BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? CK Snarks, Lisa Hough, Dennis Porter ep338

Episode Date: April 15, 2023

FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS: https://twitter.com/ck_SNARKs https://twitter.com/lisa_hough_ https://twitter.com/Dennis_Porter_ 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Nunchuk Wallet and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted mutisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Pass on your savings to your loved ones with ease in a simple claiming process with full customer support. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ Start9 is your Bitcoin & lightning node, and full personal server - enabling you to take back control from the gatekeepers of your money and data! Grab an Embassy today and become truly self-sovereign! https://start9.com/   Coinkite offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions  HodlHodl is a NON-CUSTODIAL, NON-KYC solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Furthermore, you can check out their Lend platform for p2p loans that are never rehypothecated. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION   The Miami Bitcoin Conference is the largest Bitcoin event in the world! Come check it out in Miami Beach Florida on May 18-20th. Use code BTCSESSIONS for 10% off your tickets! https://bm.b.tc/btcsessions Free video tutorials not enough? Need some extra hand-holding when mastering self-custody, multisig, coinjoin, running a node, or other skills? Book me for a private session on my website! https://www.btcsessions.ca/ BITCOIN tips: https://strike.me/btcsessions⚡[e-mail]

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show, another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish? Killer panel tonight. Very excited for this one. This should be a good one. I hope you're all doing well. I hope you all had a, if anything else, entertaining week. It's been an interesting one.

Of course, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Fuck it. Do it live.

I can write it and we'll do it live. I'm a thing sucks. If you have not already, like, subscribe, share, all those things. Super important helps get this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we bring in our guests, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is timechain calendar.com.

We're sitting at $30,452 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 3,284 sats. 92.13% of all Bitcoin have been mine. That's 19.35 million of them. And in terms of fees, 27 sats per byte next block, you're willing to wait a bit. Still 18 sats per byte. The Mempool still full, but not as full as it has been. around 341 megabytes worth of transactions sitting there.

And it doesn't look like anything is currently being purged from the Mempool, if I'm not mistaken. So, yeah, you should be right there. Anyways, use your RBF, use lightning, use whatever, act accordingly. Shout out to sponsors of the show, hoddlehottle.com. If you are buying Bitcoin and you got a few things in mind that are important to you, like peer-to-peer trading, being able to get instant self-custody and no KYC, Hodel Hodel is the simple solution for you. Very easy.

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they do also have a lending platform in which nothing is ever re-hypothicated. You can check them out. Links are down below to sign up. Now, when you do get non-KYC sats, you might want to secure that and some of the best damn hardware on the market. everything at Coin Kite is so incredible.

I love my cold card Mark 4. Thing is an absolute beast. I've got it kicking right here in my fancy case and everything. Yeah, anyways. The thing is beautiful, but they've got tons of great stuff where we're at Coin Kite. The tap signer, the Sats card, the block clock, the open dimes, and coming down the pipe pretty soon here. The cold card Q1 looks insane. So if you want to reserve that now or check out any of the other stuff, head to coinkite.com.

Code VTC sessions for 5% off everything in the store. Now, if you're looking to go beyond single-sig and dive into multi-sig, Nunchuk has an awesome thing going on with their Honey Badger package. And what this is is it's an assisted multi-sig setup. You're going to have a 204 multi-sig in which they have a just-in-case key for you. And it's got baked-in inheritance planning. So you can do this all from your mobile device. It walks you through every step of the way.

It works beautifully things like with things like the tap sign of the cold card and a whole bunch of other options. And again, yeah, that baked-in inheritance planning. where your sats can get to your next of kin without you having to worry about it. And one of the cool things about Nunchuk is non-KYC. So you don't have to actually give any personal information. Everything is done in a way where that's not required of you. And that's kind of a unique thing that is differentiating from Nunchuk.

So anyways, check them out. I did a full video on it. And you can check out the tutorial and maybe dive in. And finally, shout out to Start9.com, your sovereign computing solution. You can set up your full Bitcoin stack here with an Embassy 1 or Embassy Pro. And you can run Bitcoin Core, Lightning, Mempool. Space, join market, all that great stuff. You can host your own data. So passwords, files, photos.

You can run Noster Relays and Noster Clients, all kinds of great stuff. So the Embassy 1 is your entry level. The Embassy Pro is, if you want to be hosting your whole life on the thing, there you go. That's your beefy option. So check them out, start9.com. These guys are absolute legends. And of course, coming soon to Miami Beach, Florida. I can't wait.

Bitcoin 2023. What are we at? 34 days out or something like that now. Ooh, it's crazy. This is my fourth time attending. Very excited for it. It's a barrage on the census. So if you're going down, focus, know what you want to look at, know what you want to

see, try and take in as much as you can. Your time is precious down there. It's insane. So I can't wait to meet a ton of people down there. Anyways, if you're looking to go 150 speakers, 15,000 attendees, 2,000 companies, it's crazy. There's so much to do and see B.tc slash conference. You can use code BTC sessions for 10% off your tickets. I'm going to be doing a workshop down there too.

So be sure to check that. I'll talk about that at the end of the show. But yeah, that's going to be a blast. It's coming. It's coming. All right. So enough of my ranting. I need to get in my guests here.

Welcome to Lisa, CK, and Dennis. Thank you guys all so much for being here. I'm very excited about this show. So let's do a quick round of introductions for anybody that's watching that might be unfamiliar with you. We'll just go, who are you and what do you do? We'll start with Lisa. A little intro for yourself. Thank you.

Hi. So nice to be with you guys. I'm Lisa Huff. Everyone, most people like to say my name incorrectly, but it is Huff. Right now I'm. just working for Bitcoin. I work for Level Field Financial, and we are trying to buy Burling Bank, which is the bank in the Chicago Board of Trade Building, so that we can offer Bitcoin financial services to everyone, retail clients, institutional clients. Yeah.

Amazing. Awesome. And you did some work with Unchained back in the day as well, didn't you? I did. I worked for Unchained before I came to Level Field. And what I really learned is, not everybody thinks that holding your own keys is easy. Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a learning curve. It takes a learning curve. It takes time. And, you know, that's where we're here.

We're here to help people along their journey. So, awesome. Lisa, great to have you. Let's rotate down to Dennis. Dennis, good to see you, man. Can you give yourself an intro? Hey, Ben. Glad to be back.

And I might have to change my bullishness to Bitcoiners or buying up banks here in a little bit because that's some pretty amazing development in the space. But yeah, Dennis Porter, CEO, co-founder, Satoshi Action Fund. We also launched Satoshi Action Education where I'm the president of that organization. We just travel around the country, state by state, trying to make sure that we educate policymakers and regulators on the benefits of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. And then we turn around and we craft public policy and try to get that passed. We've had a lot of success, but we'll probably get into that a little bit here.

It's one of the main reasons I'm bullish, a lot of successful political engagement in the space right now. Dude, you've been busy. I think back to flying down to, was it Miami 21? It was. It was the one right outside of that building. I mean, that's D.K., that building couldn't have been better that you guys had in 21. Everyone loved that one. You should go back to the open air environment.

It was a great time, even though it was hot as hell in the Swan Dome. But yeah, randomly my plane got canceled. And I had to get onto another plane and flew over. We were to, what was it, Missouri or something? Or was it like Minnesota? Minneapolis, we ran into each other. I had my head down with my hat on, my Bitcoin hat on. And this one guy's like, you like Bitcoin, huh?

And I look up and it's bad. I was like, this is not, this is crazy. I mean, you were the first person I ever met in real life. That was like an active online person at the time. So I was pretty excited to go. And then we ended up sitting next to each other as well. Yeah, we traded seats with somebody. And we ended up just having an awesome chat flying

from Minneapolis to Miami. So that was that was one of my, even though it wasn't at the conference yet, that was one of my great memories of that year. So I'm glad to have you on again, man. So yeah, and I'll be seeing you soon, I'm sure. And 30 days. Yeah, man. CK, welcome back.

Good to see you, man. Can you give yourself an intro for anybody that doesn't know you? What's up, y'all? CK, I work at Bitcoin Magazine, I guess the now infamous Bitcoin magazine. We do Bitcoin magazine print. We're about to drop one of those next week. So really excited about that. We're doing a lot of cool stuff right now in the Bitcoin ecosystem. And we're putting out the Bitcoin conference. And I've been a part of every Bitcoin conference since Bitcoin 2019. So it's been an honor to put on the event and be a part of like so many stories in

people's Bitcoin's journey and story and careers. And, you know, that's why we do the event. We're trying to bring as many people together to talk about Bitcoin who are part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. So it's going to be a lot of fun, May 18th through the 20th. So excited to have BTC sessions there. And, you know, everyone here, I think everyone's going to be there. So excited for it and excited for this chat. I got some good reasons to be bullish.

So excited to get into it. Awesome. Awesome. Well, let's do that then. So everybody watching, if you're unfamiliar, this is why we're, we bullish. Very simple premise to the show. Everybody here comes with a reason why they're bullish. It could be anything. It could be a personal experience, a news item, an app, a blog, a video that they saw. It doesn't matter. Whatever tickles your fancy. But you get your chance to rant about

what you're excited about. Then we all riff on it together and then we rotate until everybody gets a turn. So really simple flow. Reason. Riff, rotate. And so I'm going to get started. I'm going to start with my reason for being bullish. I'll take you guys through a little journey, my line of thought, and then we'll riff on it a little bit. So I made, I was, I was passionate about this one, so I made some notes. So I think we're at a unique point in time right now. And so some of my bullishness is coming from the angle of pushing back against censorship. And so, you know, censorship can come from all sides, right?

Censorship can come from anyone. And that political pendulum, it swings back and forth. And with that continuous swing, I found that whoever happens to have the most political power at the time tends to be the one that exerts the power to censor views that don't agree with their own. And whoever happens to be on the receiving end of that. censorship is the group that is most likely to pound the drum of freedom and anti-censorship. And that goes back and forth. You know, growing up as a kid in the 90s, you know, it was, I viewed the conservative side of the aisle as they, oh, they're going to censor everything.

They don't want me to watch this on TV. They want this band from the radio, so on and so forth. You know, being an adult now, I see a little bit more from the opposite side of the aisle. But it's just, it's always kind of a back and forth. And, and, you know, it's, it does us well to recognize that, that it's a bad thing no matter who it comes from. And so I think right now, we're kind of living in an era that's very unique in the way that speech is now instant and global. Money has now become speech through Bitcoin in particular. The point at which the political pendulum is. And I, this is kind of more my personal opinion, but I, I think that it kind of has gone,

you know, as far left as it was going to go. And now we're seeing, we're starting to see like the push back to that and kind of the, the pendulum starting to swing a little bit, the other direction. And that swing seems to be going quicker and quicker, the, the back and forth from right to left. We're also seeing just about everybody questioning our institutions, right? Because we've seen a lot of polarization. And then we've seen everybody being angry in very recent memory at whoever the person in power was that they didn't agree with, whether that was four years ago or whether that is today. Doesn't matter. Somebody's been angry in the past four years. And so,

So the reason why I think this is so unique is that I think given the speed at which things are kind of ping ponging back and forth and the speed at which we see people questioning those institutions depending on what side they're on and the the the inclination of those in power to want to exert some type of censorship, whether it be speech wise or whether it be financial. in nature, I think that everyone now is uniquely positioned to see a use for these technologies that grant more freedom and freedom of speech and freedom of transacting with whoever they decide to. People are recognizing that open systems that are apolitical are important to have. And so we see that coming in form of obviously like the internet, but there's definitely ways that things can be clamped down upon on the internet. But now with Bitcoin and with Noster, we're starting to see people building these solutions of,

God, we really just need to be able to have open discussions and sort things out through reasoning as opposed to silencing. And so the reason that I got on this line of thought, was because because of this dude here and there's something that I just noticed about an hour before I came on this call. So, so I can't remember.

