is because I reached out to the guys at Strike. And I wanted to basically get some content around Strike for, particularly in El Salvador, for people down there, just trying to figure out how to work the damn thing. because as much as us as Bitcoiners assume that an app like strike is easy, that's not always the case and people need some handholdings. So I managed, even though I'm in Canada and it's not accessible here, the team was nice enough to give me access to it.

And I can't hook up my bank account to it, but that gives me kind of, I get to see it through the eyes of somebody that is unbanked, which is kind of cool because I get to see just how. it functions for somebody who just doesn't have a bank account. And I've got to say, wow, it's, it works. It's pretty wild. Those unfamiliar, those that may not be in the U.S. or in El Salvador and able to use this yet. Effectively, it's an app where you can store and send money peer to peer.

Everything is denominated in U.S. dollars, but you're able to shift into and out of Bitcoin, via other privately held wallets seamlessly. So you can have somebody send you Bitcoin and instant converts to a dollar balance in your app. You can send somebody dollars via the app that gets converted instantly into Bitcoin in their Bitcoin wallet. And I've been playing around with it. All of it, you know, via the Lightning Network,

though you can send to on-chain wallets as well. But damn, it is super seamless. everything that I've been playing around with, it's just zip, zap really quick back and forth. You can set up like tipping pages. You can do all kinds of stuff with it. And I'm just thinking from the perspective of somebody who basically can't use a bank account,

this is kind of a big deal. I've got to imagine. Like I'm not in that position, but the ease of, okay, I'm on the app and now I can just use this, especially if somebody has gone to the U.S., or somewhere else to work is now using the app and then sending money home via that app. It's just so, I don't know, I've just found it so smooth.

And I'm very excited to get a tutorial out there and get a Spanish translation of it done. But I guess I'll just, I'll pass it down the line here or I'll let anybody that wants to chime in, chime in. First of all, if you've used it, what do you think? And secondly, how do you see this impacting people? where they can't necessarily get bank accounts. Anybody who wants to jump in, can't. So I was able to use it down in El Salvador as well. And it was, I mean, as a Bitcoin native NeoBank in a country where the majority of people do not have any sort of financial tools,

especially like on a mobile phone. The impact is really big. In Alzante in particular, everybody was really used to using the Bitcoin Beach wallet or any other non-custodial lightning wall. that's interoperable with everything that was going on down there. But one of the most interesting parts about having the option of strike down there is it does add, it gives them, it empowers them with the ability to go back and forth between Bitcoin and USD super, super seamlessly. And so there's no exchange set up in El Salvador.

That was probably the most asked question that I got was how can I get into, get into Bitcoin? And like, you can, you can sign up on Binance. but the Salvadoran banks would get blocked. And it was just become really a hassle. And so a lot of people use the ATM to come and put Fiat in and get their first Bitcoin. However, once you're, and then there's market makers in around the country as well, where you can go and send them and they'll give you cash or vice versa.

But what this opens up is if you have, for example, the Bitcoin Beach wallet and you're holding your savings in Bitcoin, you're long Bitcoin. But maybe you don't want to be completely long Bitcoin all the time. Maybe you have psychic powers and you see a dip coming. And all of a sudden, you want to be long Bitcoin, or you want to be long US dollars. When you have strike as well,

where you can send Bitcoin to it over the Lightning Network and it auto converts into dollars, now a sudden you're long dollars and you've taken whatever. So you have $500 worth of Bitcoin. and then zapped it over and you like locked in the amount of Bitcoin that you had into US dollars in strike. And you can go back and forth super, super seamlessly using the Lightning Network. And so I don't encourage people to use it this way,

but it's effectively like a way to trade going long USDA versus long Bitcoin. I think you see people using it in a variety of ways to split risk or or adjust their, adjust their share of Bitcoin to whatever their risk tolerance is at that moment. But I totally agree with you that the full interoperability with the emerging global Bitcoin financial network is really huge. And going back and forth, it's super seamless, it's free. And it kind of mimics filling in that financial infrastructure of an exchange that the country is lacking. 100% agree.

It's also an interesting kind of inversion of the technologies where we were trying to hollible together using Bitcoin with legacy finance. And now you're seeing legacy finance kind of be built on top of Bitcoin for the first time, which is really cool. So, yeah, again, if anybody else has thoughts on this, I don't know if Alex, maybe you. Yeah, no, I do. I think that's obviously a great innovation. And I think that a lot of people have gotten kind of, I think they've lost sight of the bigger picture here and just how kind of major and historic this is. And they've gotten like tied up in some of the law in El Salvador. And what's interesting is that I think what they're upset about is that like businesses have to accept Bitcoin as payment.

And they view that as like, you know, anti-Bitcoin or something. but when you view it in the context of someone, like quite obviously the government is going to, like, do, you know, equip merchants with a strike style wallet. You know, like, then you have to like add the context there. Like obviously the person is going to be able to receive it into like your Bitcoin, give it to me. Go ahead. I can either choose to put it into dollars or to Bitcoin. So I think once you start to understand like the reality that Miles just described, you start to understand that this is actually just going to provide a lot more options for people in a world where right now they they only have one option

which as as Jack Muller described in his talk in Miami like you know is only going in one direction over time and and it's going in a direction that like nobody locally can can have any kind of say over whereas some other country has say over it right and I just think that that's a very important thing to understand because a lot of people in this world use a currency that's it's not like it's equal for everybody it's actually controlled by some other country and and they just have to do whatever that other country does it's the same in in west africa and in central africa and in the comoros there's like 15 countries that are tied to the the euro in a way where they have no control over it and it's an interesting situation because you have these like poorer countries

that have less development that are forced to use this really strong currency that's basically built for a very advanced economy. And it actually makes them very dependent on foreigners and on foreign aid because it basically makes exports really expensive and makes them reliant on imports. And it has led to a horrible legacy essentially for these countries. And El Salvador as a dollarized poorer country is kind of similar, right? So here's like a, here's an alternative, right? And I think that people maybe getting tied up a little bit here would like to

trees and a speculative law, you know, that isn't in effect yet. And they're missing the fact that like this means that you're going to have nation states now pushing, you know, permissionless, instantly settleable globally money that they can't debase their sensor. And I think that's the most important lesson to draw from this. And obviously, be interesting to hear what our friend from Tonga has to say on it. But I think it's going change the world. It's amazing. Indeed. I just want to address one comment in somebody from the comments. So Dan was asking, so our lightning transaction is going to be auto taxed. Actually, because they declared it legal tender, my understanding is that there's no capital gains tax on Bitcoin in El Salvador.

