BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Eric Yakes, Jessica Hodlr, Dave Bradley ep263

Episode Date: June 11, 2022

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Welcome, everybody. Glad to have you here. Another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish? Every guest on the show today is already working on a drink. And judging from the conversation prior to coming live, this should be a good one if we don't get pulled. So anyways, welcome. Glad everybody is here. As always, 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'll write it and we'll do it live The fucking thing sucks

If you have not already Like subscribe, share All those things help get this show In front of more eyeballs And I am Ben with the BTC sessions This is your daily session All right before we bring in our guest Let's take a look at where we are in the market right now

This is the Bitbo.io dashboard. We're sitting at $29,279 per coin. The single US dollar will grab you 3,415 sats. 90.78% of all Bitcoin has been mined. And in terms of fees, next block, a little bit higher, 16 sats per byte. But if you're willing to wait, even an hour, still looks like one sat per byte or, you know, maybe a couple sats will get you through, no problem. Of course, shout to your sponsors of the show, shakebay.com.

If you're in Canada, easy way to buy and sell Bitcoin. Don't sell Bitcoin. But e-transfers in and out. Super simple. No deposit or withdrawal fees. It's in spread. And if you sign up with the link down below, your first 100 bucks, they'll give you 30 bucks for free afterwards. And you get the same deal for referring friends and family.

They've also got Shake Your Phone every single day for free Sats, which I fucked up today. I lost my streak. So I'm super upset about that. But then they also have their Sats back Visa cards. So check them out. Links are below. up next. We got ledden.io. Love these guys. They're very helpful for whenever there's a cash flow issue. I'm in a pinch. I need dollars, but I don't want to sell my Bitcoin. So I can deposit here, get dollars to my bank account within 24 hours and when I pay back those dollars. I get back the same amount of Bitcoin. They have savings accounts as well. If you want to get some interest, just, you know, careful with exposure there with things like B2X. But also, they are in the midst of rolling out Bitcoin backed mortgages, which could be. interesting. We're there midway through kind of getting it out through Canada. There's going to be

some select U.S. states coming through the pipeline. So keep an eye out for them. If you want any, if you want to check out anything they're doing, start.org.org.com slash btc sessions down below. Bit refill helps a ton with me living on Bitcoin. And it can help you as well. You can pick up any gift card you like for Bitcoin, both on-chain and Lightning Network. You earn stats back as you shop. You get more stats back with the referral program. And also if you're in the States, they're rolling up bill payments. So they can help you get on that Bitcoin standard if you see fit. Links again, down below. Up next, Keystone Hardware wallet, 100% air gap, meaning you don't plug it into anything internet connected. It's all done offline via QR code. Keeps the keys of your money safe and away

from internet connection. Definitely upgrade to Bitcoin-only firmware. Works awesome with Blue Wallet, Sparrow, Spector. Great in a multi-sig. Check. Check. them out. I've got a full tutorial as well. And finally, if you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet, get in solid steel. Pieces of paper don't quite cut it, folks. So Bill Fottle over at privacypros.io, they got you covered. Check them out. And with that, I'm going to start my rambling. I'm going to get my guests in here. Welcome to Dave, Jess, and Eric. Everybody, welcome to the show. Let's do a round of intros and let people know who you are what you do. So I'll go to Dave first, let people know.

Thanks, Ben. Yeah, my name is Dave Bradley. I'm currently the chief revenue officer at a publicly traded Bitcoin ATM company called Bitcoin Well. I've been in the Bitcoin space for, oh, 13 years now almost, 12 years, I guess. And I've gotten my hands into just about everything you can do in the space. I'm also widely known as the strongest and best-looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in Canada. And you can do some more research on that. I'm sure everyone wants to know more about that.

Bitcoinbrains.com. I'm pulling that up, by the way. Can you give the backstory on the reasoning? Because it's my favorite thing. Well, I mean, other than the obvious, I, so years ago, we had this store, and this is when I first met Ben, and the store was called Bitcoin Brains. We were one of the first, like, physical spaces to sell Bitcoin's.

and we used the marketing tagline, the fastest and safest way to buy Bitcoin. And then like five years later, like every single Bitcoin exchange in Canada was calling themselves the fastest and safest way to buy Bitcoin. Then at some point, this is part of my bio that I left out as I co-founded Bull Bitcoin with Francis. And we needed a new tagline. And so we went with the Canada's most trusted place to buy Bitcoin. And then like a year after that, a bunch of these exchanges had switched to most trusted. And we're like, okay, well, let's switch to something that we think they're not going to switch to. And we're like joking about saying strongest and best looking.

And we didn't actually do that. But then a couple years ago, the Canadian securities administrators came out and said, if you were an executive at a Bitcoin company and you're going to make superlative claims, they have to be demonstrably true. And so because all these exchanges were saying were the biggest exchange. And so now I'm basically daring the securities commissions to sue me over being strongest and best looking. And if they don't sue me,

then it's kind of a tacit endorsement of the claim. Let's go. That's amazing. This is so fantastic. I think this is the strongest and best looking website. With anything to do with Bitcoin, I would say. There's a little section on speaking that's got me a couple paid speaking engagements, but then there's a section on steak, which is pictures of steak that I had.

No way. Wait. Hold on. Stay glad by Dave. Oh, my God. Oh, is that a COVA 5 right there? Yeah. Yeah.

That was a Costco one. It was mediocre. This is, what a great one. Oh, my God, man. Oh, my God. This is amazing. What a, wow. Wow.

Okay. So. Impressive. Cool. That is truly impressive. So, good luck, following that up, Eric. You're up next. Who are you? I don't have anything to say right now. I just I don't feel very impressive. You have stakes on your website, which is funny because when I was

forming my website, I wanted my main picture that pops up to be a picture of me holding this beef rib that I cooked. And the girl that I was dating at the time was just like, dude, you look stupid. Don't do that. You want to go like serious with it. And I was like, all right, whatever. But you've inspired me, man. I think I'm going to. I think I'm going to pull that out of the woodworks and put that on there. Yeah, my intro, so I'm the author of the seventh property, and I've got a background at finance. I used to work in private equity, and that's pretty much it.

I shitpost on Twitter a lot. I'm getting a company set up, and that's the gist of it. I've got this nice, this nice signed copy from you, man. Just for you, buddy. Yeah, because I ran into you. came up to me at Bitcoin 2021. You're like, I wrote a book and I bought it on Amazon on the spot. And there's the coolest thing ever.

I didn't know anybody in the industry yet. And I just saw him. And then I was like, dude, like, what's up, man? I know you. I wrote this book. And he's like, sweet, man. Like, I'm going to buy this thing right now. And I was just like, fuck, yeah.

Let's go. Well, it was such a pleasant surprise, too, because, like, a lot of people write books. and and I was like, well, you know, I'll get it and I'll leave through it. And then it got here and it was like pretty substantial. It's not like one of those like 98 page books with like, you know, this is what Bitcoin is. It was like a comprehensive walkthrough of like the history and current affairs of money. And then like more like in depth of how Bitcoin works. and there's quite a lot.

I'd say it was, and I don't want to chew your harm too much here, but I'd say it was, it's like a more in-depth Bitcoin standard, to be honest. So it's pretty solid. So I'm super glad to see a lot of people gravitating. Also, I was listening to you today on a, I went for a bike ride,

and I was listening to you on the Bitcoin magazine podcast, which was a good listen. So, uh, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Hey,

cheers, man. Thanks a lot for all the help. You're the, Ben was the first guy to get me started and all this. So I think you big. Well, cheers,

man. You wrote a fucking good book. So that's awesome. Um, let's, uh, go down the line to Jess. Uh,

good to have you. What, probably one of my shortest friends. Um, why. I know, but, but,

but, just shy of five feet. No way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But it was really awesome meeting you in in 2021. And now we bumped into each other at a whole bunch of different events, mostly just in Miami. Yes. Isn't that crazy that Bitcoin 2021 was like just a year ago now? Yeah. That's weird. It's really weird.

It's insane. I was like, yeah, my pictures were coming up from like, oh, this is, it's been a year. And I was like, oh, my God. Like, it feels so much longer. Yeah, yeah. I guess we should, we should give you an intro as well. Let people know who you are and what you're working on. I'm Jessica Hodler. I'm the COO of Plan B passport. We sell passports. For you Canadians that can't get out, get a second passport. But, and I just shitpost on Twitter. I'd say what I want, what I want. And there was a time when people didn't believe you were a real person. Yeah. No, no, no. Not only did they not think I wasn't.

real person. They thought I was a dude. Yeah. I think I commented on somebody, somebody was like, this is for sure a dude. I was like, yeah, I have a great dick, though. Yeah. Friken LC gave me the best dick on the internet. Fantastic. Oh, man. Yeah, no, it was, it was funny because, yeah, a lot of people assumed no, and then, and then you, you know, you started mingling with people at Bitcoin 2021. People are like, oh, it's real, it's like, oh, my gosh, just kidding. Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's awesome. Well, I'm glad to have you all. This should be a good one. Everybody watching, if you're unfamiliar, this is why are we bullish, really simple premise. Each of us have come with a reason for being bullish. So we go over the three hours here. Somebody's going to drop a reason why they're bullish. Next, we're going to riff on that reason altogether, comments, questions, whatever it may be.

And then finally we're going to rotate to the next person until we've all had a turn. So pretty simple. I'm going to get us started here. And so my reason for being bullish today has to do with the CPI print that landed today. And it's not like it's it's it's not like, oh, there's inflation. So I'm bullish on Bitcoin. It's more it's more than that. So the context here is that we got a consumer price index print of 8.6% over the month of May year over year.

And this is up from the previous high, which was in April at 8.3%. And this is with them tinkering around already with they fucked around with the price or the metrics that they used for cars last month because it was too high. So, you know, if they're not getting the CPI prints they want, then I guess they're just going to fuck with how they measure them. But even despite that, you still have these these high CPI prints. The reason I'm bullish on this is is because that everybody, the vast majority of Normy land is still looking at Bitcoin in entirely the wrong way. And the reason we can see this is because we see high CPI numbers land and Bitcoin drops. And that's because they're they're treating it as like it's a tech stock. Right.

So like we saw the print land, Bitcoin basically drops, you know, $1,000 or something immediately, like straight down. So that means, again, the majority of the world still thinks of Bitcoin basically completely backwards. and or they have such high time preference that they're only looking forward by weeks and months rather than years and decades. So they're trading it like a tech stock instead of the sound monetary asset that it is. And this is going to result in the people that have that high time reference. They're the ones that are like just kind of using this as a speculative investment. they're trading it day to day.