I can't recall. How do you say his last name? Matt Taby? Is that how you say? Do you know? I thought it was Tayaibi. Taiabi? Okay.

Or Tabe. Yeah. Something along those lines. Anyways, he's basically was one of the journalists that was, you know, putting out, was tasked with going through the data and putting out the quote unquote Twitter files of everything that kind of went on behind the scenes and some of the censorship that happened there. Well, you know, Elon basically tasked him and some other journalists to go and do this.

But then just in the last couple of days, him and Elon had a falling out because he was posting on Substack and Elon was not a big fan of, I guess, these other platforms being utilized or being advertised within Twitter and having users funneled out to other alternatives. And Substack has added a way of chatting that's very reminiscent of a Twitter feed. So it's direct competition or is becoming direct competition. So the reason I bring this up is because lo and behold, here's Matt on Noster as of, as of like yesterday. And it is him because here's a substack. And here's him saying for those asking, yes, that is me on decentralized social media protocol Noster.

And so Matt's not only recognizing the value of getting on an open protocol. call for speech. But holy shit, you better believe he's being inundated with messages to get a lightning wallet so people can zap him. So he's going to be, he's going to be electrocuted with lightning in very short order. And, you know, if he's not already orange-pilled, he's about to be. And so, yeah, like the need for open protocols like Noster, like Bitcoin, being able to speak, being able to to transact freely with whoever you see fit is so important. And even beyond that, you know, I was talking off the top of the show with, you know, Hoddle Hoddle is a sponsor of the show and they're kind of peer to peer.

But we saw Paxville shutdown. And what's happening now, Ray, Ray Yusuf, Nicholas Gregory, who also worked on Merckx. which is another like privacy preserving Bitcoin implementation. And Antoine Riard, I'm not super familiar with him, but basically they're putting together something called CivKit. I'm just going to read a little bit about this so that people are familiar with what they're trying to do there. But it's just another example of an open protocol where censorship was exerted.

And so we need to move to something that doesn't allow that to happen. So here's just the Cliffs notes here. We propose a new peer-to-peer electronic market system, which enables censorship-resistant, permissionless trading between users of the global Bitcoin system. This design, this is my favorite part, this design builds on top of the new Noster protocol for its peer-to-peer order book

and relies on the Bitcoin blockchain as a source of truth for its web of stakes marketing ranking paradigm. Market trades are locked under Bitcoin contracts, to avoid reliance on trusted third parties for dispute arbitration. All market nodes are incentivized by privacy preserving service credentials backed by Bitcoin payments. This market system should enable global trade of any kind of item all over the world, fiat currencies, goods, and services. And so like to see the recognition of we have a problem with being able to transact freely. We have a problem with being able to speak freely depending on the

platform you're on and who's running it. And then we have a problem with being able to trade, not just like send transactions, but to trade between each other and obtain Bitcoin or sell Bitcoin for goods and services or other currencies. And to see the speed at which this stuff is being developed is incredible. And so I'm bullish because it's an example that even though it can be a pain in the ass, everything is good for Bitcoin because Bitcoin is like water. It goes the path of least resistance.

I very much have value for people that are trying to remove some of the resistance, but I also place a lot of value on people that are just removing the resistance in an entirely different way as well by building things that can't be resisted. So anyways, that's where I'm at. I'm very excited about all of this. I think it's really cool that Matt is jumping on Iris. or on Nost or rather, and is probably,

he's probably got a ton of zaps already if people have finangled them into getting a lightning moment. But I'm curious about your guys thoughts. Anybody who wants to jump in, comment, question, whatever it may be. Yeah, Ben,

I think that's the best, why am I bullish ever, right? Really, free speech. Yeah. Across all avenues, across all markets.

It is, that is the most, bullish thing I think I've ever heard you say. It's incredible. The ability for us to talk to whoever we want, transact value with whomever we'd like, you know, have goods and services, build a new Airbnb on this other protocol, which I was at the Nostrakhan. It was an amazing event, although so not my world, right? Much more your world or the technical people's world. I just out there like, I know I'm in the room with greatness. And it actually wasn't even a room.

It was like outside kind of in a covered pavilion in the jungle. Did Tatum have a shirt on at this point or no? You know, it was really funny. I think it was probably the most undressed place that you'd ever see everybody because it was just so hot. It was like, what else can I take off? Like, you're just basically down to like tank top and shorts. Yeah.

and your sweat and hair. Yeah. It was great. I'm a little jealous. I wish I would have been able to make it down to that one. Unfortunately, with the amount of travel I'm about to do, I may have been murdered by my wife.

Who is coming to Miami, by the way? Very excited. She came to a little event last year, but I was like, you got to come down to Miami. She has to come. Oh, yeah. She's going to come down. and she's going to her mind's going to be blown, I think, about like,

because we went to a very, like, small, which was awesome. It was like a small intimate event. It was a hodlewine in Charlotte last year. And it was like 100 and something people. So it was like a little thing. It was a lot of fun. But she's going to get down there and be like, oh, my God. Like a barrage on the sense.

It's going to be great. Okay. So wait, I have to change what I just said. I think you bringing your wife to the conference is, the most bullish thing I've ever heard you say because I think when we get the people around us involved in Bitcoin, like we have truly won, right? Because like right now, I still feel like pretty much it's like the 128 of us that are in Bitcoin and then everybody else goes, look at, what are they talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She is, she gets, she gets it. She knows that she like

understands general Bitcoin, but she, uh, she doesn't give herself enough credit. Uh, but she does, the edits. So she'll at some point probably, you know, a few weeks out, she'll be watching this show back and she'll be editing little clips of stuff that you guys say to put out on Twitter. So anyways, when you see those clips go up and you get tagged in them, that's her. Her name is also Lisa, by the way. Awesome. All right. Thank you, Lisa. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Dennis, C.K. Do you guys want to tag in here anything about the freedom of speech? everything. I mean, I'll jump in and then I'll let,

I'll let Dennis close this out on it. But the idea that Bitcoin is like water is one of my favorites. So a slight augmentation to yours is Tina's quote, Bitcoin's like water. You can't stop it and it gets everywhere. I really do think like that is kind of how Bitcoin works. On top of that, Bitcoin's biggest advertisers are people who restrict freedom of communication and freedom of

exchange. That's Bitcoin's biggest advertisement. So we've been saying that when Trudeau froze funds, we're saying that when the U.S. did sanctions, now we're seeing that with Elon experimenting with what kind of like outbound link censorship you can do on Twitter. you know, I definitely, like in, in the world of like complex things, I, I never assume stupidity. I always assume that they're doing something that, you know, they're smarter than me. Like, they're operating on a higher level than I am.

And I try to be, you know, as adversarial as possible. And I definitely feel that way with whatever the hell Elon is doing. So I definitely think Bitcoiners should stay humble when they kind of analyze what he's doing. But at the same time, whatever he's doing is good for Nostr. And I'm going to talk a lot more about why I'm bullish on Noster. But BTC session, you said a lot of good reasons why Noster is super freaking bullish. And it's like a protocol, again, that enables a whole new level of coordination. And it's really exciting.

So I think it's awesome. Maybe you need to have a Noster insert in the Bitcoin magazine. Oh, yeah. Just like a Noster crossword puzzle. Or a fuzzy little like, uh, ostrich bookmark or something to poking out the top real feather you know i like the ideas already i'm writing these down perfect uh dennis i'm curious to hear your thoughts here yeah it's a you know a pretty good thing to be bullish on your i liked your comments about the swinging back and forth

that's occurring you know i would i would call that political volatility and the political volatility has been increasing significantly. I think that we all know that part of that is because of the volatility around the money that we've experienced. So I love to see that Bitcoiners are building the bridge to do different things as the volatility increases. You know, Bitcoiners tend to be the ones that build these bridges. You know, you have us people in a space building the bridge, the financial bridge, so that people have a way to escape what will inevitably come. Obviously, so we don't know when the dollar or if the dollar will ever start to fail as a reserve currency. It might not even happen in our lifetime, but we should be prepared for that moment

and Bitcoiners are building the bridge to make sure that people can have an opportunity to escape. And I think that you also now see that Bitcoiners are building the bridge to make sure that there's an opportunity for people to escape political volatility and I'll be able to speak freely on this new protocol. you know, the opportunity for people to leave centralized protocols like Twitter, even though I love Twitter. Obviously, I'm a big fan to use it all the time. It's a great product. There is some problems that are inherent in that product. And no matter who has control over the power of centralized entities, whether that be the government or whether that be Elon Musk over Twitter, they're going to

inevitably abuse that power against groups and peoples that they don't align themselves with or they think are problematic. You know, that line that you said about how, you know, talking about how no matter who's in power, they're going to use their power to be able to go after their political opponents. It's something I talk about a lot. And it's why I warn people, you know, just because Democrats are in power now and they are the ones that are seemingly anti-Bitcoin, it's very likely that if Republicans came into power, that, you know, they would see Bitcoin as a threat also. So I do think we'll commonly work with the party that's not in power.

I think that we make sure that's why it's important. We keep our eyes and ears open for opportunities to make inroads with Democrats. when and where we can because they're not always going to be the party in power. Political volatility just increases over time. And whoever's not in power is going to be attacked by the ones that are. And they end up being more allies of Bitcoin and allies of these sorts of new advance of technology. Like Noster and Bitcoin, the protocol itself. I hadn't thought, my last point here is I hadn't thought about Noster being a way to orange pill people into using Bitcoin.

Because if you get on there, immediately you're starting to get zapped and get lightning tips, which is huge. And so I'm, I wasn't aware of that. And I think that's a really important reason why we want to push people onto that protocol potentially. But I think some, sorry, one last point for that yellow brought up, which is that I do, I want to make sure Bitcoiners don't isolate themselves on that protocol as well. And we still meet people where they are on the current, uh, platforms that are out there today. Like, you know, don't, you know, we don't, the most dangerous thing that Bitcoiners can do is to isolate ourselves from the rest of society and not be speaking to them, which I don't think it's happening. but I think that some individuals have isolated themselves on to Noster. And I would just make sure,

encourage those people, you know, at least copy, at least copy, paste and put it on Twitter, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's super important.

And I think, I mean, if anything, like you said, I still use Twitter all the time, right? And so if anything, the fact that Noster exists, that it's got a decent network effect already,

that lots of people are using it, and lots of people are using it in tandem with Twitter, it keeps or it will keep those products in check, right? When there's an escape valve for everyone to default to, then there's a lot less shit you can try and pull before people just say, well, you know, it's getting bad over here. I'm just, you know, and I'm already using this other thing. I'll just start using that exclusively.

So now you've got a lot of people that are straddling that line. Like you were saying, you use both. So do I. I'm using both. But if, if, you know, I were to get banned from Twitter tomorrow,

I'd be like, well, I guess I just use Noster now. Like the, okay. I experimented Noster only for the majority of March. And it satisfied a lot of like my Bitcoin Twitter needs. Honestly,

it was great. I really enjoyed it. But Noster's also not ready. Noster's kind of like Bitcoin. It's like Bitcoin works really freaking good. But, if you added, you know, 50% more people on it tomorrow, like stuff would break. So Noster is definitely in its infancy still as well.

But it's extremely, extremely bullish. And the pace in which people are iterating on it is really awesome. And I agree. It's super, super optimistic for Bitcoin. The way I like to think about it is, like, how easy is it for someone to get $5 a Bitcoin? And on Noster, especially if you're someone who has like an existing reputation, you get on there, you verify yourself enough that people like trust it. Like you can get $5 a Bitcoin easily. And then some of those people can get a lot more.

And that is an awakening. Matt O'Dell, you know, he kind of like had that interview with Lionel Shivers of the Mandibles. And he like did a little Bitcoin fundraiser for her. and she got more than an entire Bitcoin. Like, she got a lot out of that. So, you know, like, this is some powerful stuff. And that kind of like of getting Bitcoin here, hands on Bitcoin for the first time without having to buy it, that's super, super bullish.

