BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Bitcoin Meme Hub, Jan Capek, Bitcoin Mechanic, Max Hillebrand ep195

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

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Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's going on everybody? Welcome to this show. I hope you're having a good week. I am. I have continued to travel throughout Greece. I am currently on the island of Naxos after a brief stopover in Micanos. So continuing on in my adventure, I've got an awesome panel for you guys today. Be sure to smash that like button, give this a share and subscribe if you haven't already. All those things really help the show. As always, this is Why Are We Bullish. I'm Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we bring in our panel, of course, shout out to sponsors of the show, leaden.com, where you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services. Of course, they have their Bitcoin back loans,

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when it comes to fire damage, water damage, or just accidentally discarding the thing. I've heard horror stories. Give yourself some peace of mind. Get a bill fottle. And now, another of my rambling, Let's get into the show. Let's bring in our panel. All right, gentlemen, welcome, welcome to the show. Very excited to have you all for why are we bullish. All first time guests, I'm so excited to have you all. I'm going to go down the line and get you guys to do a little self-intro,

who you are, what you do. And then we'll get rolling here. So Mr. Bitcoin Mechanic, do you want to give yourself? a little intro and let people know what you do. Yeah, for sure, man. So I'm an old school bit coiner. I've been around for about 10 years now. I've been obsessed.

I discovered it 10 years ago. I went full, obsessed nine years ago, I'd say. I lurked in the space pretty much the entire time, but apart from the fork wars where I was, I've got the scars to show what a painful year 2017 was. but not much right now I'm working for Start 9 who are a company that make not just a full node

but some other bits and pieces a whole self-sovereign suite of digital applications that you can use to get rid of not just rely on third parties for things like your Bitcoin transactions but or lightning channel management or anything like that but also social networking and file storage and password management all that stuff. So we're trying to see if we can expand the whole idea of self-sovereignty

from money, which is Bitcoin, to all the other things we do online as well and see if we can get it to translate. Awesome. That's exciting. I really want to get my hands on Stur9 and start playing with it. That's on the agenda for when I get home and I have my base back. So I'll reach out. We'll talk, my friend. Yeah, we should do a video on it. set one up together. It's called an embassy when you have the actual pie in your hand. There's a lot of similar projects in the space. But anyway, I'll let other people start introing themselves before I waffle on about that. No worries. Awesome. Mr. Bitcoin meme hub, a long time fan. Glad to have you on. Can you give yourself a little intro, let people know

what you do? Sure. I'm just a shit poster on Twitter, basically. just kind of like spreading the gospel because kind of like you know there's a saying a picture is worse a thousand words so that's that's what I do more or less I have a proper job as well I work in a big advertising company but like kind of Bitcoin is my hobby and kind of it got into a passion where I'm I'm ready to quit my job and just kind of full time jump into Bitcoin to help Bitcoin because I think there's a lot of kind of like spaces and kind of like the advertising and kind of like making it more accessible to users or the general public in itself. And yeah, I'm just so passionate about it. Awesome, man.

Well, I'm glad to have you. And I'm sure people watching will be familiar with the shit posting. I'm sure we'll have a few clubs in the chat. Max, take it away. Let people know who you are, what you do. Well, thanks very much, Ben, for the invite. I really love talking about Bitcoin. That's what I do for most of my time, because I'm an economist by trade and one of the

praxeological tradition of Austrian economics. So that means that logical reasoning and thinking and verbal deductive arguments. I find very fascinating. And of course, the podcasting space is exactly the place to do that. But I don't only talk, although that's the most of it. I also like to contribute to free software projects. but since I'm a noob and cannot code, well, again, most of my contributions are right talking. So that's why I have such a good microphone, you see.

But other than that, I love talking about how individuals can protect their property rights and use the free software tools at their disposal. That's just vitally important in this day and age and in these crazy times. Awesome, dude. Well, I am very humbled and excited to have you on because I've watched. and listen to you for quite some time. Let's toss it down the line. Jan, welcome to the show.

Let people know who you are, what you do. All right. Thanks for having me in the show. So my name is Jan. We are the guys behind Slash Pool. I've been around since 2013, and essentially we have started brains, and at that time, Slash basically was tired of running the pool.

So we made it into a professional project, running it through a company. We have been doing it for the past eight years. In the past year, we have acquired the remaining one-third of the pool share. So essentially now the company, Brains is the owning company of the project. We have yet another project that's called Brains OS. We started as a firmware for mining machines and miners originally T-1s. We have some open source parts, and we're working on adding new hardware lately.

The reason why we thought it would be a good idea to do this is that, you know, people don't talk about decentralization in terms of like, you know, where the hash rate physically is. Now it has moved a lot. But when you look at it, a lot of hash rate or the machines that can produce the hash rate are coming from China. And we thought it's a good idea to have some counterbalance to the original, you know, factory firmwares. And we thought that that could be. a good business opportunity. So that's what we do. And yeah, the pool itself is a running project with the new features. We just recently launched the V4, which has a complete, you know, facelift, web overhaul and many new features. So that's what you do. I mean, okay, I'm not getting into the details while we're bullish yet. Does it have the S-19 yet? Which one? Does it have the Ant Minor S-19? It's coming out in September. So we're testing it.

So almost there. Nice. It's a great project, man. Thank you. Awesome. Well, I'm excited to have you, Jan. I'm glad to have all of you guys on the show. We're going to get rolling.

Anybody that is unfamiliar with why are we bullish, very simple. We go by the three R's. Basically, somebody gives a reason, why are they, why they're feeling bullish. We all riff on the reason together, and then we rotate to the next person. So really simple. I'm going to get us started. I'm bullish this week because I've been reading when money dies.

And it's a hell of a book. If you're unfamiliar with it, basically documents the delve into hyperinflation in Weimar, Germany through the early 1920. and it is a harrowing read. I'm not fully finished yet, but there was something that that stuck out to me today when I was reading. And I'll read the quote here. And it has to do with the velocity of money. And I'll give a reason as to why this may be bullish. But here's, Here's the quote here. It said, anyone receiving money for goods quickly converted it back into other goods and the money never stopped moving, doing the work of 10 times the amount of moving at 10th as fast. So what they're getting at is the velocity of money, the speed at which is changing hands, was very, very quick. People were exchanging it back and forth for goods very quick. faster than would have happened under normal circumstances, meaning that the money was working

much more quickly facilitating much more trade than typically would have been facilitated because of that hyperinflation. And the reason that I'm so bullish on that quote is the fact that in the face of a money whose velocity is naturally orders of magnitude quicker, than the fiat money we have right now, Bitcoin continues to appreciate it and value because people value it so much. And I hadn't really delve into that concept before, the velocity of money in terms of it being kind of a downward pressure on the purchasing power of money. But I like the idea that, again, in the face of not only the basler of Bitcoin, have it. a velocity that is much quicker than our central bank and, you know, commercial bank

clearance systems. But lightning on top of that, facilitating effectively instant commerce at tiny, tiny fees, in spite of that, it continues to accrue value because we're so, so early. and because of, again, it's limited issuance. And so it was just, I guess, an angle I hadn't really appreciated before, and that kind of got me excited of how resilient Bitcoin is and again, how early we are in the adoption of Bitcoin, I suppose. So anyways, I'm going to open it up.

first of all, if anybody's read when money dies and you have any thoughts on it, I'd love to hear your thoughts, but if anybody wants to chat about the velocity of money, anything in that realm, feel free to chime in. So has anybody here actually read when money dies? Yeah, it's a phenomenal book. And in fact, they handed out for free at the Mises University and the Mises Institute in Auburn, in Alabama. So Pierce go there to the library. It's really worth checking out. And the book is phenomenal as it really shows in an applied kind of scenario, the inevitable use case or consequences of increasing

the money supply. For whatever reason or whatever justification in this case, it was war and the repayment of war debts. As soon as the money supply increases, that means that those who receive the newly created money first gain at the expense of those who receive newly printed money, later. And that means not only in the percentage of their holdings compared to the money supply, so to say, purchasing power of their units held, that's only the first thing. But the other is actually that as soon as those people understand that there's new money in the economy being printed, and as soon as those areas of the economy that receive that money first, then the entrepreneurs tend to adjust the prices, right? As supply, sorry, as demand increases,

because of the newly printed money, the prices tend to go up. And here also, those who receive the newly printed money adjust their prices much earlier than those who receive newly printed money later. And actually, that price adjustment is the core of the Kantion effect, by the way. And it is just scary to see how we're obviously making the same mistakes again, a hundred years later with this new regime of the Fiat standard that, well, Bitcoin is here to fix. right that's why i'm at least every bullish it's it's interesting how uh in the book uh they talk about how people they they didn't make the connection that the value of the their marks were going down

but rather they assumed that everything was becoming more expensive and they they placed the blame on the merchants that were just trying to you know that have some some degree of self-preservation And they also placed the blame on, at least for a while, on other countries whose value of their dollars or pounds were retaining their value in relation to the mark. So they blamed, they would say, oh, the dollar went up again instead of, oh, the mark went down again. Because in their kind of microcosm of the world economy, to them, everything else was going up. they couldn't fathom the idea that their money was going down. It was really interesting. And if anybody wants to jump in as well, feel free to.

When I was like six years old, my parents had a, or we still have it, a house, a small cottage in the mountains. And when you bought it, it was actually an old house with, you know, all these relics from the beginning of the century. And what I actually discovered, there was like a small envelope. When I opened it, there were, there were like the German marks, but these were already the million, you know, the million, you know, banknotes. And at that time, I was like, wow, this is a lot of money. And then I had this discussion with my dad explaining me that, well, actually, this was not worth even, like, you know, you should, you should put it into a stove. You know, they used it for heating because you couldn't buy a bread with that. recently I'm kind of afraid that you just exhausted my reasoning as well with this but let's let's wait

with them back in 2019 I got the purse made from the Venezuelan bolivars it was being sold at some conference and I even bought a small backpack for my daughter so this is really a topic that not too many people realize and I think we are in our own bubble as Bitcoin that we do watch for all these things and we're like seeing I don't think we're seeing like Bitcoin appreciation but this is the depreciation of all the fiat paper, you know, toy money.

