BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Duczko, Thomas Jestopher, Morgen Rochard, Rick Vanderhulst ep229

Episode Date: January 15, 2022

FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS: https://twitter.com/duczko https://twitter.com/MorgenRochard https://twitter.com/Jestopher_BTC https://twitter.com/RickV3D 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shakepay is the easiest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada Sign up now and get $30 free after your first $100 purchase! https://shakepay.me/r/BTCSESSIONS LEDN Bitcoin backed loans –  get $10 free with a savings balance of $75 or more for 15 consecutive days! https://start.ledn.io/btcsessions Get Wasabi wallet for Bitcoin privacy https://wasabiwallet.io/ Keystone Wallet: secure your Bitcoin! http://bit.ly/KeyStoneSessions BillFodl: get your wallet backups in solid steel. https://privacypros.io/btcsessions Bitrefill: use Bitcoin to purchase gift cards, earn sats back while you shop. https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/?code=O04UMic9 BITCOIN tips: https://strike.me/btcsessions

Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish? We've got a killer panel today. One returning guests and three newbies. So very excited to have some new faces on again. As always, 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. Do it live. I can write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. If you haven't already, like, subscribe, share.

All those things are beyond important. They really do help the show and they get it in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. All right. Before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. I'm pulling up the Bitbo.io dashboard. We're sitting at $43,186 per coin.

A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 2,316 sats. 90.14% of all Bitcoin have been mined. In terms of fees, one sat per byte across the board, friends, if you're looking to open up some lightning channels, do some coin join, move to cold storage, whatever you're doing, good time to do it. And we've seen some fluctuations in the fees lately. So, you know, it's not a bad time to be doing a whole bunch of stuff.

So who knows when those will spike and stay spiked for extended periods of time again, we shall see. Before we bring in our guests, of course, shout it to sponsor the show, shakepay.com. If you're buying Bitcoin in Canada is one of the easiest and best ways to do it. No deposit fees, no withdrawal fees, thin spread. When you use the link down below after your first $100 purchase, they'll give you a 30 bucks for free to stack some extra sats. You get the same deal if you refer a friend. And after you do refer a friend, you can shake your phone every day for additional sats. I'm on a 106-day streak right now, and it adds more sats every day as you build up that streak.

They also have their visa card where you can earn stats back as a shop. I've been using that a bunch. I'll do a video on that soon. Anyways, links are down below. Len.com. You can use your Bitcoin for a ton of different things. Namely, if you're in a pinch and you need dollars and it's kind of a cash flow issue, I use this multiple times to get a Bitcoin back loan so I can deposit Bitcoin, get dollars to my bank account within a day. And when I pay back those dollars, I get back the same number of SATs. That's the important number to me. They do have savings accounts for Bitcoin and USDC.

And they do have their B2X offering if you're feeling mega bullish. But of course, exercise caution with stuff like that, you guys. I do live on Bitcoin. Bit refill helps a ton every single possible gift card. Your little heart could imagine in a ton of different countries. and you can pay with Bitcoin, on-chain, and via Lightning Network. And you also earn stats back as you shop. And they've got a referral program to earn some extra stats as well.

You guys know Keystone, one of my favorite and most used hardware wallets. It is 100% air-gap. You never plug it into anything internet-connected that keeps the keys to your money safe and offline. It works like a boss with things like Blue Wallet, Wasabi, Specter, Sparrow, and it's awesome in a multi-sig setup. So check it out. I've got a ton of tutorials on it as well. finally, if you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet with any meaningful amount of funds, you might want to get it in solid steel rather than on paper, you know, fire damage, water

damage. I've heard horror stories of even people misplacing it or throwing it out because it's just a slip of paper sitting around. Solid steel gets rid of some of those concerns. And this is indeed how I do backup my important hardware wallets. So with that, I'm going to stop rambling. And I'm going to bring in our guests. We got Lucas.

We got Rick, we got Jess, we got Morgan. Welcome all. We're going to do a quick round of who are you and what do you do. So I'll toss it down the line. Lucas, you're up first. Let people know who you are, what you do. So I started a tech company back in 2010 to sign documents electronically. You got kicked out in 2017.

And I've been traveling in the world for a few years and helped startups in really difficult situations. Sold my company 2020. I had to think of what to do without money. Nothing worked. There was no good placements. So I ended up concluding the only safe placement was Bitcoin, where I could actually build a next company and not have to sit and trade all the time. So that's my story. Awesome. Well, I'm glad to have you, man. Let's jump down the line. Rick, welcome back. For those unfamiliar, those uninitiated, let people know who you are and what you do. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, does Lucas have his camera working? Because I just see a black square. I don't know if that's just me. I see him. All right. Anyways. All right. I'm Rick V. I run crypto cloaks. We do 3D printed stuff. I don't know.

Awesome. There's a bunch of your stuff on my shelf behind me over here. Exactly. That's what we do. Yeah. You can see all of them burying away in the background right now, too. It's looking nice over there, man. The new setup's pretty awesome. Yeah, I love it. Well, welcome back, man. I'm glad to have you. Yeah, no worries.

Jump down the line. Morgan, welcome to the show for the first time. Can you let people know who you are and what you do? Thanks. Yeah, I feel like compared to Rick, I should have a lava lamp or something in the background. I'm Morgan Oshard. I'm a financial planner. I have two businesses.

I have origin multi-advisors, which is my financial planning firm. I have money owners, which is a financial coaching firm. And I also am an author of a book. called the Personal Finance Quick Start Guide. Wow. All right. Well, welcome to the show. I'm curious to hear your insights today.

So a much welcome addition to the panel. And, you know, final spot here. I'm glad that you're joining in, man. Christopher, can you let people know who you are and what you do? Sure. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, so I am part of a very early stage startup called Amphos Tech. technologies that we run a Lightning Network Explorer that you can find on Ambas.

Space. Not only does it show information about all the lighting network nodes on the on the network, but it shows like economic information and which which communities node is a member of and how to how to associate these different nodes. What do they do? Is there a business behind it or is it a PLEB that's just stacking sats? That's awesome. It's a pretty good tool. I've been playing around with it. I was able to link up my node and get some interesting insights and peek around.

It's pretty awesome. So I like what you guys are doing. So thanks for being here, Matt. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Well, we're ready to get this thing rolling. Anybody watching that is unfamiliar, this is why are we bullish? And the premise is very simple.

we all come with a different reason why we're bullish. And so we go by the three hours. Pretty simple. Number one, somebody's going to drop a reason why they're bullish. Number two, we're all going to riff together on that reason. And number three, we're going to rotate to the next person until we were all the way through the panel. So I am going to get us started off with my reason for being bullish this week. And it was actually something that was dropped by Fidelity this week.

I was talking about it a little bit yesterday in the news, but I'm just going to bring it up. And it's pretty wild to see a piece like this dropped by an entity like fidelity. And what they're talking about is talking about the game theory of countries adopting Bitcoin, holding that as reserves and potentially central banks doing the same. And I'm just going to read a few quotes from this because I'm picturing myself reading this in like 2016 and my brain melting because some of the quotes in here are wild. So it says the investment firm believes a high stakes game theory is playing out that would leave early adopters of the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin in particular, better off than their peers. Quote, if Bitcoin adoption increases, the countries that secure some Bitcoin today will be better off competitively than their peers. Therefore, even if other countries do not believe in the investment thesis or adoption of Bitcoin, they will be forced to acquire some as a form of insurance.