And that by itself is going to orange a lot, orange pill a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much. I don't know. I'm excited to see. again in the context of like Dennis was saying I'd not heard of I've not heard of Noster being an avenue to Orange Pill people I think it increasingly will become that because

people will be looking for alternatives to whatever social media platform they've had issues with that they're not allowed to say certain things on and they'll migrate with free speech in mind and then they'll end up getting free speech money through that, which is incredible. So, yeah, I mean, Uber bullish. It's the same thing as the truckers, right, in Canada, when they were forced off the financial rails, like Bitcoin was there. Yeah. In the same sense, Noster is there when people are forced off of communication rails.

Yeah. But then it's also a gateway to Bitcoin because the Bitcoiners are there building on Noster first. And so there's a lot of things being done. And like you said, it's a slow grind. but eventually, you know, this thing will be in a good position to help migrate away. We need to get as much power away from these centralized entities as possible for communication and for free speech for money as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Well, I'm going to round this topic out. Again, if you're watching and you haven't played with Nostry yet, jump on it. Just experiment, like even if it's not your full-time thing and you don't use it all the time, being familiar with it and just trying it out is important, I think. because like I said, if everybody's got a fallback, it keeps other things that you use in check. It prevents them from becoming so draconian

that they drive away their user base to the truly open option, which is Noster. And, you know, it's there for you too if you start to prefer it. And I know a lot of people are starting to lean that way. So I'm still, I'm using everything. But, yeah, Nostr is a unique beast. and just as Bitcoin is.

So check it out. And I do have a couple tutorials on that. If you have no idea what the hell you're doing, you can go look those up. All right, we're going to do a rotation. First off, shout out to everybody in the chat. Keep those comments coming. I'll start pulling up more of them now that I don't have to focus so much on my own topic. But with that, we're going to do a rotation.

And Lisa, I'm going to cue you up with the simple question. Why are you bullish? Take it away. Ben, I'm bullish because your wife is coming to Bitcoin, Miami. Perfect. End of show. We're done. We're done.

Ben's wife is coming to Bitcoin, Miami. I'm bullish. The families are showing up. No, it's the same thing I talk about all the time. So I apologize if anybody's heard me say this. But I am bullish because the energy companies are at the table. I think that the next wave of adoption, yeah, exactly. is the energy companies.

And, you know, I live in Houston. I've been talking to the energy companies for a couple of years. I've had the conversations with them at their boardroom tables where they look at me like I am from Mars. They look at me like I've just said Noster. And, you know, I'm really just trying to talk to them about Bitcoin mining. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you a really bullish one instance that just got me like incredibly hyped up was at the at the Bitcoin South by Southwest takeover at the Bitcoin Commons.

You know, that's part of the half that unchained office, half Bitcoin Commons in Austin. It's a great space. People should go check it out. They had about 150 guests. And during that event, two guys who were executives at a gigantic energy company in Houston that I met with. at least 18 months ago, maybe two years ago, that told me there's no, there's no way that our shareholders would let us be involved. It's too much risk. It's no, we're, no, these guys came. Now, and we've had, I've had probably three conversations with them over the 18 months time

period, right? And every conversation, it's been like, hey, would you go talk to this person? Could you? you know and then they'd go off and do their own thing right i wasn't involved at all but they these two guys showed up at the unchained event tap me on the shoulder and i turn around and i'm like oh my gosh what are you guys doing here and they're like we're mine and bitcoin we just went to urcot and we are working on you know this gigantic project and this gigantic project and these are just in texas and I mean they have assets all over the country and it's like oh my god they're finally they have figured it out that bitcoin mining is like this razor so that you can just improve your margin you know monetize every molecule it it allows you know for example a power producer who perhaps between two and four percent at the time they have to pay urcot the grid in Texas to take power because it's just more economical for them than shutting their plants down, right? So they pay ERCOT.

And actually, I've now found out I've always estimated 2 to 4% just based on like back of the envelope, bad math. But I've gotten some confirmation that it's about 4.5% of the time they have to pay to have someone take their product. Think about how crazy that is, right? Like Costco would never pay somebody 4.5% of the time to take. product. That makes no sense. So a power company can, you know, sit Bitcoin miners down or they can do a JV or they can do it themselves and begin to monetize those assets, right? It's, I mean,

a lot of people have heard about the flared gas mitigation that happens, which is phenomenal. We, I think a lot of us think about it in West Texas, perhaps. But I mean, those projects are happening all over the world. I mean, you have natural resources being produced in some of the most pristine parts of the world, that it would break your heart to know that all there is in that part of the world is a pipeline to take the oil. So when you, when you drill, most of the time, I guess, you have oil and you have gas that comes up. And in this pristine part of the world, this is actually happening in this very beautiful pristine part of the world that you would cry. if I said where it was, there's an oil pipeline because there's geographic challenges and you can

move the oil basically uphill, but it's much more complicated to move the natural gas uphill. So they don't, they flare all of it. They flare 100% of it. And now you've got Bitcoin miners who are in a JV with, you know, this foreign entity to mitigate all of that gas flaring. Right. It's like it's mind blowing. When you think about it, it's happening just these tiny little instances. But, you know, 500 megawatts here, 500 megawatts there. It's just the scale of it will explode because where it used to be, you know, I would say reputational risk or risk with your shareholder that no way we can't touch Bitcoin, you know, ooh. Now it's like, why would you not? I mean, you're going to literally light your asset on fire. four and a half percent of the time. And you have a solution. And by the way, I mean,

same thing on an oil rig out in the Gulf of Mexico. I met with one of the largest independent producers in the Gulf of Mexico. And, you know, they produce oil and gas and they use a lot of the gas to run the rigs, but they still all flare. Well, think about it. I mean, they have the most technically savvy guys in the oil furs. field on those rigs. The computer systems, the teams, the infrastructure, the equipment, they just need some Bitcoin mining machines and they can quit flare and all that gas that, you know, gets wasted.

I mean, I could go on. I could name five more examples for different types of energy companies who are monetizing these assets. So the ability for energy companies to now have this awakening and go, holy cow, like, I'm I'm going to monetize every molecule and put that money back into my pocket or put it into my shareholder's pocket. It's incredible. And, you know, Dennis, I think your lobbying work is is incredible and important. And there's so many people that are involved at the state level in different places.

In my dreams, though, you know, we get the energy companies involved who really have significant dollars. and we get them involved in those lobbying efforts because then lights out. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So I love the energy companies. You know, I've history in the oil and gas business.

And it's just, it's like the whole thing comes together. Aside from the fact that Lisa's come into Bitcoin, Miami, for me, it is just like, oh my gosh, they have finally, they are finally doing this.

It's not weird, strange. No, we're not even going to think about it. They're going to do it. It's wild to me that, again, like you said, why would you not? It's like if you were a carpenter and you're building, I don't know, you're building whatever it is and you've got your workshop. And somebody came along and said, hey, all those scraps on the floor, can I pay you for those? And like even the sawdust, yeah, I'll take the sawdust to like any, any leftover like scraps of wood that are completely, unusable to you, I will pay you for those. And the person being like, no, don't want it. I'm going

to throw this in the trash. Thank you very much. Stop giving me money. Like, why would you do? And that's exactly right. I mean, there's a Bitcoin miner, Dan Morrison, you guys may know him. And he's out in New Mexico. He bought, I think, 40 acres of property that had essentially orphaned wells because the gas pipeline over in that area where he has takeaway. So takeaway would be the pipeline to move the fuel. It's the Waha pipeline, which Waha is historically volatile. It can either be $8 or it can be negative a dollar. And Dan finds this really abandoned property, 40 acres,

with all sorts of like buildings and steel casing and just like, you said, like metal junk, goes to the owner and, you know, they hatch a deal. And basically, the guy just wants to get rid of this because he can't figure out how to monetize the gas wells that are there because a lot of the time it's negative, right? So he's like, forget it. This is not for me. I'm walking away. So Dan picks this thing up. He sells all the casing like on Craigslist, improves these buildings, you know, puts the Bitcoin miners in himself, like puts the, you know, the, keep the dust, the dust remediation, all of that, takes care of that. I mean, it's like the ingenuity that's, that's coming into this space is just, like, to me, it's amazing, right? It's like we have invented an entirely new industry for America that we should be proud of. And yet there are many of us that just want to fight it because we think it's like magic internet trash or something. And it's quite the opposite.

Yeah. It's wild. I'll let Dennis or CK. jump in here. I'll go first this time. Me and CK. Can take turns on being laughed. Yeah, Lisa, I mean, obviously I couldn't agree with you more.

There's a reason why, you know, I started a political organization. And that is 100% focused on Bitcoin mining, even though a lot of people outside the space, you know, kind of don't understand why I would do that. But I saw what you saw, which is that there's this industry that has so much to offer, has so much potential. And a lot of innovation is going to come from that space, whether it be for, you know, capturing wasted energy, whether it be through chip efficiency and also through balancing the grid, various other probably innovations that we don't even know of yet.

We're just getting started with this technology. But I saw that potential mixed with the looming threat of being attacked by the most powerful government in the entire world. And I just thought, you know, this is exactly what, you know, a political organization gate on the benefits of Bitcoin mining, which we do on a daily basis, right? We go to state policy houses and we educate on the benefits. benefits of Bitcoin mining for jobs, local investment, grid stability, environmental cleanup, and the ability to enhance green and carbon-free energy projects, as well as other,

it's really a tool. It's good for any energy project. But the biggest one that I really love, one of these big things I really like is this wasted energy component, because no matter where you set on the political spectrum, doesn't matter if you're, you know, fringe right or fringe left on the environmental issue of concerning yourself with carbon emissions, like wasted energy is wasted energy. and converting methane into money that was previously unused by everyone and anyone and no one he wanted it or nobody could economically get it to market is a huge, huge new direction for the way that we see energy. And also with, you know, green energy projects like renewables.

I mean, there is an ungodly amount of curtail wind and solar in this country. California is on track by 2030 to curtail more energy than the bottom 36 nations combined. I mean, it's a vast amount of energy that goes unused. And yet we get stuck on this, oh, Bitcoin uses more energy than XYZ. It's like, yeah, well, there's a lot of energy out there that nobody's using. And Bitcoin mining because of the fact that it's like, what, 90% plus operational costs go to energy. Like they're always looking for ways to innovate. Combine that with the forced efficiency that has to occur with the happening and also the difficulty adjustment.

And all of a sudden, you have this technology that is just really, ruthlessly competing to drive down energy prices. And the only way that you can do that is tackling wasted stranded energy or finding other revenue sources like balancing the grid. So I'm very clearly, very positive on Bitcoin mining and energy companies coming in. I think that you're seeing the utilities come in. Duke Energy is studying Bitcoin mining, the second largest utility. Some say the first largest utility in the United States, depending on the metric.

You have various other organizations in the space, utilities in the space studying Bitcoin mining. Amarin is studying Bitcoin mining. coin mining. You know, Texas has, it's like leading the way, except for kind of what some of this recent stuff, but I think there's going to be a lot of effort to push back on this bill in Texas. We've got a lobby day we're doing on the 25th, which hopefully we can drop that in the link at some show links at some time. If you guys want to, we're getting a lot of folks together with the Texas Blockchain Council. We're going to do that lobby day on the 25th in Austin to push back on this anti-competitive anti-free market bill that's being pushed there in Texas.

And it's really sad to see, but unfortunately these are the levers of politics and it's part of the reason why again like I think it's so important to be politically involved to make sure that these things these things do not happen but I'll hand it over to CK I am I know that the the Bitcoin magazine team has some pretty interesting thoughts on on who's leading the way of their sponsorships over there this year so the energy companies are coming in big I think that he has some probably some intel on that that I don't have though yeah I mean I've said multiple times that every single energy company every single company that creates energy or handles large amounts of energy will use Bitcoin.

