BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Haley Berkoe, Tip, Jamie Stuckert, Colin Aulds ep206

Episode Date: October 9, 2021

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Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show, another Friday edition of Why Are We Bullish. We've got a killer panel today. I'm very excited, very happy that all these guests could join me as per usual. And we've got some fun topics to discuss. As always, of course, this is live. Anything can happen.

So my good friend Bill here has a message to bring to you. 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 haven't already, make sure you smash that like button, give this a share. Subscribe if you haven't already.

As always, I am Ben with the BTC Sessions. This is your daily session. Before we bring in our panel, of course, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. Now, this is the Bitbo.io dashboard. We're sitting at $54,244 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 1,844 sats. It's been a crazy week. We go back a week here, and we were still in kind of the high 40s.

And we basically had like a 10K plus move in the past week and a half. So it's been fun, we'll say. What else do I want to show you guys here? 89.71% of all Bitcoin have been mined. In terms of fees, Mempool is picking up. 18 sats per byte for the next block. We haven't seen it like that in a while. So I get the feeling that this is going to be the trend

through the fall into the winter. We're probably going to see the mempool a little bit busier. So, you know, when you can try and open up those lightning channels, get stuff into cold storage when you need to do it. Just have funds accessible on lightning. so you can easily access them. That said, if you're willing to wait up to an hour, then three or four sats per byte will do you.

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Paper might not cut it. Fire damage, water damage. maybe accidentally discard the thing, hopefully not. But if it's a big chunk of solid steel, you're less likely to do or be susceptible to all of those things. So check out the Bill Fottle over at Privacyprose.io. Anyways, enough of my rambling. What am I doing?

I have wonderful guests waiting for me. So I'm going to start bringing them in. I'm going to bring in Haley. I'm going to bring Jamie. I'm going to bring in Tip. And soon, Colin, we'll see him in a moment. Let's get some intros. Let's go around.

Let's start with Haley. Can you let everybody who's unfamiliar know who you are and what you do? Yeah. So my name's Haley and I work at Square Crypto. So I'm a program manager there and I'm working on education, research and different initiatives that can help Bitcoin newbies and other people just make it easier to learn about Bitcoin. Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on the show, taking your time to be here. I really appreciate it.

Let's keep going down the line. Tip, I'm a subscriber and a massive fan of what you do. Can you let anybody unfamiliar know who you're on what you do? Thanks, Ben. Kiyoda, to all the Kiwis out there watching on Saturday morning. My name is Tip. I'm a Bitcoin Club, and I create short videos about Bitcoin concepts, and my goal is to educate people on kind of the bigger picture on how the world works.

I was previously in the world of public equities and venture capital, but ever since kind of diving headburst into the Bitcoin rabbit hole, it's being so much fun and come to learn kind of how broken financial and governance system really are. And Bitcoin is the answer. So that's why I'm here. I'm amazed at the way that you're able to rap about Bitcoin and actually make it sound cool. It's so much fun. I need to hear this.

Yeah, you got to subscribe to on TikTok. If you're not on TikTok, you need to be. I'm all over it. Yeah. I'm coming for you. It's awesome. And Jamie, thank you for being here. Hi.

This is, I think we may have briefly met very briefly, actually. And I didn't say this before. At Bitcoin 2021, I think coming into and out of one of the pre-parties. Yeah, I actually think I recall it now too. Yeah. Very briefly. But it's good to see you and officially meet you. Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah. Let people know what you do because you're, you're, you just started something, hey? Yeah. Yeah. So I started two things, two really big things. I started working for Compass Mining. I help run their social media and I'm a two weeks in and I'm having a blast.

They're an incredible company to work for. I'm learning so much about mining. I always had a fascination for it, but there's a ton to know. And I haven't scratched the surface yet. And then I also just launched my Bitcoin podcast. It is the Bitcoin Blonde podcast. And yeah, it's super exciting. I'm new to the podcasting world.

So that is a whole journey of its own. Can't say it's the easiest thing in the world. But it's exciting. Yeah. I'm going to have to pick your brain, actually. because you've done this quite a few times. So yeah, that's kind of the gist of it. Awesome.