So no, you can just, if you hold it and it appreciates the value, great. You have appreciated purchasing power and no tax implications within that country. I guess, I guess, maybe he's asking like what if it's income but then it would be treated like and you're any other income you have you have to report it to the government right yeah withholding or you know whatever you got yeah yeah uh lord facitua do you have any thoughts on this on on on strike and and um apps like this and what they uh may enable for people yeah absolutely uh so i think the the paradigm changing uh effect of strike is that it decouples Bitcoin the network from Bitcoin the asset in a very interesting way. So for countries like El Salvador and like mine, that have a high percentage

of their GDP in remittances, my country is 40.7% of our GDP is in remittances. That's in heart about GDP. So those remittances get sent three ways. Through Western Union, MoneyGram, or through telecommunications companies who give out mobile phones to get 100% penetration, because they then have an application layer where a housekeeper in New York City can log on to a website, give her credit card number or her bank account details and send her sister Fiat in El Salvador, which she receives on her mobile phone as digital Fiat and can transact in that at a store, or I say El Salvador arbitrarily it's anywhere in the developing world. For example, there's a company named Digicel run out of Ireland,

which operates throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean. and the Pacific, which almost monopolizes this kind of sending of money. So what these three formats have in common is they lob between 20 to 30 to 40% off in fees. So that 40.7% of our GDP made up of reminces in real terms, we're only getting about 20% to 22%. So in $700 billion is spent annually by the developing world on Western Union fees alone, nothing else. So $700 billion. Just on those remittance fees, not for any goods, not for any service that's been produced, that's adding value to the economy or anyone's life just in fees. So without knowing anything about Bitcoin, the asset, if you merely add

strike to that 100% penetration of mobile telephones, that means that our population suddenly receives $99 and 98 cents rather than $70. So that adds 30% to your GDP automatically for an entire country merely by adding one app to your telephone. And the seamlessness of being able to send in Bitcoin or Fiat and receive in Bitcoin or Fiat means that's all done behind the scenes. And the receiver doesn't have to know anything at all about Bitcoin the asset. They're merely taking advantage of Bitcoin the next. network and it's brilliant. So what will happen is that immediately you're going to spend that

30 or 40% to raise your standard of living. That only makes sense. But eventually you're going to think, hang on, I was able to survive on the 70% earlier. So even though I'm a villager hand to mouth, I now have an extra 30%. I'm going to live on that 70% and I'm going to begin saving that 30%. So you effectively give the villager the ability to stack SATs. So this shows you how brilliant the Bitcoin technology is because they're doing it in reverse. Instead of store of value to medium of exchange, they're going medium of exchange to store of value and it still works perfectly. So how can you not be bullish about a paradigm changing technology like that? I love that.

Yeah, that is pretty amazing. And it does, like you said, if you're used to living on a certain amount of money and you were getting by, I guess that does give you that option to potentially save for your future. It's something that perhaps they weren't experiencing before. Guy, do you have any additional things you'd like to add in here before we move on? Yeah. So some of the just some of the numbers like you know, you always kind of have this idea before you kind of dig into specifics. 40%. Holy shit. Like that's the the amount of capital accumulation and just sheer savings in the loss or the cost of standard of living for being able to shift that over to a new platform is we're talking about a quarter of the whole country being. being able to not simply be bled out in the process of moving capital from one place to another. And I love that, like, situate the way you said like Bitcoin the network versus Bitcoin the asset is,

and I kind of talked about this a little bit in the talk that I did at Bitcoin 2021, is that I think the way that a lot of people are going to start interacting with Bitcoin for the first time is, is in the movement of Fiat. kind of like how when the first time that people are actually, most people were actually using the internet was to make a connection over their analog phone. Like it ended up being the background. It ended up being the rails to get rid of the hiss on that phone call when you were calling

all the way across the country or when you were calling to a different jurisdiction or across over to Europe or across the sea. And then the same thing is used to have long distance fees all over the place. but suddenly all that stuff started falling away. And it's because you went to that open protocol. It was only the last mile, right? It was only that that last switch that turned it back into analog, whereas the back-end infrastructure was the internet.

And I think that's a prime example of a lot of people's first interaction with is they're going to try to get dollars. They're going to try to get a better way to move Fiat. And the back end is going to move Bitcoin. and it doesn't really matter that that's the case. It's just going to work better. And then when they have that, that quote unquote excess,

which isn't really excess, but it will feel like it when the, when you get like, you know, that significant, that extra 25, that extra 30% on what you're able to retain. And you'll be able to save it in,

in lightning. And you're, you're already in an app, like using strike as the example, that's onboarded straight to lightning. That was actually like, so I started using it like the day that it was released. You know, I'm like, you sessions. I'm just like, if something comes out, I'm like download.

I don't even get malware, maybe. I don't know. And so I started using this immediately. And my big use case of it was to just have Bitcoin that went straight to lightning. So I didn't have to think about channels or conversion or anything like that. I was just on the network. at the very beginning. And I've even, like Miles Sutter said,

is I've even used it as a hedge. So like I was like planning on like trying to get like a plane ticket or like tickets for a conference or something. And it kind of looked was looking iffy over on the charts for the Bitcoin charts. I would just go ahead and move it to strike because I was going to pay over lightning anyway. And like so I'd have like, you know, I'm about to spend 500 bucks. Let me just send 500 bucks to the strike. And then the price fell.

And I basically kind of like micro hedged myself. right? And then I can just buy my ticket tomorrow morning when I'm a little bit less lazy. And all it took was a transaction to basically secure that for me. But otherwise, I can just dump it right back into my lightning wallet to save. And it's been incredible to have that seamless instant conversion between all my different, quote unquote, forms of Bitcoin and capital. And just the nature of that, I just think shows. And the potential here is absolutely massive. And I think we're literally talking about a, like Facitua said, a $700 billion friction on the globe just basically being downloaded away. Like, I'm going to download a piece of software and we're just going to delete all of this problem. And it's just a matter of time. I love it. Yeah, it's it's pretty wild.