So I think that that's the future. And it's it's the choice between communism and capitalism. It's free markets or not. It's losing money versus making money. It's having energy versus not. Like it's really clean and dry. You know, we are seeing what happens with the current energy regime. and Bitcoin is the only thing on the entire planet that is opposing to that and is opposite to that.

Once these environmentalists, if you are a real environmentalist, you must embrace Bitcoin. That is like, that is that that is the most environmental solution because what Bitcoin does is it introduces the incentive to be efficient, maximum efficiency. And I really loved what Lisa was saying, which is that you monetize every molecule. Like, that's a great way of saying, like, maximize efficiency. So if you want to maximize the efficiency of our energy system, you need Bitcoin. So at the Bitcoin conference, there's a lot of big companies that have either investigated sponsoring or are sponsoring. You can go check out the website, B.TC, forward slash conference, forward slash sponsors.

but we have an entire stage dedicated just to mining. You know, we have entire networking events dedicated just to mining and a lounge dedicated just to mining. So, you know, it's a huge part of what we're doing. There's an entire mining village at the conference. We're trying to get a mining museum with every single piece of heart, like notable piece of hardware and mining at the conference. So we're doing our best to make an incredible mining experience.

experience at Bitcoin 23. But I've also been on record saying that the only thing potentially more bullish than Bitcoin as sound money in a digital age is Bitcoin's proof of work unlocking our energy capture capabilities. Like I think that might be more bullish than the monetary element of Bitcoin. And don't, don't burn me at the stake. You know, thank God, Bitcoin has both. But it's just so incredibly bullish. Yeah. Dude, I know that you, I'm sure there's some sort of thing that, or agreement that prevents you from flaunting this name. But I never signed anything to not have to mention this explicitly. But Shell is fucking sponsoring the Bitcoin conference.

That's insane. They are massive. So, again, to this whole. whole topic. If you don't think energy companies are cluing in as to how special Bitcoin is as it relates to energy and energy consumption and removing waste from the system, I don't know what to tell you other than Shell is sponsoring the Bitcoin conference. That's crazy. Like to see that. Yeah. Can I add one more thing too? Not only the energy companies make me super bullish. But so I always say when I'm on a podcast, if you want to work in Bitcoin and I can be

helpful, hit me up on Twitter, hit me up on LinkedIn, shoot me a message. I reply to everybody. And I have 15 minutes for anybody that wants to schedule a Zoom call if you were trying to come work in Bitcoin. So in response to me saying that, I recently got a call for a message and that turned into a telephone call from a young guy who's a turpillar. an engineer for Entergy. He had already written a paper on why Bitcoin mining would be an efficiency tool for energy because on a maintenance basis, you know, again, if there's not uptake necessary for the grid, if there's not demand on the grid to take the power, those turbines have to shut down.

and all of that off and on, just like when I start and stop my battery in my car, it's more wear and tear on my battery than if I just turn it on and leave it on. I know that for a fact, because I wear out batteries like crazy because I do short trips, but it's the same thing,

apparently, with a wind turbine. And this guy wrote this paper and said, can I send this to you? This guy is a, he's like 32 years old, a wind turbine engineer for Entergy totally doesn't work in Bitcoin, right, but is a Bitcoiner. He's already done this work. And I'm like, dude, like, send this to Bitcoin Magazine.

Like, send this to your executives. Like, put this on LinkedIn. I mean, be like Mickey Koss and just start, like, firing stuff off until people start listening to you. And so the talent that's coming into this is really gets me hopeful that people are coming up with things that, you know, I certainly would never think of. And, you know, but it's just, it's stuff they see in their daily life. Okay, this would be more efficient than me turning this turbine off. I'll just mine Bitcoin. Yeah. Lisa, that's, yeah, I love to see the people that are

coming to the space with these, you know, from outside the space, into the space that understand energy. And I would love to get a hold of that paper. I don't know if you, you know, recently, we launched Satoshi Action Education and we were able to play. publish in an academic journal special issue on Bitcoin, which allows us to be able to submit papers from academics and non-academics that highlight the value of the technology. So I don't know if this guy is interested in getting that into the academic realm, which is something we need way more of in this space. But we have a gateway.

Our science advisor is an editor at that journal. And so it's a real unique opportunity if he's interested in putting that out there in a way where everyone can see it and also get it peer reviewed and get it backed up in a way where it's, you know, it's backed up in a way where the best way it can be, right? Peer reviewed is the is the worst system we have except for all others. It's just like democracy, right? It's like, but unfortunately, that is the system that a lot of policymakers make decisions on and utility companies make decisions on.

So I'd love to chat about that paper if it's an opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't know that you were working on that, Dennis. That's incredible. Thank you for doing that. What a brilliant idea. Yeah. Well, we were lucky to get approached by Dr. Murray Rudd, and he was the one that's helping

to lead the charge and helping us get into the journal. That's incredible. Nothing on my part. I just launched the organization. He's doing all the hard work. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I mean, again, like the energy topic is so, so interesting.

And it's a natural marriage between Bitcoin and energy, because it's energy is what allows us to tie Bitcoin to the laws of physics. And it's what roots it in reality instead of how did Vitalik Budarin put it? We're going to build our own laws of physics. And I don't know about you, but that's not a quality I want in money that I want to be sure works the same as when I first own it to when I go to spend it later. So anyways, and the last thing I'm going to say in regards to like the energy mining, like finding waste and utilizing its side of things is I did a video a week and a half ago. For those that think that mining at home is still out of reach, no man, you can build a space

heater with an S9. It's great. It's humming away in my living room right now, keeping my wife toasty warm. And yeah, you can find an used S9 for like 100, 150 bucks. You can get a 3D printed case from crypto cloaks and buy some fans all in. You may be looking at like 300 bucks or so. And it uses about half the wattage of a regular space heater. It won't heat the room as quick with less wattage, but it pays you back part of your electricity.

So like your, you know, weigh your options. Plug in your regular space heater and use more electricity and pay in full. for it or plug in your S9 space heater and get paid back part of your electricity every single month. I know what I'm doing now. So yeah, anyways, I love it. Bitcoin will eventually be part of any appliance that can take advantage of low-grade heat. So cool. Whenever heat is needed or whenever there's like an appliance that's unused, I think it's going to just mine Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. what did yellow say now with the space flare heater? You can mine your personal Dutch ovens from your own home.

Thank you, y'all. I feel like that is part of a whole conversation that was happening prior to that. But I brought it up anyways. All right, we're going to do a rotation. Dennis, I'm going to toss it to you next. I'm going to cue you up with the same simple question. Why are you bullish? Take it away, man.

Yeah, man. Well, it's definitely down the same vein as you know, you and Lisa so far. And it's this, you know, the conversations around the political space. You know, for the last two years, I have been very focused on trying to move the needle in the right direction politically. You know, I had some experience in the political realm before coming to Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining as a way to have, you know, some sort of success. I think that for a long time there was a narrative in the Bitcoin space that we should stay out of politics and that Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining are outside government reach. And to some extent, I do agree with that. Like Bitcoin will always survive.

You know, you can't kill Bitcoin. Those things are still true. But the problem is that you and me and everybody else listening to this call still live within the real world where government. can come after us. And I have, you know, since the beginning of my, you know, time in kind of being a public bitcoins, which started in early 2021, I saw this, you know, looming threats of the U.S. government kind of cracking down on on Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related companies and individual bitcoinsers. And I thought, you know, just like many others, like, oh, I'll, I'll just play some regulatory arbitrage. And I will go to another country that is tolerant.

Bitcoins. Well, you know, after some thinking, I realized that, you know, that's probably not a realistic path for me to be able to convince my entire family to sell our business and sell our home and, you know, move everybody across the world just so I can keep my Bitcoin. As many of Bitcoiners, you know, in the space, it's like I, I'm the Bitcoiner and my family kind of follows along and just appreciates that it goes up in value. I don't think they'd be willing to, you know, leave the nation that they're from or that they want to live in over an asset, but they don't totally fully understand. So I kind of woke up one day and was just like, wow, I don't think this is a possibility. And one day, it might be that I have to choose between

my family and my Bitcoin. And we all know we are what we're choosing in those instances. Like, you're always going to be choosing your family over, over money even. So I just, when I woke up and realized and had that thought that I never want to be faced with that problem, that I would do everything possible to make sure that the United States moves the right direction on Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining so that we never have to be faced with any sort of political discrimination. So it started off rough. I think many in a space, if you've been following me for a long time, know how it all began, but since then have had a lot of success.

And so since I've launched my organization, Satoshi Action Fund in June, we got to start trying to figure out how we could score real and realistic political vision. victories for Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. And I thought the most important issue, as I stated earlier, to lean in on was Bitcoin mining. Because if you can get energy companies on board with Bitcoin, then you have a significantly more powerful wind at your back. I've only come to realize just how powerful that wind is after spending quite a bit of time at the state level advocating for Bitcoin mining.

Utilities and power companies are some of the most powerful political, like politically involved companies and organizations in the entire world. If you go to a, for instance, in Mississippi, we had an issue there where a bill was introduced that we had kind of decided to put on the back burner because utilities were so opposed to it. So we said, you know, let's just wait. Let's not introduce it. Unfortunately, there was a breakdown in communication and it was introduced anyways.

And you know, a week later, I'm meeting with seven lobbyists from the various utilities and energy companies telling me that they're going to kill, you know, everything on I'm doing if I don't work this bill back. So we got in talks with them, communicated with them a bunch, but eventually they just chose not to trust me and killed literally everything we were doing in Mississippi. We couldn't even get the definition of a word change because they were so spooked by us. So I think that now that we're getting these energy companies on board and now that we've had some success, the reason why I'm bullish is because we have been able to pass policy, whereas I think two years ago, folks were wondering if this was even

impossible and that maybe we should just give up on the United States and start looking elsewhere. But we have successfully been able to pass in a House and the Senate in Montana and Arkansas, political protections for Bitcoin miners, which I think is critical because Bitcoin mining is under a lot of political scrutiny and attack by various entities and various organizations, whether they be local jurisdictions or environmental organizations who just don't understand the technology. And so that is really why I'm bullish. I'm bullish because we have been able to make progress. We have been able to pass policy, despite, you know, all of the, of the political headwinds. And we've done that by going to the state level. We've done that in a very

Bitcoin or fashion. We are not in D.C. although we educate there, we're in local communities. We're in local state houses and we're having conversations with these people about this technology. And we follow the same strategy as the marijuana industry. And we're going to follow that strategy for a long time to come. The marijuana, you know, we all think we have it badly, you know, in the crypto, Bitcoin space on being attacked. But nobody has it worse in the marijuana industry. It's still a federal crime to possess, distribute, and to sell or grow marijuana, it's still impossible to get, you know, traditional banking in the marijuana industry.

And yet they were able to pass pro-marijuana legislation in 75% of this country. But it started with two states. And now we're at two states. It started with two states in 2012. Colorado and Washington passed pro-marijuana legislation in those states. And then a little over a decade later, almost the entire country, 75% of it has passed.

past pro marijuana legislation and the rest of the states that haven't are looking to do the same looking to follow suit. So I think that's the same strategy that we're going to continue to follow. It's been very successful so far. The same exact thing is probably going to happen with the banking. Like you're going to have more so like state chartered banking, which is something that we're looking into and we think is an interesting idea where states can be the ones banking, you know, Bitcoin companies, because if the feds just, you know, maybe they're never going to get around to it. We think, oh, maybe the Republicans will be in power and everything will be fine. I'm not so sure. I'm not convinced. Maybe that's true.