They're not creating any value. And those are the people that eventually are getting wiped out of their positions. Whereas the winners long term are the people that are basically just keep their heads down. They're doing work. They're creating value for somebody. They're spending less than they earn and they're saving in sound money. And those are going to be the winners over the long term with this. So while the CPI print in the current context of how people think of Bitcoin isn't bullish for the price, obviously because it dumps because people are looking at in the context of something like a tech stock, in the long term, those people will very slowly realize that they were thinking of this thing very incorrectly.

and they're going to miss out on the opportunity to be stacking away sats and ignoring the noise that we're seeing right now. So I'm going to kind of open it up to everybody. One, I guess I'll just kind of say like in general, do you echo the sentiment? Do you think that's maybe not completely true? And then my second, I guess, open question to everybody. And maybe I'll, I might directly ask this to Eric. here to get us started here. What do you think needs to happen in order for people to

change the way that they're thinking like the public at large to have a different opinion of how they're treating Bitcoin in terms of what kind of an asset it is? So maybe I'll start with Eric and then kind of open it up to everybody to comment further. Yeah. Yeah. I'll um, so I definitely echo the sentiment. I think that there's there's a lot of pieces you can talk about with regards to inflation and Bitcoin. I think the first thing is that a lot of people who are investing in Bitcoin as an inflationary asset are anticipatory with how they do that. So, you know, there's different buyers and sellers in the market with different agendas

and purposes. And, you know, when we have this sell off today, like there's a proportion to retail people who are like 8.6 inflation. That hurts tech stocks. We're going to sell this thing. And we see some of that get flushed out. Then you also have like institutions. You got volatility traders who are just kind of like waiting for that type of movement

because based on prior correlations, they can assume something like that would happen. So it's, you know, it gets a little complicated with exactly how you would like break that down into different pieces. But there's also a lot of investors out there. You know, you think back to when Stan Drucken Miller and Paul Tudor Jones and a lot of these other like major sophisticated investors were getting into it. And they're like, we want a good long term inflation hedge and we're going to put significant wealth into this thing and we're going to hold it. And, you know, we see a lot of people out that that are still doing it. And I mean, if you look at from the bottom of the pandemic to where we are now with Bitcoin's price, we're still up over 400%.

Gold is up, you know, 10-ish, 20-ish percent, somewhere in that range. And S&P 500 is at like 22%. So there's, it's done a good job over the long term, an exceptional job, better than any other asset of actually hedging a lot of this behavior. And I think that we still see that. It's just, I'd say it's a different knowledge base of people who are investing in that right now. And, you know, frankly, we're talking about such a massive CPI print. You know, that's scary for markets.

And I think that Bitcoin is still holding up incredibly well, given the tech stock nature of it for all that. And I forgot your second question. What was the other one? Well, it's just what needs to change to people to people that think about Bitcoin differently? Yeah. Well, obviously, you know, exactly what you're doing, what we're doing right now, education. is a huge piece of it. And I think the scale of the asset is another major piece of it as well.

As it scales, as it decreases in volatility, as it starts to be held in ways where, you know, there's not a ton of people out there sitting on exchange with it, but people who are holding it for the long term and not necessarily just like hoddlers that we're familiar with, but if you imagine a world, say five, 10 years from now, where everybody just has some sort of account of Bitcoin that they've put away for 10 years and they have that sitting in a really secure form. And it's not necessarily because they have any sort of belief, but just because everybody else does that, maybe their uncle taught them how to do that. And I think it's a good idea to do that.

So once all these, the infrastructure changes around Bitcoin and the actual investor behavior of it changes as it starts to get, you know, indexed with other different assets and become, you know, ingrained in different financial infrastructure, that's something that's going to make it, it's going to suffer this market volatility in a lot stronger way. And I think that that'll change a lot of the investor psychology. around it. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. I'll open it up to, to Jess or Dave, if you guys want to dive in, thoughts, questions, I don't know, what, what are you feeling around the CPI print and then how Bitcoin or rather short-term thinkers holding Bitcoin react to it? Yeah, I mean, they hit, I mean, it hit a 40-year new high. And I don't think people realize that one Bitcoin still equals one Bitcoin. and because their one U.S. dollar doesn't equal the one U.S. dollar. And, you know, their purchasing power is going down.

And I feel like if people were to get paid in Bitcoin, they would realize the benefit and the use case of it. Because when I was in Austin, we rented a boat and we had a captain. And when we were done, we tipped him in Bitcoin. And then we went and saw him again like two weeks later. And it was already. He already had like a 10% increase. And we were like, look, like, you see what's so great about it?

And it's instant. And like I feel like it would show and maybe convince a lot of people, you know, the value in it and how great it is. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think people need just to have like firsthand kind of hands on experience with it. And multiple touch points.

It's going to take a long time though. I don't know. Dave, what do you think? Yeah. Yeah. So I think one thing that's easy, too, ignore is the fact that in a scenario like we're seeing right now with such high inflation and such a reduction in purchasing power, everyone has less money to spend. And a lot of the time,

what people are looking at as an investment is like at the end of their spending, right? They're like, yeah, you know what I mean? I'm, I got to buy my groceries. I've got to go out for dinner six times a month. And then what's left over me, I'm going to invest that into my stock portfolio or Bitcoin or whatever. And to your point, like they're looking at it like a tech stock. it's a very discretionary thing that they can when other things get tight you know here in Canada we're seeing our interest rates rise even though inflation is still rising um everything's getting more expensive they don't have as much money to spend on bitcoin and to that point the jessica made of getting paid in bitcoin if you get paid in bitcoin you start to look at it more of like a savings

technology and it becomes instead of like the last purchase of the month that you make as a discretionary investment it's it's the default and then instead of instead of saying you know what like everything's tight right now because we've got costs going up. Maybe instead of going out for dinner six times a month, we can only go out for dinner five times a month. And so we're going to sell less Bitcoin. So that's something we're definitely working on. That's if anybody wants to get paid in Bitcoin,

get in touch with us at Bitcoin well. We've been paying our team for almost two years now in Bitcoin. And we're just opening it up to other companies to get paid that way as well. And then the flip side of that is like what needs to change? there's this weird thing in Bitcoin where and this happens in a lot of areas of society but I feel like for some reason it happens more in Bitcoin people really love to learn the hard way

and you see that with like people getting in to the space and then the first thing that they do you know you tell somebody about Bitcoin for three years and then they're like okay I finally decided to get into Bitcoin I'm 50% in Dogecoin you know what I mean and those guys that the people that think that they're smarter than everyone that can make, you know, they almost made a lot of money on GameStop.

So they should be able to make a really good purchasing decision now. And because Elon says, so they're going to get the yield and 10x on Dogecoin, all the things you said about Bitcoin were true, but I'm smarter. And so I'm going to make this decision. And I think what needs to change is more people need to fail to learn. And so we're going to see that both from the retail side, but with this massive new push of institutional investment, you know, we're seeing a lot of products designed to get institutional investors into all this garbage. And those people will need to fail to learn as well. And then,

you know, every single time that there's a massive failure in the shitcoin world, I'm not going to, I'm trying to get away from the word shit coin. I'm going to start calling them scam coins. They're unregistered securities. Yeah, shit coin don't actually care whether their securities. They're scams. That's the issue. Shitcoin doesn't hurt them. It gives them ammo to make us look petty.

But scam coin describes what they are, or maybe casino coin. So more people need to get burned playing the scam coin casino. And then they'll start to get wrecked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, and it's,

it is funny because you're right. I almost wonder. the trajectory of the people that, you know, they get told about Bitcoin for, for however long. And then the scenario like you said, oh, yeah, I just dove in and, you know, I'm, I'm in all these things that aren't Bitcoin. And then they get destroyed. That almost like, that's, that's got to, if for some people, they might, if they, if they take in some of the right material and they start actually digging a little deeper, then yes, that might set them down the path of, okay, I'm just going to save in Bitcoin. But for others, that's got to be like it just completely ejects them from the market entirely. And then it's going to take them years longer than it would have to even start actually saving in Bitcoin. Just because they feel like all of the bullshit and then Bitcoin are are a single thing.

And they fail to differentiate. And if there's some some hurt feelings over the, that then some people can't can't quite handle that they're not they're not capable of saying uh you know i fucked up i didn't listen uh i i didn't evaluate things correctly but i was wrong about that but now i was right about or i i was mostly wrong but a little bit right had i just been in bitcoin i wonder if those people i don't know like what have you guys seen amongst people that you know like that for instance i don't know if that doge coin person is real dave but like you've obviously known people that have gone that route, you know, what, what have you seen from them? Do they,

do they basically like, they're just totally out? Or do they then kind of focus? Well, I've gotten to the point where every single person that I know is a Bitcoiner. And so like, you guys probably get this thing where you're like, every time Bitcoin goes up, everyone's like, oh, my God, and you start getting text messages from people asking you about Salana. And then when Bitcoin goes down, you, you get like all these people being like, are you okay? But I don't like, I've, I've really like literally like every single person I know is a Bitcoin and so they're all the ones getting those texts now. And I hear secondhand still about like a friend of a friend who thinks that they're getting,

they're going to win on this thing. And I don't know. It's, I've seen it so many times now. And it's like, it's pretty rare still. even though there's like a lot of really good information out there now, that people just go straight into the space and immediately become a Bitcoin maximalist. There's just like this natural desire to like find the next Bitcoin. And everybody sees like, oh, all these people made like, you know, 10,000 times their money and they want to do the same thing.

And, you know, there's a lot of really good marketing narratives from the scam coin community. And people fall right into those things. So I don't think that's going to go away anytime soon. it's uh it's just almost a right of passage for people to get into uh the space and you got to just got to pay to learn if that's what your inclination is i guess yeah yeah i agree i got some buddies who were um some pretty avid cardano guys and uh boy oh you mean cardano you've seen the yellow is yellow yeah i you know i i was chipping away at it they're just you know, they don't, they're, I don't know, they're, they're not, they don't understand much about

finance. They don't understand much about what they're investing in. They like to follow YouTube videos and get rich quick and not work hard. And, and that's kind of how it ends up going. And the problem is, is like one thing will work out for him and that'll keep them hooked for a few years when something works out for him a little bit. And then that'll, that'll kind of keep it rolling for a while. And then they'll be down, but they keep kind of envisioning when that's going to come back and uh and yeah i mean some of them even kind of tried to read my book but um i don't know if they finished it and uh yeah man it's it's tough convincing you i got one buddy who went down the whole turn and uh and now he's a he's a bitcoiner there you go yeah like dave said most of my

friends they're bitcoiners and the one or two people that are normies or don't understand they just they just don't want to take the time and effort to actually understand Bitcoin and what it has to offer and what it is, even if it's just, I don't know, reading the Bitcoin standard or even thank God for Bitcoin. Like, I feel like that's a really good explanation in short. Like, I read that book in like two and a half hours on a flight. They just don't want to take in the effort. It's like, why not?

You don't think you understand. Yeah. Well, one other thing I want to add just because it just popped up in my head. When I was at this New Year's party last year, for the. the first time in person, I met one of the Ripple people. This girl was there and she brought her husband. And she was like, oh, Eric, like, I heard that you wrote this book on Bitcoin. You should talk to my husband.