Anybody that hasn't checked it out, I will be doing a video on it on Monday, I think. But yeah, it's super interesting to see this develop and people start to use it. But I'm going to keep us rolling along. We're going to get into another reason for being bullish. Of course, 200 some on people watching here. Smash that light button. Give this a share. And let's actually head over to Lord Fisitua.

what has you feeling bullish this week? Is there a topic that you'd like to maybe riff on a little bit? Well, obviously, it's the remittances topic. And the fact that, to put it in context, the U.S. probably gives the highest amount of foreign aid on the planet. And last year, they gave $34 billion in foreign aid. So a point that's been made during the week is all, every, charity and bilateral, multilateral foreign aid that's given will add up to about 10, 15% of that 700 billion that Western Union takes in fees. So merely the adoption of the network

surpasses any humanitarian or bilateral, multilateral aid that's done. That's done, at the moment. And to put this in context in developing countries like El Salvador, like my country, there's a reason that Christian Lagarde and the IMF troops went running is because as soon as you have a monetary system that's outside the realm of the Fiat central banks, then it removes the.

the need for their existence. And they're scrambling to make sure that they remain relevant. And the latest interpretation of the World Bank Charter is Section 12 of Article 5 defines what can be counted as currency. And that means anything that's counted as legal tender in your country. that means that El Salvador can now pay back its loans in Bitcoin-backed IOUs or Fiat. And Section 9 of Article 2 says you recalculate the value of that payback as time progresses. So not only can El Salvador pay back its loans in Bitcoin,

now and not even real Bitcoin. It doesn't have the part with the Bitcoin, just Fiat or IOUs backed by Bitcoin. When the value of Bitcoin rises, the World Bank has to pay back those games

to El Salvador. So the headline is World Bank wrecked. And that makes me very bullish. Do you think they'll honor that? Do you think they'll like try to, I mean, inevitably they'll try to push back on that, right? They'll have to, or they'll fall under the jurisdiction of the ICJ.

Lord Fitzsaint, does your country have like a, like, what are the, like, rules and regulations that the IMF and World Bank try to hold you to in terms of, like, reserve percentage, stuff like that? We're still recovering from the IMF World Bank loans of the 90s and early 2000s, which not only, they give you that. the loan and then they force austerity measures on you to make sure that you can't pay back the loan. And then not only can you not pay back, but because of the austerity measures, you get social collapse because your whole public sector, all your public servants begin protesting because you're cutting their wages. And then when you find out that this is in fact policy, that they deliberately do this, then that's why the headline World Bank wreck rings so, so justified to some of us.

Wow. Yeah, that's pretty wild. I like the comment here, a number go up, World Bank go down. It's that kind of confessions of an economic hitman model. Exactly. That's so much damage in all these developments. I was just talking with somebody about that on Twitter the other week. If you haven't read Confessions of an Economic Hitman, it's pretty wild.

But there is concerning this World Bank interpretation of their charter, there is, I had it up on the screen, there is an article from Forbes on it that came out yesterday. And the title of the article is Bitcoin must be accepted by World Bank. according to charter and it kind of goes through the sections called into question now whether or not they honor that or try to sidestep it or say amend it to say something like it has to be a central bank issued currency or something like that i could see something like that come down the pipeline but but who knows i like they can't it's illegal to make a retrospective or retroactive law one that is meant to work backwards and especially if it's to remove a civil right.

And it definitely, if they don't keep to it, it puts them under the jurisdiction of the ICJ. So I'd like to see them try. There'll be a class action of developing nations across the globe that will come at them. I also think it's important for people to understand that like World Bank, IMF, you know,

largely controlled by the US and Europe, you know, in the wake of obviously World War II. and a lot of their model is basically to keep developing countries on a track of exporting raw materials so that we can then manufacture those materials and then sell them back to those countries. You know, we take that profit off them and we don't allow them to create their own export-led industries because oftentimes we, you know, whether it was the French in Africa or dollarization or other things, like they're often forced to use in your case obviously your country's pegged like a basket of our currencies of the stronger ones so you know you're just not very competitive with an export model so you end up having to import all your stuff from us and the u.s has had this like policy of forcing countries that import agriculture obviously we get into the petrodollar but the point is that like this is really cool from like a human rights perspective because it it gives anybody an opportunity to kind of break that model and And I think it forces just basically like less kind of parasitic behavior in the world, hopefully in the coming decades.

What does this transition look like? Like, is there going to be, is there going to be major pushback to this? And if so, what does that pushback look like? I don't know if anybody like, does anybody know? With the remittance industry in particular, it's a funny dichotomy because the competitors to Western Union are the banks. So the reason you use Western Union is because you're unbanked. Because the banks only charge 5%, whereas Western Union charges 20% to 30%. So the banks won't be too upset to see the Bank of Western Union,

because that'll just mean a lot more people will have to get bank accounts and use the 5%. Or use strike and completely bypass that system and receive nearly 100% of 1% of 1%. 100% of what's sent. So, yeah, I'm bullish on the latter. I think where we start to see more substantial pushback is if all of a sudden the Bank of Guatemala, the Bank of Nicaragua and a lot of these other kind of pan-central

American central banks start adopting a similar policy and are interoperable with the global reserve currency of the future and the new monetary, the new monetary foundation of the world. And all of a sudden, if these countries can instantly and for free, clear with each other and all of a sudden are opting out of the petro dollar system. All of a sudden, that's when I think the hysterics grow much, much louder. And it's unknown what sort of pushback these supernational organizations can and will muster. But to me, like, it was always very binary, in my opinion, like for years and years we've hoped,

like we've got to flip one country. We've got to flip one country. and then the rest will follow. And I do think that's the case. But I think this, so it always was kind of binary like that in my mind, but it gets super, super interesting when the network effects take hold

and others play along and are interoperable and then are really operating outside of the control of the existing framework and the SWIF system. I just wanted to, on this, in this context, there was some information out of, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration. This was a few days back, but this is a quote from them from the president of the BCIE. The signal that I want to leave you today is that the BCIE is accompanying El Salvador in this new innovative policy of adopting the cryptocurrency called Bitcoin for legal use.

And some of the founding countries include Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. non-founding regional countries, Panama, Dominican Republic, and then non-regional countries, Mexico, Cuba, Taiwan, Argentina, Colombia, Spain, Republic of Korea. So, yeah, I mean, it kind of seems like there's just dominoes are kind of starting to tip. And while it may not hit all at once, it's interesting to kind of see the interest that this has sparked. I think it could be wrong. I think just briefly, I think Miles is right. It's at a central bank level that the pushback will be.