But I'm not going to like assume and hold out a bet that that's going to happen. So we're going to keep fighting at the state level to protect Bitcoin miners and energy companies from being discriminated against when they use this technology. And we're going to keep advancing that mission. And part along the way, you know, some of the things we're doing that's good for Bitcoin mining is just good for all Bitcoiners, right? Like you'll see. Some of the stuff that we're working on that's coming out is really, really going to be good. And then we've taken that success that we had with the political organization, Satoshi Action Fund. and we've funneled that into the new organization,

which is Satoshi Action Education, and we're going to be doing research on Bitcoin mining. We want to make sure that we have data-driven, peer-reviewed, cutting-edge research on this technology, and we're going to break through that barrier. There's a glass barrier on any sort of research. Anytime you submit an article on Bitcoin mining to a journal, they have to turn around and ask people to review that article.

So who are they going to ask? Well, they're going to ask people that have written on it before and who have been peer-reviewed on Bitcoin mining before. Well, it's guys like Alex Debris and Moore et al. So unfortunately, unfortunately, there's this huge barrier in the way of us being able to get peer review data back to research into the public journals. And, you know, we plan to take our success into Satoshi Action Education and smash that glass barrier so that we can start to have real conversations on how powerful this technology can be, not just for energy systems, but for the environment and for the economy as well. Yeah, that's. And so I alluded to the fact that, you know, while obviously the people that are building the tools are important, I also value the people that are trying to remove the barriers and the speed bumps that Bitcoiners are going to have to endure in the future.

It makes the tools that much more effective, that much sooner. Yeah, man, I'm a big fan of what you guys are doing. I think it's very important. As you said, I got a family too. And like, got to tell you, it'd be a pretty tough sell to be like, well, looks like Bitcoin's illegal. We're moving to El Salvador. I don't know if my wife is going to fully latch on to that and say, yeah, let's grab the kids. The grandparents can stay behind or join us.

I'm sure they will. it's just not going to fly and so like if you got to do some groundwork at home you got to do some groundwork at home and and yeah i think that's you know that this is the work that saves a lot of people from having to make those hard decisions um and yeah i i don't know i don't have too much else to comment i just want to say like i value what you do and uh and it's kind of cool to see since our our initial conversation on our flight to Bitcoin 2021, how quickly everything that you've been doing has snowballed into what it has become. And I'm sure that snowball will only continue to gain momentum in size.

So yeah, I don't know. CCA, maybe I'll get you to tag in here and then we'll grab Lisa's thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's really important, one, to continue to educate as much as possible. Bitcoin is good for everyone, but it's also really bizarre and confusing. And it's like having that humble spot and starting there and trying to communicate the many ways that Bitcoin is beneficiary to you and your jurisdiction or whatever tailored to whoever you're talking to is super important. So, you know, we've been seeing a lot of awesome momentum from the Satoshi Action Fund. And it's like, it's unbelievable that started

just last June less than a year ago. So Dennis, cheers to everything that you've done so far there. I also want to give a shout out to another organization, BPI, Bitcoin Policy and Sue, similar time frame and putting out really great work as well, doing a lot of education. Sessions, I know you had Zell on a couple of shows ago. Last week, yeah. Before Bitcoin, BTC, 2023 in Miami Beach, they're doing the Bitcoin Policy Summit April 26th.

So that's actually the same time frame as consensus. So if you're trying to do something in between now and the Bitcoin Conference, the Bitcoin Policy Summit is a really great option. And the whole idea there is they have like some of the most incredible orange pillars and people who can articulate the Y case for Bitcoin, Jack Mallors, Troy Cross, a lot of our friends, people who've been on the show a lot. and they are going to introduce them to staffers, people who are in policy, and just trying to make sure that the highest signal event possible.

So I'm really excited for that too. But again, super bullish on people waking up to how Bitcoin makes the world better. And people who are Bitcoiners like Dennis, you know, waking up to saying, like, I don't want some knucklehead who is not going to take the time to learn about Bitcoin to ruin Bitcoin in my jurisdiction and going out there and making a difference there. And that's the beautiful thing about Bitcoin is that it's like water. You can't stop and it gets everywhere. And there's these people who are pushing it forward because, you know, they're incentivized to

because it's going to help us too and it gives us optimism for the future. Yeah, 100%. I'll tell us to Lisa. Do you want to tag in there? Yeah. No, it was just great comments, Dennis. And your track on the cannabis space is exactly right. Shout out to Burling Bank, based in Chicago that we are trying to acquire.

They bank the cannabis space. And they also bank some of your favorite Bitcoin companies. So there's a lot of, that makes a lot of sense that you guys are viewing things from that lens. And really helping people frame it that way because I think then it becomes a little more, I was going to say digestible, but, you know, no pun intended, digestible. And it's just a, it's an exciting time. It's also a very scary time for us because I feel like here in the, in the U.S., you know, I'm like starting to think, how can anybody be against sound money?

How can anybody be against free speech? How can anybody be against, you know, these principles that we think are obvious? And yet, I think it boils down to a lot of people are lazy. You know, I talk to a lot of people who aren't even on Twitter yet. They're like, oh, I don't watch, I don't, I'm not on Twitter. I don't want to listen to all that junk. And it's like, dude, where do you get your news? And where are you?

What is a news source for you? And, you know, it's like, oh, they read the New York Times in the morning. And it's like a very stale, stagnant, what have you, traditional news source. It's like we've all just, maybe me too. Like we just became late. I guess I think I was a lot, I was lazier before I found Bitcoin. And then once you find it, you're like, oh, geez, like basically everything I assume to be true may not be true. So yeah, kudos to you, Dennis, for really putting in place all of the academic, putting together the science and the academic and the practical nature of Bitcoin.

and making that information available and digestible, because then it doesn't come off like it's a, you know, a zealot who, you know, who's talking about magic internet trash. You've made it, you know, a very compelling academic case for what this looks like and why these, you know, why free speech matters, why Bitcoin mining matters to, you know, methane mitigation or all of these other uses.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally agree. Yeah, you know, that's the on that track. I'm glad to hear Lisa, a lot of times when I bring up that marijuana example, I hear a lot of people, you know, discuss various other ways that that pair, that sort of analogy works.

But one of the best parts about it is we're following them. It's good that we have that example. We're following them very closely in that we're not trying to say, oh, you should be able to have Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining because, you know, freedom of speech and all this other stuff, which is very critical and important. And the marijuana industry could have done the, you know, it's my body, my choice. You know, I should be able to smoke whatever I want. And you can't stop me.

This is a plant, this is medicine type of thing. But what really started to work for them was saying, you know, this will create jobs. This will create tax revenue. This will help increase property prices and reduce crime. And that worked because state policymakers, you know, that's what they want to bring to their jurisdiction. They want to bring more jobs and investment. And for us, it's good stability and also enhancing renewables. And Bitcoin might make all that possible, whereas it was not possible before.

And so the states compete. We were lucky to live in a country where states compete over each other to out-compete over business and jobs. And fortunately, I really love, you know, one of the best things is that this industry, because of the need for cheap power, is really attracted to unused and underutilized infrastructure. And the majority of that is in, you know, middle America, where it's been left behind over the last 30, 40 years as we've offshoreed most of our jobs to,

other countries, these people have been left behind. So guys like James that work at the riot facility in the middle of nowhere, right, in Texas, so to speak, who are 70 years old, are beaming, smiling when you come through the tour because for the first time in a long time, you know, someone is coming and bringing jobs to their local community. And when I, you know, I was talking to James, he was like, you know, I have a, like dignity again in my life. I have a real job that, you know, I can depend on the income.

And so I just want to see more of these jobs be created and more of this industry to expand. outside of just being good for, you know, energy and these kind of bigger things like grade balancing and environment, like people, individuals are being positively impacted by this industry. And I hope we can tell more of those stories as well. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. It's, uh, I think so much can, we're on the cusp of something here where, where, um, again, it's, it's kind of like the, the, I, I quite enjoy the book, the fourth turning. And and I really like the, the kind of explanation of, well, naturally, depending on, on where you're kind of born in kind of these, these generational shifts, you react to stimuli

differently. And, and I love the idea of kind of hitting that stride, of building something new, of coming past all of our differences and and everybody kind of coming together on a common goal. And that was kind of the post-World War II era of where, you know, here we are. We're building up a new way of life where, you know, everybody's got their white picket fence and they're, you know, we're all happy to go to work. We got our families. And, you know, you saw this buildup of what was America. I think we have a bumpy path ahead of us, but I think out of that, people like my kids will be coming into adulthood with that kind of like new horizon of, I don't know, like a new way of living. And I think Bitcoin is a big part of that.

And I'm very excited to see that come to fruition. Again, like my daughter is turning six. My son just turned two. They've never existed in a world where Bitcoin wasn't around. That's insane to me. It's incredible. My daughter, like my daughter makes little, she loves making stores in the house and she'll take like her stuffies and different toys and stuff.

She'll make a little shop. And there's a little iPad. And, you know, I'll say how much is that? She'll come up and say, well, it's, it's, you know, she just picks numbers. Oh, it's 600. while what she do, she pulls up her lightning app on her iPad and I pay her 600 sats. And so she's she's learning. It's a normal thing.

And initially, like, you know, I joke around and I'd be like, well, do you accept Bitcoin? And she'd be like, no. And now she's like, you have to pay me in Bitcoin. She pulls out the iPad. So she's stacking her own stats. Of course, I'm buying the stuff from her that I previously bought for her that she will then reclaim as her own. but she's she's on her path.

So yeah, it's exciting. And she's six. And she's six, yes. Pay me in Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah.

We need to train every six year old in America to say pay me a Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So before she was on the same. Yeah. Now she won't accept anything else.

It's great. It's electronic money that she can actually have. Like what other way can she have electronic money? Well, and here's the, here's the kicker too. Um, she started. So now she's like everyone's wants to play games. And, uh, and then recently like she, you know, she watched little clips on YouTube and she sees people playing, uh, Roblox. I think it is. And anyways, on bit refill, you can buy the little, the in game currency with Bitcoin via lightning. And so I've, I've been waiting for like to drop this on her. But I'm going to be like, hey, you know, when you're playing your game and I say like, no, that that costs money.

We're going to need. You can't, you can't just like buy that in the store. What if I told you now, you know how we play the store at home and you've earned some Bitcoin? Well, you can go buy a gift card with your Bitcoin for real and then go use it in your favorite game. She's going to be so floored when she finds that out. And I'm just waiting.

I'm waiting for it, but it's going to be fun. I have a story for you. So I have a bunch of little cousins, you know, kind of like from age. Now they're like 18, but when I started doing this, they're like 15 and younger. And for Christmas or any birthday, I would only give Bitcoin. And I would give them like 100 bucks. And, you know, 2017, 100 bucks or 2018, 100 bucks. That could turn into like 500 bucks pretty quick on you.

So all of a sudden, like, the. They have some substantial cash, you know, year after year getting Bitcoin from me. And one of them figured out how to go on new egg. And he was a more industrial one. He wanted to build a computer. And he used the Bitcoin to buy computer parts and build a computer. And at first I was like a little pissed at him because like, no, you're supposed to haul that forever, kid. Like, come on.

But then and then I had to like forgive him. And honestly, like he's a sharp kid. And he sold the top when he bought his computer. Like he sold 60K plus. And I was like. like, oh, no, you got a hoddle forever. And now I look like the idiot who can identify the top when my 15-year-old cousin could. But I was really proud, you know.

Are you screaming Supercycle when he bought the computer? I was like, you idiot, no. But, you know, he's been stacking too now. So proud of the guy. And honestly, you need that. You need those moments of like, like obviously I earn and live on Bitcoin now. So it's an entirely different world, right? but you need those moments of having spent Bitcoin and looking back and be like,

because like, okay, so for instance, when Fold came out, they were initially, like, you would buy gift cards with Fold, like Starbucks gift cards. And then the balance that you didn't use in your Starbucks gift card, you could get refunded in Sats back to you. So you could get like a $20 gift card, use $17 and they get the $3 back in Sats. That was part of the flow. And so I did a road trip across the U.S. In 2014 with my then fiance, well, girlfriend, now wife, but we drove across the U.S.