Yeah. That's the problem. And then I think Max already hit a few points basically saying that the merchants are greedy and they're like increasing the prices but the problem is that the merchants also have inputs they have to pay whatever transportation for the goods they have to buy the raw materials

if they're actually manufacturing and directly selling, you know, and it all adds up. And I actually had a talk with a friend of mine who has a big machining shop, and he produces like parts and thousands of pieces on CNC lights. And he said, wow, the iron material, which used to be like the cheapest material being used, went up 100% in last month. And when you look at the development of iron ore, now it dropped actually at the end of July. but this is a strong signal that something is already going on and it will be projected into, you know, the economy eventually because these are the, you know, the initial parts of the whole economical chain, the people who are actually manufacturing something. And at the end, you have the merchants selling you your Air Force or whatever. So we are going to see something interesting in a couple of months or years. So I'm kind of scared of that. It also speaks to this focus on the velocity of money being somehow a very relevant metric,

if not the most important metric to most people. It's the classic mistake that your B-Cashers make, your big blockers make. It's focusing on money's utility mainly, primarily being a medium of exchange, which is the most trivial use case for money. And they're 10 a penny. There's millions of them. It doesn't mean anything. And it's the new response to, oh, I'm in Bitcoin and they go, well, where can I spend it?

And that's not the point. If your money is a good store of value, it's a vast, it's a vast, pales into insignificance, how useful it is as a medium of exchange, right? The store of value is the time-honored problem of humanity. Mediums of exchange are everywhere. So velocity is just, it's kind of related to that, I would say. And my response is always, who cares? We can do medium of exchanges and afterthought. Like, we'll experiment with lightning and stuff like that. We'll figure it out. You know, just to hammer down on this one point because it's interesting. And I don't argue that only focusing on exchanging, it doesn't display the whole amount of what the money does. But in the Austrian tradition and when money dies is written in there as well, Carl Menger describes money as the only defining characteristic is a medium of exchange. So that it is not a consumption good, meaning you don't eat it and consume it. And it's not a production good. so you don't use it to build more consumption goods. And because it's neither a consumption good nor a production good, right?

The only reason why you might want to hold it is as a medium of exchange, so to in the future buy a consumption or a production good. And then the store of value aspect is just that aspect that you don't make that investment or consumption decision right now, but you postpone it into the uncertain future. So the store of value aspect is inherently something with the, that can only be done with a medium of exchange, so to say, at least roughly. Or in the Austrian tradition, the reasoning to talk about money always starts with a medium of exchange. And it's your, yeah, and so you're basically trying to, like you're saying, push that,

push those decisions, that uncertainty into the future so that you're preserving that medium of exchange. and the amount of your time, labor, good services that you've exchanged for that medium, that certainty that you will be paid in kind effectively. Well, the certainty that because this specific good, the scarce resource, is the most liquid in the market, meaning that any entrepreneur on the market is willing to provide any good or any service for an adequate amount of that money in exchange. And if we have a large network effect, and if that can be reasonably assumed to be the case in the future, then Bitcoin becomes a useful store of value because, you know, I don't need to make that investment decision now. I can wait to in the future talk with an entrepreneur to solve any problem that might come up.

It's interesting because we've got this dichotomy right now where a lot of us are living in worlds where our paychecks are paid in the poor store of value, but the most common. commonly use medium of exchange and we now have access to an excellent store value, which would be a good medium of exchange if there weren't such bad money being freely taken and accepted everywhere. But it's in everybody's best interest to now that those roles are temporarily segregated to accept and hold the sound money. the store of value and then to to dump or pay with the the medium the the most used medium of exchange at least for the time being until that poorly that that poor store of value

ceases to become or ceases to be a medium of exchange because people don't accept it anymore meme up how about you uh how are you feeling about uh anything that's said here in regards to um I guess we started with, with, you know, Weimar velocity of money, but we kind of went down a rabbit hole of just general inflation in terms of what we've seen in the past where we're at now. I don't know. Any thoughts that you have on it?

I think I kind of agree with you, but, you know, I think kind of like, yeah, it's different, right? Kind of Weimar Republic or, like, Zimbabwe or, wherever we are, right? I think there's very edge cases on how inflation kind of goes. I think kind of like when it comes to the US or the Eurozone, kind of like inflation is still kind of okay.

It's scary. It's getting to a point where it's getting scary because kind of like it is higher than, then, yeah, we kind of know. But I think kind of like it's still in a balance where it's okay. but okay-ish, right? Because kind of like a lot of the stuff, how we used to measure inflation and how we're measuring it right now,

it's kind of like, it's very different. Yeah, they change the metrics all the time, right? They change the metrics all the time, just kind of to fit the narrative in the end of today. But, yeah, I haven't read the book, kind of that you, kind of like, how money dies, kind of that you kind of said. So it's like kind of, I'm reluctant to kind of give a proper answer to that one because

kind of I'm just not in the know or educated enough for kind of saying that one. Sorry. No worries, no worries. Yeah. And it's, it's, yeah, I mean, it is interesting because comparatively to when it was happening in Weimar, you had currencies that by contrast were much more stable. you know, nowadays, it's kind of a race to the bottom for everybody. And you also have the deflationary effects of technology,

which are greatly reducing the costs of certain goods. And then you also have things like shrinkflation. You have ways of making products that are inferior in quality. and the especially when it comes to food, the push for for substitutions of things that people would normally have consumed, a push for, you know, people not to eat meat and everything. But everybody knows if you go out and you try to buy steak, it's more expensive. It's definitely more expensive right now. So yeah, I think I think part of it can be masked.

It hasn't obviously reached Weimar levels. but yeah, it can be a slippery slope. So anyways, I guess I'll round out this topic. Thank you guys for your thoughts on it, by the way. I'm still working my way through the book, but I hope to have it finished in the next week or so. But let's move on to our next reason for being bullish, and I'm going to move down the line,

and we'll toss it to Bitcoin Mechanic. So, dude, let people know, fill us in. What has you feeling bullish this week? All right, so why am I bullish? We all know the adage, good times, create weak men, weak men, create hard times, hard times, create strong men. And we're in that latter period there. I'm super happy about that. And this is the thing, I might rant a lot and seem pretty pissed off about the state of things at the moment and the authoritarianism that's going on.

But in the end, I'm actually grateful for it. Just like I'm grateful when China bans Bitcoin mining or when Mount Cox's, collapses or any of these things that prove to serve how, serve to prove how anti-fragile Bitcoin really is and ultimately just strengthen Bitcoin. And I see the same thing happening with humanity at the moment, which is, finally, it's time to see who's actually got some grit and who's got some guts and who can stand up to what's going on. And it's great to see people getting up off the sofa, stop watching Netflix, and actually

go out and fight and protest in the streets. And it warms my heart when I see the French and the Australian. is actually going for it and go, that's it. We're not going to stand for this anymore. This is too. But when I see it, I just know the fact that we reach for tools, right? And I believe strongly that the reason Australians are subjected to what they're subjected to and Texans aren't is specifically because of gun ownership.

And guns are a tool of self-sovereignty. Bitcoin is another tool of self-sovereignty, and it's something people are going to be reaching for. And it exists. And people, when you put them under pressure like this, they show you what they're made of. And I'm glad that Bitcoin is there for them. And I know that they're going to use it because it's so perfectly designed to undermine the power of the state. And we haven't lived in this is the most necessary time for a tool like that. And then to top it all off, to be more general about it where I'm bullish, have you seen the alternatives?

I mean, if they wanted to really undermine Bitcoin, rather than attack Bitcoin, which ultimately just helps us, or embrace it, which maybe does create some problems for us that are a little nuance to understand, if they just stopped printing money and being generally ridiculous with the approaches that are taken to the economy, or, you know, allowed you to make large transfers using your bank again without having to prove what it is you're using the money for or, you know, waiting days unnecessarily, all that stuff, if they stopped doing things. things like that, then maybe it would be harder to justify Bitcoin to people, but they just don't do it. They keep on being absolutely ridiculous of what they're doing. So that's Fiat as an alternative.

And what else do you have? Precious metals and shit coins, please, there's just nothing else out there. So Bitcoin is just absolutely, I mean, if you're not bullish on Bitcoin, I just, I want to know where it went wrong. What's up with your perspective there? So yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at. I love that. That was an excellent rant, my friend. Yeah, and I echo that sentiment. It's, it's, it's this beautiful tool that tips the scales. And again, to tap on to another great book, a sovereign individual. It, it changes the balance of the incentives behind violence.

It's like a nonviolent tool to basically undermine, like you said, everything that's wrong with the world or could be wrong with the world. or could be wrong with the world currently. It's a peaceful opt-out, and I'm so glad we have it. But I don't want to take up too much time on behalf of the rest of the panel. So does anybody else have thoughts on this topic as Bitcoin is a tool of sovereignty and what we're seeing in the world right now? I guess currently it's the only tool that we have to take this whole system apart.

It's going to take years, but we may not succeed, but I would at least like to live and eventually die with the thought that I at least tried. So it just, there's no alternative, like you said. And any moment that somebody bans, Bitcoin or whatever, mining, you mentioned, just makes it stronger. And you just stole my words with the anti-fragility. It's the thing.

Like people, typically you see very, you know, historical actions and Twitter like, oh, China did this and that. Who cares? It doesn't matter. I mean, if Bitcoin is going to fail because of something like this is good, it's going to do it now, then we would all stop wasting our time, right? Yeah. So the sooner it fails, the better.

Yeah, I agree. And also. Yeah, I agree. And not only it's, I'd go further. It's not that it doesn't matter if China ban mining is that it helps because you're in a fragile state if so much hashing is going on. China that no one thinks that's a good thing or a sustainable situation. And then the minute they ban it, I'm like, finally, that's a relief. And the price tanks goes down 50%. I'm like, none of the market

seems to understand that this is a good thing. It's not just something Bitcoin can survive. It's actually really helpful when states attack Bitcoin. I mean, look at the liquidity on BISC. BISC should be the main way people buy and sell Bitcoin. They shouldn't have to subject themselves to KYC. And the only reason people do is because they're kind of lazy and want to use Bitcoin in convenient ways. But you have to upload a picture of your passport and a recent utility bill to Coinbase or Binance or, you know, Gemini or any of these. That doesn't help Bitcoin really when people do that. And that's why the legality and the continued friendly relationship between Bitcoin and the state makes me uncomfortable. And I appreciate it when they make it illegal and you get Nigeria, which is we made Bitcoin.