Once countries, as I'm advocating for my country, developing nations as we measure our development often by our amount of foreign currency reserves because that shows you how well I actually. export sector is doing. And when countries like ours begin, they have Michael Saylor's dilemma of, do I keep it in Fiat, which is melting, do I invest in negative yielding bonds? Yeah. Inflationary gold. Or in Bitcoin, when national treasuries start investing in Bitcoin, that's a direct challenge on the primacy of the US dollar as the world's. reserve currently because that says we prefer Bitcoin to the U.S.D.

And that will get pushback. Do you know if a lot of your reserves are invested in sovereign debt? Because just in doing research for this essay I'm working on, what's crazy is that all these 15 African countries, they have to park a minimum of 50% of their reserves, meaning the earnings they make as countries with the French treasury essentially through this bizarre central banking system and then they have to take that money and buy French debt and now European debt after the year of course with it. So it's like the recycling phenomenon, right? So again, they're like they're like earning this money for exporting the raw goods and uranium and all these

materials. And then they have to give it back, uh, you know, to France's control. And then France uses it to essentially buy its own debt and finance its spending. So I'm wondering in Tonga, if, you know, how much of, you know, your earnings essentially that, that you, or a hard currency that you all save, how much of that is in like, you know, what you said, you know, negative yielding sovereign debt. Yeah, it's, it's, that's basically what's, uh, because that's what central banks classify as high quality assets. Very high quality, folks.

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. So that, that is what our central bank is invested in. Oh, man. international so yeah cool it'll be soon enough when we when we hear them say the words Bitcoin is the high quality asset but it'll be you know we'll see a few years yet I'm bullish on that yeah definitely this is wild wow I did not know when you start learning as I'm

when you start learning about some of the shit like the way these like forced allocations are made it just seems so bad shit like that seems absolutely crazy to me like like I I just imagine it from an individual perspective that someone would just be like, come to my house and be like, yeah, you're gonna have to put half of your money into my stock. And Walmart is gonna tell me that Walmart is the best stock. It's like, well, no shit, Walmart.

You're gonna think that, you know? It's kind of like there's two levels, right? There's like the geopolitical, like, justice level, which we're talking about here. And then there's the domestic level, right? And that's a different matter. Obviously, Tonga is a is a very, you know, relatively free country.

I think it's rated close to the U.S. and South Korea, just for like the audience's context by Freedom House. It's an organization that does that sort of thing. But look, it's going to be all kinds of countries that adopt this thing. I think people need to understand that. It's a neutral money for everybody. And, you know, everybody at the end of the day, I think most of us here believe that literally every country will eventually adopt it.

So, you know, I think this is something that's important for the audience to understand. I love that. I'm going to round of this topic here. Excellent, a lot of points there that I really, I had no clue about like the forced investment in, in various debt instruments,

all that kind of stuff. Wild. So I will say, again, everybody that's watching, I see your comments coming up. Somebody said, are there any spare volcanoes in Tonga?

So, but I will say, it's funny. say that my estate is actually the only inhabited volcanic island. Awesome. As soon as he gets out of the hospital, that's what his plan was. Stranded geothermal. Let's do it.

Are you suffering from magma burns or something? Is that why you're in there? Just part of the boat. No, but on the topic, though, like, you all should like, I mean, that you should be able to apply to humanitarian organizations and to the World Bank for them to pay for your Bitcoin mining so that it'll be sustainable. Now, of course, they're going to tell you to fuck off, but like that's what they should be doing if they cared about you. We have $5 million at the Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative at Square as well to fund initiatives just like this. So maybe we should chat after this.

And you know, honestly, I think it would be good to apply. that they can tell you to fuck off just so that it's more clear what their agenda is. That they won't, they will never support actual independence. They will never support solving a problem that gives $20 billion back, but they'll give you a $20 billion loan that makes you obligated to them. You know, like it's not about a solution. It's about it's about creating. I just, I don't want to write off the private foundations entirely, Lord Fasitwa.

It may be actually worth, because look, some of them are clueless, but once they actually hear you explain this, the private foundations at least, they might be, look, Melinda Gates might say, Melinda Gates might say that's actually interesting. I mean, she's not the World Bank, right? So there's a difference between the private foundations and the government wants, right? Yeah, to be completely honest, I've been hit in the DMs by a number of private organizations.

who are willing to just offer the technology for free. Amazing. And set up the geothermal technology because it provides a pilot program for their technology to be showcased. So I'm extremely, yeah, grateful for everyone that's reached out. Yeah, very appreciative. Awesome.

Awesome. So, guys, I'm going to keep it rolling with our next topic here. Everybody that's watching, there's over 200 people in here, smash that like. give it a share, keep those comments coming in. We're going to jump to Miles. And Miles, I just, again, just want to know what has you feeling bullish this week? What is exciting in your world right now?

This is your chance to rant, whatever you like, man. So, I mean, these last couple weeks have just been so exciting and gratifying and exciting. For me, having got to spend so much time down in El Salvador and in Al-Sante. And I'm really, this is something that I'm perpetually grateful for, but it's really the bit-coiners around the world and this growing, growing family of people that are working towards the same shared goal. And so, Lord Sissitu a first time meeting you, but the way we connect intellectually and are working towards the same thing, it feels like we've been long-term friends. And that's so true of people everywhere I go. And so I'm obsessed with seeing Bitcoin adoption around the world and seeing how I can, how I can help it grow. So whether it's like a marketplace in Lagos or I was at the protests in Hong Kong, I've done remittance via Bitcoin in the Philippines.

It's like the coolest thing about Bitcoin is this you can show up in any major city in the world. And you're once, you're one separation away of like meeting a best friend. And so I'll be like, hey, yo, Gladstein, who do you know in Ho Chiman City? or whatever. And just like through a telegram intro or whatever, you get introduced and hooked up with someone who takes you out and shows you around and you have so much in common. And you just build these, these bonds around the world and work towards this goal together. So in that light, last Saturday I put out a tweet saying, hey, who's done the best Spanish language introductory Bitcoin content? Like, how can we get this all organized? How can we get this to the Salvadoran people? Because

I truly believe education is going to make or break this project. Bitcoin's hard for my parents or like my peers I went to college with, you know, that are like really smart professionals. And it's hard and it's new and it takes time for it to fully click. And the thing that's scariest to me about the bill is this 90-day timeline. And I imagine they'll roll it out like in a controlled pilot and spread it there and do it responsibly. But I mean, internet crime and scams are everywhere. And it happens to people that are highly educated and have used the internet their entire life, let alone people using mobile banking

apps for the first time. With Bitcoin, there's no clawing it back. And you're on your own. You're a sovereign individual. And so I think this education piece is so, so important. I was particularly inspired this week by all of the Spanish speakers from such a variety of countries that all came together alongside me to crowdsource the top articles for spreading the Bitcoin message, for translating to getting them into Spanish, to get into the hands of the Salvadoran people to make sure this project is a success. And so in particular, I want to shout out Crypto Bastardo. I've never talked to him before in my life, but in the last week, we've been compiling a list.