He's super into it. He comes up. He's like, yeah, man, I really like ripple. And I was like, oh, awesome, weird. And then I, you know, I kind of, you know, it was a party. So I wasn't going to sit there and try to convince him of anything. But, yeah, man, it was crazy. He told me, he said,

he goes, oh yeah, you know, yeah, he goes, you know when the SEC's coming after you, that you're doing something right. And that's like, yeah, man, like, cheers of that. Oh, man. Wow. The thing keeps a lot of the people like this alive with their sentiment, though, also is kind of what I mentioned about the GameStop thing. Like, you get people where, you know, I had this guy that I sold a bunch of

bitcoins to in, like, 2017, I want to say. and he was putting it all into Ripple. I was like trying to convince him not to the whole time. And Ripple was at like a buck. And within the two weeks that he was buying from me, he probably put like $300,000 into Ripple. And it went to six bucks. And he was like, I'm a genius.

Oh, my God. Like you're wrong. I didn't say why he was doing that? Because he thought it was going to go up, basically. Because it's faster. Yeah, it's faster. The banks love it, blah, blah. and ultimately he was like, I was like, man, you're up like over a million dollars in two weeks.

Like, please just sell this. Please, please sell his coins. He's like, oh, it's going to 10 bucks. And then it obviously just like, money cents or whatever it is now, right? And all these people have these like imaginary points where like this guy had like millions of dollars in his brain that he thought he had made because he was so smart. and they're like, I got to just do this again.

I got to just like hit the right one again. And they keep chasing. And they keep throwing more money after the previous money. And like there's still some people around like local people, especially that I see that are like, they're still like you run into them and they're still talking about whatever the next stupid thing is. Even though they've been like poor for like six years. Have fun. It's a shame. Dave, back in 2017 when I was working at an unnamed OTC desk, and they had all kinds of everything.

Basically, if, you know, just all of the coins. And this is when I was starting to be like, you know, most of this doesn't make sense. And it was like near the, near the top of the bull run in 2017. And so I'm working this OTC desk. And we're, there's like a few desks in this room, kind of near downtown Calgary. And anybody could come in. And this is before, like, anybody was observing any sort of regulations or best practices or security. like we were so new in the building there were no cameras even let alone any sort of security

and i shit you not like through december i would be sitting at my desk all day every day and there would be more or less shoulder to shoulder people in the room waiting with literal stacks of physical cash in their hand or in paper bags or whatever and they were they were basically fucking kicking in the door to buy whatever went up the most that day. So like, when, when,

when, Cipple was $3.50. US, yeah, they were like, give me all of the fucking ripple. Here's 20 grand. I just took out a line of credit.

When, when light coin was like $350, every girl, I need more. I need all of the light coin. How much light coin can you sell me? Like, it was literally that every single day.

And, and nobody, cared. And, and like, even though there was a bank across the street, uh, that ran out of cash and had to call up head office to get more cash because people would go there, pick up cash and then come across the street to the OTC to buy everything that they could. Um, it was insane. And I, yeah, like, I, I don't know what happened most of those people. Like they just, but yeah, that, that was a huge factor in, and really cluing me into how stupid everything was. and like how nobody knew anything about what they were buying or cared even.

Nobody cared. Nobody cared. And so I guess let's wrap up this topic. And the way we're going to wrap it up is this is a shout out to your Cardano friends, Eric. I'm going to, I'm going to play something here for them. This is from our friend Yellow on top. Yellow, we summoned you. Yeah, here we go. Just enter the cryptospace.

That's spitting. Did you buy that? No. So good. I think that's probably one of the best of the best. So good. You can't wait to like that to your friends.

Yeah. I'm going to, for sure, send them that. Oh, man. To be honest, now, guys. Yeah. That convinced me. That got me a little more bullish. Yeah.

I'm not going to lie. Oh, that's fantastic. All right. Well, let's give this a rotation. We're going to jump to, oh, by the way, everybody watching, like, stuff, share, all that good stuff. We're going to jump to Dave. And we'll reset.

this thing. So Dave, why are you bullish? Yeah, I was definitely a little bit confused because I thought this is the why are you not bullish podcast. But I'm yeah, I'm like a little bit more bullish than I used to be, but I think overall, you know, I've been asked to predict the price of Bitcoin way too many times in my life. And the only thing that has ever worked at all is going against the crowd and the more dumb people who are all telling me that Bitcoin's going to go up, the more certain I am that it's going to go down. And so I, like, I became very bearish when the whole laser eyes thing kicked off because it was really obvious that like, this is just a group of people that wanted to sell their bitcoins for $100,000.

And that's not really a bullish sentiment in my mind. I think that we're still sort of in for some rough times here because there's too much garbage going on in the space. you know we need more blood in the streets and the reason that i say i'm more bullish than i was a little a lot ago is because of this whole like terra meltdown it's like the first little steps of like cleansing fire for the garbage that is the defy lending space and i think like it was very close to a cascading series of liquidations that could have hit celsius and everything else and you know you mentioned that like you got the celsius you got the eith um ETH 2.0. And these are all examples of sort of like mini central bank, central planning

endeavors where some people think that they're smarter than the markets. They think that they can plan an economy. And like we've seen that time and time again throughout the world at any scale that you really can't plan or control markets like this. And eventually that hubris is going to catch up to people. And so I think when I'm going to be really bullish, which I hope is soon, is when we see a couple more of these capitulations. And so the two obvious targets are the F2.0 thing that like, who knows, nobody knows how that's going to go because it's, there's too many pieces at play. And then the Celsius, Celsius seems like it's like right on the edge of collapse. And then at any given point, there's probably like at least one other shit coin that like,

you know, it's probably Cardano based on that video. that like he's like right about to collapse that we don't know about yet. And it's got to get to the point where, you know, people's cousins are not texting us to say, what about Salana or whatever else? And once we hit that part, you know, that's like I referred to the cleansing fire. That's when we can start growing again is the point where we've had enough people, learn the hard way. We've created enough new Bitcoin maximalists

and we've burned the reputation of enough people. I always say there's essentially like three kinds of people in the space. There are people who have sufficiently understood Bitcoin to become Bitcoin maximalists and they understand that that's the only real important thing in the space. There are people that have not yet figured that out. And I usually refer to those people as pre-maximalists. they're like smart people good intentions just have some bad ideas

and then the third group are the people that are there to take advantage of the second group and so we've got to like burn some more of that third group before we can really grow I think burn them yeah

burn them yeah I'm going to say blood I should I should follow this up I don't know if we're going to need this for this for this segment about about shit corners but it it follows through to like the larger conversation about you know the way the world's going and the only other investment that I'm like unreservedly bullish on in the long term I am bullish on Bitcoin in the long term obviously

is rope futures so we're going to need a lot of rope nice yeah it's it you I would echo that up until the terror blow up, I was not getting the feeling of anything close to the cleansing that we saw in 2018. Because like I remember. So I remember I was in San Fran for a conference. And and fuck me. I ended up in a cab with Bitboy. Oh my God.

And this is like, this is like as I was discovering like how much bullshit everything was. Is this the Lakecoin conference? Yeah. There's a video of Ben out there at the like coin conference dancing. I'll look that up. It's really good. Do you find it. Yeah.

Crypto graffiti. I was there with him. And then there was some like dance competitions. He's like, you should go do a thing. And so I went in and I like, like, like, popping and lock. Sweet. So, but yeah, I ended up in a cab with BitBoy. And, and it was at the time, it was like fall of 2018.

Bitcoin was like 6K. And we were chatting. And, and I was like, I was like, everybody's talking about where the market was and what's going to happen. And, and basically the sentiment for like, I was saying like, oh, we could, I feel like we could definitely drop a fair amount more, like a lot, like, everything and, and like more stuff get wiped out and Bitcoin like take a massive hit from here. And his sentiment was more or less like, uh, it's dropped so far already.

Like there's some coins that drop like 90%. How much further could it go? And like me and there's a, I can't remember who the other guy in the cab was, but he was like, they could go another 90% man and he's like lifting off like I can't remember what what coins he was talking about on I don't know

ontology and like all of these random like where the fuck are they now coins and and basically I was like I could see Bitcoin like dropping another few thousand bucks from here it's six you know we could easily go like four three something somewhere in there. And of course, like we, and obviously we did. And so I just have to wonder like

what what that looked like that moment of like everything just got wiped out. And most of this stuff that was then did not return, right? Like everything, you go back to like the Brian Kelly CNBC well diversified crypto portfolio. And like the only reason you weren't underwater is because of your 30% Bitcoin allocation. That's the only thing that saved you. Everything else basically either was flat or got wiped out. And so, yeah, there's going to be more of that. But like, Terra was the first, like, it was big.

But like, in comparison to how much bullshit there is right now still. You know, like you just, Jim Carrey launched an NFT the other day. Oh, my God. Like, like, we're still, it's, there's not enough blood. I agree. I don't know. What do you, Jess, what are your feelings right now? I think people are too cocky.

They think that they can throw like, I don't know, 10, 20 grand at a coin and it'll make them a millionaire like a couple weeks later. I'd definitely love to see some blood in the streets. And I mean, you have so many celebrities with like, dot ETH in their news. name like Paris Hilton and then Reese Witherspoon came out with Dot Eith and her name. And I'm just like, oh my God. Like some people just need to learn from personal experience. They like no matter how many times you tell them you're going to get wrecked, it's going to be awful for you.

They just won't get it. And some of them just have to, you know, suffer. Yeah. And the one thing that I do think is starting to look nice to me. that is starting to look like nature is healing is you've all seen like the charts of like this coin versus bitcoin and it's like just a volatile path to less bitcoin right but there's always like the rallies that happen in the bull markets and people aren't looking at the bitcoin price they're they're looking at the price denominated in fiat and so they just see like oh i'm making

fuck tons of money and it's higher than the previous all-time high but is it though because it's less Bitcoin now. And so you're seeing that very much the Ethereum chart is looking a lot like the light coin chart now, which the light coin chart is like the perfect cookie cutter example of what happens to to altcoins versus Bitcoin. It's like it comes in early. There's like a big spike versus Bitcoin and it hits this all time high versus Bitcoin. And then it never reattains it. But it fools people into thinking they're making money because you'll have these spikes and it again the dollar amount looks so convincing but nobody's doing the LTC versus BTC chart and that's what we're seeing now out of Ethereum is you saw the the spike in 2017 where it went to like zero it was like

15% of a Bitcoin and it's almost the spike last year was almost exactly half of its previous all-time high versus Bitcoin. And Lightcoin did the same year and year out. It hit its all-time high. And each market cycle, it was about half of the previous all-time high versus Bitcoin. And it looks to be playing out beautifully in Ethereum terms too. So I think that would be if over the next decade for the Ethereum chart to look like light coins, it would be, I feel like the perfect example of like, well, this was supposed to be

the thing. It was like the new in second place forever, like will it replace Bitcoin kind of thing. And for that to have the same chart of just like bleeding stats over the long term would be more or less, I would think the nail on the coffin for for like thinking that you can outpost Bitcoin in long term. So I don't know. Yeah. And any, sorry, go ahead. It's not going to be possible to pay Bitcoin in the long term. But I think Ethereum has like significantly split in that the real value proposition is not trying to compete with Bitcoin anymore. The real value proposition is two things. It's for the people running all these new scams. It's a great idea to run them on Ethereum because you have a user base that you know is easily.

separated from their money and I advise techno jargon. And then the other use case for Ethereum is pretending that Vitalik is going to someday come up with something really cool because he looks like he should be a computer nerd genius of some kind, right? And the reality is just like they're always going to be selling the next thing.

