BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Gigi, Andre Loja, Pablo7z - BTC CHAT ep385

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

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What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show, another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish. And I'm very excited for this panel of gentlemen and that got here. It's not often when I'm home in Canada that I can manage to wrangle European guests, but all of these gentlemen have opted to stay up very late to join me. So I'm very glad that they're here. And we'll get into intros momentarily. But of course, this is live.

anything can happen, so I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share. All those things are super important.

You can hit that little like button below the screen. That helps a ton. Share this on whatever socials you are on. And of course, subscribe. I'm on the Warpath. to hopefully 100,000 subscribers. I'm hoping by the end of 2024. So if you can help me get there,

just hit that little subscribe button. Anyways, guys. With that, I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we bring in our guests, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. And simultaneously, I'm going to bring up the live chat on the right side of the screen.

From here on in, everything that you say in the chat will be live. for the world to see for better or worse. But back to timechain calendar.com. We're sitting at $44,334 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will snag you 2,256 sats. In terms of fees, 109 sats per byte for next block. 22 sats anytime.

It's been all over the place, and I haven't seen it dip that low. So take that with a grain of salt. Either way, start figuring out your fee situation, guys. yourself on Lightning, get some fat channels. And yeah, I dropped a video on that last week on how you can prioritize a few things and get a bit more efficient. And in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.56 million of them. That's 93.16% of the entire supply. Shout out to sponsors of the show, hoddlehoddle.com. If you're stag and stats and you have liked to prioritize peer-to-peer trading, instant self-custody and no KYC. Easy to sign up here with just an email address. Log in.

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So a very warm welcome to Gigi, Andre, and Pablo. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. I know it's late. I know that you're going to pay for this tomorrow, but nonetheless, I'm glad to have you all in the room. So let's do a quick round of intros to equate in the audience with you, if they're unfamiliar.

Gigi, I'll go to you first. And I got to say, man, it's been some time. and I'm glad to we'll quote unquote see you again so let people know who we are. Yo, yeah, I guess I'm slowly coming out of my podcast hiatus. I told everyone I'm not going to do podcasts

until my second book is finished but since this will still take a while I'm just like fuck it. I've just started appearing on podcasts again. Maybe it will help with my writing too. So yeah, I'm Gigi. Most people know me because I wrote the book called 21 Lessons. I guess that's not even true. I think most people know me because I used to be

addicted to Twitter and I used to shitpost all the time. And Noster cured this addiction. Now I switched one drug for the other. And I'm now on Noster all the time. And yeah, that's me. That's awesome, man. Well, I'm glad to have you here. And yeah, hope to see you in person at some point soon. Oh, we will. Yes, absolutely. And And And Andre, welcome, man. First time on the show. Can you Give yourself an intro. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm Andrea, the founder of Freemadara, the nonprofit that we established here in the Madera Island. And now, you know, extremely busy organizing Bitcoin Atlantis and, you know, being the host of this amazing community that is starting to be born here in Madera, which is amazing.

Awesome. Man, I can't wait to get down there. I'm bringing the whole family. Nice. last awesome uh pablo welcome also first timer to the show can you give yourself an intro man yeah thanks man very nice to be here uh yeah i'm i'm pablo uh i should post but not as much and not with as much quality as giji here uh but yeah i've been working in in bitcoin stuff and now i'm doing a lot of work around noster i'm not spending a lot of time on on twitter so if you're still

on Twitter, you probably have no idea who the hell I am. But if you're an investor, you probably have used one of my six million different apps. And yeah, very, very excited to be here, very excited to be here with you guys. Awesome. Awesome. Well, guys, I'm very glad to have you here. We're going to dive in. I can already see people. Somebody was saying, why doesn't Gigi have his camera on? And I assured them that he does. He's just holding that thing right now. Yeah, I'm just, I'm not moving much. that's all. Very still. Yeah, exactly.

Send. Send mode. So we're going to dive into it. Anybody that's watching that is unfamiliar, this show is why are we bullish? And the concept is very simple. Each one of us has come with a reason, or in the cases of some of us, millions of reasons for being bullish. And the flow of the show is as such, somebody is going to, number one, drop a reason why

they are bullish. This is their chance to rant, get off their chest. whatever they want to talk about. And the reason can come in any form. It could be a news item, a new development, an app, a device, a personal experience, whatever it may be. It's the person's chance to rant. After they drop their reason for being bullish, number two, we're going to riff on that

all together. So questions, comments, rabbit holes, wherever we end up. And then number three, we're going to rotate to the next person until we've all had a turn. So reason, riff, rotate, simple. So we're going to dive in. I'll get us started. Mine is, I think, relatively brief, but just kind of based on some experiences I've had this week. I am bullish on Bitcoin builders that are receptive to constructive criticism and user-referior.

requests. And the reason this comes up is two individuals. One is Hugo from Nunchuk, and the other is Parker Lewis, who's working on ZapRite right now. And both these individuals, you know, I use their stuff all the time. And I think they're building really cool things. And but of course, like, there's always, you know, you come across things. You're like, oh, crap, I wish that feature was here. Or I wish, you know, I wish I could do this or, oh, I ran into a bug or whatever. And both these guys and many other people that are building awesome things in and around Bitcoin and Noster and everything are, I mean, Bitcoiners are are an abrasive bunch. And we get to the point in and around what works and what doesn't and what should be better and what could, you know, so and so forth. I'm maybe not too

abrasive in that sense, but, you know, developers that are building things, they have their work cut out for them and they take, you know, they take it on the chin sometimes if stuff doesn't work as expected. And so I love the people that are willing to sit and go, okay, how, you know, what do you need out of an app like this and how can we build it? And the thing that comes to mind again, like dealing with Nunshuck, I use it a bunch for like multi-sig and even just like especially travel and stuff with tap signers and all that. And they've been just super receptive to suggestions and things that I find useful. And more recently, the ZapRite thing, I literally sat on a call with Parker Lewis for like 45 minutes or an hour. earlier this week and he just he basically just like listened to the things that I was like,

I want to do this and I would love to do this and it'd be cool if it did this. And he just like basically took notes and was like, cool, we will try to do that then. And that's amazing. And I, because I can't build this shit, I'm very glad that there are people that are capable and and are dedicating their time to it. And I'm just the lucky schmuck that gets to use it afterwards. And maybe make a video on it. So yeah, I mean, I guess this in general is a big thank you to anybody building anything that I use. And so that's why I'm bullish. It's a short one, but I think it's an important one too. I think we should tip our hats to the people building everything. I'll open it up to you gentlemen, anything you want to tag in here, any props you want to give,

anything you want to add in. Whoever wants to dive in first. Go ahead. I can go. I'm also a non-technical guy, but I do use the software's, and the development, especially in the last three years, has been amazing. I'm a user of ZapRites, this clutter for all the businesses. I met with John, not with Parker, but it's also a great guy, also coming to Madera so you'll see him in person here and yeah it's been amazing and for guys like me who are mainstream users it's great to see the development and the openness the feedback reception that they that they have for for guys like ours and businesses like ours it's amazing yeah absolutely and now i was just going to ask you uh how did you find to the

the onboarding, desapparate, like setting it up? Was it pretty, like, for me, it was pretty seamless. Like, how did you find it? Very easy. I was using a mixture of other stuff previously, but they made it really, really seamless. And, you know, and I love the non-custodial facet of it. Because all the other options, simple options that I had before,

I may be forgetting or not knowing about some, but at least the ones I was using were not, the UX was not that clean as ZapRite is. It's pretty amazing to use, very simple, non-custodial, and it lets you integrate all the kinds of payments in the same, you know, in the same app, basically, or the same software, which is really cool. Yeah, yeah, I think they're doing an awesome thing. And you're right, the non-custodial aspect of it. I was impressed actually how easy it was to just plug in my own L&D node that's running on my start 9 behind me. I thought it was going to be more of a pain in the ass because I know certain things. Like it's difficult to figure out, you know, like not there's sometimes not support for Tor and things like that.