He's doing all the heavy lifting. But we're working together. he asked for like hey can I I got a group of Spanish speakers we need a little bit of funding to make this happen said boom done cash app has got you like when Bitcoin succeeds cash app succeeds when Bitcoin succeeds like we all succeed and so I'm just like it gives me so it gives me so much hope to see how passionate people are around the world and who drop what they're doing to to make this happen and we all march forward together so it's a feeling I felt uh many times in the past, but it's been particularly highlighted in the last couple of weeks. I totally feel you there. It was wild seeing, again, when everybody at the event watched Jack Mallors give his talk, I feel like it reinvigorated a lot of people that have been here for a while and they understand the benefits that Bitcoin can bring to humanity.

but maybe got lost a little bit too much in like the number go up or down or a number go sideways or whatever it may be at the time. But seeing the passion that came out of that talk, so many people have kind of shifted their focus away from who the hell cares what the number is doing at the moment to look at what this is doing to the world. And you're right. there's been so many people trying to jump in and trying to figure out how to help. I've seen so many people talking about, you know, diving into places like El Salvador and or other jurisdictions to provide content, to help people learn. And it's,

this kind of new, and I know it's not new, but it's new to a lot of people like we didn't realize myself included how much was happening down there. but it kind of thrust it front and center. And I think Bitcoiners, when pressed, are very compassionate and giving people. And we all kind of have a common goal. And it is beautiful to see.

But I'll let others chime in if anybody wants to speak to. This was always the dream, right, to empower, at least in my opinion, this was always one of the dreams of early Bitcoin is to empower developing populations that, so they can exist outside of the monoconel. regime of where they happened to be born. And I have had so many people getting my DMs about like, hey, how can I start this here? How can I do it there? There's actually a group of three Guatemalans drove down to Elzante when I was there who were trying to get it going at Lake Atiland,

which is just one of the world's most beautiful places. I would happily spend some time there getting that going. But all these people in my DMs, the message I want to get a is that I spent a lot of time there and certainly was invested in doing everything I can to make it grow. But this is decidedly not me. And the success of this program was dictated by the locals there. You can't just, we can't just send $100,000 to a village in Nigeria and expect this to happen. You need a strong pillar of the community.

And you need like Jorge, who was leading the charge down there in Alzante. Mike Peterson, big shout out to him as well, who runs that at Bitcoin Beach. But if we're going to replicate Bitcoin Beach anywhere else and try to get another circular economy, because it sounds like a lot of people are keen to do that. The message I want to get across is that it requires people on the ground that are part of the community that can inspire those around them. And it's kind of scary for a lot of these people to make that jump. and the person leading the charge of angelizing there,

they're putting their reputation on the line. Because people have to learn. Like, when the first time the price goes down 30%, that's crazy for a lot of these people. That's scary. And so on the piece that you mentioned about, number go up, number go down, I'm actually secretly kind of hoping

that we just have a number go sideways for the next 12 months. Like, to me, that is so much more worth it to, like, get, real world usage of this and getting more people onboarded and just having a stabbler situation in order to onboard those that need it most. To me, that is so much more important than any monetary games. And yeah, sorry, rant over, but I just wanted to get that bit in. Yeah, I would say that number goes sideways offers a lot of stability everywhere except for Bitcoin Twitter.

Yeah. Does anybody else want to chime in on Miles' thoughts here? I just want to reiterate what Miles said about the community. The amount of people that have reached out since they've understood the situation in Tonga and the developing world, how much we rely on remittances, and how strike can change that overnight. I've had on the one hand stories of lament from. the Bitcoin community of South American or Mexican families that have been paying Western Union fees for generations.

And then on the other hand, Bitcoin community who just, they themselves have researched, realized that Tonga's economy is agriculture and fisheries based. And there's a whole host of fisheries and agricultural experts who've just said, look, we'll pick up now. There's not much doing. We'll go to Tongan work to try and help your country out while you work towards Bitcoin adoption. This community is just phenomenal. You can't say enough about it.

Absolutely. If nobody has other thoughts, I think we can move into the next topic. If everybody's good with that, yeah? Awesome. So again, everybody here, keep those comments coming. smash that like button. And if you're listening to these guys on stage and you're thinking, I got to follow these guys and see what they're up to.

All of their Twitter profiles are listed in the show notes. So be sure to check them all out. But we're going to move to Mr. Alex Gladstein. Sir, I will just ask you, what has you feeling bullish this week? What are you excited about? Yeah, I just want to brainstorm with everybody about how to do more of this and how to expedite this and how to get education out about how to use Bitcoin. but I'll never tire from showing somebody how to use it.

I mean, it's really like rewarding for humanity when they understand how amazingly easy it works. And I say this because I spent about 90 minutes today with someone from El Salvador who I met remotely, obviously, in the last few weeks. This is someone who is not a fan of the government. It's not like what they're doing. But, you know, I have had a bunch of dialogues with her,

about that learning you know learning from her basically was my agreement i wanted to learn from her as much as possible about her situation and her perspective and then i said i would pay that back by teaching her about bitcoin right so we've been dialoguing like this and um yeah today i just like answered all her questions set her up with a moon wallet sent her bitcoin sent her lightning had her send me lightning like and um just the surprise she showed when when she realized that i had sent her money from like many thousand miles away and that she didn't have to like put in an ID was like it just blew her mind completely and it's like an amazing amazing thing and she's a teacher so she's going to teach this to all of her students how to use this thing and um i think that's why

education is so important because it it can just unite us as people and around this empowerment tool regardless of whatever the government's doing i mean most bitcoiners are like extremely skeptical of all government's like whatever like the whole point is that we're like removing the money from your hands so you can't mess it up anymore that's like our goal here um but i realize that's as a stretch for most people to start to understand but just just this idea that i could uh just technology is amazing like i she's outside of the capital of san salvador and i'm sitting in california and we're i'm showing i'm just transmitting value to her and didn't have to ask for permission from anybody and i think it's all about the usability of these apps which is why i think hrf really wants to

do what we can to help the UX in these apps. Like really like just using an app like the moon wallet is just such a game changer from three, four years ago. Like the fact that look, when you turn on a Bitcoin wallet, you should not have to put in your 12 words as the first thing. That's just like completely turns off people that don't know what that is. And I think they've handled it so brilliantly. Like when you fire up this thing, like you can use what's familiar to you.