Like they're never like, like what is it, eight years now, something like that since Ethereum launched? And like they don't even really have a working product. Like it breaks every time that it gets any significant usage, it goes to like $30,000 fees and nothing works. And even still, it's all on one node. So like, their, you know, their, their days are numbered, I think. But the sentiment that keeps them going has nothing to do with reality.

So I don't know, like, the only way that Ethereum is going to fall out of that second place is if some other scam out markets them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I almost wish there had been some sort of like a salana flippinging or something like that, whatever other garbage thing that's like, well, we centralized more so we could be faster and more efficient than Ethereum. Like I would love to see that flipping Ethereum because it would just be the most hilariously perfect thing to happen.

I wonder if, because we saw the Cynthia Loomis Bitcoin quote crypto bill drop. And it kind of, I don't know how you guys read it, but it kind of seems like they're aiming to give Ethereum a pass in terms of not labeling it as security. But as much as that's fucking shitty, it's. it also means that anybody that like their prime value proposition of launching illegal like unregistered securities

would be gone if anything like that were to pass so does that regulation even though it gives Ethereum itself a pass does it also ruin Ethereum like what they're trying to market?

That's a really good yeah go ahead Dave they're very good at like coming up with the next marketing buzzword yeah so like that's vatelix real talent not actually making anything like he's going to the term bickwin maxman he's a he's a journalist with a really strong control of language and when you see that like all these different crazy terms that he comes up with um i you probably come up with something else yeah yeah he could probably probably totally make a good jingle. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, well, you know, I'm, Dave, I like your topic because I'm down

for more blood. I'm, I'm totally fine with that. I think it's needed. And again, I think you're right. We've just begun to see the first inklings of it. And like,

when everybody is just despond it, then then it's probably a good signal that okay, well, just keep ahead with your gradual accumulation because things like the like 2020

that dropped to 4K was a gift. All of 2018 and early 2019, well, all of 2019, both those years were gifts if you were able to stack away any additional Bitcoin then, yeah,

It's just a blessing in disguise if you have your wits about you. So use these opportunities and try not to get too worried when you see drops. My favorite thing is when Bitcoin drops, but then at least I can look at everything else and just see it getting absolutely destroyed and realize like this is necessary. Nature is healing. Maybe it'll show them also why toxic maximalists are so toxic. We're so mean.

Just trying to help you. And I think, and you saw a little bit, there was a good handful of tweets after the terror blowup of people being like, all right, okay, fuck with. A lot of Bitcoin maxis were born. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully they stick down that path and they don't just like orange wash their page for a few weeks. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So awesome.

All right. Well, let's keep this rolling. Let's do a little rotation. We're going to toss to Eric. Dude, why are you bullish or bearish? You know, whatever it goes, man. Ooh, bearish is allowed, huh? Okay.

Dude, I am bullish about the Lightning Network. And I'm not much of a short-term price guy. I don't really focus on that very often. I'm more just try to, like, follow what's going on with fundamentals and how things are building out in the ecosystem. So, you know, what I think was a massive, massive development. And it's, you know, obviously it's just still an idea at this point. And there's a lot that needs to get done.

But the Taro financing that was announced back in April for the Lightning Network was huge. And then also today, there's the Web 5 announcement from TV. Okay. So the best, before you go, we're into this. The best part of the Web 5 announcement was Mark Andreessen, tweeting what happened to Web 4 and Jack Dorisney tweeted after that the same thing that happened to Web 3.

Yeah. So anyways, go on. It was funny because I was flipping through that deck and they just like don't say anything about Web 4 in it either, which is funny. So somebody, one guy who's comedy was trying to say that it's Web 2 plus Web 3 is what they mean or something, but I don't know. But I thought it was, I hope it's just that they decided to skip Web 4

and decided to call it Web 5. But yeah, no, and I think is, so I mean, just like for everybody listening, like the perspective, you know, I come from a financial background. And the way that I kind of view things working for Bitcoin is, you know, Bitcoin is this base layer of money. And then we're going to have all these other layers and applications that are built on top of it that ultimately enable this very broad financial ecosystem to exist. And, you know, when we think about how that's going to build out, there's kind of big tradeoffs. because we have the self-sovereignty aspect and maintaining self-custody, what Ben is doing just an excellent job of teaching the world how to do that. And then at the other end of the spectrum, we have to say,

okay, now let's envision a world on a Bitcoin standard. And if we are on a Bitcoin standard, then that means we need all the financial products and services that kind of exist within our current ecosystem to be replicated in this new ecosystem. Now, a lot of those things can be done because they're enabled by a new technology in either a self-custodial way or in a relatively more decentralized and less trusted manner than in the traditional system. But nonetheless, there's this degree of financialization that we're going to need to see

that's going to exist in order for things to work. People have to take out loans. People need insurance. People need all these basic financial functions for it to work. And when you bring this up, like a lot of people in the industry, I think that they think about the problems Bitcoin solves from the perspective of the individual, which is a great thing. But you also have to think about it. If we're on a Bitcoin standard, then everybody's using it.

So institutions are using it as well. And they have a very different set of needs than what retail people need. And all of that requires different financial service providers and products. And I think what is really big for Bitcoin is that, you know, we're going to witness some sort of balance that needs to be found between, you know, self-sovereignty and self-custody and then how much financialization ultimately. exist within the ecosystem. And that's kind of a real time test that we're thinking through right now and that we're going to actually have to figure out what that balance is. Some people might think maybe it's 80% of the Bitcoin needs to be in South custody. I think it's going to be a lot lower. I think it needs to be more of like a deterrence level. And I don't know what that number is.

Call it 30%, something like that. But a large, everybody's going to need to have a fail safe. But we're still going to have this financialized economy. And with that being built out, once we have that, that's when we're actually going to be competitive against the traditional financial system. And that's when I think we really get to the hyper-bitcoinization level when there's enough capital for all different types of people, not just like hardcore bitcoins, but institutions and all these other things to really get on a Bitcoin standard. And that's when we hit that catalyst level. So these developments that are going on or that are being, you know, financed for Taro on Lightning, I think are going to be incredibly important for that. If we can get smart

contract functionality and the ability for people to use stable assets as a bridge to ultimately get to a Bitcoin standard, I think that's really important for a financial layer for people to be able to create assets directly on top of Bitcoin. Like imagine a world where we have stocks and bonds that are all issued on top of Bitcoin and any other type of asset that you can think of in digital form. I think that that's all incredibly important. If that technology can be built out in the way that they're planning, I think that that's going to be massive and that's the next major step that's going to bring us toward that vision of a global Bitcoin standard. Awesome. So I have a question though. I heard that Bitcoin can only handle seven transactions per second at the cost of

2,500 kilowatt hours and then it takes 10 minutes to be settled. I don't think that Paul Groupman would lie to me. So what's going on here? I'm really confused. Let's talk Taro then, because there's been some hype around it and then there's been some pushback to it and I'm kind of curious to see where people like like in general my my feeling is if you know you can you can put things on taro if it's a good idea it will it will have value

if it's a bad idea it will not have value so like obviously if you launch shitcoins on the lightning network it's still going to be a shit coin. And if it's something that has a use, then wonderful. But I get the sense that what this may do in the long term is we'll see the alt-coin market gradually fizzle and kind of be like shadow away. And then we'll see it kind of reclassed. constitute itself on lightning for a time until people realize that bad ideas are just bad

ideas and only if you actually need this should it be used and also you don't need to print money like when you already have like a base layer money so I don't know like what what I'll go to Jess first here have you looked at Taral much or do you have like a general impression of of them enabling tokens on lightning? Is there anything you see useful there? Are you a pro or against? Like, how about what you're feeling?

Honestly, I don't know much about it, but I mean, it just sounds like it's trying to make things more complicated. If it ain't broke, like don't fix it. And I mean, if there's the allowance of these tokens or shit coins,

I mean, why are we even dealing with it? Do you think there's value in having in the interim, having access to, not like an algorithmic stable coin, but like having access to say like a US dollar, which would obviously involve counterparty risk, but a US dollar equivalent that is not subject to say like bank account seizure? So like, you know, somebody wherever wants to get donations for a specific cause, they can't buy whatever their provisions are. They're in an adversarial environment where they can't have it like in a bank account, but they want that kind of stable U.S. dollar denominated value for a period of time before they buy whatever they're, whatever they need to get. is there value in that or do you think that's like a fleeting moment or I don't know what do you feel I mean I guess strike kind of solves that problem right like they use the lightning network to transact with different currencies um so I mean like why wouldn't you just use strike

instead of trying to implement something completely different yeah I mean if you have like I don't have, I have, well, I have strike in Canada, but I'm not supposed to. But not everyone does. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not supposed to have it. Like, I literally have, and apparently I fucked up their development in the back end because I was like using it in Canada and I had like, it wasn't updating correctly. And so I was fucking up stuff as I'm using it. And anyways, uh, besides the point. I mean, I don't, I don't have strike. Never mind. Um, just kidding. I could see, Because like, my understanding of strike is that if you want the functionality of, like, it could strike still just be like not allowed in a particular jurisdictions app store versus like an open source app. Like I don't know, like Eric, if you or Dave, if you know further.

Like is there my understanding of taro and I watched roast beefs talk on it, which. Jesus Christ like if if every other podcast you listen to at like 1.5 or 2x you need to listen to roast beef talk at like point

5 because that guy just goes and and I like insane concepts that I would not like I need to slow it down and then repeat it to like capture everything that he said. But I

think my understanding is that you don't need to set up special channels for this. Perhaps only the person at the very end point of receiving a lightning transaction would need to be running a client that deals with that kind of stuff. But outside of that, it just uses SATs regularly as liquidity. But then the only thing that needs to happen is the receiver and the sender need to agree on the exchange rate at the time of that transaction and then you receive basically a stable

dollar value. It effectively, I think, gives people access to what would be the equivalent of the counterparty risk of having a bank account in a non-adversarial environment where you could have your bank account shut down. I'm inclined to think, like, maybe there's, especially like in, in parts of the world where it's really fucked or like, you know, Canada two months ago. Like, I could have seen some value in that. But, yeah, I am inherently a little skeptical of it just because I know the baggage that's

going to come along with that. And I hope it doesn't bog down the lightning network to the point where, it becomes an issue. I don't know. Dave, do you have thoughts on it? Yeah, I'm not like super well informed on the tarot side of things, but I think like as soon as you get into a position where you want to hold a value in US dollars, you're either going to get into some nonsense like the algorithmic stuff or you're going to have a counterparty. And like what you were describing there makes a lot of sense.