Then they go on to talk about China, making the ban and everything. And they said, it isn't surprising that we think an outright ban will be difficult to achieve at best. and if successful will lead to a significant loss of wealth and opportunity. And then they go on to say that we therefore wouldn't be surprised to see other sovereign nations acquire Bitcoin in 2022 and perhaps even see a central bank make an acquisition. So this coming from Fidelity, talking about the game theory and the first domino that is that is El Salvador and some other nations eyeing it. We have potential plants from Tonga for late this year, potentially,

to bring something to parliament. But to see an institution of this size talking about the topics that Bitcoiners typically talk about. And we're all in, tend to be in our own little bubble, but to see this from, you know, this is an article that you could, you would send to your skeptical uncle and have him go, oh, holy shit, this is real. So, I mean, I'm just curious, first of all, have you guys seen this this week? And secondly, what are your thoughts about, about kind of this moment of, is this like a vindication for Bitcoiners? Is this a, yeah, we've been talking about this for years and now people are seeing it.

I'll just open it up to everybody, anybody who wants to jump in, thoughts on the whole fidelity thing. I'll hop in first. If there are no other takers here. I mean, I think it's interesting from a multitude of standpoint. One that countries who are starting to be interested in aren't really the main players that you typically hear about. And so like, for instance, you would think, okay, maybe the U.S. would take a first move or China would take a first move on this, where they want to be the first to acquire Bitcoin. obviously that's not what's happened. So to me, it sort of seems like maybe Bitcoin is an opportunity for smaller countries

or ones that really haven't had power in the past and now sort of flexed their muscles a little bit and get, acquire an asset that obviously, I mean, we all believe to be the future of money and has really sound monetary policy. So I think from that perspective, it's really interesting to see the flip that's happening and that it certainly is bullish. And it's something that we, I mean, obviously in Bitcoin communities we've been talking about for years of like the gradually then suddenly type of thing where if countries do actually start to get involved and even more so right where countries have the ability to print money and then buy

Bitcoin right it's sort of it's a it's a weird place to be in where I mean we actually could see hyperinflation if that if that's the route that some countries end up going down. Yeah I mean what at what point is that I wonder at what point that tiping point hints hits where somebody's like I'm not accepting that particular fiat for for Bitcoin There's no way I would, you know, at what point do we get there? And I like what you said about kind of the smaller guys getting in first because it's almost the same trajectory that Bitcoin followed for, for individuals as well. Like it's kind of the, it's almost coming in from the fringes and working its way into kind of the middle and the mainstream because the people that have been most disenfranchised that have been basically locked out of. any sort of international banking system, they get it,

or the people that have also been most disenfranchised by hyperinflation, they get it. But then you get the other end of the spectrum where at least on an individual level or on like a company level, people whose job it is to protect purchasing power, whether for themselves or for shareholders, are starting to recognize it too. So you're getting these polar opposites

and it's slowly working its way in. And I'm wondering if we'll see the same on a nation state level where El Salvador gets it. What's the first large country that goes, oh shit, we kind of get it too. Maybe we'll. Yeah, for sure. I'm wondering, too, also, there are some wealthier nations out there with sovereign wealth funds. If they're just like, well, you know, what about 1% there, you know, see how it goes. I mean, rather than like the opposite side of it where like the U.S.

government, well, obviously the U.S. government actually does have Bitcoin right because they've seized it. they haven't sold it yet. So maybe their first move would be not to sell it. But like the U.S. government isn't actually running a surplus, right? So they would they would theoretically be printing money to then go buy it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

How about the rest of you guys? Is there anything here that stands out for you? Are you excited to see items like this pop up in the news? I mean, how can you not read that and just get bullish on itself? Because it's pretty much just. stating that everything that we have collectively been brainstorming for years is coming true. Like the people that held all the cards are losing it finally. Like little guys are starting to get power, which is what we've wanted ever since the start.

So it's amazing to see and that's a huge bullish point right there. How about Lucas or Jeff? Do you guys want to add it? Yeah. I mean, I'm a big believer in the idea that the US is bound to. to adopt Bitcoin as a reserve asset. And just because of the Triffin's dilemma, the US has been increasing the debt of the country

for so long that the US has no other option. It could head over the reserve currency status to China or a basket of currencies, the SDR, or they could head over to Bitcoin. And pretend in the meantime, oh, Bitcoin is bad. Bitcoin is bad. Do some marketing, you know, make everybody think that US is kind of like Bitcoin skeptic. And under the radar, just integrate the whole banking system, make, you know,

gray scale keep their Bitcoin, micro strategy, you know, build up. So there's like a reserve within the country that they could seize when they want. basically make all consumers buy Bitcoin and have easy access to Bitcoin, do remittances in Bitcoin. And basically, I believe that actually it's happening from the center of gravity from the US. US is driving this, but at the same time, pretending the US is not driving it and preparing the rugpole of all times. While China and the EU is like, oh, we're going to do a SDR together with Bank of International Settlements. And later, Tad-da, Bitcoin. And everybody else is fucked.

You're very optimistic there. I mean, I would love to see that. But I guess we shall see. Jess, what about you? Yeah, I think as far as Bitcoin adoption goes, it seems to surprise. is no one when like the tech pros and stuff like they get into bitcoin but everyone seems to be caught up guard when these like these countries that are you know far away from traditional finance like start to start to adopt this and like even these very conservative financial institutions

like similar to fidelity or like traditional finance like they're starting to realize like of course this is this is catching on. Like this past, this past year, I spent a month in Turkey and I got to like witness some of the inflation happening. And it was it was really eye-opening to see like this, that people just wanting to adopt this. And you saw no no price dip. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, it's, it's interesting where where you get countries. And we've seen different. instances too like there is the the Cypriot banking crisis there was um in Greece where they shut down all the banks there's been instances of those kind of uh local crises where it it's in a way you know people are are getting more familiar in those areas with bitcoin and even

if those areas at the time especially like looking back to cyprus and greece you know those people by the time they were screwed, it was too late to get Bitcoin, but people on the outside looking in started to go, ooh, maybe I'll get a little bit of Bitcoin in case that situation happens here, you know, especially people in other parts of, in other parts of Europe may have been eyeing that when it was happening in Greece. And I'm sure, again, looking at Lebanon and Turkey and Argentina, places like that, there's a lot eyeing a lot of people eyeing that now and it's a lot more prevalent and easy to

understand and utilize these days. So yeah, we shall see how this plant pans out. But yeah, really interesting to see people like Fidelity cluing in. So I think I'm going to round out this topic here and we're going to keep moving on down the panel. Everybody that's watching right now, Of course, thank you for being here. Smash that light. Give this a share. And I'm going to start trying to bring in comments that are relevant as we go along here. But I'm going to toss it to Lucas.

And I'm going to let you take it away. Maybe you want to tell the panel about what you are bullish about this week. Yeah. So I didn't say what I do now. And so this is connected to what I've been doing for the past few months where I'm involved with a project called Global Bitcoin Fest. And we're a group of people that just enjoy listening to local communities tell their stories. What's happening in their community? What's the history?

What's the setting in Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, Ethiopia, wherever? And we did this back in, on September 7th, we did the first thing together. So we started back when Naïu Kelle made his announcement at 7th of June. Okay, let's do legal tender here. So we started having Twitter spaces where we were giving away sets in Latin America. Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico. So we formed a small group of people and chatting in a Twitter chat. And then one guy had this idea, okay, let's do a Twitter space 24 hours on the day.

On the 7th of September, let's do a non-stop 24-hour space. So we decided to separate out 24 sections and have communities join in from all over the world. one hour slots each and talk about their community and kind of celebrate together the adoption of Bitcoin. And what I was really taken back by was how powerful this idea was. Like there were so many people that just joined in and like, yeah, let's do this. And like we organized this literally in six days. And we had we had Japan, Australia, Tonga.