We drove all the way to New York. And the whole way, I was buying a Starbucks with Bitcoin. And each one of those, like every time we stopped in and we got like a $30, you know, like we got a couple of lattes and some food and like a little dessert, that was thousands of dollars for every Starbucks visit. every single one of those for like a month and a half long road trip. So I think back to that, I'm like, oh my God. But it everybody has to have their Laslow pizza moment to be like, oh, this money is valuable. And it's not that you don't ever then spend it.

It's that you have you come into a mentality of I need to make sure that I'm spending less than I earn and I'm saving with my Bitcoin. And if you come out of it with that, then it does like naturally, if you have a fixed supply money, it will always purchase more in the future. But you find that balance of planning for the future while also enjoying your life. And again, as long as you're spending less than you earn, you're not utilizing massive amounts of debt for everything. it puts you in the mindset to live while also planning for the future and not in the rat race hamster wheel, whatever you want to call it that we're currently on where it's just you're perpetually spinning in the mud.

There's like three metaphors in there for you, but whatever. Nonetheless, yeah, I'm conscious of time. We've got to get to CK. I'm going to round out this topic. Dennis, I love it. Thank you for what you're doing. it's very valuable and and and I think the work that you're doing now is going to save a lot of people from a lot of a lot of roadblocks that they could have encountered and at least

every you know where where you're seeing um where you're seeing like the the most strides forward um it keeps everybody else in check right like you you have a uh you have one state doing one thing and one state doing the other, it, it incentivizes people to within their own country go there, right? Like it's it's it's it keeps the other states in check if not. Our goal is for every New York moratorium that we want three states to pass pro Bitcoin mining legislation and we're on track to meet that goal this year. So that's kind of our you know, I go ahead and attack Bitcoin because it'll just result in even more states being pro Bitcoin. Yeah. It's again like you guys in the states have I again, I'm up in Canada. So the, the, the,

you guys have a very unique situation there where you've got that that freedom from state to state where you have much more control at the state level, which we don't have provincially from province to province here, where if you don't like it, you don't even need a passport. You just hop over to whatever state is more favorable to you. Whereas here, it's, I mean, I'm in Alberta. It's like the Texas of Canada, if you could get such. But like we're still very beholden to the federal government here. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a little, uh, other than the fact that that uncle Sam will chase you across the globe to get his cut.

Uh, other than that, I'm envious of, of the, uh, geographical arbitrage you have within your own country. So, uh, with that, we're going to do a rotation. I'm going to toss it to CK. I'm going to cue you up, uh, again with a very simple question. Why are you bullish? Oh, man. So this has been a very bullish conversation. There's so many things to be bullish about. I think the sovereign individual thesis is playing out. That's extremely bullish.

If you haven't read that book, you need to. Most important book in Bitcoin, probably. Dude, how many copies are you bringing with you, by the way? I'm bringing about 10 copies, but I only have so much suitcase space. So it needs to go on top of all my stuff and my carry-on. So, but I've historically been giving copies of sovereign individuals to people who bump into me at the conference. So if you bump into me, ask for a sovereign individual, you get one if I have one. So come find me, but you got to read the book, got to listen to the book, whatever it takes, it's worth it.

But outside of that, why am I bullish? There was a meme back in 2018 and 2019 when I was like starting to like make my chops in the Bitcoin space. And that kind of narrative and meme was that Bitcoin will absorb all of the other features that are like being solved by blockchain. Like anything that is worthwhile is being absorbed by Bitcoin. And it was kind of hard to see that being a reality then, even though lightning was out. And that was kind of like one of the first kind of bolt-ons to Bitcoin that made a real. really big change there. But since then, you know, think through lightning came in 2018. Now we have Noster. Now we have podcasting 2.0. Now we have all of these other, you know,

self-server solutions. Now we have immutable file storage in terms of like different ways to put information onto Bitcoin. All of these things are building, compounding on themselves. And they're taking like all of those alt coin features, the payment coin, the NFT coin, you know, the social media coin that need, you know, social media that needs its own, you know, currency. Now you have, you know, now you have social media and Bitcoin's built right in. And it's actually the strongest potential Bitcoin orange pulling movement that is now emerging, right?

and it's this just kind of incredible seeing bitcoin absorb any good ideas and bitcoin always getting better and getting more resilient and you know packs full goes down civ kit appears build you know and that's even harder to kill um so it's super super bullish it makes me really excited um and i know people are torn on inscriptions um i'm personally not someone who is like going to spend a lot of Bitcoin on art or anything like that, but it's Bitcoin, right? This is happening on Bitcoin and people are using something within the consensus mechanism that is bringing more people to Bitcoin, fees up, full nodes up, people who are using coin join up. You know, all of these things are up. And this is kind of showing Bitcoin's nature of absorbing what is good around it, being a true fee

market asset and, you know, all of it, a lot of this, you know, transpired just this year. So it's incredible just to see how bullish of a year, 20, 2023 has been. I'm extremely bullish for the remainder of this year. And I think 2024, hopefully we're off to the races with the, with the halving. But Bitcoin's getting harder. Bitcoin's getting stronger. I'm bullish. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think it's, it's a very unique time. I think there's a lot of people that are having trouble with kind of reckoning what's currently happening, right? Because you're right. Everything, just as people have been saying for years, everything of value will be built at top Bitcoin.

That also means people are going to try to build things that don't have value at top Bitcoin. And that's also a very subjective thing. And so, I think what you're seeing right now is, is Bitcoin focused for so long and everybody on Bitcoin focus for so long of we need a solid foundation, something you cannot shake. And that takes a long time to establish. You can't, you can't fuck around with that. You've got to get it right. You've got to get it perfect or as close to perfect as possible.

It has to be good enough. And it can't, the ground can't be shifting from underneath you. at all times. You can't be questioning how the protocol is going to function moving forward if you're building stuff on top of it. And that's what we see these massive tradeoffs that all of these other coins have made were we want to do this. We can't currently do it on Bitcoin, but we want to do it now. So, you know, immutability, you know, censorship resistance, all of these other things. Well, yeah, but we need to do this now. So, you know, that's what you saw. And you saw people go off, build other blockchains and experiment and do all this other crap.

Okay. Well, now we're out of space where Bitcoin is slow and expensive is out the window, right? Like if you try to say that today in 2023, I do not know what to tell you. I probably can't convince you. But nonetheless, that is a moot point that you just said social media platforms. We need a token for them. Do you? No, apparently not because the one that actually goes.

bought any traction that's doing well and growing has lightning baked in and native. And so now you're seeing things where, you know, I'm not an NFT guy. I'm going to be right out of the gate. I can't. I'm not going to pay for a JPEG. It's just it's not in my blood. I don't. But at the same time, like, I'm not.

It's not. It's not for me. But at the same time, like, I'm looking at this. I don't line up with the idea. I don't see it as a threat either. I think a lot of people are going to take all of the ideas that happen outside of Bitcoin, good and bad. And they're all going to come to Bitcoin.

And then we will start to sort through what is of value and what's not. And I have my opinions about what I think is bullshit and what's not. And other people will differ from that. But I think in the end, like the economic reality that is scarce block space will sort through that. Right now, we're in a space where, you know, somebody may not have a problem, you know, making a four megabyte block with with a silly picture in it and paying a couple grand for that. But when the price of Bitcoin is much higher and block space is much more scarce, that may not be such a trivial transaction to put through. And so what takes precedent? And also, what does that do to the pace of the pace of development on layer two solutions that also still guarantee you self-custody?

I think all of this, because we focus so much on having this, this base layer that is unshakable or as close to unshakable as we can get it. The economics of it are sound. And I don't know, if a few shitty jpegs can bring down Bitcoin, then I'd rather know now. So my whole mental model with Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is most likely binary. Like the option three is Bitcoin is just some other asset. So outside of a binary win-lose scenario, in my opinion, is very unlikely. So I think either Bitcoin hyper-Bitcoinization or Bitcoin zero because of a more disruptive technology making it irrelevant or the game theory breaking down and it'll be. all falls apart.

That's how I think of Bitcoin. So if JPEGs make Bitcoin not fungible and Ordinals make Bitcoin not fungible, then Bitcoin broken. Like, I don't know what else to say. But I don't think that's the case. And I think that if it was so easy to break Bitcoin, then it's not the answer for us. Firstly, I don't think that any of this stuff so far is going to make Bitcoin. And I'm very excited to see how Bitcoin's incentives continue to have.

evolve and how people who use it within consensus continue to evolve. And that's how it's going to, you know, become this thing that we all think it's going to be. Yeah. I want to, I'm bringing this one up because I want, I want to address it too. And I'm, this is where kind of I'm, I'm sitting there looking at everything that's, that's, you know, happening in and around ordinals and everything. And I know this is a super hot topic. I've talked about it on the show prior. again and where where I sit is I think it's dumb I also and whatever if somebody wants to go and do ordnals like I also don't think it's a threat I think economically it sorts of self out so the comment here it's not about Bitcoin it's about grifter scamming people I mean I'd be sure like if you're going to rug pull if you're doing shady shit absolutely um so

I think the long and the short of it is if somebody is convinced that one set is worth more than one set, I don't know what to tell them. I don't agree with them. I'm not about to sell them. I'm not about to sell one set to somebody else for more than one sat. But yeah. I don't know. I think that those, you know, if I'm right, then those people will learn a valuable economic lesson. If I'm wrong, then congratulations to them, I suppose. I don't know. Either way, Bitcoin continues to function as it is.

So like, and like in the context of, of Bitcoiners, like, Bitcoiners that have been around for a long time, well, a lot of them gravitate towards the idea of like, you know, like, I'm not going to pay additional money for sets because they have, you know, some, some code, a snippet of code in them. And then for the newcomers, I mean, I was an idiot when I joined in this whole space. I had all of the bullshit. I ran Dogecoin QT. I had the Dogecoin client verifying the Dogecoin blockchain on my friggin Macbook. And like, yeah, I mean, we all go through that idiocy.

You know, some people's trajectories are quicker. Like there wasn't as much information back then. So it took me like, I think it was like 2017, 2018. The idiocy of inscriptions now gets you to download sparrow wallet in a full mode. So I mean, it could be stupider. That's for sure. Yeah, I don't know. Again, I think I see Bitcoin binary.

And, you know, it's either good or bad for Bitcoin. I think that everything is good for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is just this overwhelming kind of force. It's like water. It gets everywhere. Or you can't stop it and it gets everywhere. So it's either that or it's not. So I'm pretty calm here.

I mean, I'm happy to address the elephant in the room. Bitcoin Magazine tomorrow is doing a auction of 23 covers inscribed into Bitcoin. You know, again, I think it's an experiment. We've had opportunities as like a publication, a media company, an art company. We've been involved in art for a long time. We're a culture company. We bring Bitcoiners together. We've had the opportunities to like make a digital artifact for a long time. And we've pretty much always said no outside of experimenting with stuff that was associate with Bitcoin. We did something on Liquid. We've done stuff on counterparty, which is all run on Bitcoin. And then this is the most Bitcoin thing possible so far. So we have folks

on the team who are in the art space, very excited, you know, inscribed covers early on. You know, we're just experimenting seeing what's happening. We're doing a Dutch auction, which starts at the highest price and goes backwards. And we're doing it with PSBTs. So partially signed Bitcoin transactions. It's trust minimized. It's really cool. So, I mean, again, in the grand scheme of things, we love Bitcoin. We're focused on Bitcoin.