And it becomes, but they're like, yeah, just copy this thing, paste it here, copy this other thing. And then hit save. It's like good for good for dummy bitcoins as me. Yeah. And then of course, like they've still got support for like Albi and strike and all of these other things. But like I was just, I was thinking like, oh, it's going to be a pain in the ass to get my own note on here. But no, not so. So yeah.

Yeah, I think this is a really good reason to be to be bullish. Because I think we tend, both in Bitcoin and also, we tend to have a lot of developers that are tinkers and we like, like building stuff because it's fun and we're scratching our own niche. But there is something to be said to the point where a project that you're working on, something that you're hacking on, touches the market, touches other users, and you start seeing how it can be improved from the eyes of your users. And it goes from something that you're hacking for yourself and for six friends that are able to use it, to being a tool that can be used much more widely.

And it transitions into being something much more professional, something that is, that can be, can appeal to a way larger audience of people that are ready to use the tools, but the tools are not ready to be used. And I'm seeing a lot of these changes in Bitcoin around trying to create better tools that are more thoughtful and take much more care of these details. And I think, Jon is a really good person. He did a bunch of really amazing work at Bull Bitcoin, and he has a really good eye at seeing these special details and understanding how the fact that it's technically possible to do something is not enough. Like, you have to build a tool that makes it humanly possible to do the thing. So I think these reasons to be bullish is incredibly good. I might change my reason now, and I'm just going to take your reason. Pablo, I got a question for you.

Like, is there when you're working on stuff, are there times when you'll build something and like, are there any examples you can think of where you've built something and you're like, this is the way it should be, but then you get feedback from somebody and it completely changes your perspective on like your trajectory? Absolutely. All the time. And there are some tools where I completely disregard that because I want to experiment and I want to be at the cutting edge of what's.

technically possible to do, and I cannot think on how to make it humanly accessible, let's call it. And for other things, I just try to, like I try to make the audience, these people, like more normy people. So when I'm building something, I'm thinking, who am I building it for? If it's just for me and six friends, then I would just ignore all the people that tell me, how do I use it? Well, figure it out. But other times I'm working on stuff and they tell me, okay, I don't understand how to fix this, how to make this work. And then I'll incorporate that feedback into the product. Yeah, all the time, basically.

I think that's a very important point to understand that we want to have the easy-to-use tools with Mass Appeal and so on. But we also want to have the very, very specialized tools that are for, you know, easy-to-use tools. you know, like maybe, you know, the 250 people of the world that know exactly how to use this tree. And that's not only true for software. I mean, look at something simple like a knife, you know. Like there's like a million different knife types and some knife types to, you know, like fillet this one very special fish

that is poisonous and will kill you if you fillet it wrong and you eat the wrong part or whatever. There's probably a special knife for that. And you know, there's another special knife you know for just working with leather there's another special knife for this and that and so i think that's the right way to think about it you don't want to dump everything down to the absolute common denominator and you know stupefy everything which is um another way of um saying abstracting away the the the hard and complicated parts you definitely also need the tools um for the builders and

for the more technical people and for a more technical audience and so on and so forth. I think that's very important to point out. And I mean, I obviously agree with everything that you said and what has me bullish is that we have this whole range of tools and we have a range of products and we have the very easy things and we have also the more specialized things. And you see this clearly, you know, across the whole stack. It doesn't matter if you pick, you know, what kind of node software you use, what kind of lightning solution you use, what kind of wallet you use.

And also in the Noster universe now, you know, like what kind of client you use or how deep you go into this whole stack. And yeah, there is a lot to be said about the various types of tools and the various types of builders. And I'm incredibly bullish as well. It's lovely to see the whole builder community grow, the whole community in general grow, and also the various products finding product market fit, basically. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many options out there.

I mean, I can remember the early days of, of, you know, there was, you basically had one or two choices for hardware, like when hardware became a thing, you know, you, that you were very limited and had like basically zip for features on, you know, when it came to mobile wallets and desktop wallets like there's there's and now it's just i can't keep up with all the new things that are happening and all the new things to try and there's so many even just like sub i don't know i don't know what to call them like sub genres of being a bitcoins right like it's like there's the privacy aspects there's the the people that are super into like lightning and payments and there's all of these different kind of paths to go down and and it's really hard to be on top of all of them but i mean at the

the day, you don't need to be because Bitcoin's going to be very different things to different people. And so, you know, whatever you need it for is, is maybe where you'll be the most informed. And, you know, like you're saying, Gigi, there's different tools for different types of people. And for the person that is in a place where they don't need to worry about, they don't need to worry about like necessarily a government kicking in their door or a currency devaluation and they just want like cheap payments, then there's there's a wallet for that. But, you know, if you're subverting a tyrannical regime, there's tools for that too. So there's a little bit of everything, I suppose.

Yeah, I think I think it's going to be interesting how this plays out because I think that's very much true what you just said that Bitcoin is different things to different people. And I think that's true for the internet as well, but we still have something approximating a global internet culture. At least we used to have in the last, I think that's true for the internet. Oh, I'm getting an echo. Was it was it me or someone else? But that was true in the last, I don't know, like 15, 20 years or so. I'm not sure if it will be true going forward.

I think it's like a size thing as well. But in Bitcoin, we definitely have a shared Bitcoin culture in some sense. and I'm not necessarily talking about, you know, like, I don't know, eating raw liver for breakfast or whatever, like whatever meme is currently in vogue, but there is a certain shilling point around, for example, the principle of proof of work, the principle of limited money supply, those kind of things. And this seeps into other areas of, you know, how you build things and how you think about

things and so on and so forth. And, you know, it will be interesting how this plays out the next like 10 years, 20 years because there is already, as you mentioned, a big split. Like there's a lot of people focused on mining. They have no idea, you know, how lighting works and they don't care and they don't need to care. And there is, like you said, you know, there's people receiving steps right now and they have no idea what Bitcoin even is. You know, they don't know that it's a fraction of a Bitcoin.

Like they don't know what the Satoshi is, basically. And this was already true with podcasting 2.0. That's the first time, I think, where we saw this for now. And now with Noster, it's, it's even more extreme. And so I think it will be, as always, you know, very interesting and exciting to, to watch this play out. But how this exactly develops. And if we have, if we, if we will continue to have a more or less global Bitcoin culture in some sense, like we have a internet culture, I would argue, is yet to be seen. I think.

Interesting. Yeah. There's no shortage of niches to cater to. And again, I think that's kind of when we're seeing success in that way where we're beginning to cater to those niches. The fact that we need to in the first place means that we've already enjoyed a degree of success. So, yeah, I mean, again, just to kind of sum up the topic here, and I'm just super grateful

to anybody that builds anything that I use because with that, out them, I, what would I be doing? So I appreciate all of you. And again, shout out to, in particular, Hugo and Parker for taking the time to always be receptive and built cool shit. So with that, I'm going to put a bow on that topic and we're going to do a rotation here. Of course, shout out to everybody in the chat. Thanks for being here and continue to drop those messages in. I saw NVK in there and I see and see Funk and everybody. So thanks for being here, guys. And we're going to keep it rolling. I'm going to do a rotation. I'm actually going to toss it down to Andre first. And I'm going to cue you up with the same question everybody's going to get.

Why are you bullish? Well, I'm bullish for my own experience, I guess, like the community. around the world are blowing up and it's it's amazing to see what what this little you know starts these little small events that just blow blossom into this huge communities that then almost run by itself and and what we're doing here is a good example but I but I've seen a graphic the other day that was really cool and was showing all the communities are the most well known because I believe there's a lot more but how many of them are showing up on every corner of the world and growing in numbers and in Bitcoin understanding and how that unfolds.