Bitcoin illegal, the price shot up 30% immediately. All the peer-to-peer exchanges thrived everyone. They've got something like $2 or $3 billion has been slashed off the deficit. Sorry, the, what do you call it? The market. Permittance. Yeah, exactly. So much money has suddenly just moved into Bitcoin.

And even the Nigerian parliament or Senate maybe, I don't remember exactly. We're like, we just helped Bitcoin a lot when we made it illegal. so we should probably not do that anymore. So it's like occasionally they do figure it out. But what's weird to me is when Bitcoin is don't figure it out. And they're saying, call your senator. And I'm like, what are you going to call your senator for? Like, you don't need friendly politicians for Bitcoin to survive.

If you do, then I got news for you. They're not going to be friendly to it because like they don't like it. You know, they've figured out that it's an attack on the US dollar. It is. Like they're not going to just be, you're not going to vote for. Ron Ball and what's the name, Senator Lammis and all these people, that wouldn't even help if they did get into power. So it's a war. Let's fight the war.

Let's fight head on in an adversarial capacity, in my opinion. Let's not pretend to play ball with them and accept regulatory capture. I think that does more harm than good. Look, I think kind of like the interesting thing kind of like just building up on what mechanic kind of set is kind of like we moving into a world where central bank, digital currencies are a real thing, right? I live in a part of the world where, like, that's why I am leaving as well, this country right now that I'm in. Next year, a central bank,

does a currency will be the currency. So I am under complete financial surveillance, if I want to stay in that country. So I don't know. And I can kind of like, like, just look kind of like the state, Europe, Canada, wherever you are, everybody wants to build a central bank digital currency. So it's either kind of like either is going to be Bitcoin and freedom or we are going to live under a central bank controlled digital currency where, hey, you having the fifth beer

in a pop, at the fifth year is going to be texts like 50. versus the first year it's going to be taxed at 10%. So we don't know what a future is going to lead, but it's a fucking scary future. So I don't know, kind of like where that's going to lead

and how are they going to abuse the powers, but they have the complete financial surveillance, basically into kind of like putting us into a state where it's kind of like 1984 looks like,

Disneyland essentially it can be a lot worse and I think kind of like that's something that we should redefide for and I think that's why we're Bitcoin. I agree man I mean we've got freedom of association freedom of assembly the freedom to protest the freedom of speech you know given that it's all done online now over third parties big data platforms basically all of the freedoms that we need to enjoy to be prosperous have been eroded and destroyed but the free to transact using something like cash, that still exists and Bitcoin makes that persist. And that's huge. That's such a powerful thing, the freedom to actually exchange and Bitcoin maintaining that.

With central bank digital currencies, that's gone. Central bank digital currencies are basically a Fiat hard fork to clean up the technical debt left behind where there's still these awkward things like cash that people can use. And people can still kind of slip under the radar and do a transaction that, you know, the idea that you might walk into a store and buy some AA batteries without the government knowing about it keeps them awake at night that fat guy from you know the Bank of international settlements though you know the one yeah the new bullet sponge the final boss of the banking you know the the the robotnik of banks i'm going to call him like you know he's they they can't

handle it they don't want us to have any of that so i mean it's interesting to see what might happen because they kind of need cash to exist so that, you know, the bottom half of America can continue, like all the ghettos can continue drug dealing and the whole prison complex can remain intact. Like, I don't know what they think is going to happen to all that with CBDCs. They're going to have to deliberately just allow lots of illegal activity to happen with it anyway, otherwise America is in for a complete collapse. But aside from that, just the fact that these CBDCs are coming around, like, I don't know, like, I mean, what are we going to do with it?

we know how bad it's going to be right. No one doesn't. They can turn off a flick a switch and then suddenly you can't buy things anymore. You're done. Like, oh, I couldn't pay for my home insurance or my mortgage because I didn't get my 98th shot of Pfizer. So now I'm homeless, literally. The bank owned my house, which, by the way, I mean, I was speaking to Geiswan down at the Bitcoin Standard Conference. And he made the great point that when you borrow money to buy a house, the bank makes the money

out of thin air. And then if you don't pay your mortgage, the bank gets your house. So the bank effectively made themselves a house out of nothing. They just completely just printed a house for themselves. And it's such a scam. But anyway, I mean, that's a, the idea that this whole thing can just continue on the path has been going. Like, I mean, I don't have any hope for the world if we didn't have Bitcoin around. We need Bitcoin so much right now. But can you really imagine what would happen with these like CPDC is the final store like that's it they're going that's it now you can't spend money either but you know what I think kind of is the the scary thing is kind of like I know kind of like mechanic I think you're based in the states or kind of North

America and stuff like that but in Asia this is kind of like happening reality in the three five months it's happening it's around the corner this is fucking scary fucking shit Yeah, but it shows you what you're made of, hey. Like, I'm grateful for it. Like, honestly, can you imagine a Bitcoin where Mount Gawks didn't collapse? Gavin Andreessen didn't attack us. Roger Veer never, you know, became the fallen angel he did. Can you imagine if Bitcoin didn't go through any of these events?

That will be dreadfully boring. It would be boring. And also, like, when it has these events and survives them, really, like, on some psychological level, you need to witness Bitcoin resisting these cataclysmic events. to justify massive financial commitment. Because if Bitcoin didn't get, if Bitcoin didn't undergo these things, it would be anti-fragile in theory, right?

But you wouldn't really know or believe it. But I've seen Bitcoin withstand the most ruinous stuff and come out of it, absolutely fine. Literally the China ban being there, like 60% of the global hash rate kicked out of one country has to scatter all around the world. We shrugged it off in minutes. And the fact that you can see that stuff makes you,

like can you imagine anything else undergoing something like that. But the ACH system, the banking system or network in America, that went down for a day, right? And that was probably because someone, you know, someone didn't show up for work that day or something utterly trivial. Like, Bitcoin is just tough, man. We've seen it win battles. So are you going to put millions of dollars in something that doesn't just, it doesn't, it's not just designed to be tough, but you've seen it actually win battles. Are you going to put millions of dollars in that? I think it would be harder to do. And on the other hand, We're just getting started, right?

And I don't think that the serious attacks have actually been manifested yet. What do you think a more serious attack looks like? Well, you know, central banks like printing even more money to buy Bitcoin and to try to get the entire supply. You know, that's, I think, as custodianship of Bitcoin centralizes and is therefore also full notes who running merchants, verifying their transactions, reduces. then the rules of Bitcoin are no longer secure.

We're kind of close to that. Hey, you've got Kentucky subsidizing Bitcoin mining, which is kind of, kind of a way of the state buying Bitcoin with its own printed money. It's like you're about one hop away from that being a reality already, I think. Oh, and you know, this is actually super interesting

on the macro politics, because if any government subsidizes one miner, that is effectively a tax on all other miners, right? because miners is about being marginally more profitable than the other guy. So if someone else supports your competition, then you actually earn less. And so that's a tax. And this way, local governments subsidizing their local miners can actually tax international minor or mines in general.

Yeah, I agree. It's another attack. And it's why Michael Saylor's Bitcoin Mining Council is very, very misguided. And it's another example of why when you do something that looks like on the surface, it might help Bitcoin, it just creates problems. Can we ask Gian to that question? Because I guess he's kind of like the guru of mining, basically, here. You mean bribing the miners? I think it's actually good because, again, it proves that the thing is anti-fragile.

You can break it. So if you try doing that, then we'll see the effects in the network. Well, at some point, the bribing, or you can call it subsidizing or whatever, but I mean, I think white paper mentions it as a bribing. It would have to be executed at massive scale. But what mechanic mentioned about somebody didn't show up at work, I think of this, like, anytime I do a transaction after 5 p.m., I'll be like, fuck, this is not going to go through until next two days. you know and and like it it is so ridiculous well we typically buy testing testing machines for you know for mining because we do the firmware in china and like you know you find the machines and you just click and you paid for them in five seconds i mean we don't do lightning these are like

big amounts uh but it just happens if i was to push this amount of money a couple thousand dollars for one machine roughly through a banking system, I would get questioned, like, why I'm buying it? Is it legal to buy it? And in a week, maybe the money arrives. And at that time, I either don't have the goods or the price has changed already. So, I mean, like, anytime I touched the online banking and it's Friday, well, then I'm like, okay, I have to wait like two days. And the most laughable part is when they have maintenance. There's no maintenance for Bitcoin. Like how can a bank have a maintenance? I just want to transfer like any time I want.

They should have their systems like available and deploying them like in real time. Continuous deployment, it's called. I mean, there's nothing like this in Bitcoin. So yeah, I think the problem that we are seeing is that it's not just the governments, but banks as private entities are actually scared of this because it kind of like renders them obsolete unless they will turn the system. So,

ramming is good. Let's keep doing that. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I was going to, so in regards to the mining council, like, okay,

so, you know, I know that we're definitely not big on, on, uh, councils or, or, uh,

what was the, the Bitcoin Foundation or whatever the hell it was back in the day, with the Brock. but if okay so this mining council their whole thing is is basically like ESG trying to reduce emissions all that kind of stuff if they're not mining in the most efficient way possible aren't they effectively just like self-taxing they're they're they're giving up market share because they're they're effectively taken a hit by by

choosing not to mine in the most efficient way possible, which gives up, you know, limited Bitcoin that will be mined. And if somebody is able to mine it more efficiently, then, like, are they shooting themselves in the foot is what I'm getting at? And will it be enough of a shot for them to bleed out? I don't know. Thoughts? Yeah, and I want to hear you on this, man. Well, we had these discussions about the price of capital that's being put into Bitcoin. And it's kind of problematic in a way that sometimes you can create an incentive for a party to actually build a Bitcoin mine, that when you look at it from just pure Bitcoin mining perspective, is not efficient in terms of the amount of hours it's operating,

you know, different grid balancing programs and so on. But when you look at the whole project as a grid program, it turns out to be profitable. So the question is what you want. And I would be okay with this setup if there was not this subsidizing part. of making the capital actually cheap. If it was a fair competition

where you would have some super knowledge where to get this cheap capital in a legal way, I mean, not stealing or whatever, then it's fine. But I mean, this is a little bit twisting the market conditions between the miners. But at the same time, I just still think it's a good thing

because it's going to prove that eventually it should fail. Yeah. I mean, you cannot print the money indefinitely and keep subsidizing different projects, making the capital availability super cheap, you know. So I don't know. I mean, when you look at it, like when you focus just on this simple fact, it just makes people pissed off because it is not the right thing to do. But if you look at larger scale, it just doesn't scale.