You can use an email as a backup as the first step. And then obviously you're going to learn about Bitcoin. And then at the bottom, it says, create your emergency kit, which is a brilliant way of branding it. Emergency kit is the, are the words. And that way if you lose your phone, you're backed up. But like, I love the way that they've just condensed this product. It's in Spanish. It's brilliant.

Everything's in Spanish. Like, it's just so, so easy for her to use. And there's no extraneous nonsense. And, you know, I showed her how to change the denomination to Satoshi's, which she thought was really helpful because at first it's just like this very, very small number. and you're like, what is that? So, SAT's the standard. But I'm just really, really bullish about this,

that even somebody who is very, you know, does not like the government, does not like the way they passed the law, is able to understand it and get excited about the technology and is going to share it, and we're going to share it with all the students there, and makes you think about how to do this. Like, maybe it's just a bunch of us have to film ourselves doing this,

and then it gets played in front of kids, and then we come on and, do a Q&A after. I'm down for whatever. But like, we got to think about how to translate this material. And it really can't be copy and pasted. Like, it was so valuable for me to answer her specific questions. Like, she did not understand what Bitcoin mining was. And she was like, why is my president going to a volcano? And then I explained to her about the fact that that's how the transactions are processed. And she's like, who's taking the $2 fee when you sent me the on-chain transaction? The miners are taking it. Then it all started to click into place for her.

But you can't really do it with like a generic dry template. It almost has to be interactive. So it's going to demand a lot of our time. And we just have to replicate ourselves and just do what you're doing, you know, Ben. And like, we got to get out there and do this. It's so important. So that's my rant for the day. And that's why I'm very bullish.

I couldn't agree with you more on, on the, how rewarding it is teaching people. And having them have that, oh, I get it now, moment. It's it's so invigorating because it's it's almost like you're getting to relive those moments for yourself as you as you got it. And it's it's like you want to capture that as much as possible and you want to see that light in people's eyes as as they light up and go, oh, wow, that was easy. Did we just send money like across the planet in a few seconds? That's insane. And I really like the wallet that you mentioned, Moon Wallet, M-U-U-N. Anybody that's not familiar, I did do a tutorial on this a few days back, but it's basically a Bitcoin wallet with a single unified balance that you can receive and send both on-chain and lightning.

Everything is lightning by default, but you can send and receive from regular Bitcoin wallets as well. So it's I like, I really love this idea. I like, and I think that this is what we're going to see more of in the future where you don't have to. Yeah, you don't have to think about what network you're on. You're just using Bitcoin in the most efficient way that is currently available based on what's actually happening in the background. And the sideways market will allow, like, I'm talking to people like within the year, like there's going to be coin joins type stuff happening on the back of these wallets. And you're not going to know, you're not going to know the difference. It's just going to be privacy by default.

It's going to be amazing. So we just have to keep supporting the devs and keep pushing them forward. But I mean, they are very much, look, the cool part is for me as a human rights activist, I've never dealt with that industry before that is like, I don't need to worry about like whatever. They are way intense freedom activists already that people building these apps. It's not like you sit around to be a core developer if you don't care about human freedom. That's literally why you're doing it. So it's extremely satisfying to be able to just work with them and support them.

I so sorry I have to go take care of my kid but I wanted to say thank you all this has been amazing Lord Situa amazing to meet you and um guys miles always great to speak with you and um hope to see some of you soon we're going to have an awesome event at the Oslo freedom forum in Miami in October we're going to be onboarding people into Bitcoin uh so I can't wait for that and we'll do more soon amazing miles we're excited about it I don't even know about it but I'll I might. Oh, there's an invite in your inbox. I just decided to be there.

Awesome. All right. You might see you there. Real pleasure. Thanks for teaching us about Tonga and we'll talk soon. Thanks, thanks, Alex. Later, man. Cool.

Does anybody? Yeah, go ahead. Quick plus one to moon. Shout out to Dario. He's Argentinian. And it's really felt like the U.S. of Lightning has taken a big step forward this year and it couldn't have come at a better time. So I just big thank you to all the devs out there.

I mean, we've come a long way from when we're doing the lightning torch and people are kind of like opening up their first channels. And you're like, what do you mean? Like, how does this work? Like, is this thing ever going to work? And so a lot of the highly technical stuff going on behind the scenes that Moon is doing that to make that one unified wallet to make it a seamless onboarding experience where I fund the wallet on chain and before that's even.

confirmed, I can fulfill a lightning invoice. It's the first time for me, it was like an aha moment where it clicked and it felt like this technology has matured a lot. And this can go mainstream. And I can have this awesome user experience while maintaining custody of my private keys without giving any KYC. And so I'm just a huge, huge fan of Moon.

And also all the other lightning wall developers out there pushing the space forward. We have a comment. Somebody's holding your feet to the fire. Cashab going lightning. Yeah, we'll have lightning for you. Okay, beautiful. I love it.

Very to the point. Yes, absolutely. No beating around the bush there. Yeah. Yeah. Any last thoughts in and around the idea of education for Bitcoin newcomers, ways to approach it, just feelings around what you guys have experienced? Well, on the point of Miles brought up Chris Cryptobastato and their kind of gang that's translating stuff, they're also doing audio.

I've been talking with them as well. And it looks like we're going to get some, we're going to get L Bitcoin Audible for at least a lot of the major pieces. And hopefully as much as I can contribute to it. Luckily, Bitcoin Audible is really starting to bring in capital. and I've absolutely loved it. I can just turn around and just throw this to expand the whole thing. And I hope to be able to put a lot of a lot of devote a lot of capital to this. Because I wanted to be as widely available as possible.