It's so bullish. It's amazing. And there's little, little things that you can do. And now it's an invite to wall. the people that may be listening. I one year and a half before this I thought I was the only Bitcoin here in Madara but that now I'm surrounded by a lot of people and amazing things are happening here so you can do it as well wherever you are. I love that. I mean it's it's so how give me a little detail like how did you begin reaching out because I think this is

an important thing to touch on in because there's plenty of people like yourself a year and a half ago thinking i'm the only bitcoin or around what was what you're sitting there you're thinking that what was the next step that set you on the trajectory to where you are now well i think my case was a bit special i guess because um since the beginning that it involved basically with the it's before but the main thing was when we were able to convince the president of Madera to go to Miami last year but that was only possible because I was already deeping you know I have several businesses in Madera and I was already thinking on how to penetrate the Bitcoin world of course after being infected right

not only through the companies that I had that were you know doing the simple things as accepting Bitcoin for the services but I wanted to go about bit more deep into the space. And I decided to do a Bitcoin publishing company, so to translate the best books that were out there to Portuguese, but because there was nothing on the Portuguese bookstores. And because I did that, I already had contact with some key people like Daniel Prince and Jeff Booth and others that when the opportunity arose of having

that conversation with the president that was a fluke by accident that it just happened. You know, I had their support to, you know, really make it happen and bring the guy over and then it was just a crazy chain of events. Very crazy. That week in Miami is still surreal in my head. And you know, we got back and I started building. We were talking about software buildings, but there's many other. building that you can do not only coding right and i think as the space evolves there will be

even more space for other kinds of developments and building and you know i don't know i i have to i i can't trust i must verify uh in the in the chat uh see fun she said not only is there a ton of bitcoins and madeira uh there's apparently many many many attractive women, meaning that we're all getting girlfriends. So, Andre, is the prophecy real? I would say Portuguese women are beautiful in general, yeah. So, yeah. Awesome. All right.

I'm, I'm kidding. I'm married, but myself, my wife can look and we'll high five. I'd love to add something to that because what Andre said, I think everyone kind of knows or many, many bitcoins know, it's like I'm the only bitcoins, you know, in my area, or even in my country and so on and so forth. And I was in a similar situation like six short years ago. And I basically was very jealous about all of you Canadians and Americans, because, you know, you obviously had a Bitcoin scene going and very knowledgeable and motivated people. And yeah, one day I was like, fuck it. We have to do it ourselves. And that's how the

whole Enozvente project started, which kickstarted a large Bitcoin-only community in the German-speaking world. And a little later, we realized kind of that there is actually a way to do this. And that's how 21 world came to be. So if anyone is interested in kick-starting a Bitcoin-only community, 21.world might be useful. Because I really think that we are still in a Bitcoin adoption phase where this is very much the case, where a lot of people feel very much alone, they don't know kind of, you know, what to do, and they don't know where to start and so on. And what Andre said is exactly spot on. Like, you just have to start somewhere.

You have to put in the work, and there's always consistency is key. And so what we did is we started a podcast, which is very, very easy to do, I would say. Like if you do it, audio-only, low effort, you know, like if you're already plugged into Bitcoin just talking about the news and how it might relate to your area or your country or whatever in your local language. That's the important part. Like stick. We don't need another English podcast.

Stick to the area you actually want to focus on and use your local language exclusively and talk to local people exclusively. And we did this basically, you know, like for a year or so when things started suddenly happening because you always, you know, the grind is real. So you don't expect overnight success. But this actually works. And we were able to export this concept and replicate it in other areas and in other countries. And everything else happens because of the other people you will attract.

So if you send out a strong signal and tell the world, you're here, and this is what we are about. And this is our values. And this is what we want to see. And this is what we want to build. You will attract exactly the right people. And I think that's what's currently happening also in the, you know, like basically meat space citadals for lack of a better word. Because, I mean, if you, a lot of Bitcoiners currently, I think they are playing the jurisdictional arbitrage game. And they want to, if they are mobile enough and if they are in a situation in their life where they actually can move somewhere,

they want to find a spot that's that treats them and their Bitcoin well. And I think we will continue to see these kind of communities sprouting up. And, you know, like the obvious go-to examples, I think are well known in the Bitcoin community. There's, you know, it's the Bitcoin beaches of the world, the Bitcoin jungles of the world, the Bitcoin lakes of the world and so on. And I mean, I think Francis would say a similar thing, you know, like two and a half years ago, there was no Bitcoin jungle. And now you can actually live on the Bitcoin standard there. So you can spend only Bitcoin, live only on Bitcoin and get everything you need in this area,

in the Bitcoin jungle in Costa Rica, if you want to. And I think that's awesome. And it's all grassroots. It was all bottom up. It was all community dream. And I think, yeah, I guess one more reason, one more reason to be bullish because I see this happening all over the world. Yeah. Pablo, what are you thinking? Yeah, to me, I mean, what Shishu was pointing at with the regards to being able to spend the Bitcoin and all that stuff is, it's fantastic. And I mean, here in my date, I'm spending Bitcoin literally multiple times every single day to vary degrees of slowness. Not everyone has, you know, a tour node running in a shoe box somewhere. But actually, it's fantastic.

I'm usually paying either with mutinies. Mutinies is the one that I'm using probably 50% of the time, and then I have my own note here at home, like you said, running over tour only. And payments typically take anywhere between 30 seconds to 120 seconds, which is always very painful. And the people at the shops always look like very impressed that, that it's working.

Holy shit. This is such a experience. But regardless of that, there's something to be said to the fact that when you find other Bitcoiners you can hang out with on a day-to-day basis,

it transcends Bitcoin because Bitcoin transcends a lot of things and it's a value alignment. And I first experienced this when I left I was living in Spain during the lockdowns, and I moved to Costa Rica because Spain went like really hard with the lockdowns. And I made my first bitconer. Like I've never seen a bitconer in real life until I moved to Costa Rica.

And then I started hanging out with all these bitconers that were just fuck this place. Most of them were Canadians. They were all going to Costa Rica. And it went so far beyond Bitcoin. It's seeing the world from a, from the same light. from the same point of view and agreeing in a bunch of different things, that level of value alignment, immediate value alignment, it's so, so absolutely amazing.

And yeah, to me, that sense of community is the thing that gives me the most value of being around a place where there is some kind of Bitcoin standard happening. Yeah, yeah, it's, and again, to, I guess the entire theme, of this topic is, you know, you can't expect other people to do it for you. You've got to go out and you've got to, if it doesn't exist, if not you, then who, right? So you've got to go and you've got to do it yourself. And I think it's easy to get into, and I'm, I'm guilty of it, you know, up until very recently. I was just waiting for somebody to start something here where I am. And, you know, like, oh, where's the, we're all the Bitcoin merchants. Where are the people that are reading like a circular economy. Where are the people that are using Bitcoin? And the funny thing is, the Bitcoiners, it's to a point where we exist. Like, there's a good number of Bitcoiners and people that are interested in it.

It's just that a lot of us haven't taken action, just even insofar as being like, I offer a good or service. And I would be willing to accept Bitcoin for that. And then making that known. And just that, I think people need that. little push to get them to take that step. And so like, you know, I've been, you know, I'm coming up here in about eight days. I'm doing a similar thing where I just kind of, you know, nobody else was doing it. And it dawned on me that maybe I should do it. So we've got, we've got, I'm doing

something called the, well, we're calling it the sat or day market. And, and so it's on Saturday. and everybody accepts sets at this market. And so we've got all these different, we've got farmers, we've got artists, we've got barbers, we've got even like hypnotists. We've got literally like pretty much every eclectic thing that you could imagine. We've got, but we've also got like tradesmen,

like plumbers and people that do construction and people that do flooring and kind of like the whole gamut. Right now we've got about 30 merchants that are signed up for this market that I just decided to do two weeks ago. And so it's all coming together really quickly. I'm sure mistakes will be made and we'll learn from them. But we're looking to do it hopefully quarterly at this point. And so, you know, we get our dry run coming up this next weekend in eight days. And there's been some awesome people that are,

are coming and I can't wait. And there's Dave in the chat. The hypnotic is going to leave with everyone's Bitcoin. I think so. I think that's the game. Yeah. But yeah, I mean,

it's going to be a lot of fun. I'm excited for it. And I encourage other people to bootstrap similar initiatives. I think my hope here is in doing it to create a little bit of a blueprint so that others that maybe aren't sure where to start. They can at least have like a few lessons that. we learned in like to-do's and not to-dos and then just kind of get going with something. But either way, Andre, you're right.