It just works locally for some countries, some governments, some local, you know, counties and so on. But it doesn't scale. And at some point, you would be like massively bleeding by printing so much money that the inflation would just collapse everything. Because, I mean, you cannot build the mining operation out of thin air. It's not just the miners. I mean, you know, you need to source a lot of different things, hardware, buildouts, you know, electricity and all that kind of stuff. So I think it's going to sort itself out eventually, but it just needs some time. So how's this play out then?

Okay. So let's say this mining council goes forward, whoever's part of it, they get, they say, hey, we're mining green. They then get subsidies from the government to do so, meaning that they are now at least at par, maybe more. profitable than miners that are just going about it through like typical you know in other parts of the world where they just have to use the most efficient means so you're rewarding less efficient miners but that can only go so far so as to the point where the fiat that's being printed to subsidize set minors is no longer worth worth the subsidy that was originally being given And so what, the end game is the collapse of Fiat then solves the problem? Or what's the end game?

I really like that. I mean, I would say it is difficult to execute something like this in scale. And when you look at it just locally, it doesn't have the big impact. I mean, you can be pissed off as a miner in the other part of the world where you don't have such opportunity. but if you add all these things together, you would see it's just a fraction of the whole Bitcoin network. So it just doesn't matter. Yeah, and I do agree also with your point. I do agree that given that it's an attack vector, the mining council, that it's ultimately good for Bitcoin. I do agree with that. Of course, the only the reason I sort of get, I trip up on it is because people like

Michael Saylor, who are just fantastic champions for Bitcoin, see it as a good thing. And I'm like, whoa, that's like, it's okay if you like it. Ultimately, I'd like to see a scenario where these sort of unworkable, massive K.YC. AML mining pools that aren't the kind of weak spots, really. Let's be honest. Like, the mining to be strong has everyone with one ASIC in their house, like heating their water tank maybe or something. But even that is an economic externality we maybe don't want.

Everyone mining at home is great and it's hard to shut down. But running a miner is harder than running a node, right? Like running a node, you can basically do silently overtore. But running a miner that's got, it's a bit like growing cannabis illegally, right? You've got to deal with lots of consumption of electricity and lots of heat output. And it can be kind of hard to hide it. So that's one area that's just more obvious to attack, right? So I'm sure we can survive it.

And I would like the attack to come in the form of this like, this Greek gift of we're going to demonstrate the Tesla that we're mining with clean energy again. Yay, Elon will invest again. He will start, you know, buying, accepting Bitcoin for Teslas and all these things. Great. But like, let's be honest. First off, I agree with Francis Pullio. The correct response to the ESG people is cry harder. Like, it's my money. I'm going to use the electricity for what I want. I'm going to mine whether you like it or not. It's not, oh, look at us. we're so green and carbon neutral and please give us a subsidy or something like that. But I love the scenario.

You're talking about where they subsidize miners that are playing ball with the regulators and we get Mara pool kind of ridiculousness where they start censoring coin joint transactions or Iranian addresses or any of that stuff. I love it that they subsidize it with money that eventually just becomes worthless. So that seems hilarious to me. But I'd like to see the attack. I genuinely would. I just want people in the community to understand and see it for what it is.

It's an attack. It's not people trying to help Bitcoin. It needs to be viewed for what it is. And I'm sure Bitcoin will survive it. But it just, it kind of, it's weird to me when so many Bitcoiners are like, they see things that look like attacks as things that need to be stopped and that Bitcoin can't survive and things that look like help as being actually helpful. And I'm like, well, it's kind of upside down.

Like, you know that flow chart? Is this good for Bitcoin? No. this is good for Bitcoin. Is this good for Bitcoin? Yes, then this is good for Bitcoin. I think that's got one part wrong in it. I think if it's good for Bitcoin, it isn't.

And if it isn't good for Bitcoin, it is. I think that's generally how I see it. But ultimately, they both go down another layer to everything is good for Bitcoin. I agree. But the point is when we're helped and people are in, you know, I don't know, I'm going off on too much of a tangent here. I apologize. but I'm saying the current situation is so untenable in many ways,

but I would like for the community to see it as an attack when this mining council thing gets going, and governments start going, okay, there's good miners. We like them. They're using over X percent of renewable energy, so they get a tax break or something like that. And it's all voluntary until it isn't.

I would like people to just look at that as an attack rather than, you know, as a way, as a means of convincing short, people that are blocked by their shareholders from, you know, becoming orange pill because of concerns about energy and stuff like that. I 100% agree with you because kind of like, you know what? In the end of the day, it's kind of like there's so much kind of like shit that we're wasting energy on.

It's like kind of Christmas lights or your little garden lights that you kind of have running in the evening for no fucking reason because you're not going out, but they look kind of fucking nice. It's like there's so much energy waste. And I don't even think energy wastage is kind of like as a problem, right? Because kind of like what is human society? It's kind of like you wouldn't strive without energy in the end of the day. I think it's a very hypocritical argument.

Yeah, it's super dark to say to humans like you must justify your intention with this energy you're going to consume to an authority. That is insane. Like it doesn't, I'm going to consume it. You got the, you're the power plant. I'm the consumer. I'm going to buy the electricity, you're going to sell it to me. I'm not going to, it's just another form of authoritarian ridiculousness for me to say, oh, the thing I'm using it for is this.

And we all saw that, was it the alienware computer that can't be sold to people that live in California or Oregon or Hawaii or something like that? Because he uses too much electricity. Oh my God. Yeah, I remember that one. Like, dude, I'm going to use, like, it's, it comes down to the very, like, your ability to consume. It's like, where do you logically stop?

Philosophically, let's get ridiculous. You're breathing in and consuming oxygen and turning into carbon dioxide. Is it justified? Is your use of that oxygen justified? We want a written form, assigned thing every hour, justifying your consumption of this oxygen. It's philosophically the same thing, right? You get to consume stuff in your environment.

I saw you went for a run today, pretty inconsiderate of the environment, man. Yeah, exactly. Oh, dare you? You should feel bad. Spoil the oceans. I love this topic, guys. I'm going to, I, let's wrap it where it's at, you know, I love your sentiment, more attacks better in the end. Honestly, we need to see how resilient this thing is and get it out of the way.

So, you know, I hope that, and I'm confident that it will survive. These things are always scary while they're happening. but in the end it makes us all better and Bitcoin tends to find a way and Bitcoiners tend to find a way. So yeah, very bullish point. Let's keep it rolling. Memhub, I'm going to defer to you

and I'm going to let you take us on our next little tangent here. What has you bullish this week? Take it away. I think it's not just this week, but it's kind of like, I think in general, I think kind of what we really bullish is the Lightning Network in general. kind of in the exponential roles that we're seeing kind of right now. We have like more than 2.3K Bitcoin kind of like locked up in lightning channels.

We have close to 14,000 nodes. And especially kind of like 75% of these notes are running through tour, which is fucking awesome, right? Kind of like there's a lot of privacy and so on. That's kind of happening. And what I kind of like kind of just think kind of like it is just kind of mind blowing. It's like I'm learning by the day all of the different services and so on. It's kind of like I think there's a lot more to lightning than kind of just kind of like it's being a transaction layer.

In the beginning kind of like I don't know, like kind of the lightning torch, the toddler or not kind of good body kind of like kind of brought to life for us. So like, oh, okay, it's a cheap way to transact. But right now, by the day, I'm kind of learning more. And it's so much more than just the transactional layer. It's kind of like it's kind of like mind blowing on what are people building on it. It's kind of like, there's a few examples, like Swin set, which I think it's pretty immature still. But it kind of shows you like what the future can hold, right? It's kind of, it's messaging basically built on lightning.

or podcast and your streaming sets by the minute or anything else. It's kind of like stuff like, there's a very interesting company. And I'm really still uneducated about this, like kind of impervious AI. They kind of build a bunch of like, like, like APIs that you can kind of plug into where they like, they kind of like they started their own VPN service, right?

So kind of like they can't interact. It's like actually don't need nor SvpN or astral anymore or anything else. I can kind of like do my own VPN through lightning or kind of like I can do con calls. It's like one node can kind of act as a phone number to another note. Just like kind of like it's just fucking mind-blowing. It's like I'm learning so much right now on this kind of stuff on what's kind of happening on kind of like, I would almost call it 30 or 3, right? kind of on what can be built on lightning. I think it's just fucking amazing.

And then just kind of with lightning as well, there's so many services that I never kind of thought about. It's kind of like, there's a site called stackwork.com.org. I'm not sure what I forgot. Anyway, but it's kind of like it's mind-blowing, right? This site is kind of basically the microtas site. And I got a bunch of kids. anyway my oldest one

basically kind of like he wanted to have a Lego Star Wars kid and I discovered that was kind of like probably one and a half years ago I discovered the site stackwork and it's kind of like okay you earn yourself the set that's kind of side is basically doing little microtask

it's kind of stuff that AI is too stupid to do so so I kind of like looking at the nutrition label and kind of like, okay, what's the sugar content of this nutritional label? So this side is all about little microtask. And I literally have my son kind of like, he can kind of read. He's just coming to school right now. But you could read before.