And unfortunately, it's, well, fortunately or unfortunately, it's going to be a whole lot quicker to have someone who already speaks a language do it faster than me learning a new language because I only speak the one and not even all that great. But I love that Moon is getting a lot of attention now, because Moon is one that I felt like flew under the radar for quite a while. The major lightning wallets that, and I think this is the standard, essentially,

with lightning wallets going forward, the ones that don't treat Bitcoin and Lightning as ubiquitous, I think are already a level below what should be the new standard. And like right now, Breeze, Phoenix, and Moon are essentially my top wallets. And it's because basically you can talk both of both on chain and off chain, so to speak, as one, as one language. And maybe, maybe since we're about to get to the reason I'm bullish, I'll, I'll save.

I'll save that for just a second. But moon is, moon is amazing. My first onboarding wasn't even to send a Bitcoin transaction. I sent a lightning transaction. And behind the scenes, it automatically opened up a channel and then deposited that into my channel. And then I could immediately send it somewhere else. And just for the fun of it, I sent it from my not my BTC pay to moon. I think I'll say like 100,000 sats.

And then I sent it straight to strike. And I lost damn near nothing. And then it was dollars. And the fact that that essentially these these applications are available. anywhere in the world. You know, this is, this has no clue and could not care less, which on what side of what border I'm on. I think like, like that is why I'm bullish. And if we're about to move into that, you know. Yeah, man, take it, take it. Let's let's just move into your topic. All right. So my, my reason why I'm bullish is, you know, it's only, you know, 0.1%

0.05% whatever the hell it is of the world population right now and the infrastructure. But the implication of being on a single monetary base that has no borders that can be run over a satellite that can be run over the cheapest of smartphones is, it literally keeps me up at night thinking about how much things can change and how quickly. and you talk about like situations like, Fisitia, like, Tonga, like in 40% remittances. You're talking about like GDP changes to the tune of a quarter or a half. I mean, imagine if the United States could say, oh, our GDP went up by 40% this year.

Like, like the, the amount of, the amount of like life changing capital that is. you can't you can't fucking put you can't put a price tag on that like that's real fucking change this isn't another bandaid for 70 years of bullshit bandades this is a real solution this is something real and once we move to it you don't undo it you don't undo it and when developing nations god i fucking hope every developing nation gets on this while the world bank and the IMF with a giant fucking stick up their ass says, oh, it's too untransparent and we hate volcanoes and whatever the fuck complaint they have.

I hope they all do it. And I hope they put a middle finger in their fucking face for not providing any sort of a solution or any real help for so long. God, you can't weigh. You cannot weigh how big of a difference this could make in such a short time. I don't know. That's just got me bullish.

I love it. I had to bring up the preach banner while you were going there. I saw that. But the beautiful thing too is it goes to, it doesn't like go through the government to the people.

It goes to the people. Directly to them. Directly to them. And it's, it's fortunately, it's to the people that need it the most. Exactly.

Anyone who could possibly benefit it to see the people that need it the most. And someone drew, made the analogy, so that in U.S. terms you'd understand, if someone said tomorrow, no more federal income tax, how would that make you do? That's equivalent. Yeah. It's paradigm changing. Yeah. Imagine, imagine looking at your paycheck that you get every couple of weeks and you always see like X amount chopped off.

And this is effectively what people see when they receive remittances. And then all that just disappears. I can't. It'd be crazy. I can't imagine. I can't imagine. You know, I got like six debit cards and like four bank accounts. Like I don't think about that and just trying to put myself in that position.

like the just just the sheer percentages the sheer like stuff that like things that won't bleed out of what I would do every single day you know it's it's like it's like having to constantly bandage a wound and then just one day it heals you know I just I don't know we get some of the best comments here somebody somebody in the comments as someone as someone from a shithole country I truly understand what Guy Swan is saying. Resonates, man, I guess. It's, yeah, it's wild to think how directly this can affect people. And you're, you were alluding to some of the comments from the World Bank. Basically, there was, they came out the other day and said that they would not assist in El Salvador's implementation of Bitcoin because El Salvador had asked them for some assistance in, and just kind of getting the infrastructure set up to kind of like have the dog. and Bitcoin work at like side by side.

And they cited, of course, environmental concerns and transparency concerns, which is absolutely hilarious. I mean, I know we're not big into even trying to justify the mix here necessarily of energy, but like is the energy used worth it? is the better context to put it in. But if you dive down the renewables route, we're above and beyond the majority of every other industry out there. Essentially, in comparison to any industry, like, it's the highest margin.

It's the highest margin just because of the nature of looking for the cheapest energy source, which is going to be wasted energy, which is going to be naturally, mostly renewables. It's going to be mostly hydro. They had the senator out yesterday. I forget her name. It's nearly quadrupled. So 40% of Bitcoin mining in renewables and 12% of the national US grid.

So yeah, nearly quadrupled. It's funny. It's literally like analogous to having like a race to see who's the fastest person in the world. And then you have the winner, literally the fastest person in the world go up on stage. and then you berate them for a couple hours and make them apologize about not being fast enough. Yes, 100% that. And Miles, you're with Cash App, you guys are and Square Crypto, you guys are kind of attacking that side of it, right? What is it that you guys are kind of driving initiatives to do and has,

like in the face of what we all view as kind of energy fud around this stuff, given the actual data of what's being used in comparison to the status quo, like are you guys seeing any uptake on, oh, it's already at this level and you're trying to move the needle further? Like, what's the response been? Yeah, I'm going to be careful. not careful, but on this topic, there's a lot of people that I think that work at technology companies and throughout Silicon Valley that are very passionate about climate change.

And they believe that it's a really important issue. And because they haven't had enough time to spend and learn about Bitcoin, many people have like a visceral reaction to it. And so even as like a strong pro-bitcoin company, and we're not the company, like there's still subgroups within the company and people with strong opinions this direction and strong opinions in that direction.

What we have done is we put out a white paper the day before Earth Egg entitled, Bitcoin is key to an abundant clean energy future, which really took the narrative and spun it completely around. But I believe that it's a, it's a completely true statement. And in many ways, Bitcoin will be the thing that kicks off, like moving to 100% renewable energy grid, incentivized because it's a unique fire of energy of last resort and that it incentivizes green energy usage.

So I think we have math and I think we have economics working in our favor. I think that with this, if we are able to, I agree with everything that was said. It's like, Bitcoin's leading the charge here way more than any other industry. And I think it doesn't make a lot of sense to attack Bitcoin in this way. But like you, I personally don't. But it kind of comes down to your question earlier. Like, do you think Bitcoin is valuable or do you not think it's valuable? And if you don't understand Bitcoin yet, this would seem like energy that's being used for something that you think is stupid.