Well, I'm glad to have you. And we do have our last guest. I'm going to bring him in right now. Yo, Colin. Yo, sorry I'm late, everyone. Love to be here. Hello, Colin. How's it going?

Welcome. For those watching, can you let people know? And I kind of already teased it. I was already shilling your stuff here. So let people know who you are. Yeah, let people know who you are, what you do, man. Yeah, so, man, I do so many things now. I'm one of four hosts over at the Unhash podcast, which is every Bitcoin podcaster's favorite podcast, we like to say.

We get super technical, super in the weeds. And so I do that over with Ruben Somsen and Mario Gibney and my brother Brian, who I'm alternating in today for him. And then I also founded Bill Foddle slash privacy pros. It's a hardware wallet backup device. And we are very avid fans and sponsors of the BDC session show. And let's see. Oh, I'm the main editor over at Buy Bitcoin Worldwide, which is one of the largest informational and affiliate sites for basically every exchange you could think of.

So I wear a lot of hats, do a lot of things. and that is my 30 second readers digest. Awesome. Well, dude, I am glad to have you and the rest of the panel, very excited to have you all. People watching, if you were unfamiliar with the show, this is a weekly show called Why Are We Bullish?

And we follow the three hours. It's really, really easy. It's going to start. Somebody's going to give a reason why they are bullish. Then all together, we're going to riff on that reason. And then once we wrap that topic, we're going to rotate to the next person. It's a really, really simple. Reason, riff, rotate.

So I'm going to get us started this week. I'm fired up because I just got home from Miami and Miami Beach specifically. But I was there for a very specific reason. I was at the Oslo Freedom Forum put on by the Human Rights Foundation. And so they, of course, have their regular track where they bring in human rights activists. from around the world with very, very serious problems that they're trying to help with and solve. But this year, because Alex Gladstein is part of the Human Rights Foundation, and he writes just incredible content and champions Bitcoin across the world,

there was a Bitcoin specific track on both days in the afternoons, and it was called the Bitcoin Academy. And I was astounded when he reached out to me. He asked me to come and help MC. for both days, which was insane. But I got down there and I met so many people as part of these panels that are using Bitcoin to help with human rights in various capacities. So I'm going to mention just a few of them that I met just because, again, I won't be

able to get to all of them. But there's a few that I want to chat about. So there was a great guy named Fode from Senegal, and he's a developer. There is a guy named Abdo, also from Senegal, and he's an economist. Cal from Ethiopia had some great things to say. Alejandro from Venezuela. He's part of the Open Money Initiative. But a couple that I wanted to zero in on.

When I first got into Bitcoin, there was a book that I read by Michael Casey and Paul Viny. called The Age of Cryptocurrency. And in the very first chapter of that book, it details about a lady or girl at the time, I guess, that was founder of the Afghan girls robotic team. And they were doing a lot of stuff. She had to pay her employees. The problem was in Afghanistan, they weren't allowed to have bank accounts. They weren't allowed to receive money.

They weren't allowed to do anything outside of the purview of a man overseeing it. And so she started doing all this stuff and paying her employees the only way she could with Bitcoin. And so she started receiving money and using this as a way to pay all of her employees, which was incredible and basically subverted the fact that none of them were allowed to even have bank accounts. And so she did this for quite some time. I believe that there were effectively threats to her life eventually, and she did leave the country. But seven years later, I got to meet her in person, which was crazy because this is one of the first things I ever learned about with Bitcoin. And I was almost like starstruck meeting her. And I had this great discussion with her about kind of what it was like in Afghanistan and how she was able to use this.

She was on a panel that I got to host an amazing person. And one other person I want to talk about is Farita. And she's from Togo. And she's a writer, human rights activist as well. But she talked a lot about something that Alex Gladstein wrote about, which was the semi, how would I put it? France still has a lot of control over a lot of African nations via their currencies. And so the way that it works is that France effectively prints their currencies for them

and they can debase them at will with the people being able to do nothing. The other part of this deal where they're basically still occupied by France in this sense is that all resources and goods created in said countries must first be offered for sale to France before they are allowed to offer them to anywhere else in the world. At which point France can say, great, yeah, we'll buy them if they want them. We're just going to print a bunch of your money to do it first. So they are effectively just siphoning off all the resources from these countries. And no surprise, a number of these countries are amongst the poorest countries in the world.

because how do you come out from under that? In one of the countries where they attempted to fight back and say, no, this isn't okay. We need to establish our own currency. The guy that was president that wanted to do that within two months of saying that he was assassinated. So this is a very real problem, but they are using Bitcoin on the ground to get around this as a way to opt out of their local currency when they have. no access to any other currency markets. They can use peer to peer and get their hands on Bitcoin to get out of these awful, awful situations. So while it's not a silver bullet, Bitcoin is indeed being used for human rights reasons around the world. And it was amazing to see it.