I got a tiger mom. So he could kind of like read and stuff like that before he kind of goes to school. But it's like, sugar, okay, look at the label and type in at six. grams of sugar and anything else. So he earned actually Sats on that side. I think it's called Stackwork. It's like, it's fucking phenomenal. So he actually earned his whole entire

Lego kit. Of course, we didn't sell the Sats. I kept the Sats for him. Pay that one. But he was kind of literally kind of on that side every single fucking day to earn money, which is fucking phenomenal. And kind of like, if you think about it,

kind of like within about 10 days, If you earned enough, I forgot how much the Lego kit was. It was probably $20 or something like that. It's like 10 days, 15 days or something like that. We kind of just use an iPad and did little microtasks on earning that money. And now think about it like that, right? Kind of like there's so many communities around the world where earning $1,2, $3 a world a day, it's a huge fucking salary.

I think kind of it's fucking mind-blowing what lightning can do and kind of like the way of financial inclusion it can bring to the world beyond just kind of like a sheer means of payment, right? Kind of like you can reward people for a tiny little task and that's why I'm really, really boring on Bitcoin, not just this week, but just in general.

I think kind of like the opportunities with lightning I just kind of like fucking mind blowing to me. I love that you brought this up. I literally just did a video on all of the extra stuff that's being built in and around lightning just like last this past week. And I was looking at impervious and what's kind of being done around there. I read about the red phone thing that you're talking about doing an encrypted peer-to-peer call via

lightning network that nobody shout out so pseudocas by the way he's behind that one very good play yeah it's it's cool because again

like it's an instance where nobody would even know that that call took place there's another guy that did he basically sent a file through lighting network using um using AMP

so it basically took the file split it into a whole bunch of little pieces, use lightning routes to get to coales. Yeah, yeah. And it was and, like, if all the pieces don't make it there because they can't find routes, then you won't end up having to pay. So it's, there's like a condition there where only if the, all of them get there. There's so many cool things that I didn't realize were were possible online. And again, it's still like testing and people are dicking around with it. But it just, it kind of takes those, those shit coin narratives and, and it flies in the face of like, oh, we need an alternative blockchain and token in order to accomplish this.

We need a separate currency. You don't. You just need layers. And, you know, if it's a good idea, it'll be used on top of, on top of Bitcoin. If it's a bad idea, well, you never needed a blockchain, let alone anything in the first place. So all of the use cases. that are actually needed, you don't need a new currency for them. You can just do it on top of Bitcoin, and it's fantastic.

But yeah, I'll ask anybody else in the panel, what's your experience with Lightning? Have you seen anything interesting with it? What do you see his value there? Lightning is obviously the best smart contracting platform out there, designed and engineered for Bitcoin micropayments and also get out of here with all that eats shit and NFT nonsense. You know, this is where the real sovereignty is at. And it's amazing. And, you know, I remember a couple years ago where it was still more than reckless to even think about doing this on Mainnet.

And nowadays, we really see these massive ventures like podcasting 2.0 with now, I believe it's over a thousand podcasts. Actually having their lightning note hooked up in the value field of their podcast and getting sets every single minute that the users are listening. hopefully you too will be these sessions. I'm not sure. You are? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm on there. Of course, smash that boost right there.

Yeah. If you're on Breeze wallet, it's in there. And I think I haven't. Sphinx chat for Android is not as smooth as I've heard it is on iPhone. But yeah, I have my note hooked up and I can go in and I can see like streams of like eight sats, nine sats here and there from every minute people want. It's just cool to see. It's amazing. Yeah, I love it too

And this is As I said, I work for Start 9 They're a Node project But more than that They were originally conceived Just because Aiden Sorry Keegan and Matt Hill

Two of the main guys from it Founders were trying to set up a lightning node And we're like, this is too difficult to do Like this has taken us a few days to do it And we're devs So it shouldn't be this difficult for people to do So they went and did something that looks a little reminiscent of all the other projects people love like Umbrell and Mynode and

Rospie Blitz, but then they went way further and decided to make a bunch of other apps as well. So you have Sphinx on EmbersyOS as well. I haven't used Sphinx for ages because I run graphene instead of Android. And as you just said, it's pretty buggy on Android anyway. But when it comes to using graphene instead, then it just becomes unusable from what I've seen. So yes, as Max said, it was a... reckless, beyond reckless. I originally used lightning for the first time in January 2018 during my first excursion to Canada, to West Coast Canada. And I remember sitting in

Tofino, which is this beautiful, it's Canada's Hawaii, basically. And it was January, so it was very cold and stormy. Very cold Hawaii. Yeah, I spun up an Ubuntu VM and got lightning running and managed to buy some stickers from Blockstream and something like that. And it was a lot of fun. I lost the stats that I didn't spend. I've no idea what happened to them, probably, you know, 100,000 sats or something like that, that will be worth enough to buy me 10 houses in about a month. But maybe that's a little optimistic. But yeah, lightning has, and it's been fun. Like, it's been fun watching all the detractors attack it and be wrong. And they still call it vaporware. They still make all these false claims about it. Like, oh, you're

never going to be able to onboard everyone onto lightning, because you'll need to do one transaction per person in the world, like just not understanding things like batching or, you know, submarine swaps or any of the tech that's advanced, you know, its detractors look more and more foolish. Like I went around three or four months ago, I went back in R slash BTC, which is Roger Veer's forum for attacking Bitcoin. And all of the, it was, it was fun to do. I used to spend all of 2016 and 2017 arguing with people in these forums, but I kind of forgotten about it for a few years and I went back in there. And it was funny to see all those old narratives again.

Like, Lull, Lightning's going to be ready in two years. Like TM, you know, with the two weeks trademark and all that stuff. It's Vaporware. And I was like, what are you talking about? I used this like all day, every day now. I use Lightning a lot. Like it's, it works, guys. There's like loads of wallets out there.

And then move on to Moon Wallet. And you've got, you don't even have to be technically aware of what's going on in lightning in the first place. You just accept Bitcoin and it's automatically in a lightning channel in the first place, right? BTC Sessions did a guide on how to use Moonwallet, I think. So, yeah, check that out. Lightning is great. It doesn't solve every problem and it's not the only layer two thing that Bitcoin has.

And it's also chain agnostic too, right? So you can have lightning on anything else as well if you want it. So it's not strictly, technically, strictly a Bitcoin-only project. But let's be honest, all of the Lightning devs, there are. for contributing, at least to LND, is you've got to understand Bitcoin. They're not like, oh, and you also need a firm understanding of, you know, B, SV or F or one of these shit coins. So I think it's an exciting and good project.

It's definitely a reason to be bullish. It's incredibly cool software. But as we all, you know, would say it's early on. It's experimental. Be careful with what you do in Lightning. But at the same time, that's kind of all right because no one would ever tell you to send tens of thousands of dollars using Lightning anyway. It's not really designed for that.

It is designed for small, very rapid payments. It's not designed for big final settlement stuff. And now, just to finish up, now is a good time to open channels on the Lightning Network. If you want to get something like an Embassy OS or just something far more custom than that, because you'll want to be online all the time with Lightning. That's one thing to remember. If you want to do something like that, the blocks are basically empty at the moment. Not empty, but there's a lot of space in the blocks.

So it's a good time to open channels and play around. And there's always test net as well if you really don't want to use any sets. So yeah, that's my piece. But testing things on MNNet makes mistakes very memorable. Can confirm. Can confirm. Jan, what's your experience of Lightning? You dove in a lot?

I did my, well, actually back in 2017, that was still before Lightning being officially. usable on mainnet. I did a presentation in parallel Neupolis, which is a place where, you know, the bitcoins used to get together and still get together in Prague. And I was demonstrating really live a lightning running over, I think, a light coin and Bitcoin test nets and did a transaction on there. And by that time, I actually deeply studied all the of the mechanics and which just made me sure, super exciting is that when you look at the mechanics of the crypto behind it, essentially, it's the thing that it's trustless is, I mean, when you look at it, it's super simple in a way, once you understand it, then you would be, wow, this is a great idea and you would be wondering

why this hasn't come much earlier, but, you know, things evolve. So that was back then, and I've been following it ever since then. Now I'm super excited that we have a finalichner in place, so that's going to make a few things a little bit more smooth within the network. So I think this is the layer that the smart contracts are going to be running on.

I mean, I can't think of anything else. In terms of practice, I mean, we as a pool are not really, we don't have a really good business case. But I think a year ago, when there was the lightning torch going, that experiment, we were one of the ones holding the torch at like 200 bucks

so that Bitcoin worth that needed to be transferred with the next step was like 200 bucks and that was already a little difficult but we managed and it was very exciting. So this is my experience. I mean

if there is anything that people call defied, this is going to be the place where it's going to be happening. Yeah, and can I ask you a question? What do you think kind of as a mining pool, what do you think about kind of lightning? Because kind of, I can see kind of like it's probably kind of like it might be right, right now, kind of like most of the stuff is kind of like on chain fees and so on.

So if lightning kind of like really develops in. Oh, you mean if it's like threatening the miners in a way, that it's like you know taking no no i don't think it will ever threaten the miners because kind of like in the end of the day lightning you need to do the settlement actually right yeah exactly what's what's what's your whole take on kind of lightning and kind of like how it competes with kind of the fee market and stuff like that uh well looking at the blockchain lately i mean you you guys all have seen the the transaction fees though they have been going down but we still have a pretty significant block subsidy, right?