And so I think alongside the clean energy mix education we have to do, more and more people over time will learn why Bitcoin is valuable for economic empowerment for securing fundamental rights for people all around the world. And so we're trying to do our best through education through this white paper, which I think is really, really strong in terms of educating people that might not understand how Bitcoin mining works or how it does incentivize renewable energy, how it picks up stranded energy around the world and also helps you deploy renewable energies at an accelerating rate to ultimately kind of globally rebalance this energy. grid and move it closer to full-time renewables. Personally, I think there's other things you can do too. I'm kind of a nuclear guy, but if going, hey, we should, going that far in our first white paper would probably be a step too far. So I think in convincing people, I think it makes sense to speak in their language and show how this can be good for both of our goals in the long run.

And so, as I mentioned, we're looking to incentivize or fund clean energy mining projects. We're doing one with Blockstream that'll be fully renewable. It'll be open source where you can follow the metrics online at all times to prove out this thesis that we put together alongside Arc Invest. Shout out to Yassin over there who did the open source model, but we believe it's a really strong thesis. And we look forward to that playing out in the long run. and also putting money towards new innovative ways of deploying Bitcoin miners on renewable energy sources, such as geothermal in Tonga. We would love to do that. So let's chat later.

Shout out to that paper. And it's also in audio. That project in general is amazing. One of the things that often is strange to us in the South Pacific because we've had the least, we have had zero carbon footprint over the centuries, but we are hit the worst by climate change. So two countries in the South Pacific will be underwater by 2035. But seeing armchair environmentalists say it's because of Bitcoin mining, So those of us who have skin in the game, we follow the science and we follow the math and the economics.

And Bitcoin mining is not it. So if some technology can free up 700 billion from the developing world and it's equivalent to how much you use just not at full blast, just your usual air conditioning to keep your room cool throughout the year. That's, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but the global use of just sort of sedentary air conditioning by residential houses would exceed the amounts of carbon produced by Bitcoin mining. So to change the life of two-thirds of the planet and it only costing you air conditioning in the developed world, that's a no-brainer. I think it's even worse. We can just eliminate Christmas lights every year. And that's more energy.

I think air conditioning is like orders of magnitude higher. So for those of us, we're big. in the game, we understand the math and the economics and it is not Bitcoin mining. It is, we'll put it this way, a Fiat system that has a military industrial complex built and designed to do nothing but kill human beings to protect it is a little bit more threatening to us than Bitcoin mining. Yeah. Du J. Excellent. Gouche. Wow. Yeah.

gentlemen I'm going to start rounding it out here I'm conscious of time we're around the hour and 25 minute mark and I do appreciate all of your time so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go down the line really quick get any final thoughts from anybody and at the same time as you're offering your final thoughts let people know once again where they can find you so Lord Fisitua I know you're just talking but I'm going to pass it to you first any final thoughts you have about anything we talked about today and where people can find you. Yeah, I just want to weigh in my support for Moon also.

That was my first exposure to lightning, completely seamless on the back end. Love it. Yeah, as you said, you don't even have to know what format you're sending or receiving you. It's completely seamless. So can't big up their devs that are. and yeah just back to the fact that you can have bitcoin as the network and bitcoin as the asset you can do it store of value medium of exchange or medium exchange store of value

and it still is life changing either way you flip it i cannot help but be bullish on that And I'm just Lord Fusitua, every platform is just L-O-R-D, F-U-S-I-A. And it's been an absolute privilege and an honor to be with these gentlemen and yourself, Ben, on the stage today. Well, thanks for being here, man. I loved it. Let's toss it down the line to Mr. Guy Swan. Any final thoughts? And where can people find you?

Yeah, just a final thought. I got to give props, Lord Visitua. For, I mean, your perspective more than, you know, anything, but I don't think I've ever had the honor of having someone who was so devoted to this that they ended up logging in from a hospital bed. And that just props, props to the whole stack, the whole mountain of props to you for that. And, but as far as, you.

Yeah, man. Yeah, man. But as far as me, I'm just the guy Swan on Twitter. And of course, the show's Bitcoin Audible. So, yeah, check it out. Awesome. And Miles, that leaves it with you. Any final thoughts? And where can people find you? I just think it's so cool this day and age we live in where we can hop on with a politician. Like you, Lord, DeSitua, thanks so much. I look back on the Twitter spaces where Naid Bukkele hopped on. And like we just, we live in such a cool era where passionate individuals like us can make direct change by interacting with these people on the internet. You see it with Central American and other areas, politicians going laser eyes. And so I think we need to like do our best to keep moving forward this mission through education, through passion and through leading the way by example.

And if I have any parting words, I would just say to everybody, never forget, the mission is more important than the money. I think everybody here knows that. But as this goes more mainstream and as the price keeps going up, it's important to remember why we're here. And I think El Salvador is the perfect example. And I'm so glad that it's reinvigorated so many in the community and around the world. Awesome. I'm at Miles Stewart on Twitter. Great.

And I do have everybody's Twitter profile in the show notes below. So be sure to check it out. But gentlemen, I will say thank you all for being here and shout out to Alex Gladstein for joining us for the first hour and a bit as well. Awesome conversation. Lots of fun. And this is always the best part of my Friday. So gentlemen, I thank you very much. I am going to cut your audio and video now as I do a little outro here.

But thank you all for being here. Thank you, Ben. Absolute legend. Thank you, brother. Cheers. So everybody, what do you think of that? You like that conversation? I hope you did.

Lots of people in the comments, lots of people sharing this around. Thank you so much for being here. As always, please do hit, like, subscribe, and share. All of those things help the show just so much. And they help get this content in front of more people. Of course, you can hit up any of the previously mentioned sponsors in the show notes down below. And if you really liked what you saw it, you can always drop me. a Bitcoin Lightning Network tip at my Strike page.

I'm on strike now, as I was talking about, strike.me slash BTC sessions. And again, like just a cool little easy to use. And this is the same as in the app. You can just like do a request and then it pops up a lightning invoice. And it turns, it basically gets sent and shows up as a dollar balance, which can then be sent out to any Bitcoin Lightning

wallet or Bitcoin on chain wallet. It's crazy. So I'm super bullish and excited on some of the tutorials I'm going to get to put together. But again, everybody, thank you so much for being here. Wherever you are, have a wonderful day or evening. And I will see you guys next time for your daily session.