Greatly Polynesia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Greece, Venezuela, Cuba, El Salvador, Argentina. I mean, like, communities from all over the world were taking these slots. And we didn't have much time to, like, assess what the actual quality would be of these spaces. And then we did 24 hours non-stop, just awesome content. It was just one space that was kind of like, you know, not really maxi, but everybody else was really knowledgeable communities that have been like really diving deep into this. And we got so inspired that, okay, let's keep doing this on a weekly basis with one new country every week. So on Sunday, we're actually going to do Argentina, was just announced.

last week we did Guatemala the week before that we did Indonesia before that Japan before that Costa Rica and what what is this an emerging pattern where people seem to have there seem to have these being these dormant cells people have been kind of doing their own thing they didn't kind of know what what they could contribute or do. And then they've been like building up all this knowledge by themselves and kind of orange pill and friends here and there. And now they're like emboldened by by everything that's happening. So for example, I talked to Bitcoin Akasi in South Africa and he was like, look, I didn't know how to apply my knowledge. But now I got so inspired by Bitcoin Beach in Elzonte. So I started this

with my surf kids that I'm kind of supporting, there's 40 kids that I'm trying to, you know, from impoverished communities, I'm trying to help. So now I'm bringing Bitcoin as part of their education and making it part of my project and making like a small Bitcoin beach here in South Africa. And there's all these small stories where all these community builders

have built up knowledge for so many years. when I first dove into Bitcoin in 2017, there was so little, I felt it was so hard to find good quality knowledge. I found Andreas Antonopoulos and like, that was kind of it when I was trying to Google. And so I got all fooled by, you know, the shitcoin stories and everything and I just went all in on shitcoins and then I lost, you know, 98%. And now there's, I really believe that there's, we're hitting a, um, a critical mass of educators. And they, they, are also enabled by tools that we didn't have back then. So we have Twitter spaces, for example, yes?

And also, you know, streaming platforms like this. But so, so it's so much easier for everybody to connect and kind of teach each other. And of course, Lightning Network that, you know, we'll talk about later, but like, it's so easy to just demo a person and the person just goes, boom, whoa, what just happened? to me, you know? So that's why I'm bullish. And I think that's why we're enjoying to do global Bitcoin fast because we just get to hear all these amazing stories. Yeah. I love that. I love the, I mean, it fits with the ethos of Bitcoin, right? This grassroots, individual communities popping up and and catering to what the locals want and need.

right because that's that's kind of what what happened with bitcoin beach and and i love seeing what's happening in guatemala it's really exciting that you're doing argentina this week um just it's so cool to see all these all these communities around the globe it also i really love traveling well you know when when i can uh but but you know i do really love traveling and so i would love to to visit a lot of these communities in person and meet space and actually, because there's nothing greater than getting together with a group of bitcoins. It's like seeing your long lost family because a lot of Bitcoiners, they don't get that day to day.

I'm lucky in that I at least get to do this once a week and chat with other awesome bitcoins. But like, I think that's part of the reason why people watch stuff like this or join in those spaces is because they're craving that interaction with people with like-minded, uh, and that see something that not a lot of people yet on the globe see or understand. And it's a pretty unique thing still to be a Bitcoiner at this point and truly kind of get it as much as possible. And case in point, actually, like, so what we're doing is actually we're broadcasting these communities to the outside world. So we're actually not like focusing on them talking to each other about like, so we're focusing and then talking to each other so that the rest of the world knows.

And so that when you want to travel to a place, you have kind of the quick rundown. You can listen to a space, a recorded space, two hours, like, how does it work and go up to Mala? And who do I contact? Who are these people talking here? So they can connect me to others. So we had, for example, Chimbera called into the Indonesia session,

And like, I want to go surf in Bali, man. I want to go surf in Bali. Invite me. And it's like, who should I talk to? And Dea from Bali, she's like, yeah, we're sitting up, you know, an education center here. Come and help us, you know? So, yeah. I, I, that was one of my first experiences meeting Bitcoin as abroad was in Indonesia.

I was, I got married in Bali in 2016. And I, I went to, there was a little. center in in kuta that they had like a bitcoin ATM there and they had a few different things so i went into that shop and checked it out and did like a little interview it's one of my first videos that i ever did and then i also went to ubood and then there was a center called hubood in the middle and it's basically like a working space but they had a bitcoin ATM there and i kind of talked to the staff it was really cool. And yeah, these international communities, it's, it's so awesome.

I mean, I'll stop ranting and I'll let other people tag in. So if anybody has thoughts, feel free. Y'all go on about the whole tribe thing. Like, that's a hard, that's a hard thing to find. And like, we just, I just moved out to Colorado for Minnesota. And it was awesome. There's, there's a lot of Bitcoiners even closer here than I had in Minnesota, but the way that we can find tribes and like pinpoint people to start meeting up and just even grab a beer, when you sit down with a Bitcoiner like one-on-one to just drink a beer and bullshit and go over like all the stuff in Bitcoin, it is the greatest thing ever.

I don't think I'll ever stop loving that. And that's like my favorite thing that I've literally realized now. It's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Jess, you were going to say something taken away. Yeah. Like personally, I love going to Bitcoin meetups. And this year, since I'm doing full-time Bitcoin and working for myself, which is like what Bitcoin enabled, like, I'm able to go travel and see the little microcosms of like Bitcoiners.

Because like if you love Bitcoin, like start a meetup and all these other Bitcoiners will be attracted to come to your place. Like right now, I'm in an Airbnb in Portland, just like going to attend the like 13th Bitcoin birthday party. And just to like see the the different culture in different parts of the world, different parts of the U.S., it's huge to like not only like create a community locally, but then be able to share that community globally since we're all on the internet. So yeah, really cool stuff that you're doing, Lucas. We are doing. I'm just one of a big bunch of people from Zimbabwe, El Salvador, Argentina, all over us.

Yeah. Awesome. Morgan, if you want to jump in. Yeah, I'll piggyback on all of the sentiment here. I had a moment. So I went to Big Block Boom back in 2019, and then shortly after went to a financial planning conference with Normies. And I remember having a moment when I was at the financial planning conference being like,

nobody's talking about Bitcoin. This sucks. And I found the guys who work over at Wealthbox, and I know that the CEO is a Bitcoiner. So I, like, went over to their stand and started. talking to them and then like we immediately started talking about bitcoin and there's just something there's something about it there's a magnetic pull in the universe that bitcoiners have towards each other and we just like we can't help it um and obviously the more these communities pop up and the more people

um get into it right the the farther the reach goes and um the more people who are going to be pulled towards it i i want to see you at at a financial planning event and refer to the room as normies Yeah. See the reaction because that would be fantastic. I'm sure it would be outrage and shock. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there'd be a little bit of that. That's okay.

You can tell them that you've got orange pills for everybody. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Lucas, I love what you're working on. I'm so glad that you brought it up. And I can't wait to see more of it. I'm going to try and jump in some of those spaces when I see them pop up.

Do you know when the Argentina one is happening? Yeah, we're doing 8.30 p.m. Argentina time. So that's 3.30 p.m. California time, I think. Yeah, I'm having to convert the times all the time. And I'm in Vietnam, so it's like 6.30 a.m. Vietnam time. You know, actually, speaking of Vietnam, again, I was there, like when I got married, we did a kind of a tour through Southeast Asia and hit a bunch of different places. And this was 2016. And I had kind of, I had just started the channel, but like my wife, we ran into, and maybe it's just because subconsciously she was looking for it. But she saw more Bitcoin related stuff on that trip than we had seen ever previously, like just like ATMs and different things around. And like even we were down in, in, uh, Ho Chi,

in where they have like the tunnels and everything and literally like she went to you can like go on the back of the truck and fire the Rambo gun she was like it was like you know you pay like $30 for half a second of like and that's about it but we were there firing that gun and she gets off the truck and on the ground there was like a Bitcoin sticker that somebody had like it was just random little things everywhere and she thought this was just like some stupid hobby of mine she's like maybe there is. And same thing, we're in Laos and we wandered into a random little bar and she goes up to grab a beer at the counter and she comes back. She's like, you're not going to believe this. But they accept a Bitcoin here for beer in 2016 at a random pub in the

middle of Laos. So it's everywhere. It is everywhere. That's very interesting. I think now it's I haven't seen that much. I mean, the Vietnamese, there's maybe it was more like play time back then. But like I think now as it's become more serious money, the Vietnamese, they really don't like to show off or show what they have. So like no Vietnamese, like they kind of don't want to go to the Bitcoin meetup here in Saigon because it's like, I don't want to show I have Bitcoin. I don't want anyone to know I'm even interested in this subject. But a lot of Vietnamese are like secretly stacking. There's been a lot of boating accidents of Vietnamese. Yeah. How Long Bay is just full of cold cards.