So even though bigger fees would be a nice incentive for the miners, I think the exchange rate currently is the incentive and the gap between the exchange rate and the difficulty is the incentive for the miners to join, you know, this mining game. So I don't think miners are really concerned about this. I mean, I wouldn't be. And once it starts evolving, the question is,

what would be the exchange rate? of Bitcoin at that time. It would be the difficulty. And again, when you look at the Bitcoin network, it is very exciting to observe how it balances itself out. So I'm not worried. If the exchange rate is too low, we have seen minor capitalization. They just went offline. Sorry, I can't pronounce it. Back then when the exchange rate was like 3K, but by that time, the S-9s were being sold for like 50 bucks a piece and those who planned for this are made some good bucks after that. So it's a very interesting economical game. And I think in fact for me it's it's the most exciting computer game ever like watching all these you know forces economical things that are you know pushing the whole

vehicle further. Yeah. I think by the time that it's you know that the, that the majority of subsidy is, is just from fees, you know, the cost of a single set. Like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the equivalent will by that time, hopefully more than make up for, you know, worrying about, uh, whether or not blocks are full. I, I, I think by that time, uh, there'll be, you know, if Bitcoin is to succeed, then there'll be constant demand for that block space regardless of lightning network because again you're going to have a lot of people on the globe trying to interact trying to have funds on lightning you'll have batch transactions opening and closing and and and setting up channels what's the

I just saw the the newest thing or not the newest thing but where you can well there's a couple things, you can direct open a channel from your hard wallet, as in send out of your hard wallet to fund a channel. It's no longer in cold storage from there, but like as in that transaction lands in an address that would then be online and accessible. And then the other thing was joint, I can't remember the name for it, but joint channel creation where you're creating a channel with somebody. Oh, you mean AMP? Like,

no, joint channel creation is dual funding. Dual funding. Yes, that's what I'm thinking of. Yes. And you can do a nice trick with splicing as well, but that's a bit different. Dual funding basically means that two peers

provide sats in the opening transaction to the same channel. And so two peers create one channel and each of them put some sets on the table inside that channel. So on both hands of the balance. So, yeah, Let me, let's, can we break down how that would work?

Because, okay, so I have Bitcoin in my wallet. You have Bitcoin in your wallet sitting in an address. We want to contribute to the channel. The channel would have, it's basically a two of two multi-sig, correct? And so what's the technicals of what's happening behind the scenes there? Yes. So this is a two-of-two multi-sig, meaning you alone can no longer spend that money. And so the idea of the Lightning Network is that before you even send money into that 2 of 2 Multisic channel, you ask your peer to create a pre-signed spending transaction that spends the money out of this coin and or out of this address back into your own single-sick wallet.

So the multi-sick wallet gets spent even before it gets created. And that means that it gets by default if you own. only Ellis provides sets into the channel, then 100% of the channel balance go back to Alice, to her single public key, before she even signs that first funding transaction. And here in that funding transaction, only Alice has coins in the input. So that's the regular lightning channel opening, as we know it as of now. Then with splicing, no, sorry, with dual funding, we have a coin join happening. So this funding transactions has two coins from multiple users, both Alice and Bob.

And therefore, they will only want to sign this transaction that spends both of their coins, you know, if they have everything checked out, if they have everything else verified, mainly that both of them get the money back. So when having the, before signing the first coin joint transaction to open the channel, we sign, we pre-signed coin join, sorry, we pre-sign transactions spending out of that multi-sick channel back into the single-sick wallets of Alice and Bob with the amount of stats that they were respectively have. And then only after this refund transaction is signed, first Alice signs the opening transaction and then Bob signs it. Both people need to sign it because it is a coin join.

Right. Okay, yeah. So because, yeah, the typical, like you were saying, just to reiterate, let me know if I get anything wrong here. But basically, typically in a lightning channel, you open it, a single person contributes stats to the channel. The pre-signed transaction would basically guarantee that they get back their stats as they are spending on that lightning channel and pushing coins to the other side of a channel. It's basically a pre-signed transaction where if they were to close out that channel at that moment, the amount that they've spent are no longer in their control,

and it would settle back to their wallet and the other person's wallet where they would have on-chain transactions going back to them. In this instance, you're still doing the same thing, but you're able to have two basically, yeah, you're right, a coin join or two signatories sending coins to the same address at the same time, with that pre-signed transaction, not just presigning it to one individual, but to both for the respective amount of initial sats that they contributed. Exactly.

And one additional small nuance is that the input amount of both users is likely going to be higher than the channel capacity or the channel balance that they want to have on their side. So let's say Alice has one Bitcoin input or UTXO, but she only wants to open a channel worth 0.1 Bitcoin. And Bob has a 5 Bitcoin UTCSO, but he also only wants to put 0.2 Bitcoin into there. And here, of course, then in this opening transaction, we generate one output,

which is that multi-sick lightning channel, and then there would be two change outputs that are all single-sick for either Alice and Bob with the 0.9 and 1.8 Bitcoin and change that they get back. But because these change amounts are on a single, sick addresses and no longer multi-sick addresses. We don't need to worry about all of the pre-signed metric of lightning, because that's just your keys, your Bitcoin. I like it. Oh, we got deep on that one. Awesome. I enjoy that. Sweet. Okay. I love the lightning chat, but I do have to,

I'm conscious of time. I know I'm keeping you guys longer than planned, but we're going to keep it rolling. Mima, thank you for bringing up lightning. I'm so bullish on lightning, and I love it. And I encourage everybody to dabble and learn and test out wallets and see what's up because it's a lot of fun to play with if you haven't if you haven't tried already. Max, you are up. Dude, please let us know what has you feeling bullish this week. Oh, this week specifically, it was bold 12 to stay with the Lightning Network. That's the next generation payment negotiation UX flow. And it's really magical and super useful. So far, a Lightning Network invoice, Bolt 11, is a one-time payment secret, basically.

And it's the string that you should only use once to request the payment. And that make things a bit awkward. You know, main thing is that you cannot get a tattoo of your Lightning Invoice, because that would be a very short-lived fun. And that we got to solve, of course, right? There are current nice hacks around this, mainly LN URL, which is kind of a separate server that you need to set up. And that then, you know, you have a small domain link, you know, BTCSessions.com slash pay me. And all of a sudden you can toss Ben some sets, right?

That's possible with this add-on service. But what Bolt 12 is doing now is to do kind of of a similar thing, but inside the Lightning Network directly, running completely inside your lightning node and communicating only inside the lightning network. So you don't need to have a separate server, you don't need to run any separate software, you don't need to have a domain and all of these things are taking care of. It's all just lightning pop keys at that point. And the cool things that you can do is static invoices or these static offers, right? So you actually can get a tattoo right on your forehead.

People can scan all the time and continue sending you one set as you deserve, obviously for that heroic act. But it also allows for automatic recurring payments. So you can say, hey, scan this QR code and you will pay me forever, once at every minute. That's great. And there's also nice messaging involved here directly. So sender and merchant can communicate and send messages back and forth about details of the payment,

which is fascinating as well. And because you, well, because there is some difference between the time where this offer was created and you print the QR code. And when then someone actually pays the QR code, you can also do, for example, some trickery with the exchange rates. You can print a QR code with an offer that says, pay me five bucks, you know, in dollars. And a week later, of course, the sat price is much different as the Shiklan continues. to hyperinflate, right? So you're going to get less shick coins for those five cents, five Bitcoin. Sorry, you get less you get less stats for those five shit coins, exactly. And this can also be negotiated again at the time where you actually make that payment.

And so small things like this that really show in hindsight how bad lightning was and how much of a heck it was in the beginning and it's a miracle that it actually worked. But now the we have, well, over four years under our belt of actually implementing this craziness. We've learned this thing or two. And that is all kind of cohesively packaged under Bolt 12 lightning offers by Rusty Russell. So bolt12.org as a really useful resource that shows you all the fabulous things. It's still very early. So far only implemented by Sea Lightning.

And one other full note, lightning note implementation will need to implement it before it's considered no longer a draft in the spec. but I'm bullish as fuck, especially as a podcaster and content creator. You know, I've been showing Bitcoin-on-Chank QR codes on YouTube videos for way too long. And Lightning made that terribly worse because every QR code that you show, only the first listener can pay it and nobody else can. And so getting Lightning back to the beautiful days of sending stats for watching cat videos on YouTube, which obviously is the highest achievement of humankind in this regard.

We're on a good path. So that makes me even more bullish. That's the main use case of Bitcoin, in my opinion. Cat videos. Yeah, I love that these developments are happening. Again, it's just another example of everybody, the naysayers being proven wrong in that it's working. Yes, it was a workaround. It was rough around the edges.

And it still is. It's still early. But the amount of, I think, people look at a single point in time like you know you were talking we were talking previously about you know our BTC going there and seeing people saying that lightning is vaporware right because they looked at it when it was not yet in production when it was not yet on mean that and they just see that picture in their mind as that's constantly what is happening and

And people just have no concept that things are developing so quickly now. And it's going to be like you snap your fingers, or at least it will seem like that to people that are on the outside looking in. And one day they'll be like, oh, holy shit, this all actually works quickly because they'll just download an app and it will just work. But to those of us that have been tinkering with this stuff for a while, you kind of see the progress. and it is moving quickly, but you know that there's work being put into it. It is, you know, you live through all of that. So I don't know, again, if people want to tag in here to what Max said around the static QR codes and some of the cool things that you can program in there versus your current experiences of lightning.

Memhub, what are you using right now for a wallet, by the way, for lightning? a bunch of different bullets basically but yeah I'm not really spending Bitcoin so but yeah which are you using

to earn for all your memes is the question you gotta earn the stats yeah how are you stacking those sets I use blue in a way yeah

which is kind of like yeah I know it's kind of like it's a custodial lightning wallet but yeah. I really like that there's a few that I've found are staying right on top of of kind of some of the newer.

And I'm talking about like mobile wallists that people can just use. But it seems to be that Breeze and Phoenix are both pretty on top of things in terms of, okay, something new comes down in the pipeline and they're relatively quick to implement it. Moon has been doing a pretty good job in terms of just like the unified balance and then implementing newer things. Although I would like to see them, they've kind of like half implemented LN URL. I'd like to see that like fully implemented because there's certain things that it doesn't quite understand what you're trying to do. But yeah, man, Bolt 12. Very excited to just have a static. It makes the user experience so much easier to just be

like, yeah, here's, this is my lightning wall. Instead of actively being like, okay, I got to make an invoice for you, I got to do all this. It's so much easier. I fully agree with you, but I think kind of like that's kind of like it has been a really big issue with lightning in general. Kind of like there's not a static QR code. Kind of like that the QR code is always changing in a way, right?