But like as soon as the receiver gets the coins, now they're back into Bitcoin Explore. And I think we're in this medium stage here where there's a lot of people who want to use the technology without getting the exposure in the short term. And that's where those like collateralized stable coins make a certain degree of sense compared to Bitcoin. It's like Bitcoin's not really good money if you need to spend it soon. Right. Like it's it's long term savings technology. And so there's a case to be made to have like some exposure in the short term to dollars. and you know I think collateralized is the best way to do it but you can't really do like trustless censorship resistant collateralized stable coins right because there's you're just like right now I like the dollars that I own are mostly in a bank account run by a

Canadian bank and they can seize them very easily but if I was using a collateralized stable coin instead those dollars would just be in a bank account run owned by whoever's my counterparty with the stable coin. And so the trust situation changes, but it's not necessarily better, right? Maybe you're better off if you're a Canadian trucker and you're looking to get some donations. If you use a collateralized stable coin from Panama,

it might be harder for the Canadian government to seize those funds. But really it's just like, it's just moving the trust around. It's just an extra step of sort of like regulatory arbitrage. In the long term, like those people just need to be transacted. on Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's something to be said of that shift of the skeptics that

that they're like, I don't want, I don't want to hold or use Bitcoin because insert reason X. But they are using Bitcoin specifically because it enables them to get dollars quicker. You know, and again, as you said, you're shifting the trust around. There's different trust profiles of that. But then as the years go on and it becomes clear that in terms of savings technology and eventually just as a regular currency, Bitcoin is a better bet. It's less prone to censorship. Those people that were using the network as a way to move value, even in holding dollars, all of a sudden.

sudden that transition of using Bitcoin and just moving to Bitcoin is a is a fuckload easier because you're already using it. Yeah. Didn't didn't really fully realize it. I mean, so yeah, it's it's definitely a nuanced thing that's happening. I'm like I'm bullish as fuck in general on on lightning. I really enjoy using it. I use it every single day.

I have a couple guys that help me with some of my like short. or edits and stuff like that and videos that go out. And like at times I'm paying them with lightning from my own node. You know, other times I'm using other things. But always Bitcoin, obviously. But like the other thing that one of my cool lightning experiences that I enjoyed, when I was in Norway for the Oslo Freedom Forum, they had a beer tap there.

Oh, yes, Stefan's a. That was so funny. But I paid for my beer with my own lightning. That was here in Canada. So like I had Zeus set up linked to my home node and I scanned that and paid it with my own liquidity, my own channels that I set up from home on the other side of the planet. Which I thought was kind of cool. Like it's just a very unique thing to have been able to even do that. And, you know, things like the, I put the podcast up and people listen and they'll, like the value for value kind of model.

It's, it's, let's be real. It's not going to replace things like sponsorships and ads and stuff anytime soon. It doesn't make economic sense in terms of like, I'm not going to get like 10 people listening. on on like breeze wallet or something and be able to replace the revenue that I make on the channel normally. But it is really cool to see and look on my note and see like 100 sats, 100 sats coming in minute by minute as somebody listens to the pod and be able to spend those independently like last year. I was in Greece and I was able to like make purchases and use the sats that were coming in live

from somebody listening to the podcast. from my node in Canada. So like just all of these things, it's really unique. And I do like the idea and the market that's developing around providing liquidity and getting an albeit small yield from being able to provide liquidity and channels to other people without giving up custody of your Bitcoin. I think that's an interesting development. Right now you can make sweet fuck all.

But you're also making more sats than you've made with, again, without giving up your Bitcoin. You're simply just providing a channel and anything that flows through that channel is coming into your node from another channel. So you're not losing any sats there. You're making sats. I did a video on Monday of Ambos. They have a new thing called magma, relatively new. And again, it's just basically a marketplace. And you can say, hey, here's my node.

here's all the details of it like how many channels I have going and here's what I'm offering and the fee rate that I'm offering and the APY that I'm offering in terms of how much you need for a channel. So like businesses that want to accept

lightning payments and need inbound channels, they might be willing to pay 1% over the course of the year for you to lock up your Bitcoin with them. I'm okay with that. Other than it being in a hot wallet, That's the risk that I have to assume. But I'm not having to give my Bitcoin to somebody.

That's pretty sweet. I like that. So, yeah, I don't know. Has anybody, like, are you guys, is anybody here running a lightning node? I'm curious. No. I've gotten on, bro. Oh, do you?

Okay. And what's your experience been so far? Have you been tinkered? I haven't, like, I have not tinkered as much as I would like. So the other night I was trying to get the BTC pacer, we're going. and I think I got it up and running. Nice. So I'm going to do my first invoice off of that.

But I haven't, I haven't like, you know, done all the basics and, like, monitored my channels and all of that yet. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit of a learning curve at first. Once you kind of get the basics of it, then it's not too much. I don't, I don't monitor and tinker too much with channels really ever at this point. I just kind of set it and forget it. And I don't know.

It's, it's an interesting thing. It gives me a, a better understanding, I think of how lightning is actually working under the hood. And it gives, it makes you a little bit more privy to, you know,

the positives, but also like the challenges that are posed. And, and, you know, little things like, even just as simple as like error codes when a, when a payment doesn't go through,

it doesn't really fucking tell you what's going on. It's not like, it's not like, oh, you don't have any liquidity. or there's no path to get there versus, oh, you know, the fee to get there is greater than the max fee that you set. You have zero information about what happened.

You're just like, I guess I'll try to get a higher fee. So little things like that are just, and it's all stuff that can be dealt with. It's just going to take some time. But it's infinitely better than when I dicked around with it in 2018. even like just for a basic person that just wants to transact on lightning in a non-custodial fashion, it's so much easier than it was back then. I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

And now you don't have to run a node. You can just download a wallet and be able to transact more or less instantly on lightning and not have to worry about it. So it's leaps and bounds over the past few years. I don't know. Cool. Well, let's do another. final rotation here.

Everybody in the chat, thank you for being here. I'm going to start trying to pull up more comments and stuff too. I've been kind of neglecting them for a little bit here. Labras here. There's also, there's a, there's a, an Eth maxi in here. Alex, I love you. Thank you for being here. He said that he is, he said he's allocated 50% Ethereum, 0% Bitcoin.

I hope that works out for you. Labra says hi. Hello, Labra. Hello. But, yeah, I'm going to chat. Thanks for being here. Let's move on to our final reason for being bullish. Jess, you're up.

What are you feeling? What are you excited about? So I'm bullish for two reasons, but firstly I'm bullish because Bitcoin is just so fundamentally, deeply undervalued. And I feel like it's important to point out, especially for the nubes that got in at like 60, 65K, that since we're now under, I think, 30K now, that the value of Bitcoin is just going to go up over a certain period of time. And so when Bitcoin is at 500K,000, it doesn't really matter whether you bought it 60 or 30 in the grand scheme of things. obviously in a perfect world you'd want to buy in at like 30, 10, 300, whatever. But we don't live in a perfect world and people get liquid at certain periods of times

and that doesn't necessarily correspond with the lowest prices. But if you look at the adoption trend of Bitcoin, you could have terrible timing right now and still make serious money and it's ridiculous. Just because the trend is so strong. If you had bought the high in the previous bull markets, even in the last one, if you had bought the high in 2017, you'd still three-xed. And this trend is incredibly rare and powerful. And probably by 2025, you know, we might have a billion people using Bitcoin. And you don't have to be a brilliant economic scholar to figure out that if you take a resource that is limited and scarce and you have billions of people coming into the market, that

want it, the price is going to go up. So, and whenever we're in a bear market, you have people constantly saying, oh, look, the Bitcoin people were wrong. We knew it was going to go down. It doesn't work. And then we go right back up again. And so you just got to be patient. Stay humble, stack stats.

And I also wanted to say that, you know, Davos happened recently, even though they always said that it didn't happen. But the great reset. and their whole agenda for us. I feel like it's doing a lot of people more favors than they think it is because I think it's opening up a lot of people's eyes. And maybe it'll allow for the destruction of the current corrupt systems and maybe push towards the full adoption of Bitcoin.

I mean, that's the optimistic self, me talking. I think you're right, though. I think you're right. Like when you when you have examples of why a censorship resistant immutable, you know, finite money is necessary, like it draws more people to it. Like, again, everything that happened here in Canada over the past few months, that was probably one of the greatest advertisements Bitcoin's had. in the history of its existence. Like there's been a number of them that have been very important

in highlighting why Bitcoin is here. But for a lot of people, it definitely highlighted like, hey, you know, there's oftentimes where you and your government may not be aligned. And in those instances, it may not be the best situation.

if your government has totalitarian control over your finances. Shut down your bank account. Yeah, exactly. The state meets you, by the way. Yes, yes. I mean, I was lucky in that, like, I was thinking through at the time, and I was like, how fucked would I be if my bank account got shut down? And like, I'm already pretty much living on a Bitcoin standard

in terms of like my income and everything like that's all like other than like YouTube revenue which is like YouTube basically rakes it all away from you anyways um but like for the most part I'm getting Bitcoin I'm not getting dollars and so in terms of like getting paid not an issue um you know there's there's ways to pay your bills with Bitcoin obviously there's there's you know, Dave's at Bitcoin well. That's one of them. And you can pay your bills with Bitcoin there. You know, bull Bitcoin.

Same thing. There's, there's options there. There's outlets like bit refill. There's the Bitcoin company. You can get prepaid visas through them. There's a number of options that are out there. But I was still thinking it through being like, fuck, a few of these things are going to be a giant pain in the ass,

like certain bills that have to be paid that come out of bank accounts. it's for me as an individual who's already divorced myself as much as possible from traditional finance I was still trying to think it through like if I get slapped here like it's it's going to be kind of shitty I'm going to have to deal with a number of things for people that are fully entrenched in that world and don't even understand like how bitcoin works this was for a number of people, they're, oh,

I need to learn a little bit about this moment. And I think that's important because there's going to be more and more of those examples, as you're saying, as kind of the Fiat Ponzi dissolves itself, there's going to be more and more examples

of, well, the only way we could keep this thing flow is by becoming more totalitarian, exerting more pressure and control over people's actions and finances and limiting them from doing something or from purchasing certain things or acting in certain ways. And when people push back against us, we need to limit them even further. And so that's going to hurt a lot of people in the interim, but it's also going to open a lot of eyeballs and get people curious. I was chatting with Matt O'Dell when I was.

in Norway and he's like he's like there's something I want to see normalized and the thing I want to be normalized is whenever there's a like some sort of anti-government protest or something in in in an area where it's not government sanctioned and there's there's there's individual like basically you're going to get your bank account shut down and you have people donating Bitcoin to a specific cause we need to normalize the act of Bitcoiners going down there to buy peer-to-peer Bitcoin from the people that just got the donations with cash. I think that's a fucking fantastic idea. Can you imagine like the trucker convoy, they're getting all of their donations handed out,

and then there's just like dudes on the street being like, yo, anybody's selling Bitcoin? I've got cash. I've got cash. Come over. Open your cape. Here's the guy. Yeah.

Yeah. And so I want, I think that's a fantastic idea. I would love to see that normalized. We need, again, when I was in Norway, Jimmy Song was at, I did like a Bitcoin 101 for a lot of people of like how to get your first wallet and send and everything. And Jimmy's song was in the audience being like, if anybody wants Bitcoin and you got cash, you can come over here, buy for me. Also, if anybody wants to buy Bitcoin, you can, he was basically like the mobile Bitcoin ATM of the. And he piped up like 10 times throughout the process of teaching these people to get a Bitcoin wallet. And legit, like the first time he said it, some dude, I think sprinted across the room with cash in hand. And then Jimmy's like, fuck, I got all this cash. What am I going to do?