It's super tragic. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead, Jess. Oh, yeah. Let's see. I was just looking at the Ambas stats and like all of our visitors around the world. The one piece about the communities is like the Diamond Hands community out of Japan. Like Koji running that and we're getting to see the community on, on Ambron, Ambas grow. And it's just like really cool for lightning education, that type of stuff to see, to see that

community grow. And actually, Amsterdam is like where most of our traffic is coming from now, like outpacing a lot of the U.S. So it's super interesting to watch these communities pop up. That's so cool. I love that. It gives me hope for doing another little world tour, but actually hit. up some meetups on the way.

One question. What other, like, is there any other, like, secret community, like, Central African Republic or something like that we wouldn't, like, think of that you see in your stats, Justin? Yeah, I'll keep my eyes peeled for it. But right now, the big surprising one is sections of Japan, Amsterdam, Berlin, of course, and a few other parts of Germany. I think that's where they have the most nodes is Germany.

That's interesting. Actually, we did an interview with Koji and a bunch of like OG Japanese bitcorners. So that was, that was super interesting to hear like how the block size wars were happening with Roger Ver in like in Japan back in 2017 and how they, how fake tooshi came in to like to Japan and try to like steal bit corners into into his shit coin and so on. Awesome. Well, dude, I'm glad you really, I'm glad you brought that up. I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for those spaces and, and peek into them whenever I can. Yeah, you're welcome to hop up as well. I mean, we're having like one hour section or so where people just talk within the community, but then anybody's welcome to just jump up and riff with questions. And so. Yeah. Yeah. So everybody keep an eye out. And again, everybody's Twitter handles

are in the show notes. So be sure to give Lucas a follow and keep an eye out for that. But dude, thank you for that topic. That was awesome. I'm glad that you brought it up. And yeah, let's keep it rolling. We're going to rotate again. Everybody in the comments, keep them coming.

Thanks for watching here. We have a bunch coming through. But, you know, when I get caught up in the conversation, I try not to distract myself too much. But yeah, everybody watching, smash it like. Give it a share. all that good stuff. We're going to rotate over to Rick.

Dude, let me know. What are you excited about this week? I got two things. I don't know if that's allowed, but I'm going to do it anyways. Breaking the rules. Yeah, right. Sorry.

So the first thing I'm absolutely bullish on in Bitcoin is Bitcoiners getting 3D printers. Like that is a whole different aspect of self-sovereignty on another level. And that's one thing is like I build crypto cloaks up as always trying to get Bitcoiners to get 3D printers for like the two. or even just like if something breaks around your house, I had a story where I tried to get Christmas hooks for this past Christmas and all the stores were sold out. So I just went on my design software designed a hook and then 3D printing my own hooks for my entire house. So it's like

little things like that that 3D printers are so useful. Like if a part breaks around your house or anything like that, you can literally design it or go online and there's millions of designs out there where you can automatically download it, put it in your slicer, and then start printing it yourself. So that's one thing I love seeing right now. Like over this past New Year, there's a ton of people tagging me going, yeah, CryptoClox signals like passing everywhere. I'm like, yeah, everybody get 3D printers. That's like one of my main goals. So that one's really fun to see.

That's cool. And I love the self-sovereity angle because, you know, we've seen, and this has been kind of in my feed lately, but the like seed signer, build your own hardware. and then to be able to like, you know, if you're dabbling in 3D printing, like building your own casing for it and everything, that's, I love that idea. People are being able to do it yourself from the bare bones of even creating hardware. That's literally what it's all about. And I love seeing that more and more people are even designing files and open sourcing stuff.

It's awesome. Feel free to hit us with your second as well. Oh, yeah. So the second one, also pretty passionate about home mining. So the explosion of home mining in general, I think over the past six months that I've seen is crazy. Even the different things that people are designing for just setups to run miners, how to keep them cool, or even plugging them into houses to heat your house. Like I run a miner and I literally heat my garage, so it's negative 20 outside and my garage will sit at 75 degrees. Like that's the best thing ever.

My wife never complains because their car is always warm in the garage at 70. And you can either, and I have the other one tie into the house. So if the shop ever is cold in the morning, I just plug it right into the shop and it starts heating it up and then I just vent it outside. And you look online, like people are heating up hot tubs and stuff with coils and it's mind boggling what people are coming up with. But it's really awesome to see how that whole home mining aspect and technology is changing and really growing itself. Like it's a whole other part of Bitcoin that I hope everybody at least runs like an S-9 in their house someday because it's crazy. cool to just mess with it. Yeah, that's that's super awesome.

I love both of those because I mean, they both are the same theme, right? The self-sovereignty aspect of Bitcoin. Like not your keys, not your coins, but also, you know, don't trust verify. And there's an aspect of that to, you know, doing things like you're building your old your own hardware, but then being able to make things for, you know, make your casing for your hardware, make your shell. Mining yourself, I think probably gives you a greater understanding of the Bitcoin network. That's one of my goals for this year is to get an S9 and just kind of go through the process

of like, how do I require one? You know, how do I calculate my power costs and see if it's even profitable and feasible? How do I connect to a mining goal? Like all of those things, I think I'm going to try and do a series on that. That would absolutely be a great tutorial, by the way, because there's a lot of people that have those simple questions, just like how you did the lightning node stuff. It's all the simple things that people just want, like a really clear cut video. So even connecting to pools and stuff, I mean, a lot of people go around, there's no good one thing to find it, usually. And I literally have no idea.

So it would be like, if anybody's watching this at this moment, I am an absolute idiot when it comes to mining. I have no idea what I'm doing. So I've got my work cut out for me in that. department. But yeah, you're you're absolutely right. Mining at home is is a very interesting aspect that I think even as a learning tool more people should dive into. But I don't know. Yeah, if you have anything more to say about it or if Lucas, Jess or Morgan want to jump in, feel free. We've been joking around how we want to stealthly heat the community pool during the winter or the Bitcoin miner. They do not like, it's ridiculous. We live in Texas. You should be able to use the pool

year round, but it's like 50 degrees of that water in January, even though it's 70 degrees out. I'm like, all right. Well, I mean, my husband's brave enough to go in, but I, you know, I dip a toe and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll go in later, you know. That's awesome. I could use some extra heating in and around my house, too. It was, what was it last? It's warmer now, but a week ago or a week and a half ago, it was negative 35 Celsius here, which in Fahrenheit, it's a weird conversion, but it's negative 31 Fahrenheit. You could, if you took boiling water and you stepped outside and you threw it, it freezes

instantly. It's crazy. Yeah. You used to do that in Minnesota when it was negative 50 with a wind chill. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. As a Swedish, this is close to my heart, you know, because that's why I, part of why I emigrated