It was crazy. I really hope that we did a halfway decent job of catching the ear of a number of human rights activists at this event. And that was my experience. Sorry, that was a bit rambly, but yeah, it was a very enlightening week. And it was wild. So I'm going to open it up a little bit to the floor. And I just kind of want everybody's thoughts on, you know, how do you see Bitcoin playing into helping human rights around the world?

What are some of the hurdles that you still see? Anybody can feel free to jump in. Otherwise, I can call on somebody. I don't know. Any thoughts? Anybody? Yeah, well, I had one thought on that. You know, I've always been pretty vocal on this show and on my own that once you have Bitcoin,

make the money printers go burr. It just, it's an acceleration effect. The more you print, the better off we all are, actually, because it reverses. that you have the escape hatch you can get out on. But, you know, I want to play devil's advocate to myself on that and ask you, if you have a country that poor, does the average person have the expendable income available to them to save anything and buy Bitcoin?

Because if they don't, then it's not really an escape hatch and the printing that France can, on the people of Togo is just all bad. There's no negative, there's no positives because you can't escape hatch. It's, yeah, and I mean,

it depends on the circumstance. So like in, for instance, in El Salvador, it's a little bit different in that, uh, the savings may come from, um,

uh, from savings on remittances. So it's money that, that would have been seen in the first place. And they gave everyone 30 bucks. So they have something. That too. But I mean, in the instance of a lot of these African nations, it could be viewed as a, I mean, so one of the one of the gentlemen there, Fode, he had been saving to come to America and start studying.

and the money that he had saved to do so was if as he was about to do it, France basically said, hey, we're devaluing your currency by half and he no longer had enough money to come. The only reason that he made it through okay is because his dad was writing a book and had a bit of a book deal going on. And so they basically used everything there as collateral to say that he had enough enough in order to to come across to get the okay

so I mean people it depends on their condition some can save some if you're literally below the poverty line and you're just trying to put food in your mouths then yeah obviously not but

it's better than nothing right yeah yeah effectively I actually tuned into your Bitcoin and developing country's panel then and I think one of the panelists Cal mentioned that Ethiopia relied on foreign aid from organizations like UNICEF. And when you're making donations, you never really know how much of that dollar that you donate reaches the final destination or the child in need. But with Bitcoin, like,

you can whip out your QR code and I can pay you like the full dollar instantly. And I actually made a video about this called Future of Charity and use an example of someone raising money on behalf of an El Salvadorian food cart owner on Twitter via Lightning. So someone had posted the food cart owner's lightning wallet QR code on Twitter, and they raised like $1,000 from Bitcoiners around the world. And then they posted the picture on Twitter of what the food cart owner had spent the money on. And I think he bought like a deep friar and a cooler to like expand his business and sell more food and drinks. And so like not only do the donors know the full amount went to the final destination,

they saw exactly how that money was spent and there was just so much more I guess like accountability and transparency now for that utility of that donation and I think in the case of Cal from Ethiopia he had a really awesome use case where instead of just like a one-time, one-sided donation where he would send like someone money for free

which isn't necessarily like a sustainable relationship, he was able to send like 10 cents to his friend in exchange for text messages with a joke every morning. So 10 cent every morning in exchange for a joke. So he was able to kind of like fractionalize value in exchange for fractionalized utility. So I think we might actually be moving away from this kind of like one-sided donation to more of like a two-sided value exchange, human-to-human transaction where like both sides provide utility without borders, without a need to rely on like a centralized institution like UNICEF or a company or a government to coordinate