Just do local bitcoins for testers. Oh, yeah. I think that should be an app. or something like protest bitcoin or something yeah i think that'd be great i think that's a fantastic thing um but yeah i mean absolutely it it's um you know the the the changing political environments are going to draw more eyeballs to this and and uh in the long term it's it's a net positive i don't know like dave or eric i don't know if you want to jump in comments on what jess was saying yeah i think that kind of goes into what I was going to say for my last point here is it's like you're going to get

people everyone gets into Bitcoin when they deserve to get into Bitcoin right and a lot of people are never going to really willingly make that jump they're only going to do it when they have to and the two reasons that people are going to have to generally are that censorship resistance side which is almost like the nice way to get in if like the government freezes your bank account but then eventually unfreezes it someday and you get like a wake up call, that's not that bad compared to the other way, which is like the government inflates your value away to nothing. And you have to take whatever you can get for your Bitcoin.

And so I think my long-term view, I would guess that 10, 15 years from now, we're going to see a lot more countries in the world and a lot fewer currencies. So there'll probably be 3,000 countries and 5 or 6 currencies. because all of these, all of these currencies in smaller nations are starting to crumble. And we're starting to see some of them die already. There's already a whole area of the Americas that's all in the U.S. dollar at this point. I think what we're going to see is a large switch to regional currencies. And when I say five or six currencies, it'll probably be those, those major regional currencies,

along with Bitcoin. And when a country's currency dies, pretty soon they're going to have that choice. Do I, you know, especially if you're kind of in between, if you're like, if you're in the Middle East, right, do you go to the euro? Do you go to the yuan? Do you go to Bitcoin? And they're going to have those choices. And I think that that's going to be the catalyst in the long term for everyone to switch is like necessity. And that's why I'm bullish in the long term.

I don't think that everything that we can talk about, building a great community, making great arguments, keeping people away from shit coins, like they're never going to hear that and they're just going to switch when they have to. And it's kind of, I think we've passed the point with global inflation in every single currency in the world, as well as Bitcoin's stability and longevity that it's inevitable at this point. I think we're probably going to be looking at a scenario, you know, maybe 20 years from now where the last currency in the world fails. the last currency other than Bitcoin. It probably be the US dollar, but who knows? And at that point, like, all this stock of price is going to be, it's going to seem stupid.

Like, there's no, there's no price to Bitcoin and US dollars, right? Like, how many, how many, how many, how many Bolivars, Venezuelan Boulevard, would it take for you to sell a Bitcoin right now? Like, I don't even know what the answer is, but there isn't one. like not giving you a good time yeah it's going to be the case for every single other currency out there and these numbers of like you know five 10 50 100 000 a million 500 million dollars are all going to seem like yeah who cares it's just pick more yeah yeah yeah i definitely agree with dave's point i think you know i think like pushing back on it a little bit i think we'll probably see a lot of that adoption come through uh stable coin

in the near term. But long term, I think where a lot of the Bitcoin adoption is probably going to come from first is going to be more on the reserve asset level rather than at the boots on the ground level. And with what's happened with the Russia sanctions this year and with trends, and there's a lot more fragmentation of global reserve assets, the US dollar in 2001 was 71% of global reserve or the, sorry, not US dollar, US treasury debt was 71% of global reserve assets, which is like a 16 trillion dollar market. And now that's down to about 59%. So that's a very, it's been a very gradual decline over the past 20 years. So the dollar has been losing a lot of dominance. And what we're seeing is who's making up for that? Well, it's actually a lot more

smaller currencies that have been making up for that or a smaller country debt that's been starting to come into that composition. So we're seeing a lot more fragmentation in the world. And that creates a really strong argument for Bitcoin because once we saw these sanctions get pushed on Russia, the whole concept of the U.S. debt is risk-free was kind of thrown out the window. And a lot of these emerging market economies, as well as more developed or larger-sized economies that have political interests against the U.S. are starting to consider what kind of assets they're going to be holding in reserves and whether or not they want them to be confiscatable. by the US. And that's going to push a lot of people away from trusting, you know, debt-based money like fiat money. And I think it's actually going to end up benefiting gold quite a bit because a lot of people are going to start pushing their money into commodities and gold's going to benefit pretty

significantly from that. And, you know, the U.S. dollar is not going away significantly. So, you know, I always try to push people in the Bitcoin community to not get too ahead of your skis with how some of the stuff's going to work. I think we're going to see massive adoption. But I think that, you know, in the short term, we're probably going to see those two trends emerge initially. but Bitcoin is going to have a huge chunk of all the money that people, you know, would be gold investors are going to start to flow into. And when you look at like emerging market economy, global reserves, that's like a $12.5 trillion market.

It's massive. It's much bigger than the developed economies. So it makes a ton of sense that the incentives are aligned for all these countries to adopt it in reserve. And, you know, if Bitcoin gets 10% of that, then we're talking about a huge, huge growth in the market. And that's a really big deal. I

Dave I'm sorry comment on Eric and then I've got a question I was going to say that's one area where that global reserve asset I think is probably the most important thing that we can be pushing in terms of all the engagement that we get from the political

landscape you know we've got in Canada here we've got Pierpoliev who's a bitcoiner who is running for leadership of the conservative party and there's a lot of Bitcoin are supporting him and in so much as we're able to influence him in that process, if he ever gets into office, I think that's the single most important thing that any country could do is putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet.

That's literally like, I think Canada is as a country probably not going to be long for the world. I think there's too big of a disparity. We out west here are too far from the seat of power and we're not being represented accurately at all. And yet the only thing that I think could possibly save the country is putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet because we're running into a scenario where like the country is not just out of money. It's like it's out of money so long ago and we've printed to such

a extreme extent compared to most other countries in the world that it's like we're just like we got to leave basically. We're in Alberta here out west and that's what I'd like to see happen is an independent Alberta. We've also got a leadership race going on in the province for our premier for the leader of the province and the lead candidate right now is somebody that Ben and I have both been on her show and Daniel Smith is a is it we both told her not to leave her coins on quadriga um she lost all her coins in an exchange that uh disappeared here but uh but yeah i think like the province of alberta holding bitcoin is not like a super far-fetched uh outcome at this point so that's like if there's only one thing that we can tell the political class who are

largely not our friends. It's that if you want your, whatever your country is, whatever your jurisdiction, if you want to survive, it must hold Bitcoin. Yeah. It's, I'm wondering, I was talking about this last week. And I was actually, my reason for being bullish last week was, it had to do with Pierre Pahliav running for prime minister. or well, leader of the conservative party, but then subsequently prime minister,

assuming he gets that spot. And, and again, I kind of went down the route of, you know, you don't want to put too much trust in politicians, nor do you want that to be,

you know, I'm not placing all my faith in politicians. And even if a politician whose ideas I agree with were to be in office, it's only a matter of time before somebody else replaces them. And so you can't put all your faith in that system. But I would find it incredibly bullish if we had a bitcoiner as prime minister of Canada

and then we had a bitcoiner as the Premier of Alberta. Because what that does is it molds favorable regulation that simply gives us, gives us a head start and a longer time frame to get Bitcoin so entrenched in the population that when somebody shitty gets in office, it's too late. Because individuals already have access and the knowledge of how to use the technology and you can't undo that. Right now, there's so many people ignorant to the freedom that Bitcoin affords them. that you know, you could clamp down enough where there'd be a subset of the population

that would want to understand and be able to navigate around that. But the vast majority of people would just be like, shit, that sucks. Like, I guess I'm just shit out of luck. And maybe some of them would gravitate towards Bitcoin. But like, more or less, you'd be able to exert a lot of control and make it so painful to deal with Bitcoin and try to obtain and use Bitcoin, that it would be a big pin in the ass. But what makes me weary of Pierre is that the last time I checked, he was a part of the

young global leaders, which is Klaus's schooling. So he came out afterwards. Did he address it? Yeah, he addressed it directly. somebody was like you were on the WEF website and he's like I have no association with them whatsoever they put me up on the website and now every now he's actively campaigning against the world economic forum and saying and basically saying if anybody's a young global leader I want them out get get the fuck out of my office I want you I want you working on local issues I don't want you working for this global cabal

a bullshit. So yeah. But yeah. I agree. I don't like politicians, but I mean, it's comforting for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think if anything, again, I don't want to place all my faith in a politician, but again, as a mechanism to buy time, I think we should explore

all avenues because time is our friend. If we can buy time to get more people to understand, Bitcoin and like part of it it's it's a double-edged sword Dave you were saying people aren't going to adopt it until they absolutely need to so like there's there's like this balance to be struck of like let's buy some time and get more people understand but part of it is you need shit to hit the fan for people to get it and actually jump on board so I don't know where that balance is yeah and Timberlake I didn't say I was for the great reset

I'm very anti the Great Reset. I said that it's probably going to open a lot of people's eyes just because they're pushing for so much. Yeah. If you know Jessica, she is distinctly not for The Great Reset. Yeah, if you watch one of our podcast episodes, it's just on the WEF. And I'm literally just ranting like the entire time we made like these tinfoil hats. and I said, oh, hi, it's Alexa Jones. That's great.

I'm not like ideologically aligned with the W.A.F. Or the Great Reset or any of their stuff at all. But there's a part of me that wants to be kind of like a collapsitarian and be like, what I mean? Like, I'm going to vote for Trudeau because he's going to melt this shit down faster. Yeah. Yeah. And like, it, we just rip the bandaid off, you know.

Yeah. And that's the other aspect of it, right? Like in the context of you saying people won't, won't use Bitcoin until they need to, maybe, you know, maybe many more years of Trudeau is going to necessitate that. And that's part of part of the reason why. So like, Trudeau basically aligned with. with another political party to more or less guarantee that he's going to remain Prime Minister of Canada for another three years.

So he's for sure in until 2025, more or less, unless there's a major rift between them. And part of me was like, fuck, another three years of Trudeau for sure. But the other part of me was thinking, well, in this instance, like if there was an election right now, the Canadian public at large is so still kind of indoctrinated to be like, yes, everything that you say is true. And he would probably still win. Not by popular vote, not by, but just because there's not enough people that are pissed off enough.

But with three more years, and not just three more years of like a choice, but three years of I've partnered with another political party to make it possible for me to maintain power for three years. That additional three years is enough. I think to piss enough people off that they may not vote liberal. If they want something other than liberal, they're not going to look to the other major political party that they aligned with called the NDP because that enabled Trudeau to stay for an additional three years. And the only viable alternative would be if Pierre's in power would be Pierre Folliyev and the conservatives.