from there. It's just, I just can't stand that. So the home heating aspect, I think is really interesting. Rick, do you have, have you measured the, are you warming your house with your mining? Yeah, so I have an S-19 plugged into the duck work in the cold air intake right before it goes through the filter to go into your furnace. I have one S-19 plugged into there. So it literally will pull that heat up through the filter and then distribute it. So I run the fan on the furnace 24-7 just to circulate the air and then it also pulls in that s-19 heat into the whole house so slow it's not much but it definitely keeps up a couple degrees compared to where it is so so do you have any any measurement or like how much you save like is there any like financial component that you know man

i haven't tracked u.s dollars on that all i care about is when i'm home mining i just care that's k yc free that's the only thing yeah yeah that's the other poll too hey like that's it is you know people want their Bitcoin stack and they don't necessarily want, you know, everybody and their grandmother able to take a look at exactly what their stack equates to, which, you know, a lot of people aren't privy to general privacy practices with Bitcoin. But, you know, if you're, if you're mining some, then you can have your little stash that you set off to the side and, and, you know, should an exchange get hacked or something and somebody get your info, they're not necessarily going to know about that stack when they kick it,

open your door and try to $5 wrench attack you. Yeah, I think what we'll see in the future is like a whole bunch of more like home heating and just more applications on using that heat towards, instead of just blowing it out in the environment or whatever, use it and bring it somewhere else. Heat pools, heat hot tubs, heat your house. Yeah. Might as well use it.

I think that'll be for my garage. We're probably going to do a garage in the next couple of years. That'll be my heating solution out there. Absolutely, man. It works. I have a two-car garage and that one S-19 keeps it at 75 all time. Damn. It's nice.

It's real nice. That's awesome. I could probably make the case to my wife for that rather than putting in heating. Pays for itself, man. Yeah. Sweet. Plans. Plans. All right. Awesome. Anybody else want to jump in on any mining or home 3D printing stuff before we round out and jump to the next?

Sure. The 3D printing that came along with like Umbrol where like folks are wanting to like customize their nodes, that was really exciting to see because like each of these, each of these nodes has a personality. And like one of the reasons that we include a referral to. crypto clothes is so that we could like see all those like cool nodes come out. And yeah, I see that like 3D printing that self-sovereignty just goes hand in hand with Bitcoin to really push it further and make it cool and have a personality. Absolutely. That's why I say Bitcoin's personal. Your notes should be too. I love that tagline.

So question on the on the whole mining like also one one thing that I've been wondering about is how do you are you able to easily connect to like satellite i mean a blockstream satellite or is that like a super hard i mean if you get a satellite on your house i haven't set it up yet i used i tried to in the minnesota house i had a satellite dish and i just never got around to it because i'm a terrible at like coding and in command line so i need to learn on that just on that aspect but ever since blockstream came out with their satellite kits i think it's a lot easier to just plug and play and get connected. And then once you're connected to that, I'm almost,

I think I saw Samson say something about how you can connect to the satellite with your miners. And that's what would have, it could have prevented that in like Kazakhstan or whatever about it. Yeah, I was actually thinking about Kazakhstan. Like, it really showcases what may happen when like we do have a global shutdown of internet everywhere. When they want to reset the financial system, like make the reason to like,

oh, now we have CBDCs everywhere. And so like you kind of really want to make sure that there's enough home mining that's connected to satellites so that we're not relying only on those like big, big mining farms. I honestly think you'll have more Bitcoin satellites in the future, not just one from them. Just for the fact that if a government wants to say, well, screw the internet for you guys, you guys can't do anything anymore. Well, you can still mine and you can still produce blocks and do hashes. I think you'll see a huge increase on maybe Bitcoin satellites and just being able to connect to that aspect to keep it going. Yeah, that's that's huge. Again, like it's and and in the instance of Kazakhstan when they did shut down, shut off the internet, like now all of those miners that just migrated from China are like, oh, Jesus.

But, but it gives them, you know, whatever doesn't kill Bitcoin. actually does make it stronger because everybody's looking at that going, okay, how do we solve that issue? Because, I mean, it's just jurisdictional, but there are ways around it. And you can use something like Blockstreet Satellites and still be able to continue on.

I think that's a huge hurdle to clear, but I'm sure there's people looking at that now saying, well, it's just in case. I actually heard that it was, 18% of the mining network wasn't Kassik's down at this point, but only 15% went down. I'm not sure this is the actual number,

but that would in that case mean that those three extra percent have either some way to access like some back door to the operator internet or satellite. Yeah, yeah. Well, I can't speak to that.

I have no idea, to be honest. All right. Any final thoughts on this one before we jump buy a 3D printer yeah there we go you heard it you heard it here buy one maybe I should get one I should I'll do that awesome all right well Rick thank you I'm glad that we got to talk about both those things we're going to rotate of course everybody in the chat again thank you for being here I've got to give a shout out to my my biggest anti-fan that is here

David, good to see you again, man. I'm glad you're in there, rebutting everything we say. I appreciate it. I'm glad you watch every single week for every single show. You are always welcome here. But with that, we're going to rotate. Morgan, you are up. What has you feeling bullish this week?

Take it away. Yeah, sure. So I think I come from a very different part of the financial world than most people listening to this or who are on the show. My financial planning practice mostly deals with high net worth individuals, something that I imagine many Bitcoiners who are listening to this will become and will maybe need my services or somebody like my services in the future. That said, right, when we all think about Bitcoin,

we think about the ability to receive money, right, to hold it for some period of time, then to eventually send it, right, to pay for something, to do something nice, to give it to somebody else. the sending and receiving portion of Bitcoin is really quite nice, right? There's the Bitcoin network itself. There's also lightning. In the current financial world, in the fiat world, it's not very nice. So, right, there's ACH and there's wires and there's all sorts of ways to move money around.

And this sort of came up for me because I've been dealing with issues for two specific clients over the last month where we've been trying to send money to a specific place and we just can't get it there. And every time I talk to Pierre at home, he's like, He's like, well, you know, and you don't even need to, he doesn't even need to roll off his lips. Like he's about to say Bitcoin fixes this. And I'm like, dude, like, you know, it's not like if I wanted to, I could. You know, we're not in that situation yet. But yeah, it's just been a nightmare.

I mean, literally to send a check from one institution to another institution. You would think that the check would just get cut. It would get overnighted. It would get deposited within a few days, right? And then they would take a couple days to clear maybe a week tops. We're going on over a month now on one check. So it's just things like that. where you're like, of course this is the future, right? Of course, like not having a check being

sent for over a week and $100,000 just being up in the year. Like, that's not the future. I remember when I worked at UBS, we actually, we sent this wire as an international wire and it was for a couple million dollars and it got stuck in OFAC. OFAC is part of the Fed. And it literally got held in OFAC for about, I think it was 17 or 18 days. Can you imagine you send a couple million dollars around and it gets stuck for that long. Like it's just stuff like that where you're like there's no way this isn't where the future is going. So and I think with all that in mind, like to kind of piggyback on what Rick was saying on the privacy side, I also wanted to just add in a little flavor for traders out there to stop trading because it sort of adds a whole layer of complexity to your financial

situation. And it also is bullish for Bitcoin. Right. If you just buy and hold, that's the bullish Bitcoin future. Whereas if you're trading around, you're trying to time the market, right? You end up, with a tax situation that is completely unfeasible. There are a lot of people out there on Twitter right now who are advertising, oh, we can make it simple. I have this 19-piece thread that will make your life simple. I mean, that alone should be enough to deter people not to be trading their Bitcoin around. And then also the little checkbox you have to now put on your 1040 that you're moving cryptocurrency

around, yet again, another deterrent. All the KYC factors involved, obviously, in being on exchanges and everything else. So that's my two cents on why I'm bullish. I yeah, the sending money again like previously traveling. It's such a pain in the ass getting money anywhere like you know across borders is insane. And just the experience of actually having Bitcoin when you go somewhere else and just oh, this is this is easy I can send. And I can you know here in Canada I pay my bills with bull Bitcoin. and I can do that wherever the hell I am, right?