If this is a fail, it's a fail. If it's a huge win, it's a huge win. You know, we go on to the next thing. We're dropping a magazine two days later. We're doing a Bitcoin conference 30 days later. like um i think people are get get their wits you know get get get bent out of shape um when bitcoin's just ticking along so i will i'm i'm i will say that the i love the physical copies i will not not to be offensive i will not be bidding on the uh on the inscription uh

But yeah, the physical copies, I do, I quite enjoy the magazine. I've got actually, like, I think it's issue 22, one of the, one of the old ones. That's a great one. That's issue. I think that is issue 22, which is the last, um, the last one made by like the original Bitcoin magazine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So I, I've got that. I've got that one. Um, yeah. I mean, again, like I, I, I don't. personally like I don't see the value in the in the inscriptions on on chain I don't see that I don't see them as dangerous either I just I yeah but the physical magazine and like I Bitcoin's not not physical and so as somebody who you know I like having my memorabilia and stuff like that so like having copies of magazines and so I have a framed copy of a magazine on my

wall. And, you know, there's, there's things like that that I, I find value in. And so, yeah, I view those things as different. I also, I love what Maidx is doing, like Space Bowl. So he, he, what he does is basically the inverse of what ordnals and NFTs are. He take, he makes physical art. And then for a while, what he was doing is taking an open dime. and he was doing a small transaction for a certain amount of sats to the open dime

and then affixing it to the physical art like so that it couldn't be removed. And that's basically like part of his signature along with a physical signature. And he would put the block on it and the transaction ID. So you can actually look up like the transaction, the movement of stats to like an open dime that's affixed to your physical piece of art. So like it's like instead of being like, like here's a digital piece of art that everybody has access to that's on like an open chain. It's here's a physical piece of art which no one else has access to.

You have the only piece of art. And the signature has basically been like is affixed to a certain block, which was just like a regular Bitcoin transaction that is affixed to a hardware device on your piece of art that you will own forever. And if you wanted to tear it off and redeem the sats on. the open dime, it would kind of be like tearing off the signature on a Picasso, which is to me, that's a cool idea. I think that's a unique way of.

It's fucking awesome. Yeah. There's some artists in Bitcoin that like mesh Bitcoin into their art so well. And it's absolutely wild. I've been talking for a while. I mean, I would love to hear what Lisa or Dennis have to say about all this stuff. but again, you know, Bitcoin compounding. That's why I'm bullish.

Yeah, I'll jump in. First of all, I didn't know we weren't supposed to like be buying Bitcoin at 60,000. Because your cousin was selling. I mean, I was buying it. And I've been saying that. Like I said that all the way down to 16. I'm super excited. I bought it in the 60s.

I think it's actually a bragging right that I still own that Bitcoin. So it makes me happy. But yeah, I mean, there's the, I was on toxic happy hour. right before I jumped on here tonight. And I mean, the whole space was on fire over these things that you all are doing tomorrow at Bitcoin Magazine. And I was so late to the conversation, I was like, wait, wait, wait, what happened? What have I missed? And I mean, Alana was on fire and somebody else was on fire.

And it's like, guys, you know what? Two words. Free market. Right? Free market. It'll sort itself out. That's the great thing. about Bitcoin. And, you know, to somebody's point, you know, Ben, I think your journey to doge. And,

you know, my daughter told me today that she's in the blockchain club at her college. And so I asked her, shoot, they have a meeting on Friday night. Who knew? And I said, oh, it's great. You know, how is everybody what's going on? I asked her about some of her friends. And she said, oh, you know, I think I'm making progress with so-and-so because they said to me, you know, I think I don't own enough Bitcoin and I have to sell all of that Eath and all of a flight. Definitely. Definitely. But like it's the journey, right?

It's the journey. I mean, I owned about 20 something coins and traded because I told myself that I was a legit day trader. Like I was paid for 10 years to trade commodities. So I could definitely trade crypto. How dumb is that? Right? Now I'm like, nope, I bought it 60 and I still own it. I'm happy to have it.

No day trading involved. Thank you very much. Makes my IRS tax filing so much simpler. Yeah, 100%. No, I'm excited for you guys, CK. I think it's cool what you're doing. And, you know, if it's a fail, that's kind of cool too. You know, it'll certainly make a huge splash.

You'll probably get more publicity if it's a fail. It's a fail on Bitcoin. And I mean, people are talking about 10 BTC. so I think that might be working too. Yeah, definitely. Dennis, I want to get you in here too. Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting. You know, I can definitely see points on both sides of the aisle on this issue.

And it also is interesting that we are, you know, within the Bitcoin community, we kind of have our own political, you know, factions, so to speak. This one is interesting to me in particular because, you know, you have this, you know, small block narrative and all of a sudden now you have some of these people on the inscription side saying like we should increase the block size and I think that's the only area where I would say it's like very dangerous so just as long as we can make sure that we are not having those types of conversations or entertaining those types of conversations I think that's something to be to be cognizant of and otherwise you know I said this is the same it's the same thing I said about

NFTs, right? It's like, I'm glad artists have a way to monetize and that this is a way for them to get their art out there. It's not something that I would buy. I much prefer physical art. I'm a big fan of physical art and physical objects, things that I can hold in my hand, right? It's funny because it's the same argument people use about gold versus Bitcoin, right? It's something that I can hold in my hand. But I think it's good to experiment. You know, I like experimentation. And as CK said, if it's a failure, then, you know, it's least as, you know, we tried to do it on Bitcoin. And this is the thing that people said for a long time. I think it does kind of help in the narrative war a little bit in the sense that people go for a long time like, oh, you can't do it on Bitcoin. It's like, well, you can. It just depends on, you know, what we decide to build on Bitcoin. Or we're going to allow these things to be built on Bitcoin. And I think if it becomes a serious problem, just like the block size wars, you'll see a big battle and the more entrenched side will win, right?

So I'm not too concerned. And I really don't think there's an opportunity to expand the block size, the Ordinol clan, the ordinal people that are interested in that will run into the exact same problem that the BSV people did, which is that users control the network and users are not going to allow the block size to be expanded for essentially NFTs. I'm assuming you're referring, are you referring to the tweet from Ordinals wallet that was like, I don't know, I just I've heard people say we should expand the block size to allow for more ordinals. And so that's the only thing that I'm like, well, that's just a no go, right? I mean, that's why I came when I first joined in Bitcoin 2017,

total and on on the internet was just watching and listening I became very entrenched into the small block side of the debate. I think that's a critical component to Bitcoin to protect its decentralization. So when anyone's talking about increasing the block size

and not even for transactions, this is for something else other than transactions, which I think Bitcoin transactions are quite a bit more important than art transactions, then that's really going to be a problem. But otherwise, you know,

do it until breaks, right? I guess. So there was one person that commented, too. They said they had a hard time getting a transaction through, a small transaction through on the base there. So it's something to be concerned about. I think it's something we should be watching and keep an eye on it. But I don't think we should rush to destroy it just because it's creating some inefficiency

problems in the short term. So, so I mean, okay, so here is, okay, first of all, let's, let's chat about the guy who, this is kind of where it came from. So this is the tweet. It's from a Twitter account called Ordn, wallet. Increasing the block size 1% means 1% more fees earned per block for minors. Increasing the block size 100% means 100% more fees earned per block for minors. Quick maths. I mean, first of all, no. But second of all, just for context, the dude that created this is one of the dudes

that was like hardcore. So the person behind this account left Bitcoin for B-Cash for bigger blocks and then subsequently left B-Cash for BSV for bigger blocks and then subsequently return to Bitcoin for ordinals and now is complaining that the blocks are not large enough. So just to just to give you the full context of what was going on there and where this conversation materialize. Secondly, again, I think the economic reality will come home to roost at some point,

and people will only utilize this where it makes economic sense. If you're unsure, if you're going to recoup hundreds and hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of fees to put a silly JPEG on the Bitcoin blockchain, then you're much less likely to do that. Now, the interesting analogy that I was, I went out and hung out with Madex and Dave Bradley, his name, Bitcoin brains on Twitter. He's co-founder of Bull Bitcoin. So the three of us were hanging out. This was like probably like a month back just after the ordinal stuff or like a month and a half back after the ordinal stuff had just kind of started blowing up. And so we're having a discussion about it.

And Medex obviously is very physical art. I want to make physical art. Maybe I can use Bitcoin in some way to more or less like time stamp my physical art. But like he's not, he's been asked to do NFTs and ordinals and shit. And he's like, I am blanket, not ever doing that. And I'm like, sweet. Awesome. I love your physical art.

And I think that's a solid stance to take. And that's fine. But he was talking about Burning Man. He's talking about Burning Man and going to Burning Man and how they build these massive structures out of wood. And there's just these amazing monoliths and these incredible structures that eventually get burned down. And he basically talked about how you go inside of these things.

and the whole bottom of the structure, people just go in and they just write shit all over the bottom of it. And they graffiti it. They do dumb shit. Some people write out like, oh, they're trying to let go of certain things that have happened to them through the years. So they'll write it on the side of the inside of this big monolith,

this big structure that has been built. And he said like the bottom is just covered in fucking bullshit. But then there's a, point where people can't reach it anymore. They can't, like, they can't reach beyond a certain point. Maybe you can get on somebody's shoulders and write a little bit higher, but there's a certain point where people can no longer write. And he's like, at that point, beyond there, it's, it's pristine. And it's, it's only basically used for its original purpose, which is like this big, incredible sculpture and like, I don't know, like, owed to humanity. And I think,

there's a very useful metaphor there in Bitcoin. We are so early to Bitcoin where we've seen Bitcoin blocks be used for a ton of different stuff. Shit, one of the first things that filled the Bitcoin blockchain was Satoshi dice, literally online gambling poker transactions, and every single game, every single settlement was an on-chain transaction. And they bloated the chain and bumped up fees. We saw all kinds of like we saw exchanges. Every withdrawal was an on-chain transaction. Coinbase didn't bash transactions for fucking ever, even though everybody's like, you need to do this. Come on. And so, you know, and now, yeah, people are paying money and putting silly JPEGs on the chain. But I think what I'm getting at here is we're 13 years in,

14 years in, like we're in its infancy. And we're getting to the point where the economic reality is people are going to start to not be able to reach. Economically, it's not going to make sense. The effort it's going to take to scribble your name on the Bitcoin blockchain is going to be increasingly economically difficult. And we're going to get to the point where Bitcoin becomes this beautiful monolith. It's so early that people can still graffiti the side of the chain, if that's how you're looking at it. But that will not be true in the future.

And I think the most important economic transactions of our society as settlement will be taking place on the Bitcoin blockchain. And then the simplistic buying a cup of coffee, doing other things. will be taking place on second layers, on side chains, on all of these different things that utilize Bitcoin as an anchor, but that monolith that owed to humanity will be all the sudden, almost kind of untouched. It will serve its purpose and we'll be able to look at it in all its beauty

and all of the flaws from the early years and appreciate it for what it is. So that's kind of, I thought it was such. And again, I've got to give this to Maidex because that metaphor, was so, I think it was a beautiful metaphor that he was getting at. And I know a lot of people are very passionate about Bitcoin. And rightfully so, because it's, I'm going to say, the most important invention that, you know, in my lifetime. And I think that it will fulfill that role. And I know that people will use it for silly reasons in the entire.

term and that's that's just part of the game that's just how it it earns its stripes but i i think that that doesn't take away for what it is growing into um in adulthood and in late life so yeah that's my take that is a phenomenal metaphor i i can't wait i don't i'm not sure if i follow him so i have to go follow him on noster and twitter space where else that is an incredible metaphor. Love that. Very punk rock art as well. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. Yellow. Wait, that means today's ordinals are going to be worth a lot more in the future. Ben, change metaphor quick from yellow. Scary, bro. That's funny. That's funny. Okay. I know we're definitely over. We got to start rounding out.

give everybody a quick chance to give any final thoughts. The other thing that I like to do at the very end of a show is any final thoughts that you didn't get to say, but also if you have a recommendation for people to check out, it could be anything. It could be just like a piece of advice. It could be a blog, a video, a book, whatever it may be, a website, anything that's top of mind that you're like, hey, this could be useful to you point people in that direction. So my general, I think the The general gist of the talk is it was all around not having to ask permission. It was all around allowing people to freely choose what they do with their time, their energy, their speech, their transactions, all of that stuff.