Like you've got to take action. You've got to do something with it, right? Otherwise it stands out. Absolutely. And, you know, Pablo is mentioning that now we can, you know, go out and use Bitcoin almost every day or every day around Fussela, the main city, especially. And, you know, we, in the beginning, when the community was not, that big, I was not pushing a lot for the merchant part of it because I didn't want, you know, people not having customers, you know, paying in Bitcoin for a while. And so I was pushing other stuff before. But now because of the conference and the community growing, we started pushing it and we have this guy Charlie now going around for Zhao. And man, same thing. We think we are the only, we are the only, we, we are.

once, but the acceptance has been completely extraordinary. We are like in a bull market of merchants and merchants accepting Bitcoin in Madara because of Charlie and everywhere it goes, people, people say yes. It's been amazing. And if you go on this rhythm, we'll have 300 by the by the conference. Damn, that's that's awesome. And I think the unique thing now compared to years ago because like the there's a push in 2014, 2015 of like, let's get every retailer to accept it. And I think some of that was one early, but also a little misguided because the way that people were accepting it, it was like, let's get Microsoft to accept Bitcoin. And Microsoft didn't care to accept Bitcoin. It was like a marketing stick. And

then they were dumping it for Fiat. And so, like, I think now it's a little bit different because you've got a ground swallow of people that just want the Bitcoin, like myself included, where I'm like, I'm going to accept Bitcoin because I want that compared to dollars. And I think, yeah, there's a slightly different dynamic now. So I think it'll be, you know, you'll still get a little bit of that. But I think you're going to be more successful in the long run. You'll have more merchants that just continue instead of just dropping.

know because i mean this this adoption is happening during a bear bear market um you know bull runs are exciting but it also leads to knee jerk oh yeah i'm gonna do this and then and then never coming back to it again type things so yeah is this time different i don't know well this this was another surprise actually uh charlie has the correct number but it's something like 87% of the merchants that are now accepting Bitcoin in Madana are keeping the sets. Nice. So that was way above what I thought because I thought a lot of them were just, you know, converting to yours because, you know, also because of accounting and compliance and all that shit. But they're keeping the set. So it's really good to see.

That's awesome. I will now refer to compliance as all that shit from that. Awesome. I love it. All right. Well, cool. Let's put a ball on that topic and give ourselves another rotation. Again, everybody in the chat. Thank you for being here. Make sure you do smash that like button just below the screen that helps a ton. Give this a share if you haven't already. And I'm going to jump to Pablo next and I'm going to cue you up with the same question. And why are you bullish, man? Yeah, it's a recent one. But this week, we got a few of the politicians, the main politicians making me bullish on Bitcoin because they hate it. With Pocahontas saying that North Korea is funding their nuclear war development

and saying that we need to stop Bitcoin and the other whatever Shemak, Shemis, something. Yeah, the guy from Shepi Morgan saying that if he was the government, he would stop Bitcoin, like press the third. off button. We're guarding that, right? Control all the deal. Yeah, and I think Bitcoin thrives when all the politicians want to kill it, especially in a bull run.

I mean, clearly the bull run is here. And the politicians hating on it. It's fantastic because it shows the new people that they heard about Bitcoin. A few, maybe two or three weeks ago, I met a Russian at the playground. and we were, the Bitcoin topic came up.

And he was like, oh, Bitcoin, that thing is still alive. He was impressed that it was still alive. Being Russian, he should probably get it. But the fact that people see that this thing is still alive and coming back and the politicians, and people, very powerful politicians like Pocahontas and these people, they attack it up front, we need to stop it and they can't.

that combination is so good and so powerful. I grew up in Argentina and from Argentina, and every time the government would crack down on dollars, which was often, I'm very hard, the dollar demand would just skyrocket. Every single time they would go to what we call the Quevas, which is where you buy the black market dollar, the blue dollar is called.

They would go in and they do like a whole show of sending the cops and just storming the place and arresting everybody involved. And they are just doing that now. Every time they do that, dollar demand goes up. Obviously, it goes up. And the same thing is the same thing happens with Bitcoin. So every time they attack it, I'm like, yes, please keep going, keep going. and keep saying how it's killing the whales and how doing something.

Because it shows people that might have thought, this is taking the power away from the government, is taking the money printers, even the people that would be ideologically aligned and would get it. The fact that someone that like Elizabeth Warren is going after it and they can't do anything against it, it's proof. It's more and more and more and more proof.

So, yeah, when I saw that, I was like, okay, this is my topic. This is why I'm bullish. I mean, anything that makes Elizabeth Warren mad is okay with me. I mean, how ironic, though, is it that she parades out all these bankers to give their reasons why Bitcoin is only for bad people? Like what greater signal to the general public that Bitcoin is probably for them than getting these elitist bankers out to say, oh, Bitcoin's horrible. You don't want Bitcoin. We should shut it down. Jamie Diamond of all people who has like run money for some of the biggest criminals on the planet. And he's out there saying that Bitcoin's for criminals. I mean, the irony is...

There was a lot of projection going on there. It's like, you know, don't use it. It's for money laundering. It's for, you know, paying your ships full of cocaine that you're driving across the Atlantic. I don't know it's just the things he listed are basically all things he did personally it's it's really funny yeah this is this is the kind of money that would only bank geoffrey epstein for example yeah let like pier said right it's uh geoffrey abstein used bank accounts not bitcoin yeah yeah exactly it it also gets me too that you know she warn based a lot of this on on on that Wall Street Journal article, which has since like obviously been debunked, which is funny because it was debunked by the very chain analysis company that they pulled the information

from and they came back and said like, actually that's entirely not accurate. You can't you can't really say that based on the information we presented. And when Bitcoiners are going to bat for a chain analysis company as a hero in the situation, I know you've got a fucking problem. Yeah, it's unreal. I don't know. Andre, what are your thoughts around good old Ms. Warren? Well, I don't follow that much.

Well, except for Twitter, of course, and all the sheet posting, I guess. But I don't follow that much the US politics. Although there are so many Americans on Twitter that you end up seeing, all those stupid clips. But here in Europe, and I won't say Portugal, because I guess the bureaucracy and the bullshitness comes from Brussels. And right now, most, at least most, I won't say all, but most national governments are puppets to the bureaucrats of Brussels. It's exactly the same thing. And you have now, you know many many good European bitcoinsers trying to fight you know soon to be presented

laws and regulations and you know based in vaporware and complete falseness so I guess I guess it's everywhere and either they're ignorant slash very corrupt or a great mixture of both But it's in the end, as Pavel was saying, it only makes Bitcoin more resilient. And, you know, it was always a long-term plan. So make them come at us come at will. Like, I know that Madeira is a bit of an autonomous zone. So like in terms of how much of a pain in the ass, the EU can make things for you. Yeah, it's still the same thing.

We are under the U umbrella. It's a semi-autonomous region, but the semi-part is very important. And of course, on that semi-part is all the important stuff, like tax and regulations and bullshit. Yeah. So, I don't know. We are autonomous for things that they don't mind. We control.