I think that has been a huge issue in lightning in general. I'm based in a country where I don't have a wallet anymore right I'm using a centralized service and my mobile phone to pay for fucking everything but I'm not kind of like I actually don't have a wallet anymore since three four years I'm just like this she kind of like paying everything with my mobile phone however it's centralized right but yeah I think it's really important, kind of like, especially if we want to accept payments and stuff like that, unless we can kind of sort it out somehow. Or even if you have a podcast, right, kind of like, you just kind of like want to put up a QR code and say like, kind of like donate to the pot or whatever it is. It's like,

if there's not a centralized form of payment, centralized is the wrong word for it, right? Kind of like there's a static QR code. No, but you are right, though, because, currently like at the end of my videos, I stick up like a link to my strike page, right? Which strike is awesome. It's super easy for people to utilize that. But, you know, it is what it is. It's a centralized service or like I was previously using tippin.comme and people can like drop some sass there. But it's it's it falls short of the potential of just going directly into your wallet.

It's it goes through a service that then sees who you are and what. you've got and then you have to pull it out into your own custody. So there's that that hop where it hits somebody else's custody for that brief moment in time. And to eliminate that in the long term is a fantastic thing. I think it's great. 100%. You know what? Actually, actually kind of like what were the kind of like, it's a new find. I kind of just found it two, three days ago. Actually, you can do kind of pretty cool designs with QR course as well. I think kind of like, I think it's just cosmetic, though, but you can kind of do or design VD awesome looking QR course.

I got to get, what's his name? Is it World of Rusty? Maybe he can design. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's awesome. He does. Rusty fucking fucking. I fucking love him.

He's a great guy as well. He did mechanics crown there. He did, he's done a bunch of a bunch of stuff. Yeah, of course. You can tell the art stuff. He did a bunch of Michael Sailor stuff and of course, tone stuff. Yeah. That's how I got to know him.

He was a very distinct author. But no, that's not a punch. It's like kind of like, he can kind of like actually kind of like, I'd love to send it to you in the DMs. Like there's some really interesting things about a QR code because actually kind of like you only need to like how all our mobile phones

kind of read a QR code is actually only a third of the QR code needs to be visible. This is very interesting. So you can kind of like design the shit out of it. So you could kind of have really, really interesting QR codes that look fucking crazy.

You know, also moving QR codes and flashing QR codes, right? So that in a couple seconds, the screen shows hundreds of QR codes and you just hold the phone for a second or two and it scans through all of them. Large files can be transferred with that. And that's actually very useful for Bitcoin multisignatures, especially in a pre-Taproot world, where you transfer a lot of data and it gets more and more and more with every signature. Very useful to have that. I think a couple of wallets have that implemented.

I'm not sure there. There are, yeah. So like if you're using something like Keystone or Foundation Passport or even I think in some instances like the Blue Wallet built in multi-sig, they have the animated QR code where basically, yeah, it'll flash through like three or four QRs to get all of the multi-sig information over. Super useful. Yeah, shout out to Seed Siner. and, you know, the Spectre DIY wallet. I wanted to bring up Spectre here just because they deserve a shout-out. It's best, best, best wallet out there.

I hear good things about Sparrow 2 in a similar way, but I haven't used it yet. But I was going to say this whole Lightning discussion, what Lightning really needs is a Spector wallet, something of that level, but for Lightning, because Spector is just, like, all respect to Electrum, after finally Spector coming out I'm like finally like a wallet that does what I intuitively want a wallet to do and I'm not affiliated with Spector guys

this is just out of pure love and there's every lightning wallet I've used every single one of them guys and every one of them does something that really annoys me like a lot of the times the thing that annoys me is I can't choose a fee like I really want to choose a fee

and you know if the blocks are empty and I do a lightning transaction that spent 56 sats per bite on a weekend when everything there's two sets per bites getting in. I'm like, why? Why? That's really frustrating that that happened. I deliberately chose this time to close this channel and you're going to charge me a huge fee anyway. That's one thing that's annoying. Every lightning wallet has something about it that drives me nuts. So I know that Ben Kaufman, one of the main guys, Inspector Wallet, kind of thinks lightning is not really all that good, which is a funny thing.

Like, it is possible to think that and still be an amazing bitcoinser, not a ridiculous person. But so I don't think Spector themselves are going to implement Lightning like Electrum did. But nonetheless, it's wide open. Like, even Moonwallet, as amazing as it is, it's still open for someone. How long did it take for Spector to come and change the game when it came to Bitcoin Wallets? I mean, it's years we've been waiting for something that good. So Lightning, all this development and excitement that's going on on it, you know, it's still wide open for someone to come along and make it a fantastic lightning wallet.

And you can use the moon model where you're always in, you can receive just regular Bitcoin and you're always in a lightning channel whether you like it or not. That's good. But just come along. It's wide open for you. Yeah, I love to see that. I wouldn't doubt if Sparrow were to do that. I know they're doing some interesting things.

I mean, they've got such a cool setup. And they're just so interoperable. And they're doing so much work, just making sure that just so many different things work. And, you know, from testing them out early on to doing a video like a, you know, a few weeks or a month back or something. So much has changed. And it constantly does. So, so kudos to them. I know they're working hard.

Yeah. Max, thank you for bringing up Bolt 12. and tagging on to the lightning chat. I'm going to keep us rolling, and we're going to do our final reason for being bullish. Jan, I know you've been a patient man this evening, so I'm going to toss it to you, and I'm going to ask you, why are you feeling bullish this week? I knew this was going to come, and I think I'm in the hardest position, because guys pretty much covered all the different aspects.

So, anyways, I'll try. Wait, aren't you bullish for the Watts Minor firmer release that's coming? tomorrow tomorrow tm two weeks okay yeah coming soon uh anyway so for the for the past week uh what makes me sad and bullish at the same time are all the events in afghanistan which just it's it's a super shitty situation and like watching the people it's i think we're sitting here and you know chatting and there's people struggling there I mean, I just can't imagine being there. Why I think this could be bullish is that it could strengthen additional AML, KYC, whatever, you name it.

And the more regulation we have that's going to be reflected in the price, I would say. On a long run, we all, at least I was brought up in an environment where, you know, I got a piggyback. And I was brought up by my parents explaining me that it's good to say, you know, for later, save some money. My piggy-bang had a form factor of not a pig, but it was actually a snowman with his hand holding. So it has a nice groove, and you would see the coin rolling, you know, down the snowman.

And I was used to that. And like, past few years basically teach people that saving money is a bad thing. You have to live from a loan. You have to buy everything from a loan. And the loan itself is not the problem. The problem is what you guys mentioned, that the loan has been provided

not from somebody else's money who put the money in the bank, but from the printed money that the bank just got almost for free. We're living in times when there's negative interest rates. My bank charges me negative interest rates for keeping euros in my account. That's, I mean, WTF.

Is this 21st century? So I have no other option than being bullish. There was a beautiful interview with Max Kayser. The interviewer was from CNBC, South Africa. And it was probably like three minutes, and it ends up like him, you know, tearing up the $20 banknote and saying, like, we have to do something.

And I'm pretty much in line with whatever he said. We have to do something and we're doing it. We just have to participate in this and trying to show people that there is alternative that doesn't depreciate like all the paper money. So this makes me bullish. I like that you brought up the negative interest rates because we kind of come full circle there back to some of the CBDC talk that we're having earlier on because this is another easy thing that they can do.

with central bank digital currencies is if you've got a direct line to the central bank uh from your native digital wallet um yes they can they can uh do like air drops and ubi but they can also say if you don't spend this within a certain amount of time we're going to start siphoning off some of your wealth because it's for the good of the economy so uh you know you're talking about negative interest rates in a bank account people you know you go just withdraw withdraw that eventually that's not an option and yeah something obviously needs to be done and and I think we have the solution in front of us now it's it and I think it's going to be a painful road for those that don't realize what's happening quickly enough because it's it's

going to be painful so I don't is does anybody have have anything to tag on to what Jan was saying here. Don't all jump in at once. I hate awkward silences, man. Go forward, my guy again. Well, look, I have, um, it's a beautiful thing for a generation to rediscover the future and planning for that future and saving for it. And to me, Hoddle was a generation discovering savings through, you know, a rhyming

repetition of history, like not the same repetition, but it. rhymes, right? History rhymes. And Hodel is basically, I mean, I know it didn't start at that. We've all seen the ridiculous Bitcoin talk post where the guy was spelling hold wrong and just freaking out about his girlfriend being at a lesbian bar and just generally melting down. But I mean, to me, that's not what it is anymore. To me, Hodel is just people saying you can have a future, save for that future. And don't spend today something that will be worth. a lot more tomorrow unless you really need it. I mean, I don't want to just become a mouthpiece for Saferdin here,

but we know that the Bitcoin standard is, it ushers in a new era of quality. Like, if you have anything from 150 years ago, like furniture or, you know, cookware or anything, it was built to last. But if you have anything that was made in the last 30 years, I mean, planned obsolescence is just a part of the Fiat standard, right? Everything is junk. Like 99% of what you can buy is junk. Like even your house is junk.

It will fall apart in a few decades. Like, nothing is really made to last anymore. In a Bitcoin, under a Bitcoin standard, you just can't do that because people aren't going to buy stuff that isn't. If I buy a juicer, I want that thing to last for 40 years. If I buy a paper shredder or a light bulb or whatever, I need this stuff to last because I'm not going to spend, you know, three bitcoins on a car to have it only last a few years. Like, I'm not going to do it.

It needs to be something that's incredibly, you know, something that can be handed down for generation after generation. So this ushering in a new era of quality is great and then just saving. Like, you know, my daughter's one and a half. So the Bitcoin I got for her when she was born, you know, what's happened to the price of Bitcoin in the last year and a half, you know, it's the right move in it. And it means that we're taken off the,

treadmill of being forced to use something that only has one quality, which is medium of exchange, which is spend it as quickly as possible because it's not a store of value. And we can, like your definitions of it, Max, are a little different to mine. I'm coming at this thing without any formal economic training, you know. But the idea of just having something that's utility is spend it or it will lose its value very quickly because it's not designed to be a store of value or you can't rely on the people that are in control of it to respect the fact that people are using it as a store of value

means everything else costs is having its market distorted because people are buying houses as stores of value because they don't have money to use for it. So house prices aren't reflective of what they would be if people only bought houses as places to live or maybe to rent out. Instead, people buy them to store value and then stocks and shares, meme stocks. People are literally just being like money is worthless.