Like my income is Bitcoin and so I can just wherever I am, I just, you know, pull a bull Bitcoin and my bills get paid and that's easy. But it's, yeah, it's such a hindrance. And I now charge, I charge a Fiat premium if somebody wants to pay me in dollars. I just, I don't like accepting it. I prefer being paid in Bitcoin. And yeah, the only way you can truly screw yourself in Bitcoin to your trading to your trading point is by trading it. Like you kind of sidestep all the bullshit manipulation of people trying to make it hit certain price points to trigger liquidations and so and so over.

You sidestep all of that if you just hold your Bitcoin for the long term. Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean, you've got a Fiat job, right? You get your income and VAT for the most part, right, unless you're at BTC sessions. And then you take some of that VIA and you go and buy some Bitcoin with it. Your tax situation is not really that complicated, right? You get your W2, you get your business income, you go meet with your account or you do, you know, turbo tax, whatever, and you're done. You then, instead of doing that, right, of just buying and holding your Bitcoin, you decide to trade around.

Next thing you know, you're like pulling literally the worst cost basis sheets you've ever seen off of these exchanges. They're not reporting anything crap properly. you're trying to decipher whether or not you actually sent the money out or if it was a transaction. I mean, they haven't really coded that stuff properly. I mean, that stuff alone, like just even looking at a statement that just has buys and transfers out to me sometimes, I'm just like, whoa, what's going on here? Did I sell? What is this?

So, I mean, maybe people who are smarter than me can look at these sheets better. But I think for the most part, the amount you actually have to pay an accountant to look at that or the amount of time that you're spending sifting through that, that alone, that cost, I mean, is enough for, should deter, at least, you know, many people. However, I think the promise of what you could make if you trade the Bitcoin price correctly, right, is what keeps people in the game. Stupid games, stupid prizes. Exactly. Anybody else want to dive in?

Anything that Morgan said? Yeah, I'd like to jump in and just say, I totally agree with the whole transacting overseas anywhere is the hugest pain in the ass. So I buy and like pay for stuff all over now and try to do a place in Turkey. And it was through credit card and we tried like wire transfers and nothing was working. I go, can you just accept Bitcoin? Because I'll send it to you. And within 10 minutes, it was done compared to trying to mess with a payment for two weeks. So it's just stuff like that.

How can you look at that and be like, that's not the, like how can you say that's not the future? It's crazy how easy Bitcoin makes transactions. It's how it should be. Yeah. Yeah. So for our, for Global Bitcoin Fest, we have an El Salvadorian. producer and just send the sats, you know, 10 seconds after he's done, he sends the invoice, and then boom, he's got the sats in one second. So it's so easy to just work cross-border.

It's so nice and just interact cross-border, pleb to pleb. Yeah, you just don't have to have to have a company and all that stuff. And one thing that I noticed recently, Sweden, I predict, Sweden is going to be the first country in the world after China to adopt a CBDC. Because we have like over 99% of all transactions are digital. Over 98% of all the population have a digital ID. And we are used to total control and we like it. So, so, so the, what's happening in Sweden right now is basically the banks that said, you can't transfer money out of the EU, several,

banks recent. I had an old investor in mine call me and like, Lucas, you live in Vietnam, though, yeah? I need to make a deposit to a Vietnamese company, okay, or to Vietnamese account. I'm like, so why don't you do that yourself? He's like, because you obviously have the money. He's like, yeah, but all the questions I'm getting from the bank, it's so freaky. I just don't want to deal with it. So, yes, Bitcoin, peace of mind in international transactions. Even the people that have the money just really,

really, really don't want to deal with the banks at this point because it's so creepy. I mean, at one point, my cousin who lives in Brussels was transferring money to Sweden. And eventually after two weeks of DD, he sent an email directly to the bank and like, do you want, you know, do you want, you know, make a, you know, blood sample or pee sample, check if my urine is clean. What's up, you know? It's, it is, it becomes invasive. It's, it's just such a pain in the ass.

I mean, like, I don't know if any of you recently have had to actually just go into a bank. oh my god oh my god just standing in that lineup and you're like wow like this is this is still how people do things like people still haven't experienced this oh you you need some money on the other side of the globe cool it's there now like that's as simple as it is it's insane and then to stand in line and have these long transfer times and i don't know how it is in the u.s I'm not familiar with exactly how ACH works and how quick it is. At least in Canada, we've got e-transfers, which are pretty fast. So like I can like the small amount of dollars that I do get paid,

I typically send over to like a SATs back visa card so I can then make purchases. But when I want to fund that, it's like I send it and it lands. in like a minute. So that's nice, but that's local within Canada. So like what's ACH like in the States? It can be kind of a mess. Sometimes it can work really well. Oh, sorry, maybe Morgan is the best to answer this one. I mean, Jess, you can do it too, whatever. You're on, you're saying what I was going to say anywhere between one to seven business days. Holy shit. What? But you're usually more like one to three. It's usually one to three, but sometimes things go. get stuck. That's like, it's the worst. I would say, though, the way that the financial system fails,

which I think Bitcoin would get. So it's not really the ACH. It's not really wires. Wires are same day. ACH is pretty, is fairly quick. And especially if you have things linked up, like one bank will recognize that if money's coming from somewhere else, so they'll be pretty good about, like, about showing that you're in good, good condition. It's the, it's like a payroll error that takes four months to work out or a check that gets sent somewhere and somehow miraculously gets stuck or like just like random error right you sent an ACH but you sent the wrong amount and yet it's the user error side but it would be you know really easy to quick maybe be a lot easier to fix in a different situation so I like that's how I found like the financial system has

failed it's like where you're in these situations where they're and they're usually caused by the US government right like the check we're sending out right now is because we're trying to get a tax deduction for 2021. So it's like if you're not in a situation where like, you know, the government is involved with all these stupid deductions and other things that people do to put money in their retirement accounts, put money in random donor advised funds and other things. That's why like, end of the year is always really crazy and tight for financial planners like me and for anyone who's trying to do anything in the fiscal year end. And then everything slows down as a result of that, right? There's things like Bitcoin that could fix that obviously that wouldn't clog up the financial

system. But also like maybe we wouldn't need all these deductions and other things and have this stupid, ridiculous, complicated financial tax situation that we have here, if governments couldn't willy-nilly print money and then decide whatever they're going to do on the tax side. I think also on the transfer side, I think there's an active policy now. Many banks that have adopted a policy of actually making transactions hard on purpose. So for example, a friend now tried to deposit to an exchange, and they were actually, it's a known exchange

within the EU they could check it easily instead they were kind of scaring this person like oh you know there's a lot of fraud here you know you can lose everything you know and just like really creepy

questions to like you don't want to take the money back you're sure you're sure and like so that was one one approach another approach I've noticed so I transferred some money out of Sweden in a few steps. And every single time the banks did the same thing.

Two times they typed in the wrong information. Then they have a policy saying we can't change it after two times. And then the receiving bank is like the information is wrong, so we have to send it back. Every single time. They did the same thing. And this is people that are working with transfers every day, all day. For sure, they know what they're doing. Finally, like, it reached to me.

Like, it can be no other reason than, like, purposefully. Maybe they're trying to make, like, extra AML KYC stuff. I don't know. Like, but it's really bizarre. Yeah. And, I mean, there's been a lot of pushback from traditional financial institutions that, you know, have not been. friendly to anything related to Bitcoin, right?