The things they do mind go on the exceptions. So. Yeah. But, you know, and we had that. criticism a lot in the beginning you know so why are you doing that you know in madada you're under a you it's a failed project and i we're saying we're doing this despite of government despite of brussels we we have to we have to do it anyway what's the other option is not doing anything that doesn't that will not work for sure yeah the trick is to do it just like pablo does it

put your node into a shoebox or you're just fully autonomous by default you're not so semi-autonomous, you're fully autonomous. I need to invest in some more shoeboxes, I think. Make a better independent again. Let's go, Gigi. We're going to build a wall. There's a real seat. I mean, part of it, too, is to a degree, like,

if you have a local community and you all know each other, It's a lot harder to control just individual relationships that you've forged with the people, right? Like, it's a lot harder to hone in and say, like, well, I know the guy where I get my beef. I know my barber. I know. And so, like, when, you know, a push came to shove in a nightmare scenario, it's, oh, you're just, you're not allowed to have Bitcoin anymore. You're not allowed to use it. you can't but I mean when it comes down to it in a situation like that if if you have a lot of people

that understand that clearly you don't want dollars or euros or whatever and and you have people that were previously accepting peer to peer bitcoin payments that that becomes a lot more difficult to stamp out than oh I was holding bitcoin on an exchange as a speculation and now it was taken away for me right yeah and I also think like I mean, first of all, all laws make only sense if they can enforce, can be enforced in a meaningful way. So passing a law that says thinking about the pink elephant is illegal now. It doesn't make a lot of sense. And a lot of flaws when it comes to the possession of Bitcoin are in this realm because it's like 12 words in your head are now illegal.

So and it's more and more people understand these kind of things. There's also, you know, Bitcoiners explaining these things to legislators and so on, not saying that I'm very bullish on that, but still, it's, it's about enforceability. And it's also about, like you said, you know, like if you, if you have an educated population that is empowered by using open source tools and open source software and using these things right, then it's going to be very, very hard to enforce these things and undo this trend. And I think that's the trend that we are currently seeing. And I think everyone in the Bitcoin space knows this by now that a lot of human rights activists and a lot of people that are, you know, forced, for lack of a better word, to use Bitcoin because they can't use anything else.

But even the current status quo legislators and politicians agree that those are good people doing good things. It's very, very kind of hard to pass loss that will basically cut off those people from the only monetary tool, financial tool that works for them in the European Union or wherever. I'm not saying that it's not going to happen. I'm not very bullish on the European Union. So I can see proof of work ban coming or something. something like you need a license to use proof of work and so on. But still, like it's, in theory, you know, like you can do proof of work by hand, locking yourself into the toilet with a couple of dice and so on.

So it's all, it's, it's, it's all very tricky passing these kind of laws. And I think on a long enough time scale, this won't fly. But of course, it would be better if we can win this. battle just like the battle around cryptography was at least this one battle around RSA was one when at the back end other people you know printed this t-shirt where it's basically this t-shirt is classified as ammunition because all strong encryption was classified as ammunition and you were not allowed to import it or export it or whatever and just going through an airport with this t-shirt basically made you public enemy number one and i think that's that's also a strategy that's still very

very much underutilized. You know, like in the Bitcoin world, I would love to see more of those kind of, more of this kind of activism basically where it's, you know, just advertise you have 12 words in your head and you're holding Bitcoin and does this make you a criminal? I always come back to these kind of fundamentals because most people still don't understand. Most people don't understand what it means to have a digital bear asset, what it means to have information that truly is worth something.

Yeah. They still default back to the model that we all use in our speech, that there is a wallet and there are coins and the coins are somewhere wherein some wallet and you can take them away and so on. That's not how Bitcoin works. It's really very different. And the actual value is in the actual information. And it's very hard to say also where Bitcoin really is, you know, like where is the physical

Bitcoin and that's why things like the travel rule and so on don't make a lot of sense in the Bitcoin world. If you truly have 12 words in your head and you cross your border, did you bring Bitcoin with you? Was this a Bitcoin transaction across borders and those kind of things? You know, like it's very hard to answer those things. More and more people are realizing this. That would be a very interesting. I'm picturing somebody, you know, taking a plane, going to X number of countries around the world with, again, with a memorized 12-word phrase.

and then just having a video of them reconstituting that wallet in each jurisdiction. And then the wallet has more than whatever the amount. The limit is really low and getting lower. So someone just go ahead and do it. Yeah. Like how compelling would that be to be like, here's a video of this individual. They memorized 12 words. And then they went to, you know, 80 countries or whatever.

and in every single country they downloaded an app and then put in the 12 words and they had full access to like $20,000. If you really want to drive to point home, you know, cash it out and buy Bitcoin again. Yeah. Go to the next country. We have the perfect guy for that.

Paco Dela India, just make him run again all over the world. Yeah, no, it's, it's, I think you're right. They can make it a huge pain in the ass in the short term, but I think it will become pretty evident what this thing really is given enough time. But for me, it's like, you know, on some days, I'm of two minds when it comes to this topic. Most days I'm kind of like a legislation accelerationalist. It's like just just be blunt about it, make it illegal. Yeah. Just tell everyone 12 words in your head, you're a criminal.

trying to find random numbers at home on a USB stick or whatever, you're a criminal. It's just like, you know, home mining is illegal. And so on, just be upfront about it. Stop with the, you know, sneaky bullshit that you're trying to pull with language like unhosted wallets and those kind of things. And so I think if they would be upfront about it, it would also accelerate, you know, running stealthy notes. Like it would accelerate. Like if you make running notes in Germany, for example, illegal.

In Germany, I think there's still the highest density of Bitcoin nodes per capita. And if clear net notes would be like clear net notes are easily identifiable. And if it would, if some legislation would make running that illegal, I think the hacker community in Germany would find ways to more easily and more stealthily run notes. And I hope we would say, I hope we would see the same development. in the mining world and so on and so forth. Because what is legal and what is illegal and what is moral and what is immoral are two very different things.

And so I think people have a way of figuring these things out. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. All right. Well, gentlemen, let's put a bow on this topic as well. And we're going to round the corner.

And Gigi, I know you got a little rant out there, but I'm going to keep it with you here. How much time do we have left? Well, I mean, it's only five in the evening for me. So, you know, if you want to take a run at seeing the sunrise, then let's go for it. Yeah, there's so many reasons to be bullish. Yeah. It's it's ridiculous. So we already had, you know, we already touched on some of them.

Like, you know, all the communities that are popping up, circle economies that are popping up. I would say I'm most bullish on the fundamentals in general. And we touched on some of those as well. And I always kind of come back to the fundamentals. And it also, it won't matter what happens in the next, you know, bull cycle or in the next new cycle or whatever. Bitcoin will just truck on and every 10 minutes, a new block will come in. And if you just look to me, the most impressive chart in Bitcoin is the average block time

chart you had a you had a you know you had wild block times in the very beginning and and ever since bitcoin got up and running it's like a flat line of basically 10 minutes you know and so every 10 minutes a new block comes in and that's that's that's what's happening all the time and that's what the world still you know will have to come to grips with all politicians and all the people that we mentioned included and i'm i'm just so bullish that bitcoin works and that we kind of barely even have scratch the surface of what this thing is going to do and what will be possible also in the future. I'm surprised that we didn't really touch on Nostra or talk about Nostar, you know, with Pablo on the panel. He probably needs a break, you know, like single-handedly responsible for like 50% of the things that are happening in the Noste well.

But it's like you don't know what kind of crazy Brazilian is currently sitting on a business. street with his laptop and coding up the new thing. You know, you don't know. And like three years ago or so, there was Fia Jeff. And he came up with the idea of Noster and he actually implemented. And it turns out it actually works. Like, and it works because of its fundamentals. It works because it is, it has fundamentally the right building blocks. It has fundamentally the right architecture. Yes, it's not perfect. Also Bitcoin is not perfect. The monetary policy of Bitcoin is perfect. But Bitcoin itself, you know, is far from perfect. I think every everyone who has been around for a long of time knows this and also it doesn't have to be perfect to be like a hundred X improvement

to what we have and I think that's that's the right lens of of looking at it like Bitcoin is easily 100x improvement to gold Bitcoin is also easily 100x improvement to Fiat and that's what people haven't realized it. People haven't realized the fundamentals yet and I'm not even only talking about you know politicians and legislators and so on I'm talking about everyday people also They don't really have to realize it. They will figure it out with A-B tests. But I think we need to make sure that we protect these fundamentals and cherish these fundamentals and also help others to understand these fundamentals.