I mean, that kind of comes down to the ethos of Bitcoin and what it is within the constraints of economic reality. Like, do you want to do this? Is this worth it to you? And I think we're seeing that. We're seeing that with Bitcoin. We're seeing that with all the layers on top of Bitcoin. We're seeing that in social protocols.

We're seeing that in transactional markets like Civkit, all these different things that are happening. And I think it's very unique. If anything, and I've kind of been trumpeting it through the week. But if anything, given the New York Times, riot, blockchain, all that kind of stuff, in and around mining. If you would like to go forth and mine anyways and perhaps capitalize on some waste, go build yourself an S9 space heater and you can use my tutorial to do so. And then, yeah, get repaid a little bit of your electricity bill in the process.

So yeah, that's my recommendation there. I'll toss it to let's go CK first. Final thoughts, recommendations. Thank you, Benny. I got a bounce here soon. I got a friend waiting for me downstairs. But in terms of recommendations, you know, I would just say go to a Bitcoin meetup. That is absolutely the best way to continue to further Bitcoin forward.

Best way to onboard people is meeting Bitcoiners in person. I think that Bitcoiners are best in person. So while we have 24-7. live programming all over the internet at any given time. You know, the virtual stuff is not the same as meeting up in person. That's why we do the Bitcoin conference. So go to your Bitcoin meetup. And if you can come to the Bitcoin conference, definitely try to do so.

It's absolutely worth it. Life changing to be around that many Bitcoiners. So that would be my, that would be how I exit here. And y'all, thank you so much for the great conversation. Thank you so much for having me, Benny. And thank you so much for everyone who watched and gave me feedback as well. I always love feedback. But I got to bounce.

So I'm going to let myself out. Thanks again. CK. Thank you. Have a good night. Have a good weekend. Peace. Awesome.

Awesome. Dennis, I'm going to toss it to you next for final thoughts and recommendations. Go ahead, man. Oh, you know, just final thoughts. Just, you know, love being on the show. Thank you for having me on. And excited to see Lisa and C.

all this excitement around the energy companies and them coming into the space. I'll have to touch base with you later and see how we get more of these energy companies lobbying for Bitcoin mining and not just the Bitcoin mining companies, so to speak, which I think is inevitably going to take place. You know, we talked about earlier how Shell is sponsoring that conference, but the BTC 23 conference, but they also create like products, liquids that are for immersion cooling for the mining space. They also are funny enough, they own a shell company that owns a Bitcoin mining company.

So Shell owns a Shell company that owns a Bitcoin mining company. It's pretty funny there. Not a whole lot to recommend other than just, yeah, make sure you're going to the latest conferences. I'll be in and around BTC 23. And also there's going to be mining disrupt coming in up in July. We are going to be going in very heavy on mining disrupt in July. We're going to be having an event there, big event in collaboration with some of the folks on the ground. We're going to do an expo.

We're going to be speaking. So that's going to be a really, really, really big push for us. And I think that if you're into Bitcoin mining, if you want to learn more about Bitcoin mining, you couldn't pick a better event to go to. And tickets are still pretty relatively cheap because it's a little ways out. So I'll be there in both those conferences. If you want to hit me up, you know, my Twitter, my DMs are always open.

I'm always open to hearing from people. And thank you for all the folks that gave me some support in the chat for the work that's happening with Satoshi acting. Awesome. Dennis, where can, is there a website for Satoshi Action Fund? Yeah, Satoshiaction.io is where you can go to see our main website. We also have Satoshiaction.org is for more of our C3 nonprofit stuff that does the research

and education. But both of those sites are up and running. You can check them out. Most of our work is on the Satoshi action. Dotoshi.com. But also, I don't know if to let me drop down in here, does it? Yeah. This is the event bright.

I just put an event bright down there. So April 25th, Austin, Capitol. We're going to be on the yard out there. We got the South Lawn booked. We'll have a tent because it's going to be hot. We're going to have food. We might be working with the Texas Beef Initiative. We're not sure yet.

Still trying to work those details out. But we will be going in heavy. We'll have speakers. There'll be elected officials that are coming out to speak. And also, I think some great bit coiners are going to talk as well and share why Texas needs to stop attacking this technology that's helping them so much to balance their grid. So if you want to be a part of that's a big lobby day. It would be a great time.

I'm going to have a ton of people there from Texas Blockchain Council, Digital Chamber. and Satoshi Action Fund, where the four, four or three, excuse me, my numbers are off. My three groups that are putting that together. So be excited for anyone to join us. That event bright link is right there in the chat for everyone if they want to go. Is it? I don't see it. I dropped, does it, block links on your thing automatically.

Yeah, it does, I think. All right. Well, I'll send it to you in the private chat and you can hopefully you can share with your folks. I'll paste it up when we, when we leave here. I'll pull it into my sidebar here. So I'll bring it up. And just so people know, it's like the third tweet on my main page. If you go to my Twitter, there's like a link to the event right too.

So it's that don't mess with Texas innovation. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, we're going to have it at the Capitol. So it should be good. Free food, free chance to engage with folks you like. And if you live in Texas, please go because then we're going to have potentially have you kind of come into the Capitol and help have conversations with policymakers there. Awesome.

I think it'll let me drop it in the chat, which I just did. So yeah, if you're in the live chat, then feel free to check that. out. But yeah, thanks, Dennis. That's awesome. And I'll toss it to Lisa here. You get to close us out. Final thoughts, recommendations. Go ahead. Yeah. Thank you so much. This was fun. And Ben, I mean, I think this had to be your best, Why Are We Bullish episode ever, right? Well, I mean, you were on it. So of course it was. Why not? It was amazing. It was fun. What do I recommend? I recommend that people who don't work in Bitcoin, connect with somebody that does. And people that do work in Bitcoin, like Dennis, I DM him on Twitter.

He responds all the time, you know, reach out to the folks that say something that you're interested in or say something that you maybe don't understand and find out more. I just, I think the power of connection is what brings us together and keeps us together. I think we uniquely are fighting for the same things. You mentioned, you know, after World War II, this sort of euphoria that was taking place in the United States. And I feel as though, you know, even though we left the war era with the most gold in the world and we were the wealthiest nation, you know, somehow we've gotten here where we're just completely bankrupt, beyond bankrupt. We have this, you know, we have the possibility again to fortify our nation. I do think that this is a global, you know, arms race of sorts in Bitcoin because I think that it's a way to fortify our balance sheet and stands for everything that matters to me as a Texan and certainly as us, as, you know, citizens of democratic countries, liberty, freedom, property rights, right?

That is the basis of all human flourishing and energy. So liberty, freedom, property rights. it's critical for an advancing society. It's critical for us. It's critical for your two and six-year-old to know that they're going to live in a place where they can learn and grow and speak freely and protect themselves with their own money.

Absolutely. Well, this has been a hell of a conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank the both of you and CK for coming. hell of a conversation. I also want to give a shout out to, again, everybody in the chat. And actually, to be honest, especially the people that were, you know, bringing up the ordinal stuff and, you know, quote unquote, shitting on Bitcoin magazine for, you know,

the ordnals thing. I mean, it's important to be able to voice the things that you like and the things that you don't. And, like, again, in the end, the market will decide with the expectations. economic reality of scarce block space, what they care to do with it. But, you know, it's all part of the conversation that leads to people making sound economic decisions with their own money. And so, you know, like people, we've got, you know, Bitcoin in the chat. This is just, you know, one of the comments here.

But, you know, nonetheless, you know, over the Bitcoin channel there, you know, holding, holding everybody's feet to the fire and saying like, you know, is this a valuable? use of Bitcoin block space? Is this like, you know, the questioning, you know, should, should this be done? Should we be encouraging certain types of things? And, you know, those are, those are good conversations that we had. Again, like it's if we don't have these discussions, then, you know, again, again, in the end, I think it's valuable to have these discussions regardless.

And it makes people think more deeply about the, proper allocation of their capital. I'll leave it there. But anyways, this is fantastic. Thank you both. Thank you to CK. And you're all welcome back anytime. Thank you, Ben.

Dennis, so fun to see you, as always. I'll chat at you. Great to see you. Lisa. Looking forward to it. And Ben, as always great to be on. Hopefully we can somehow find ourselves

on the same airplane again. Yeah, absolutely. All right. I'll see you guys both in Miami. See in Miami. Yeah, I'll be there. Yeah. All right.

I'll see you guys there. Have a good night. No, you too. Cheers. All right. Everybody, thank you so much for being here. This was a blast. I really enjoyed this one.

This is a good one. Of course, if he can, like, subscribe, share. All those things, help a ton. Thank you to everybody in the chat. Lots of fun stuff going on in the chat. And I got to give a shout out to not David Wong, David wrong. We have his, I want to say his good twin here. There's always a good and an evil twin.

Anyways, the good twin or the parody twin is here in the chat. David Wrong, I can't wait for you to meet David Wong in the chat. It will be a showdown of epic proportions. But nonetheless, I love it when people make meme accounts for the chat. It's the best. So anyways, thank you for being here. Again,

everybody, thank you for watching. Of course, if you want to help out the show, you can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. Those were hoddle, hoddle,

coin kite, Nunchuk, and Start 9. They're all down here. If you're going to be down in Miami, or if you're thinking about being down in Miami, of course, you know, the website,

B.tc. Conference. Again, it's a week from today, tickets go up another 50 bucks. So if you're thinking about it, then yeah, jump on the site before next Friday

and at least it'll save you 50 bucks from there. Also, you can use Code BTC sessions for 10% off. Ticket price, that should help a little bit, knocking 85 bucks off of that. And also, if you're going to be in Miami, cold card workshop,

just saying, it is on Wednesday, May 17th prior to the conference. So the next day is industry day. So this is before any of the days of the conference start. So yeah, Wednesday, May 17th, it will be from 1 to 5 p.m. We're basically starting from scratch, getting you set up on a cold card, going through the whole setup process.

How do you use it? How do you do air gap transactions with the SD card? How do you back it up and recover it? So we're going to wipe the device and then recover from scratch. So you have that knowledge and that expertise. also after that we're going to dive into some of the advanced features what is bip 85 how do you use a passphrase uh all kinds of great stuff we're going to be touching on so if you want to be one of the best bitcoin or bitcoin cold card export experts on the planet come on down uh and it

should be a good time there are five tickets left i shit you know oh wait yeah no i'm right five Tickets left. Five tickets left to the event. I still have four cold card bundles. So if you do need to get your own device and all that, there's four of those as well. But yeah, five tickets left to the event. You can find it through my website. So you just go to BTCSessions.ca. And over on the far right side, there are the in-person workshops. That'll take you to the BTCPA server and you can grab a ticket there. So yeah, five of those left. I'm sure they'll be gone before. conference time. So if you need one, grab it now. You can also book me there. If the free to, by the way, all of the educational stuff that I make, and this includes stuff around the cold card, everything, it's all free. So what I'll say is no matter what, if you're looking to learn, you can do it for free. You can go to my YouTube. There are literally tutorials on everything. It will walk you through every step of the way. So who is this for? If you want, If you look at a video and you're like, holy shit, I like, I can't just follow along with that.

I need that interaction. I need that affirmation. I need if anything comes up differently than it did in the video, I need somebody to like direct me in the right direction. That's more or less what this is for. And you can also book me for one on ones here on the website as well for private. And again, I do this all the time with people saying like, I just need you to be there to walk me through everything. So I'm confident the first time I do it and then I'm good. So anyways, yeah, BTCSessions.com.

You can see all of that there. And with that, let's wrap it up. Of course, if you really liked what you saw, you can drop me a Bitcoin tip on my strike page. You do not need a strike account to use it. You can just head to strike. Dot me slash BTC sessions. Type in any amount you like. Hit the tip button.

You'll be greeted with a lightning invoice or if you prefer tap the arrow to the right. You'll see a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening. I'll see you guys next time for your daily session. We have BTC sessions. Bitcoin is a few money. You can't stop it.

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