that relationship. And I think that's where like the value might come from in the future. That's interesting because you could also kind of probe with initial donations to ensure that you're seeing progress on the ground there. Like ensure that, hey, you know, if this money is going to this individual who's kind of in charge of a particular initiative, okay, show as each donation hits, what have you done now and what have you done now? And if at some point progress is, it's not adding up what is being built versus what is being sent, then it's better than just having large lump sum donations that could potentially, like thinking adversarially could be exploited in some way. And to your point, Colin, like some people might not be able to buy Bitcoin and save them Bitcoin, but if they can provide utility in some way that the whole world can see,

they can receive Bitcoin and then start saving through that action. Yeah, they can also start earning Bitcoin too with different. You can earn stats like super easy or you can use stack work and different types of companies. So that's a lot of people get into Bitcoin when they start earning it. So that is something that really inspires me too, that it's easier to earn money. Yeah, it's it's interesting because yeah, you do have, um, in some of these countries, there'll be people that are, that have enough that they can at least maybe even go into an internet cafe and maybe rent, rent a little bit of time and,

and then do some tasks online, some basic stuff and be paid partially like in a world where sats are flowing very easily and you have these kind of metered drips of sets of sats for people that are doing work. You could potentially see a system where people are able to, you know, you're getting this global workforce. You know, you see it all the time. People are now jump into places like Fiverr to get logos and stuff. In fact, there's a, my logo is from Fiverr. But, you know, you see people looking online to various economies to get work done for them. And this just makes that easier because you could potentially do it without gatekeepers in the middle. Yeah. I'll open it up to any kind of final thoughts about the kind of the human

rights perspective of this or what it makes possible in that realm. But if there's none other then we can we can jump to the next topic. But anybody else have any final thoughts? I think we're set. All right. I'm going to keep rolling. So yeah, I know I know that was. It was a bit more of like a serious topic off the top. But yeah, I don't know. It was refreshing to see Bitcoin in that context instead of just number go up, moon bros and stuff like that. Although like Bitcoiners are, I was going to say aren't always like that. But you know, we'll see.

We'll see. So now that we have that topic rounded off, we're going to keep rolling. Of course, anybody that is watching live, anybody that. is in the chat. Feel free to smash that like button, give this a share. Let's get even more people in here. I do see people in the chat right now.

There's already some praise coming in. Oh, tip is a genius name because it is a name suggestion. And dare, I say, NLP command in a Twitter tipping feature. So there is, I see the comments coming in. Keep them coming. I'm going to start pulling up more now that I'm not going to be rambling the whole time. I'm going to pass it down the line. And Haley, I'm going to pass it to you.

And I'm going to let you take the stage. What is your reason for being bullish this week? So my reason about feeling bullish this week is really just the community being on this show. I've only actually been in Bitcoin for about six months. So I'm super new to Bitcoin. I've had it for a while, but I didn't go down the rabbit holes about six months ago. And not going to lie, when I first started working at Square Crypto, being in the Bitcoin space, I was super nervous. I'm not sure if Bitcoiners realize that they do this,

but the first thing someone usually says when you meet someone is the year they got into Bitcoin. And like when you're new to Bitcoin, you just immediately feel like a rush of imposter syndrome or just kind of like, oh my God, why am I so late to the party? It's like 2021 now. This guy just said that he's been here since 2015. But with all that said, like, No one has ever made me feel bad about it or made me feel dumb that it took me so long to get into Bitcoin and just really been very excited that like someone else is like into Bitcoin and helping for the cause. I've never felt any sort of like hierarchy. And it just really shows that anyone can contribute to the network and your background or years of experience just really don't matter. And so that was just, yeah, we're all really early.

And that has just been really inspiring for me to be in Bitcoin. And I think from the outside, there can be kind of like a negative view that it can be like difficult to learn about Bitcoin or it's not that accessible to everyone or various different reasons. But I have felt that everyone has been very gracious with their time and only really positive things. So I find that when, yeah, I find that when you're when you're genuinely curious and you come, come from a perspective of, hey, you know, what's the deal with this?