And keep an eye on those fundamentals. Because if we, there are certain things that you cannot abstract the way. Like if you want to use Bitcoin in a self-serving way, there are certain things you need to do. You need to take care of. And we also need to make sure that we have a good. good understanding that a certain percentage of the user population needs to use Bitcoin in a self-servant way. Otherwise, Bitcoin is completely pointless. Like, if there is only, like, one coin base running one node, holding everyone's custodial Bitcoin. Bitcoin has basically failed. Bitcoin

is completely useless and meaningless. And the same is true for, you know, Nasser and other things and so on and so forth. But I'm very bullish because of fundamentals. And the fundamentals are right. And Bitcoin works. And Bitcoin keeps working. And that's kind of the root of it all and the reason why all the other things that we mentioned are springing up. Like, yeah, well, all those communities, the circle economies, the politicians trying to ban it and so on and so forth. And so in general, I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm like, I still cherish Hasma Cook a lot. And he's been, he used to write a lot about Bitcoin mining in the early days around like 24. 2014, 2015, I think, and did a lot of analysis there and had a lot of insights very early on.

And one of the insights that I really liked is, he was, I think, one of the first people that realized that Bitcoin is a natural process, so speak. So he used the shorthand phrase that Bitcoin is nature. And that's another way of saying that Bitcoin is just built on very solid fundamentalists. And some people, you know, like Michael Saylor say that Bitcoin is monetary energy and those kind of things. But it all comes down to, there is no way to do. cheat nature, there is no way to cheat Bitcoin. And Bitcoin builds on the natural order of things. And Bitcoin plugs into physics in a way that a natural system emerges. So are you going to be bearish on this? Are you going to be bearish on nature? Seriously? It's like, I'm, I'm bullish on the

fundamentals and I'm bullish on Bitcoin. I'm bullish on nature. I like that. It's, Bitcoin is almost, it's an, it's an admission of, of human nature. Right? It's, Fiat is is, pretending that there are people among us that,

that can avoid human nature and avoid the temptation to debase currency and censor and do all of these things and want to seize control, whereas Bitcoin is more of a admission that, you know,

with the right incentive structure, somebody will try to, exploit some of those things. And so we need a system that that, that, um, is resilient against that human nature that we all have. Yeah, exactly. It, it, it, it, it, it realizes that human nature is very flawed. And a lot of people also, you know, Bitcoin transforms greed into freedom, which is also, which is also a very profound insight. But, um, what's, what's still most people don't realize is that Bitcoin basically moves the problem of monetary policy into the natural realm, away from the political and human realm.

So just I think Safedin mentioned this also a long time ago. It's just like it doesn't matter what your opinion is. Bitcoin is like, you know, the tide coming in and down and, you know, the sun rising in the morning. Like you, even though it is, it is, Bitcoin is a human-made construct and humans keep it running and so on, your human opinion and also like the mob opinion or whatever. of Bitcoin, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The next block will come in in the next 10 minutes, and you're not going to change the monetary supply of Bitcoin. It doesn't matter what you do. And so it's it basically outsources the problem of monetary policy to nature, just like gold did, you know, but as everyone should know, gold is a massive shit coin because you can't teleport it.

It's like, what kind of money are you using if you can't teleport it? What kind of money are you using if you can start in your head? So the Bitcoin can be perfectly hidden. Bitcoin can be teleported with the speed of light. And that's what sets it apart from gold massively. Also, gold is inflating with like, you know, almost 2% per year. So massive inflationary shit coin. But anyway, like the gold box will soon find out and come around. I love it.

Pablo, do you want to jump in here, tag on to that? Yeah, it's hard to follow Gigi. He outlined it so well. But yeah, I mean, when you, to me, the fundamentals, the way Chishu was phrasing it with regards to Bitcoin being nature, that resonates so much because it takes away so many, like there is no power on, on, like, it's non-hierarchical, right? And I see so many tools and technologies now that are harnessing that same concept of non-hyarchy. and since Gigi brought it up, I think Nostr is another huge outlook of this same, in a completely different structure,

but the same type of non-hierarchical data flows. That I think both what has been happening in Bitcoin in the past couple of years with regards to miniscript and some kind of covenant and this kind of thing, it allows us to build tools that are similar to the tools that Fiat has, but respecting the natural order of Bitcoin, which I think it's super important, because Fiat did introduce a bunch of new futures that previous monies did not have. It's just Fiat builds them in a synthetic way. It's sort of like,

because Fiat itself is a lie, the tools that have been built on top of Fiat are also a lie. And I think we have some tools that are built on on on on on Bitcoin that are also like for example chain alices I think it makes absolute no sense if you look at how it actually works you it's it's absolute voodoo it's it's completely logical but it's it's all narrative it's like shitcoins in in that sense is it's narrative based there are no fundamental behind it but but I think we we now have tools that give us future parity with Fiat in some ways and gives us much, much stronger features that Fiat.

When I say Fiat, I don't only mean money. I mean any type of these hierarchical systems that provide a hierarchy power to someone that has not earned that power over people that have not given that power. So that would include like the Facebook and and the Google's and this type of companies that have extremely profited from the Fiat system itself. So I think we are in incredibly good position to absolutely replace them and just make them obsolete, completely obsolete. Well, it's interesting, again, as you're talking about Noster and the quality, of what it enables, really like between Bitcoin and Nostra, the, the whole crux of it is that information wants to be free.

Information wants to flow freely. And yourself and others, you're spending all of this time to ensure that information can just simply freely flow. Because, I mean, money is just us assigning our values, right? Like we poured our blood, sweat, and tears into, you know, being remunerated for something. And then we're basically just assigning value to things and exchanging, you know, our time for, for, you know, goods and services. But it's a, it's a communication layer, right? And so we've got these two things now, Bitcoin and Noster, that that have literally been built with the explicit intent of sub.

subverting the control of people that want to prevent information from being free. They want to prevent you from being able to say, I value this. I would like to assign my value here. They want to put up barriers between those things. I want to be able to say something on the internet and I would like it not to be, I would like people to not be prevented from seeing the thing that I would like to say. And people want to put barriers there as well. And so again, it harkens back.

to the whole human nature. The people that gain control can't help but use that control to prevent others from being free. And so thus we need the tools that are being built. Yeah. And I think we also, sorry, I just wanted to add one comment to the topic at hand. Like the problem that Twitter tries to solve that now Elon Musk tries to solve is literally an impossible problem you cannot police the speech of the whole world in a meaningful way like if you if you are if you have the power to censor and say what is okay and what is not it's it's an impossible problem like he he's in the process of of finding this out and i think i think historically like there is a reason why the western world holds free speech in the in such high regard and there's a reason why you know like also historically

religiously the logos is sacred. I think we found this out like many times over, like over the thousands of years that we tried to build up civilizations and and failed. And so I think we're at a very pivotal point in human history right now where we have a global society. We have global communications systems. We have, you know, instant exchange of ideas and information at the speed of light, which is also, of course, a very very, chaotic state to be in and of course people are afraid and people that are sitting at these control points they want to make use of their power and they also have to make use of their power like oftentimes it's it's not a choice you know you have people with even longer sticks coming and knocking at your door and you are forced to you know censor this type of speech in Iran

censor this type of speech in you know wherever Canada like you can't honk It's illegal now. I mean, that's literally violence, you know. Yes, there you go. And so I think that's very important to understand that if you, very similar to the problem of the money printer and the problem of monetary policy, if you can print money, you will print money, period. It's like, I don't care who you are. I don't, I don't care how highly you think of yourself. Like if your four-year-old daughter has bone marrow cancer and you have a money print in the basement,

are you not going to print money? Like stop kidding yourself. If you can print money, you're going to print money. And so you will find an excuse. You will find you and once you, you know, like once you know how this works, you will, of course, that's what's currently happening in the world. You will find like you will manufacture the crisis. You will manufacture the excuses to use this tool and so on.