Let's buy stocks we know are useless just to screw with people. I mean, Jimmy Song wrote an article on it. It's called it postmodern investing. And it's like nothing even has to have any. It's not the case that you buy a stock and share because you believe in a company. Like that's a ridiculous outdated notion. You buy a stock because it's funny. You buy a stock because you want to screw over a hedge fund.

You buy a stock basically because you don't have any respect for the money you're buying it with. and it's just what a world to live in. It's not, it's just a complete, an utter shit show. And Bitcoin comes along and says, look, you can't be silly or childish when you have me. If you don't know how to be secure, you will lose it. And if you are frivolous with your spending, you'll hate yourself in about five years.

So both of those things are a call to adulthood and responsibility. And it's so good to see that coming along. and I really am trying to dial down on the utopianism and the brilliant, the heralding of a new age of human prosperity that Bitcoin will bring in. I'm trying not to be too optimistic with it or too, yeah, utopian in my thinking, but I can't help it.

And the old, like you describing putting cash in a little snowman with an arm with a hole in it, it's a fantastic thing, and it's a heartbreaking thing to tell a kid. You should probably spend those $3 soon. because, I mean, what's inflation now? It's what, 15, 20% a year? Like, it's bad. So, I mean, a lot of, I think it's here.

I think hyper-biturinization is happening already. I think the collapse of the US dollar is happening. I don't think it's about to happen. I think COVID accelerated the timeline insanely. Like, we didn't expect this to be the super cycle, right? The end of Fiat, you know, we didn't expect that. But here we are. I mean, COVID accelerated it.

So it's time. Like, this is it. Get on board, everyone, if you're not already. Yeah, Yimar vibes all around, man. The meme stock stuff you're talking about, same kind of shit. Again, pulling it full circle. That's a good portion of the first part of the book. People just buying shit just to buy shit because they didn't want the money.

And I think we're kind of seeing it again. I wonder if, because in that time, the people that were smart enough to preserve their capital were kind of looked down upon or seen as predators or like pariahs, I feel like we're in for that. I've seen that in Canada. Christia, the finance minister, she was about eight or nine months ago. I saw her saying, too many Canadians have too much. savings and is harming our economic recovery plan.

And this was, I quote, if anyone has any ideas about how we can tap in to that untapped stimulus, please call in. This was like a TV show. She wanted Canadians to phone in and suggest ideas about how they might rob middle-class Canadians of their unfairly large savings accounts. Like this was literally, like, I mean, first of all, you're just, you know, just a lot of just going to print your way out of it anyway like you always do. So that just makes it ultra punitive, just coming after like the, the, the relatively successful people in your culture that have worked

hard that are still not really doing much better than anyone else. And you're going to come after them. It's just so, it's just so punitive and evil. I just can't even begin to see, like, how you would even, like, look at yourself in the mirror after that. But second off, just the idea of, like, call in, like, make some suggestions. It's literally like, guys, we're building a guillotine, like, to hang various peasants. Like, can you help us? Like, can you hold this piece of wood while I hammer in the name? Yeah.

Yeah, it's wild to see. And again, I feel like, while it will be exciting to see things play out where Bitcoin is, is doing what it was built to do, it will also be scary to see the narrative that surrounds that. and the vitriol that people that don't understand what's happening come at at bitcoins with. But have you guys thought about a reason why do Texas still exist because they can pretty much print the money, right? So why do we have like two parallel ways how to steal? because wealth redistribution there's a bunch of methods for doing it one way is the cantyon effect

that max was talking about which is you get to decide where the newly printed money goes and that's at least doesn't redistribute money itself but does redistribute the purchasing power of what everyone has upwards of course but that's one way another way is actual taxation which is I mean as you say it's like there's it's ridiculous but I mean that's that's the question we've seen all of a Bitcoin Twitter for a year right is ask yourself why you pay taxes if they can just print the money they need I guess the the sort of midwit response to that is well if they just did that all the time then inflation would happen and that would be bad and not that it is not happening yeah exactly this is the problem that I'm seeing

I think it's just all technical debt, right? Like you could argue that just here's the efficient thing. Use one mechanism. Don't use both taxation and money printing because they're just two sides of the same coin. Just use one. But they can't, right? Because if you, like inflation is just a sneaky tax that no one would ever accept if it was done overtly. If you just had, you know, 8% of the money removed from your bank balance every year,

you'd be annoyed about that. But instead, it's purchasing power shrinks by the equivalent amount. And no one notices and goes, why is gas so expensive? Oh, why is this so expensive? Oh, my God. Why is rent so expensive? And they don't ever ask the question,

why is my money worth nothing? They just keep asking why everything is so expensive. And, I mean, isn't that the deliberate lack of education? We have about economics and school system? Well, psychology is a better approach. Yeah. Yeah, if taxes didn't exist, too many people would be asking questions about how the government can afford things, I imagine. Good point. Yeah. It's, but hey, I mean, Jan, you're right. The conditions that are kind of prevalent right now are why Bitcoin exists.

And I think that we're lucky enough to have been in the right place, right time to have realized it. I think there are many out there that are very close to realizing it. But, you know, some maybe set in like precious metals kind of mindsets. And it can be difficult to kind of get around that. I get the problem and I get the solution, but I just happen to choose the wrong medium. Like, you know, Peter Schiff syndrome type thing. but yeah i i i'm glad the bitcoin's here i'm glad that uh i'm glad that i i get to be a part of it kind of see what what uh what will be written in the history books i hope it's largely positive

you see see the interview actually even peter shiff kind of admitted that he's kind of like sorry to kind of like kind of oh he feels bad that he didn't invest in bitcoin you saw i won this week yeah i saw and he also he also said he's he's sad that he made that he missed it, but now it's too late. I know. Oh, God. Don't you hate? You know what really hurts?

I know you've got to run off BTC, but you know what hurts me so much about that one? Is these people that get into shitcoins or hear about Bitcoin, don't buy, and then the price is way up. And they're like, well, I missed that. I'm like, it's not going away. You're still going to have to get into Bitcoin at some point. It's the longer you. And when people get into shit coins and get burnt, and then the. they write off the whole space.

That's the main reason I'm so upset that they exist because they'll buy some Bitcoin and they'll find out about Binance chain or whatever and just go ridiculously onto all that stuff, get burnt to death. And then, you know, their wife will sit there and be like, yeah, you're not touching crypto again. You're done with that whole thing. And, you know, they're like, okay, I don't want to lose my wife over this whole thing. And they just abandon it.

And I'm like, it's not going to be a thing that you sort of go, well, I made a mistake there. That was five years ago. I got back on track now. It's fine. Bitcoin is here. It's what you're going to ultimately have to use and learn how to use correctly. So at some point, you have to bite the bullet and go, that Bitcoin thing, yeah, I can't

really afford not to use it anymore. At some point, you can't afford not to be a Bitcoiner. And these people are, it really sucks. If you set a wrong foot and you get burnt, then it's a major psychological test to accept that, oh, hold on, I made a mistake, but I need to actually get back into this thing. Yeah, it's going to be the challenge for everybody. Again, I think you're right, the ones that have been the most stubborn or the ones that got in, got burnt, got out, and then have to reenter, those are the ones that are going to be the most difficult. I have seen some positive developments.

This round in particular, the past couple of years of people coming in and almost immediately or right off the back. going Bitcoin only. I think that's very positive. And I think it's in part due to a cohesive narrative around why Bitcoin that has been cultivated over the years. And yeah, I think that's a positive development. And I hope to see that trend continue. Hopefully, you know, when a bunch of other shit coins get washed out again and we see kind of, you know, if we see another cycle, we'll see a lot more of that rather than rushing into shit coin casinos. But who knows, who knows. Gentlemen, I'm going to wrap up here.

I thank you all so much for your time being here and sharing your bullish reasons with me this week. Let's just quickly go around one more time, remind people who you are, where they can find you. I'll toss to Bitcoin Mechanic first. Take away. Sure. Thanks, man. So I'm on Twitter at grass-fed Bitcoin, just so you don't confuse my accent and think I'm saying cross-fit. I'm saying grass-fed, like the best kind of beef you can eat. It's grass. It eats grass, like we all know. And I work for Start9. You can go start-9.com and check out the EmbassyOS project, which is a whole self-sovereign suite for people that want to do instant messaging or social networking or obviously just Bitcoin and Lightning. things like that in a self-sovereign way where they're not depending on any third parties. But in a way with no technical challenges to it, you can just buy a box, plug it in and go.

But it's open source as well, right? So if you want to compile it yourself, you can go for it too. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on, man. No worries. Mimab, you're up. Oh, dude, I think you're muted. I think, oh, aye. Fair point, fair point, fair point.

Okay, now I'm not. you can find me at at bitcoin meme hop on tour basically just kind of like just a warning if you follow me there's a bunch of ship posts come for the ship posts highly recommend thanks for being on man max how about you but one more time where can people find you on my personal website is towards liberty dot com and find me on twitter github and all the places at max had lebrandt dude thank you very much And Jan, let people know where they can find you. I'm on Twitter under Jan Brains, and you can find anything that we do with Brains Company underbrains.com, BrainsOS and the Stashpool brand, and start saving instead of the piggy bank.

Thanks for inviting me to your talk. Yeah, no worries. Guys, thank you very much. Anybody watching, of course, all of these gentlemen, their Twitter handles are listed below in the show notes. Give them follow. Check them out. And gentlemen, once again, thank you so much for your time. Loved talking bull with you. Thank you guys so much for watching and or listening if you're on the pod afterwards.

Be sure to hit, like, subscribe, and share all of those things help so, so much. They help get this content in front of more eyeballs. Now, if you want to help with the show in another way, you can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. Ledin, Bit Buy, BitRefil, Keystone. and Bill Fottle at Privacy Pros. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip at my strike.me page, that is, strike.m.me slash BTC Sessions.

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