And you're asking about it. Bitcoiners are pretty good with jumping in with, you know, suggestions of resources, of places to go of answers to questions that you may have. Are there certain things that you have found that have been a little bit easier to, as you know, you're six months in, you're this, you know, it's a never-ending learning process. what have you found have been some of the easier things to grapple with versus some of the things that have been major hurdles to get over? For me, it was pretty easy to learn about the basics and feel very excited right away. One of the difficult things that I work with the team of all very technical people and trying to kind of be a middleman of translating things to non-technical people and new people, it's really hard to find a middle ground.

of what's technically correct, but also digestible by the average person. So that's been really hard and interesting. And sometimes people ask for like something who's not Bitcoin will like ask me a question. They're like, this is a great teaching moment. They don't understand why it kind of takes a long time to be able to like think how to put something until he means terms. That's been kind of hard. And especially like when you start learning about the Lightning Network, it's just,

it's very difficult to make that relatable. without having kind of context. Yeah. Lightning's like learning Bitcoin all over again. So I don't envy you having to learn Bitcoin and Lightning at the same time. That's a bit of a hurdle. What about the rest of the panel? What have you found in terms of as you're learning? What has the quote unquote Bitcoin community been good at explaining and helping you with?

And are there improvements that can be made, as it'll put it out there as? yeah i uh well i wanted to tell haley that uh in like two years you're going to be an o g and then uh people are going to like holy shit she got in 2021 my god um and the and the other reason i think people are nice is no matter how early they were there's someone they know who is in like three years before them and uh that's o g to that person so uh everyone knows someone that's more o g than they are And so I think that kind of humbles you a little bit. I think Haley's pretty on, hit the nail on the head with how welcoming people can be until you start asking about alt coins. And then it's like you could have no idea because you don't know anything.

And, you know, you hear about all these alt coins. And you know, well, I mean, you know, I read that this one is faster than Bitcoin. This one has, you know, this one has better transaction throughput. And then I think this is something that Udi's. he's been getting a lot of trouble with lately, but I think his point is accurate that just immediately calling them scams, even if it's true, just isn't very constructive to the new person who just doesn't know and is asking for your opinion, and then you immediately bite their head off the moment that they bring up an alt-coin. So I think that's an area of

improvement for all of us, perhaps. Yeah, Jamie, how about you? What's your journey been like? What's the deal? What can be fixed? What was good? it's interesting it is so fascinating to hear like how everyone got in and like where they get their information from i happen to get in essentially through clubhouse and that's where i spent so much of my time initially um i i was you know listening to people like uh british hoddle american hoddle bitcoin tina so as you can imagine it was like hardcore maxi stuff and so i just buy bypass all of the alt coin world. And I was like, oh no, Bitcoin only. You know? So I mean, I learned so much from those guys. And I just, in terms of the altcoin stuff, I just, it just

didn't make sense to me. So I'm like, okay, well, this is an easy one to write off. But the more I learn and the more involved I get, I don't, I can't say I feel exactly the same. I mean, I don't, I don't spend any money or time there, right? Like, I'm Bitcoin only. But I want to learn more, you know? And it can be tough because if you express that in a certain place, you may get a lot of like hate. And that's the stuff I don't really agree with. And that's why it can be tough. So I tweeted yesterday something about, you know, like, I can't even remember what the tweet was, just something about not being hateful. Like constructive feedback is very different from hateful criticism.

But some people forget that. And delivery matters. Anyways, it can, it can be tough, but I've had to, like, form a thick skin, if you will. Yeah, it definitely does that to you, right? I'm kind of putting it lightly, by the way. Yeah, it's, it's, well, it's Twitter too, right? Like, Twitter isn't real life, but Twitter can be like, if you, if you jump on with something that's a little bit off base or like, I think, I think, I think the issue is that Bitcoin has been around for a long time.

They've seen just these cycles of bullshit come through and a lot of people get burned really badly. And so they're almost like it gets to the point where you're protective of newcomers, sometimes at the detriment of newcomers. It's an autoimmune response that's just been, you know, PTSD for the past five, 10 years maybe. even. Well, yeah, exactly. You see, you see, you know, we're basically seeing ICO craze 2.0 right now with various defy, NFTE, all that kind of stuff. You're, you're kind of seeing, at least I get the feeling going into the end of this year, we're going to see a bit more of it, a repeat of that level of disconnectedness between what the money people are dumping into things and their actual value,