At which point, we would have a bit coiner as the prime minister of Canada, which would be a pretty interesting and stark 180 from where we are right now. And again, a great time buying mechanism if there ever was one. And yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Maybe if it turned into real China to I think we should take a moment to take a break and recognize the amazing content that this F guy is putting into the Alex Stewart something else

something else what does he say you will be able to stake for Ethan in 2029 and help validate the middle class wait what is happening in Antarctica Alex. I like Alex, I've seen a few messages, and he fucking hates Trudeau,

but he's all about the Eith. I don't, I feel like there could be alignment there. You just got to do a bit of digging, man. He also said one of the other ones that he owns gold, which is pretty funny that he owns zero Bitcoin. Yeah, he owns gold. I've been looking for a way to help validate

middle class. They need some validation. Let's get four-e. People are saying that Alex G is actually David Wong in disguise. David Wong was a long-term viewer of the channel. He would come repeatedly every Friday

to watch the show. Sometimes he was here hours early. He fucking hates Bitcoin, but he was here every week. But he's your biggest fan. He was. He hasn't been here for a while, though. Where'd he go? I think he's in the transition period where he's having like, oh, he's transitioning. Yeah, I think he's he's, he's has an existential crisis and he's realizing that he's actually a Bitcoin maximalist. That's my hope. He's going to come back and he's like, guys, guys, I transitioned. I'm the Bitcoin Maxin was now.

So, you know, no hate here. I, you know, I welcome my Bitcoin Maxi trannies. Is this a safe space? This is a safe space. So I hope. So Alex, the same goes to you. I hope you come back every week. And hopefully we can gradually, slowly wean you off ETH and towards Bitcoin.

And, you know, there's, already in alignment where we both think that Trudeau's a fucking clown. And so I think there's, at least there's a common ground to start from there. And we'll work on it together, man. So keep coming back. And, you know, you can be the new, you're the new David. So same time next week. He's in, yeah, yeah.

He said, he said, he said, I'm white. I swear. I'm white. I'm sweet. I swear. I'm glad we Thank you for letting us know. Yeah.

Incredible. Okay. So let's start rounding this out, I guess. Let's do just a round of, I'm going to go around final thoughts from you guys on anything discussed here. And then I'm also going to challenge you to recommend a piece of content. whatever it may be it could be a book an article a a podcast a video just something that you have found valuable over time in your bitcoin journey and it can be it doesn't have to be directly related to bitcoin but some sort of tangential relation would be valuable

so final thoughts here are I'm down for more pain I think that would be just fine. And I say this in the context of living on Bitcoin. I get paid in Bitcoin. So the only way that that is a thing that I would be okay with is if I'm actively making sure that I spend less than I earn, that I'm taking time to like create value hopefully and I'm being conscientious and putting away for the future because in the context of more pain for Bitcoin

if I'm spending less than I earn and I'm saving in Bitcoin then those drops and those those decimations one ruin the shit coins around Bitcoin and and draw more of the focus of okay, this is the long-term thing that actually is worth paying attention to. But two, just fantastic opportunities to build generational wealth. And by adopting those qualities and those habits of low time preference and, again, spending less than you earn and trying to create value for people,

it fits perfectly into a Bitcoin standard, which over the long, long term, I think we're headed towards. And in the interim, it'll be a Bitcoin backing to a perhaps multi-currency standard, less on the US dollar. And people trying to figure out what the hell is going on. But Bitcoin will benefit from that in the interim. So, yeah, that's why that is my final thought. for content Eric

hopefully you weren't going to self-shill because I'm going to do it for you read the seventh property it's really fucking good I've got to say it's it's actually really good it's high quality

it's I now when people say what book should I read on Bitcoin obviously like the Bitcoin standard is kind of a staple but this is effectively my my paired book that I recommend along with it.

Bitcoin Standard and the Seventh Property. I think those two, they just reinforce each other and you can glean different things from each one. Savadin has his own style of writing. I feel like, Eric, the way you presented is a bit more kind of, like objective.

But at the same time, you've also spattered in some fantastic quotes from both Mike Tyson and Kanye West in here. I sure did. If there's one, so I haven't

gotten any criticism on the book yet because it's like still, it hasn't totally gotten outside of the Bitcoin world. So the only criticism I have gotten is been around the Mike Tyson quotes. There's actually like there was like this hilarious one where this guy called me a a woke millennial who needed to use who needed to use black people as quotes in his book.

Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't use Alex. Yeah. Yeah. Alex G will be thoroughly quoted in the seventh property of shit coins.

Yeah, for everybody listening, I, yeah, you know, to your point about the objectiveness, I think when I came into the industry, that was something that I thought, you know, people are very passionate and that was very necessary to get the industry to where it was. But I wanted to create a resource that was a bit more measured with the way that I discussed things and try to, you know, talk about the criticisms and, you know, draw light to them as well and say, these are also very major things you consider. But I tried to be a little bit more summarized and holistic than safety. I think like with my history of money, it's a lot lighter than what he provides in the book. He has a large chunk of that that goes into that, as well as I try to stay away less from

getting theoretical about concepts. And I try to focus more on what happened in history, what are the patterns, and how we can kind of see that replicating today in our current system and just how things function. But yeah, those are those are kind of the differences. I wanted to get pretty technically deep into a few areas around Bitcoin. If you want like a broad-based resource for, you know, if you're trying to get technical, but you want it to be more broad than like mastering Bitcoin, if you really want to get deep than programming Bitcoin.

But for me, it was geared for people with like a financial background of people who are looking at Bitcoin from an investment perspective initially. And, you know, there is a few areas focused on the incentives of the network and how that works in the background that you need to understand to get that. And I get pretty technical into how that all works. But yeah, that's the gist of the book. In terms of my recommended resource, you know, it's because this is a pretty solid like Bitcoin audience, I think from what I've seen, on Twitter, a book that would probably benefit quite a bit of the Bitcoin community. It was a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. I think everybody should probably give that one a world.

I love that book. I honestly, I will go flip that book every five years or so. I feel like I had to read it when I was pledging a fraternity in college and I've been hooked ever since. Yeah. Speaking of how to win friends and influence. excellent quote from Dr. Thamey.

Ethereum is the mother asshole from which all shit coins are created. That was, I think maybe one of the best quotes that's ever been on Yeah, seriously. Yeah, it was excellent. Eric, do you have any, you already did your resource, but any other

and by the way, again, I legitimately will echo that book. It's a solid book. title throws you off because you think it's going to come off as manipulative, but actually it just more or less reinforces the idea of of trying to understand how somebody arrived at their position so that you can, A, give them the pertinent information to help them reassess their position or realize you're wrong. It's more or less that, right? And through that, you're able to able to better align with individuals and mutually benefit from each other's interactions.

It's a really good read. I personally like the old school version that has all the old references. Like, I don't know. Some of the newer ones have been updated with new references. But like, I think the original one had like Abraham Lincoln dealing with his generals and things like. Like there's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So definitely read that. But anyways, Eric, any final thoughts they have on and anything discussed today? You know, I guess, you know, final thoughts are just, you know, us being in the bear market. I think I really enjoy bare markets. I think it's a great time to focus on things. It's a good time to build. And I'd encourage everybody to really just kind of, if you're wondering about how to get involved in the industry, you want to take some sort of leap.

I feel like now is a really good time to do that. Awesome. All right. Jess, I'll go to you next. Final thoughts and any recommendations you may have. Yeah, so I mean, I'm totally down for some blood in the streets. I would love to see some people get wrecked. Die!

But also, I just want to emphasize how amazing the community is. I just spent the last month in Austin and oh wow thanks be mad did you guys see what he just comments it thanks anyway I just spent the last month in Austin and went to BitDev's and it was a ghost town during the bull market there was probably like 100 150 people there they were probably like 30 people there and it was just really cool to see like who are the hardcore bitcoiners and the people who are in it for just more than the price. And it's just really amazing to see people like put their heads down, working on their projects, focusing on what's important and just being around like-minded people who have

the same values and principles. And the community is amazing. Yeah. I'd echo that. And this is also another thing that gets me excited is, is I think back to Bitcoin 2019 in when they hosted it in san fran so it was like not fully like deep in the the bear because like 2018 was well it probably would have been low it's tough because like it was lower in in 2018 around that time but like it was still everybody was like are we done are we done is this is it and so it had

like a lot of the grifters were gone um there was still like some shit coining there, but like there was a, uh, there was definitely some signal. And so like a lot of the riffraff gets filtered out and you get people just have their heads down and they're working on stuff. Um, and I look forward to seeing a bit more of that, perhaps at Bitcoin 2020. Right. Like where and like, you know, obviously the large Bitcoin conferences are where there's going to be, you know, more noise gravitates towards it. And if you're good at finding the signal, then whatever. You just, you gravitate towards what you want to be a part of and what you,

what you find value in. And you can ignore a lot of the garbage that's in the background. But as, boom is where it's at. I'm so sad that I can't go. I'm like, I'm going. I'm, yeah. And it's, it's, it's always in August. So that's my wife's birthday.

And we tend to, we're always going somewhere for her birthday. and going to Texas in August. What's the end of August? I mean, it's like towards the end of the summer. Texas in August for a Bitcoin conference, as much as she's supportive of me, is maybe not like the best birthday present I could offer her. So the Bitflok boom tends to be a hard sell for me.

On the contrary, though, I am going to surf and bird. Bitcoin in beer writs in France in August. Ooh. Yeah. Oh, man. So that's going to be, I'm excited for that one. That one's going to be cool.

Oh, that's so cool. They're doing a panel on, on geopolitical tensions or something to that effect, and I'm on a panel with it in relation to what happened in Canada. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. An interesting one. So, but yeah, anyways, Jess, one final thing.

Do you have recommendations of content? I do. I would probably say, thank God for Bitcoin, just because it's so short and concise and gets right to the points, not technical. So, like, if you just want to give someone a quick read on just like a really easy explanation on the use cases and why it's valuable, I think it's a great read. I loved it. Yeah, that's cool. I like, I've, I've gotten a new, I'm, I myself and not a religious person, but whereas before I was almost, I almost had like a, uh, because I went to Catholic school when I was younger. And I almost, I came out of that experience. And I think it was just more

or less a function of timing because in the 90s there were kind of more conservative voices in power and whoever happens to be in power at the time gets to kind of dictate

the narrative and also like clamp down on opposing views and so I grew up with you know what tended to be like conservative religious voices influencing things that were allowed to be on TV and so and so forth.

And I had kind of like this vitriol towards religion because I saw it as if anybody's going to be somebody that's going to limit free speech, it's going to come from the conservative side of things. Lo and behold, here I am in adulthood. And the side of the aisle that I originally came from, more or less, labeled me a domestic terrorist for supporting a legal protest. So don't I have egg on my face now. But yeah, I've come to appreciate religion more in that I see it valuable as giving people a moral

framework to work within and to model their lives. Bitcoin is very similar to religion. We talked about this because Bitcoin are movies making a documentary. We have the white paper. We have holidays. We have like a diet. They're so into, you know, carnivore and stuff. And we're all like-minded and have the same principles.

Bitcoin is basically a religion. But we're not a cult. I actually had a tweet about this like a couple weeks ago where. Did you? Yeah. Well, I'm not religious, but I was asking people that are like Bitcoin religious is like a serious question. Like how, you know, like don't trust verify, but you know, it depends on how you define a religion and what that means. Like some people trust an institution.