Like we, I've, I've had friends that run Bitcoin related businesses that have had endless numbers of bank accounts just shut down because they don't, they just don't like it. Regardless of how, uh, how, how, like properly and by the book, they've done all of their financial reporting. like there's a friend of mine wanted this company listed on CSX or like venture TX in Canada and was still getting flack from banks they wouldn't they you know they wouldn't bank them and he's he's looking to get his company listed on on the stock exchange like it's it's it is insanity and there is this weird like resistance to all of this stuff but I

I do get the feeling that in the long run, commercial banks will become and are becoming friendly to this stuff because, you know, as CBDCs become more of a reality, all of a sudden you have a direct line between central bank and consumer, and that cuts out commercial banks. So commercial banks probably would like to offer something that a central bank never. would, which would be like a service where you can purchase Bitcoin. But I think that's also some of the impetus for some of these policies where they've been, they continue to be adversarial to Bitcoin companies because almost like in, um, uh, the big short where they're like busy kind of getting their shit in order, getting their ducks in a row before they, they, you know, let the reality sink in. I think there may be a little bit of that somewhere in the background where they're like,

we'll kind of get our Bitcoin service ready in the background. And then when we offer it to clients where they can use our custodial Bitcoin service, then we'll stop being dickheads to the non-custodial Bitcoin services out there. I think that may be a little with that. This is actually fact in Australia. So there was a case, Bitcoin versus Banks, a guy that was debanked with his small Bitcoin Exchange. She was just doing transactions on one of the peer-to-peer exchanges helping people.

And one or several of the big banks in Australia have actually invested in one or several exchanges. At the same time, they're not allowing these other exchanges to bank. So clearly, like, there is something going on with their own incentives. Yeah, yeah, it's unfortunate. Jess, I don't know if you have anything that you wanted to add in. I haven't let you chat much yet. Sure. Let's see.

The experience in Turkey was, I think, Rick, you mentioned that. They would, they'll just write, they'll just pass along a check. Like, it's like, like, that is the asset and write the new information on it and just pass it around. You'll have like 10 different names on there. And like, it's just sort of this like, just delayed settlement because no one has the money because all of that like inflation um and it it was just like wild like that's the fiat system and like here in the u.s like the the financial center of the world or uh it it's still like on a sunny day you know it's like still one to seven

business days like everything's going perfect um like i just had my first experience with a wire transfer and that just felt like the most archaic system. But then, like, just, like, about a week ago, I sent money across borders from words in my head that was in cold storage, and I sent it without Wi-Fi. So, like, this is just, like, unstoppable tech, and, like, the rest of the Fiat world cannot compete with this. I think it's funny you mentioned the wire part too because people are like, oh, Bitcoin's so complicated. I can't possibly figure it out. And you're like, okay, you ever tried to send a wire? Because I mean, most of the questions I get from clients who run businesses are like, what the heck is this? What do I? And the only reason I know how to do is because I've been doing this for a decade. Like if I mean, the first time I looked at it, I was like, this is bizarre, especially if you're doing an international one versus a U.S. one and you have to figure out like, oh, do I need an I ban or a Bick or a slip? What is this? And like the lingo.

and you could be Googling it and get six different answers. I mean, it's crazy to me. I think like there's a will, there's a way, right? If you want to figure out how to send your money or receive money, you will figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Wiring money sucks.

So I think the general consensus of the panel is the legacy financial system is trash and Bitcoin fixes this. Is that about right? Yeah? Okay. Awesome. Well, I enjoyed that topic. Thank you so much, Morgan. We're going to jump to our final one.

Everybody that's in the comments, again, thank you for being here, keep it going. David wants to let everybody know that he's never had a problem with his bank, just so you guys know. So that's excellent. You must not be moving around of money, David. Yeah. So, but, you know, and he also would like everybody to know, Rick, particularly for you, David has real heat, not other heat. I was unaware that there's different types of heat.

But thank you for the comments, David. I appreciate it. You are a valued viewer of this channel. But I digress. Jess, you are up. Let us know what has you feeling bullish this week. This week, it feels like so much has happened. But at the beginning of the week,

Cash app announced that they were doing lightning withdrawals. And so this gets me particularly bullish because Cash app, I think, is one of the easiest, like, user-friendly tools to use to, like, do finance stuff. It's like, I mean, it's got the name and it's just like a couple of buttons. And it's not very complicated. And they just added some really cutting edge lightning technology that is actually interoperable. And so anyone that runs a node will be able to send Bitcoin to themselves. And they can even just hop it to another wallet and do it privately and still disguise which node is actually theirs.

So I'm particularly excited about it because the more commerce that happens on lightning, the more rewarding it is to run a node, which of course helps my business. But I just think it's really cool. Some of the things that we've watched is like just people like yourself, Ben, have like run a node and everybody wants to connect to your node. And it's cool to not only have like just a connection, like write a comment and a chat, but also like open a channel and have a financial, a meaningful financial connection that like last months and whatnot. And you can like participate in their financial lives. So this like this cash up announcement was just like the first step into like just connecting very user friendly tools to this expansive financial network. that is growing like gangbusters. Yeah, and it's, it seems to be more of a trend too, right?

Like cash app is a big one for people to get, yeah, yeah. And that's a big one for people to get kind of their first Bitcoin experience and lightning experience in one. That's impressive. And when that's one of your first experiences, and that's an option on a platform as large as cash app, then the narrative of Bitcoin being slow and expensive is immediately dismissed, right? Because that's your first, oh, what's lightning? Oh, that was instant. Great. I have it. I have the money. It's in my own wallet. What the hell are you talking about? It's slow and expensive.

And same on Twitter, right? Like you can go from, you can send a transaction from cash app to somebody on Twitter or strike or whatever it may be. There's so many things that are kind of hitting and you know, Jack Mallor's regularly hitting these interviews and talking about lightning and and Jack Dorsey working so hard to kind of get it to the forefront of most people's kind of first touch point with Bitcoin. It's, again, that narrative, that slow and expensive narrative has is being crushed. But some people are still like the, the, some of the shit corners are still hanging. it's like they haven't even

taken a moment to look almost like they're like I saw I think it was a bunch of dot Eths were having a little CJ together and they were saying that the lightning narrative is dead

what what are you talking about? I use it every day every single day multiple times at this point I don't know I think it brings that oh sorry Rick go. There you go. Okay. It brings a full circle kind of what we were talking about before, though, right? It's the game theory thing for companies as well as for countries, right?

If CashUp is coming out with this, I mean, PayPal and Venmo already have ability to buy Bitcoin and there's only a matter of time before they add Lightning, right? And really any other place where you can go and buy Bitcoin, right, if you see that these places now have it, okay, now we have to go and add Lightning. And the next thing you know, exchanges have it. And then other places have it, right? And that's really a lot easier for people to transact and to accept lightning or to use, use lightning and accept Bitcoin in their businesses. Yeah, absolutely. And the other, and there is a workaround too. Like if you're, if you're stuck in locally, you don't have an exchange that allows you to withdraw direct to

lightning. You can just, and I think I've got like a two minute explainer on this. I'm dropping next week, but basically get like Breeze wallet or Moon wallet or Phoenix or whatever. And it's literally from direct from your exchange, withdraw to a regular Bitcoin address within any of those wallets. And the second it lands and gets a confirmation, it's now instantly accessible via the Lightning Network. Like it's everything is is in the background. You don't need to think about it.

It's just I'm receiving a Bitcoin payment and now I can use it on Lightning. And it's non-custodial, right? It's your Bitcoin. It's not held on behalf of somebody else. It's yours. So even if you don't have access to Lightning withdraws, Well, you can get it direct into a lightning wallet if you want. So one thing that's really emboldened me with the Lightning Network is seeing these reactions

when when I told people like, okay, look, I'll give you a Bitcoin in one single, you know, minute, in one minute. Just get on your phone and you'll have an account and you'll have a account and you'll have have the Bitcoin in your wallet in one single minute. And then people are, I don't, okay, okay, I'll take one minute. And then they'll do it and it's just boom. So it's like after you had that experience or after they had that experience, they just, it's so hard for them not to be interested.