And I think we see this also in the realm of free speech. We see this in the realm of the communication platforms that we use. Like if you can stop people from using it, if you can censor, if you can do certain things, you will do these things or you will be forced to do these things by people with longer sticks than you. And so Matt often says that, you know, like all fiat currencies are going to zero in Bitcoin terms, which is true. And again, coming back to fundamentals, the reason why most bullish, this is fundamentally true. fiat currencies are categorically different than bitcoin are categorically different than all natural

monies and so all fiat currencies will go to zero on a long enough time scale in bitcoin terms in purchasing power terms and i would add to that that all closed platforms will go to zero in user terms because all companies that run them will eventually run out of money that's just the way the what it works. That's just like Google won't be around forever. Facebook won't be around forever. No company will be around forever. But free and open protocols will be around forever. They have the chance of being around forever. That's why like languages, like languages. And Bitcoin is very much like a language. And all protocols are very much like languages. And so as long as some people still care about them, they are still alive. They're very, very hard to kill. And so I guess coming back to

to my, you know, reason to be bullish, the fundamentals. I think what Bitcoin also got right and what Noster also got right is the complete openness and building out in the open, building open protocols and building it using open source software. And I'm so bullish on all of that. Like you guys have no idea. We see so much stuff happening on this front. There are so many people coming into this ecosystem, building awesome stuff. and we're just getting started.

So we're again, like I said before, you don't know what kind of things will come up in the next one, two, three, four, five years. Like some 14 year old kids is just, you know, like coming out of the script kitty face and learning how to call properly, basically. And we have all these tools now and we have all this information and we have all this free and open source software software that anyone can build up on and there is like there's no reason not to be bullish is basically what

i'm trying to say yeah i love it andre i want your thoughts as well here well this is very hard to come on top of this but i don't think i'll even try but just just sort of a joke you know i remember jiji was talking about the fundamentals and the only thing on my head was vitilic saying they could improve on the physics of nature by not being attached to it. So that's not true. We can improve, G.D. We can be better than nature, you know. Why we attach to proof of work and energy and all the laws of physics?

Why would you need a system that you need to know how it's going to function in order to base decisions on it? There's actually some poetic justice in all of that because, you know, as much as i used to hate shit coins i kind of came to cherish them because they provide a lot of you know like they're a big they're a big of they're a big source of entertainment as well that's true but also they provide they provide a kind of you know regulatory shithield in some sense and they also attract all the scammers and uh weird people uh like flies so um there's something to be said about that but it's the poetic just the

justice I was referring to is like if you actually think that if you actually think that you can improve nature by an artificial human-made thing like you're you're holier than thou and you know better than nature how the world works and you're going to build a system that's superior to to nature then like there's a lot of people that think this way and they're also sitting in you know the central banks of the world and so on and these people usually will get it less and that's the poetic justice so that's that's that's how i think about it yeah that's great yeah um all right gentlemen i i think uh this is the part in the show where i start to round out um but i always like to kind of round things out in a certain way and and what i like to do is is uh just go to each person really

quickly and just allow them to get out. Any final thoughts, just summarizing, you know, the thoughts on the conversation, so and so forth. But also, another important thing would be recommendations. And when I say recommendations, and hopefully Pablo's not completely disappeared. Oh, I still see him. There is. But never what I decided to connect the NSA wanting to change camera. So, yeah, final thoughts, but also recommendations. And when I say recommendations, what I mean is it can come in any form, but basically, stuff that you think that people watching would gain something from. So a recommendation, maybe it's a book, maybe it's a podcast, maybe it's a video that you saw,

maybe it is an app to try or a device to try, or maybe it's just a piece of life advice that you found helpful and that has helped you along the way. So I'll kind of get us started and then and then I'll pass a demo line really quick here. So in terms of final thoughts, I've been kind of on the same kick for a while, but just in general from this conversation, if you want to see something happen, then take the initiative and start doing it yourself or reach out to your local community and try to find people that can help you. you execute on that vision. Because if you sit around waiting for other people to do it, it'll never get done. And so, yeah, take your skill set, contribute how you can, and be the change, again, that you'd like to see in the world.

In terms of recommendations, I'm going to, and I'm going to keep doing this for the next eight days here, but my recommendation is please do go and amplify, even if you're you're not in Canada or in Calgary, if you can amplify our little market that we've got going here coming up, it would be hugely helpful. This is it. This is the Saturday market. And we've got it's on Orange Pill app. It's on meetup.com. There's a Facebook page for it. There's a whole bunch of it's kind of flitting around everywhere. I've posted it to Nostra, of course. I've posted it on Twitter. It's kind of everywhere.

It's pinned on Twitter. So anyways, what I'm getting at is it's kind of everywhere. If you can share it, if you can amplify it, and you can help us make it a success. That would be huge. And we hope to maybe learn some stuff and relay that information to others that are looking to do the same and maybe even help in the process. And if you are, if you are from Calgary, then please reach out. Of course, we want people to just show up and have fun, but if you want to be a merchant, we still have a little bit of space.

We have a few spots left that you can fill in. And you can just shoot me an email, contact at bTCsessions.ca is probably the best one. Contact at btc sessions.com. And, yeah, December 16th in Calgary, come to the Saturdays market. Anyway, so that's kind of my final thoughts and my recommendation. I'll toss it to Andre. And yeah, any final thoughts that you may have? any recommendation you may have. Go ahead.

Well, I will reinforce yours again because it's really true. You need to put yourself in front of your, put your, I'll do what Americans say, put your money where your mouth is and just go ahead with stuff. And it's really, really important. You know, I know is guaranteed, but it changes a lot. You have a lot more power in you than you think to change things. So that's really important. And if I didn't have done that, nothing of, I'd happen here in Madero so far, which is, and it's been so good so far.

In terms of recommendations, actually, I want to recommend a book that is not Bitcoin related. It's called Beyond Democracy. It's actually the latest book that we got at Maser Books to translate the port. Portuguese and I freaking loved it. It's a very short, concise, you know, explanation on why democracy doesn't work. And it's really, really good. Knoot told me, I recommended it to Knoot. He read it. I think he's going to invite the authors to the podcast actually. And he said, I don't know, because I didn't read that one, that it's almost like a short, concise summary of the God that failed. But well, it's a really good book and I recommend it a lot. Awesome. Awesome. And you know what? I'm going to shove in another recommendation because you were too humble to do it yourself. But everybody should probably come to Bitcoin Atlantis. Oh yeah, of course. By the way, you know.

It's probably a good thing to check out. But holy crap, it looks it looks stunning there and And it looks like you are putting in the work here. The list of people that are coming down to be a part of it is astounding. Some familiar faces in there. But it's a lot more than that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We have over 120 people confirmed already.

Damn. That's super awesome. And I'm super excited to be a part of it as well. I'm going to be running a kind of an education station throughout it and I'm going to be part of the Bitcoin 101. There's going to be a whole bunch of stuff there and there's some amazing educators that are going to be there. So hopefully the locals get fully orange-pilled being present and then the people coming in from all over the globe. I mean, there's going to be no shortage of incredible things to see and be a part of in an incredibly unique. location. So anyways, Bitcoin Atlantis.com. I think I have a code. Andre, I got to learn it.

Whatever it is. It's either sessions or BTC sessions, something like that. It'll probably give you a code. I can find it. Go ahead and I'll find it. It's all good. I mean, as I yeah, as long as if people want to come, they come because it's there. And it's going to be an absolute blast. And I'm very excited. It's going to be my first traveling of the year next year. I've been traveling around a lot, and I'm now on a little hiatus until Madeira. So I'm looking forward to that one. I'm going to toss it down the line, though.