Some people just have a set of values and principles that they believe in based on a text from the Bronze Age that they trust. But I was like, how do you kind of like reconcile those things? And I got, I had some pretty interesting conversations in the threat. Yeah. See, I like this thread of conversation. I think it's interesting. Anyways, Jeff, go ahead. No, and that's the other thing.

Like, thank God for Bitcoin. It's not super religious at all. Like, I think there's maybe two or three Bible verses in there, but, like, it's not pushy or super religious or anything like that. Yeah. You can identify as tax exempt. I identify as a non-U.S. Yes.

Labra, I'm pretty sure that that's all you need. It's your tax exempt now, I'm pretty sure. You just yell it out, like, in the office when Michael screams. Ramele echoes this. I don't think dogs need to pay taxes, Labra. You don't need a passport either, Labra. Tax exempt according to who. To everyone.

Become ungovernable. Yes, awesome. Well, and also, Jess, I feel like you should shill your own podcast because you You guys just started like not too long ago doing that. When did you guys start that up? Probably two months ago. Yeah. We actually just had this really interesting guy on.

He's a hunting guy. And he takes out men, sometimes women, depending, who want to go hunting. And he talks about masculinity, confidence. We talked about what is a man? It's a good one. It's called the Bishbeat Podcast. Anyone wants to watch it. That's awesome.

I enjoy that. Dave, I'm going to jump to you next. But before I do, just in relation to hunting, you brought up a hilarious conversation I had with Jeff Booth. I love Jeff. He's so awesome. He invited me out to his cabin this summer. I'm going to be there in about a month from now.

I'm taking my wife and my kids. And we're going to go out to his cabin. and we're going to spend a night there and get to hang it at the lake before we hit Vancouver. But so I'm talking to him at the Freedom Forum and he's like, I've got to tell you this story. It's crazy. And I know you in particular are going to love it just because you're in Canada. And Dave, listen closely because we might need to go in on this together. there's a Canadian law in and around owning land and it has to do with fur trappers.

And so the old school fur trappers that would trap animals and like take their fur and sell pelts and stuff, they have specific provisions that entitle them to be able to purchase certain land. and only people with their trappers license can buy certain tracks of land. And so Jeff Booth became privy to this law through a number of other individuals. And they came across a parcel of land. This is, it was 160 square miles of land. But they could only purchase it if they had their trappers license. And they said, fuck it, we're getting our trappers licenses.

Is it hard? It's a three-day course. And you literally like you trap an animal and you skin it and you get the pelt and you do like a handful of things. And you learn these guys take you out in the wilderness and you learn how to do it. Would any of you venture to guess? And to give context, this I'm not, I don't know the exact location, but basically like off of the Okinaw. in British Columbia, which is like a beautiful place. It's wonderful.

There's, you know, like all kinds of like lakes and rivers and stuff running through it. Great weather in the summer. Anyways, so 160 square miles. Any of you want to venture to guess how much this 160 square miles cost him? Good day, looking at that out. Is there no idea? Yeah, James go to town. Let us wait for Dave.

I'm trying to convert. I don't know what square miles are. I'm trying to convert that to acres. Yeah, I don't know acres. I mean, kilometers times 2.2, I think, or 1.8. I can't remember the conversion. Anyways, do you want me to tell you how much it costs? Yes.

It was. The suspense. It was, it was, I think it was $28,000. Whoa. Canadian. Oh, my God. Canadian. So that's like 10 cents.

That's like a nickel, US. I had this experience. I was trying to buy some fur. And we have, that has been told, right? Wait, wait. I feel like we need to back. of a step where you were trying to buy some fur. There's actually a really interesting case study

in the fur industry of these beaver nickels that the Hudson Bay Company tried to put out there as like an alternative form of money. And it was basically like an early fiat within North America. And it didn't work because the trappers wanted silver. But that's not what I'm talking about.

I was trying to buy some fur. And I learned that very recently the Hudson Bay company, which is one of the oldest companies in the world was founded on the premise of it was a fur trading company literally now it's like a department store it's like a high-end Walmart at this point and it's they recently last year stopped selling furs and that was to me like one of those things where like much like i you know i mentioned another thing to you guys in the in the opening here like the fall of society is happening when the hudson bay company stopped selling furs literally based upon this is like i don't know if you guys you you don't get this down in the states but like we in grade school learn about canadian history and the hudson's bay company is like integral to canadian history and the fur trappers that would like capture and like create beaver pelts and like sell them to the to the local like it was it's like a part of

Canadian history and for the Hudson Bay company to be like, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. Dark times. Dave, did you end up seeing the conversion for square miles to acres? That's a lot of acres. Yeah, I don't believe this. It's

102,000 acres. Uh-huh. Wait, say that again? 102,000 acres. I feel like one of us for 28,000 Canadian. There's no way you can get 28,000. No, it's because all of the trappers are dying.

The laws still exist to exempt anybody other than people with their trappers license to purchase this land. So are you going to find some land and create a citadel? Yeah, actually. And so like there's no, there's no roads or anything here. Like it's just like bare land. Are you allowed to? You can do. Are you allowed to develop it?

Yeah. So Jeff literally, he's like, we helicoptered in lumber to build, to build a cabin on this lake. Wow. He's like, the helicopter costs more than the land. Like to be in the lumber. Seriously. But I legitimately, Dave, can we put our heads together on this after? Yeah. Let's do it. Seriously.

Okay. Will you do the Trappers course with me? Oh, yeah. I'm just like, I'm disappointed in myself that haven't already done the Trappers course. I didn't know that was just thing. Okay, we're going to do this. We're doing this. Let's get a handful of Bitcorners. Let's get in particular, let's see if we can find some land, maybe Alberta specific, because who knows, in the, in your, in your assertation that Bitcoin will be split up into smaller country. we've got to make sure we keep it local. But yeah, I would love that. Save me a slot, please. Yeah, you can come up when Canada Stan dissolves and the Republic of Alberta becomes a thing, you are more than welcome.

Fantastic. We need a homestead at some point. Yeah, exactly. Just avoid winter. It's pretty fucking cold here. Yeah, no. But Dave, I'll defer to you. Final thoughts.

any recommendations of content. Okay. Final thoughts. I think that everybody who wants the price to go up is going with one of two flawed ways of thinking. Either they already have enough Bitcoin, which is not very likely. I don't know if that's possible.

Or they are like the thousands of laser-eyed larpers. And what they actually want is they want the price to go up so they can sell and have more dollars. And that's not where I'm coming from. I want to buy more Bitcoin. I want the price to go as low as possible. And people like Ben that are getting paid in Bitcoin probably feel the same way. So that's my thoughts. I don't think we're in a rush for the price to go to any particular amount.

content-wise I'm going to go with some art that I have right behind me from my very good friend, Madex. And if you don't know Madex, what the fuck is wrong with you? But I think he's the best making an artist in the space.

Very cool Bitcoin-themed art, generally speaking. We got the Genesis block there. Nice Satoshi quote. And then this is the were, which is the counterpoint to the bur. of the money printers. This is Bitcoin miners operating at oil wells. And then the other thing that's really cool about these guys, he's accomplished what NFTs are trying to accomplish

and that he's attached to digital signature in the form of an open dime. So this open dime has a small amount of bitcoins, which essentially is the signature. This is the block number, which is the name of a piece. And if somebody wanted to remove this digital signature to get the bitcoins, they'd essentially be like ripping the signature off of a piece of art. So I love that. Very, very cool innovation. What's his, what's his website? Do you remember? Yeah, he's Spaceball on Twitter and it's mvdex.io is the website. N-V-D-E-X. M as in Michael. Oh, yeah, right, yeah. And that's like, other than rope futures in Bitcoin, it's one of the only things that I think might outperform those things is a Medex. And, you know, he's a really good friend of mine.

But if he, I'm secretly hoping he dies soon because I have a lot of his art and it will go up and tell you. Yeah, I've got to say, like, he does some incredible, oh, damn. He does some cool shit. It's awesome. Yeah, that was, that's the one he had at the, the, at the conference. in Miami. That's nice. Yeah, he's done some incredible things.

He did, so my friend, Dave, not Bradley, commissioned a piece from him, and I'm the one who got my friend, obviously, into Bitcoin. And so he, like, snuck in, like, a cartoon image of me, like, into part of the art, like, very discreetly. You would never even see it was there. But it wasn't even an... Yeah. It wasn't even an image from my channel,

but there's a mall outside of Calgary called... You have to tweet it out. Yeah, there's a mall called... Cross Iron Mills. Cross Iron Mills. And they had a marketing campaign where they basically just had like, you know, very basic artwork of like shoppers buying things.

But it was, I swear to God, it was literally fucking me in their promotional material. Like it could not have been more me as this cartoon avatar. And he took that image and injected it into this commissioned piece

that my friend was. It's so funny. And even at the time, it's not like he did it. And then I was like, man, that's me. It's like early on, I saw it. I was in the mall. And I was like, did these people take my likeness to me like it was insane

maybe they found your YouTube maybe Twitter the crazy thing is I have a sister who has like bright red hair and in the same fucking marketing material they had a person that looked so like her it was mind-blowing. And I don't know what has happened, but I feel like they owe me money. Yeah. You should tell them that.

I did. I tweeted them and they neglected to respond. I think I sent you that and you're like, yeah, you're like the fifth person to send me this. Yeah. I need to see this. Yeah, yeah. I'll have to tweet it after this show.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, awesome. Well, we're going to run. wrap it up there. I want to thank you guys all for spending a great evening with me. I'm more lit than I was at the beginning of the show. It tends to be a good indication that it was a fun show. So I appreciate it all. Really quick, where can people find you? Let's start with Dave and we'll make our way around. Dave. I am Bitcoin Brains on Twitter. My website that we

mentioned at the start of the show is also Bitcoin Brains.com. And my company that I'm with is Bitcoin Well. We are publicly traded on the TSXV stock exchange under the Tigger BTCW. So awesome. Make your own decisions invest wisely. Awesome. Jess, you. Where can people find you? Go ahead. Yeah, I'm on Jessica Hodler on Twitter. Our website is Plan B, passport.com. And yeah, it's basically it. Awesome, awesome. And Eric, you're up. I'm my name on Twitter, and you can find my book on Amazon.

It's just searched the seventh property, and it'll pop up. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm, again, super happy that all you guys made it out for the show. Obviously, welcome back anytime. And, yeah, I'll leave you there. Have a great weekend, everybody. Later, guys.

Thanks for having me. Bye, guys. Thanks. Bye. Awesome. Everybody watching, thank you so much for being here. Hope you had a good time.

That was a good one. Had fun with that one. It's like hanging out with old friends. Of course, like, subscribe, share, all those things. Indeed, very important. They really do help the show. If you want to help the show in another way, you can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below.

Those were ShakePay, Laden, BitRefel, Keystone, Bill Fottle. They're all in the show notes. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a, drip me, drop me, a Bitcoin tip at my strike page that is strike.me slash BTC sessions. You get there, you type in any amount you want, you 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. Also, don't forget to follow all of the guests.

All of their Twitter handles are in the show notes as well. With that, I'm out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, and I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.