It's like that's why some shit corners are like, no, I don't want to try. I'm good, I'm good. Like it's almost like they don't want to experience it because like they don't want to break that worldview. So, yeah. You're right. I don't, I don't even want to, I think I was in, it was in Miami for Bitcoin 2021. And I was talking to a girl again, like, she was literally attending the, the shit coin conference.

It was actually called the shit coin conference happening in Miami at the same time. And I was like, well, I mean, at least yourself aware. But then she was talking about demoing light coin or something to people and how you can't use, you can't use Bitcoin as cheap and it's slow and expensive. And lightning is all custodial. And I was like, that's not true, though. You can get a lightning wallet right now. And I can.

And then the pushback that I got. as I demoed, I was like, okay, hit receive and then type in an amount to make an invoice, and then I'll send it. You know, there'll be a QR code like normal and I'll send it. And the act of adding a value first, she was like, well, I'll try explaining that to a regular person, though. And I was like, and now that's not even like, that's about to be not even the case. it's going to be like you have a lightning address, right? So like even that argument is is gone.

So yes, I mean, they're all falling to the wayside and and grasping at straws. You know, if your if your shit coin's marketing schick was X number of transactions per second, you're going to get fucking wrecked at this point. Yeah, just having to explain like an on-chain withdrawal from an exchange. And normally you have to choose like the priority of the withdrawal. And then they see it in their wallet. And of course their question is, well, why is it say unconfirmed? And it's like, oh, no.

But now that they have lightning, it's not even a question. It's just done. There's not a question about priority. It's just, oh, we paid zero fees to send this. And it was done in an instant. So like huge user experience improvements. So, Jessica, you've been doing Ambos for how many years? Let's see, we launched in May of last year.

Okay, so yeah, because I was curious, like, how long you've been, like, monitoring really close. But I guess before you started Ambos, you're probably already kind of diving into transactions on Lightning and, like, looking into the volumes and so on. because I'm curious to know, like, what is the ramp, like, what's your, when you've been looking at it day to day, what's your impression of the ramp up? Like, do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think I downloaded Eclare first on my phone, and that was my first channel to Pollo feed, which was like the chicken feeder. And that was in, I think, early 2019, maybe late 2018. And then from there, I got my own node and then started learning how to be a good routing node. And then I think maybe midway through like 2019, I like started to like get it and start to like earn some routing income.

And then from there, I was like, okay, we need way better tools. And that's where that's when we, I teamed up with the debt behind Thunderpenter. Thunder Hub and we started building AmBos. And now it's like the go-to explorer. We've got 17% of the network has already claimed their node on our site. So yeah, it's growing really fast. And the network itself is growing like 5% per week for the most part. So it's been it's been growing a lot.

Hey, like it's the, The amount of Bitcoin sitting on lightning, the number of nodes, like, that's been growing quite, quite quickly. Like, it's been, it's been an explosion this year, or I guess, 2021 from what I've seen. Yeah. And it's like if another coin wanted to add lightning, like they could. It is interoperable. But apparently none of them have been able to develop that far on this basic, like, lightning. money sending technology.

So, like, you know, I don't have to call them shit coins. I just say we'll develop the best money transmitting technology. And, yeah, join up. Awesome. I'm bullish on lightning. I can really recommend everybody to, like, actually throw a lightning giveaway party. It's really fun. I mean, just gather people.

on Twitter spaces or like get them together in a bar like do whatever and just like we we um yeah we we did that all the time before and it's it's just really fun so i'd like to do a local one i'd like to do a local like everybody get together get at your phone we did one uh tone vase had some people out to dubai and he did a workshop and so we did a like a quick lightning workshop just how to how to do your first lightning transactions, which is a lot of fun. It was cool. A lot of people hadn't tried before. So yeah, I'm bullish on more people learning and trying.

And yeah, I imagine this time next year and a few years out, like every, it seems after every having cycle, there's some new incredible thing that kind of becomes just ubiquitous. Like last time it was Segwit, now 80 something percent of the network transactions are are Segw transactions. And I think, you know, four years out from kind of this having cycle, you're going to see, oh,

wow, like most people or a lot of people. Yeah, are using lightning. But I digress. Guys, I got to start wrapping this up. I'm going to say,

first of all, Jess, thank you so much for the topic. Super awesome. Always happy to chat lightning. I want to do it just, a quick round of final thoughts anything just super quick um anything you want to finish up saying and also where can people find you so uh lucas i'll i'll jump to you first yeah so i would want to do the same

thing as heima did with i want to prop to uh you know invite some some global bit corners like maybe Darwin from El Salvador or Koji from Japan or I'm sure you've had a crypto but startup from Venezuela at least like there's so many really awesome bit corners from all over the world and it's kind of cool to hear from their perspective so hit me up and I'll I'll suggest for example Darwin from El Salvador super interesting what he's doing on the ground there building actual lightning business and helping businesses on the ground on board with lightning in El Salvador, for example. So, and you can find us on Global BTC Fest.

So at Global BTC Fest on Twitter. And that's pretty much where it's happening. We're not that well organized yet. So we're just doing these weekly spaces. Follow us there and then you can just listen in and join the conversation. Awesome, awesome. Jump down to Rick. final thoughts and where can people find you yeah absolutely uh everybody should buy a 3d printer

and run it if you're a bitcoiner your next tool should be a 3d printer besides a node just saying uh also if you want to get into 3d printing or have any questions on it join us uh there's a link i don't know ben you can put it somewhere after the show or whatever uh 3d printing bitcoin bitcoin.com will take you to our telegram group and then also we have another link that brings you kind of to a page that shows you all the basics about getting into 3d printing printers uh and stuff like that. And that's 3D printers go burr, brrr.com. And then if you ever want to get a hold of me, I'm at Rick V3D. And I'm also running the crypto cloaks Twitter one. That's, that's me. So yeah, Ben, you're muted. I was going to say, sorry, the timing of the burr in the

background was absolutely perfect. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. They're, they're busy. Morgan, final thoughts. And where can people find you? Buy and hold, stop giving yourself tax problems, create estate planning problems with your buying and holding, then you'll need me. You can find me. I'm at Morgan with an E. Rochard on Twitter. Pierre and I also have the Bitcoin for Advisors podcast. It was intended for other financial advisors to get into Bitcoin and get good information from it,

but we've been getting really good feedback from anybody who's listening to advisor or not. So check that out as well. We're on all the major platforms. And if you are interested in financial planning services, you can find me at Origin, W-A-W-A-WalthAdvisors.com. Awesome. Thanks for being here. And Jess, once again, final thoughts and where can people find you?

I think we talked a lot about starting communities. So I think it really does start at grassroots. I think there's Bitcoiners all over the world. So, yeah, join up and find your squad. But you can find me at AmBos Tech, AMBOS, S. dot uh or that space is the website and then emboss tech on twitter awesome yeah thanks to all of you for being here i have really enjoyed the conversation had a lot of fun and of course you're all welcome back anytime uh so i'm going to uh kill your audio video and do a quick outro if anybody

sticks around i'll say a quick goodbye afterwards so thank you all for being here cheers All right. So everybody watching, again, thank you for joining me. Fridays are always my favorite day of the week. I get to hang out with bitcoins. And so do you. You get to come into the chat. David, good seeing you, man.

Glad you came. Everybody, again, thank you so much for being here. As always, like, subscribe, share. All those things are beyond important. They really do help the show. So please do them. If you want to help the show in another way, you can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below.

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With that, I am out. Have yourselves a, a wonderful day or evening. Follow all of the panelists. Their Twitter handles are linked down below. And I will see you guys next time for your daily session. Total the Bitcoin.