I'll give it to Pablo, and I'll ask any final thoughts and recommendations you have. Yeah, final thoughts and recommendations. I think we are in a strange moment for us as a human, as people, where we have so much information that it becomes hard to make decisions. At least I see this a lot. And there is so much in just making a decision and trying something and not over thinking, think so much. particularly i see people queue up and i do this myself and i know most of my friends do this as well

we queue up a bunch of podcasts or youtube videos or whatever it might be and we go from a to b to c and we listen to podcasts with saif or with gg or whomever it might be oh this is such an amazing idea and then we go to the next podcast it was an amazing idea but we didn't do anything with it. It's like this amount of Bitcoin that we can just take and we look at it and we say, oh, this is fantastic. And then we just move along without changing anything. I think there's something to be said to stopping for a bit and reflecting if you found something that is interesting or an idea popped in your head. And you actually make a change in your life based on that idea, based on that input, it can go from you watch the video on how to run a node.

Don't just go and watch a video on how to do a coin sharing. Run a node. Try it out. I think the stuff that we're building with Noster and the stuff that we're building with Bitcoin and with whatever with e-cash, with lightning, with whatever it might be, these are tools. And when you experiment with them, even if you're not technical, when you experiment with them is when you actually unlock the power.

Their existence is great, but until you personally use them and feel comfortable with them, you don't really benefit that much. So if you watch something about, again, running a note, try it out. Maybe you'll fail. Maybe it'll work. If you are listening to a podcast and they talk about a conference in Madeira, maybe don't over the thinking. Maybe it's just buy a flight to Madeira and you...

Confirmed code BTC sessions. There we go. There we go. There we go. You get a discount. But I think like this is small things. I came to my data because I was listening to a podcast with Andre and John Ballies. And I was in Thailand.

I sent a message a message to Rob, who was also on the podcast. And a few weeks later, I came to my data with my family to check it out. There was an action based on that input. And I think making those actions, it's absolutely like a superpower. Just don't think it too much. Just go. Maybe you go. You hate the place.

And you go somewhere else. It's all good. It's not such a huge investment in time or energy. So to sum it up, just take action. Take action on the input that you get. I like it. Yeah, absolutely. I echo that entirely.

Well, I'll toss it to Gigi last. Gigi, any final thoughts, recommendations? Yeah, my recommendation is actually related to what Pablo just said. And I swear, like, this is not a follow-up. I actually wrote it on the napkin before Pablo started talking. But my recommendation is to go ahead and put yourself out there. Just put yourself out there. It's still true that most people are pure consumers.

the 99% rule on the internet is still very much intact, which means 99% of people on any platform, probably even on any protocol, are pure lurkers. They are not, you know, like if you take Twitter as an example, 99% of people are just reading. They're just reading and scrolling, not even liking or retweeting, really. It's just reading and scrolling.

And like the 1% is who produces stuff and puts themselves out there. And I would encourage everyone to, you know, basically jump over your own shadow and put yourself out there. I think everyone has something to say. Everyone has some role to play in this, not only in Bitcoin, but in the world at large. And just give it a try and put yourself out there. And be brave and put yourself out there. I just can't repeat it over and over again. It doesn't matter what you do.

It doesn't matter what you produce. It doesn't matter if it's, you know, creating memes. or writing or producing podcasts, producing videos, or writing software. It's that's also a way of putting yourself out there. Like if you're interested in coding in, you know, more than just using the tools, but improving the tools and writing tools, reach out to people. Like get your first poll request in. And also, you know, like if you're actually doing this and you want to,

you want to step up to the next level, like apply for a grant. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, um, great companies and great organizations providing support for open source work. There is Brink, there is HRF, there's OpenSats, of course, as well. So I would encourage you to apply to one of these. I will obviously show OpenSats.org where you can see what we are doing and you can apply for grants by OpenSets, going to OpenSats.org slash apply. And that's another way of putting yourself out there and just kind of enlarging your

impact footprint that I think any one of us has. And yeah, we also, we, again, I want to echo what Pablo said. And it's also something we, we didn't even talk about yet. But by putting yourself out there, by making this first step and by taking action and, you know, like DMing this person and checking out the place and, you know, for example, coming to Madeira for Bitcoin Atlantis, you will, you will set things into motion where you you wouldn't just be riding the wave basically like there it is about making this one decision it is about um yeah making taking the first step taking this leap of faith

more or less and that's also in part why we are um organizing in January actually a cohort that we're going to call sovereign engineering the sovereign engineering cohort and we want to bring those kind of builders and people together to meet and basically have an exercise in distributed cognition like everyone knows that a lot of magic can happen when people that work on the same stuff come together and spend time together and think through problems together and have a lot of lively exchange and prototype various ideas and just try out things and try to think through things and think about things in the right way. And if you're interested in something like that,

it's probably mostly going to be focused on Noster because Pablo is involved. So that's just the way it's going to be. But basically, as the as the, you know, like as the title says, sovereign engineering is what we're interested in. So basically building tools for self-sovereign use, for self-sovereign digital realm,

for basically the Bitcoin way of thinking applied to other things as well. And it's going to be very Noster and lightning focused. But we'll see what people come up with. We're going to explore this wide open space that basically sound money and sound communication technology now opens up. And also self-sovereign identity opens up. Because I think one of the under-discussed things still in the Noste world, is that you actually own your identity.

You can't be rocked. And that's, that would have been actually my, my second suggestion or my second recommendation is to work on making yourself increasingly unruggable. So what I mean by that is, you know, like, first of all, fix your money. Fix your money and also fix yourself. I think those two go hand in hand. And in terms of a long-term plan, you know, you want to, for example, stack some bank accounts if you're probably still going to need to use some for the foreseeable future, maybe stack

some passports as well. And just think about those things and take baby steps, step by step, making yourself increasingly on Raggleball because I think the next decade potentially still gets very volatile, geopolitically speaking. So yeah, with all that sad, I'm done with my rents and my recommendations, but that probably sums it up. Awesome. Awesome. I will echo everybody, please do check out opensats.org. You can donate to the general fund or you can go into specific projects and support something that you're passionate about. There's a ton of stuff on there. So go check it out. And so Gigi, I'm imagining your home you don't have you own you don't own a single rug do you no rugs no chairs two t-shirts

one pant that's about it pale-ass shoes with holes in them yeah i'm a very simple man i post memes and i don't buy stuff yeah and he walks around my data naked so yeah they're just streaks of green i actually had to give him clothes yesterday that's actually too i'm sorry i have i have three t-shirts now and a hoodie and the hoody amazing amazing all gentlemen uh thank you so much for being here thank you for taking the time i know it's late where you are so i appreciate it that much more uh had a blast here everybody in the chat of course uh all these gentlemen follow them everywhere. Of course, follow them on Noster first and foremost. And then all of the other fun places that you can find what they're doing. Check out OpenSass, check out Bitcoin Atlantis.

If you're on Nostr, you're probably already using like half the shit that Pauvel built. So yeah, so it's all there. And yeah, support everybody. Get yourself out there. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. You're welcome back anytime. And I have a feeling I'll be seeing you soon. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you, Ben. No worries, guys. Have a good night.

Bye. All right, everybody. Thank you for being here. Of course, go follow those gentlemen on Noster and everywhere else that they're doing everything that they're up to. Go check out BitcoinAtlantis.com, opensats.org, play with all the fun Noster tools that Pabla's been building.

There's all kinds of great stuff to get involved in. Everybody that's here, of course, smash them. like button. Thank you for being part of the chat. I always love everybody being part of the conversation here. Of course, share this to anybody that you think may get a kick out of the conversation and help me on my mission to 100,000 subs by subscribing to the channel if you have not already. And finally, of course, you can help out the show in another way if you want. You can hit up any of the previously mentioned sponsors. They're all down in the show notes down below.

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there's eight years worth of free tutorials on the internet. So, of course, go check out all the free stuff and educate yourself. But if you do need

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Have a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. See you guys next time for your daily session.