which in many cases is effectively zero. And so, yeah, you see that stuff and you want to be like, hey, fuck you. But at the same time, at the same time, if it's somebody who's legitimately just got here and they're like, oh, this looks cool. you know, sometimes starting off with an explanation could actually help save them. Like your end goal is to have people not be burned by this stuff. So sometimes a bit of an explanation as infuriating as it is to do a million times over

could go further than than jumping down somebody's throat. But I guess it depends on what you perceive as their intentions. I think also for a lot of maxis, it's, you know, We would all like to say that we were always Bitcoiners only, but I wasn't. I mean, I started in that and then, you know, 2016, 2017 rolled around and you see these shiny new toys and you don't totally understand everything. And maybe you do okay and you stack more stats from shit coining, but maybe you don't. And then you really go through the ropes of learning the tech. And you realize that a lot of these promises that are made are vaporware or unrealistic or just outright lies.

And then you're now seeing the Matrix. And I think there's a lot of Maxis who became Maxis through getting burned. And they just don't want you to go through it. And so they have a very strong reaction. And they come on strong. So, okay, I want to do a quick round the table question, two-part question. Amount of time in Bitcoin and did you start as only Bitcoin? So for me, I started about seven years ago and I was not only Bitcoin at the time.

I dabbled in some shit coins for a while, probably all the way up to 2017 until I really, I think people that were watching in and around then, Vortex on World Crypto Network really helped me start to hone in on the signal through the noise. So that was a huge help to me. But yeah, it was around, but I never went, I never went like fully, fully, you know, I think maybe like 5% of what I had,

maybe 10% of what I had was dabbling in, in just trashy old coins that I really had no conviction in. And then that just gradually went away. But, you know, I was not immune to chick-coining early on. You know, it was a learning process. But I'm seeing more of the, oh, I just got in and I'm just sticking with Bitcoin, I think maybe because of the content. So I'll keep going around the circle.

But Haley, like what has been your journey and your kind of dive in so far? in terms of, you know, you're at square, you're presented with all this information. What's it like trying to parse through all of that and figure out where actual value sits? My experience might be a little bit different since I'm on square crypto and our team is dedicated 100% to Bitcoin. So all my time is actually spent on Bitcoin. But it's it's hard when I get questions from people who are just learning about crypto and they want to understand why Bitcoin is better than other coins.

It can be kind of hard to craft that argument when you're only working on Bitcoin. So trying to like have them be able to give kind of like that unbiased view to people who are new as something that I want to work on to make it like a little bit easier people to kind of find it. But my experience has only been Bitcoin. Yeah. And you jumped into a, like you said, a company that is focused entirely on Bitcoin, which I mean, didn't really exist.

Those existed for a time when it was only Bitcoin. And then they stopped existing when any other coin existed. And then now we're starting to see a resurgence in the past years of, no, we need to revert back to just Bitcoin on the part of a lot of companies. So and content too. So that's interesting to see. And Jamie, you have a similar experience. You basically came in.

You're like, okay, Bitcoin only. And what got you there? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would, I spent hours listening. Like, I worked my last like corporate real estate job and I would be in clubhouse all day. And I was like, it is for sure. After I at Orange Pilled myself by listening to all these guys, it was for sure Bitcoin only. There were like no questions asked. And I've been in it for seven months now. So also like, Haley, I felt for a while I was like, oh, I'm so late. I'm so late. The more I learn, I'm like, oh, hell. know like i'm early this is going over a million i'm i'm not worried a bit like so early you know yeah yeah it's everybody always feels late for a certain period of time until they come to that realization oh until you meet someone and they say holy shit you're so o g yeah exactly so call what about you? Like, what was your, you know, how long ago, or if you, if you cared a comment on that,

did you get into Bitcoin? And what was your journey to get to kind of your thought process now? Yeah. So I've told the story many times, but I don't, you know, I never know who's listening, so I can briefly go through it. I first heard about Bitcoin in 2011, maybe 2012. It was, it was, I was always lurking on the mesas.org forums and eventually those forums moved to Liberty HQ and it was just full of anarcho capitalists and

I heard about it because we were all gold bugs and I thought it was the dumbest shit I'd ever heard of and I totally dismissed it and I didn't hear about it again until I moved to Korea in 2014 where I met Ruben Somsen he runs the sole Bitcoin meetup he was coming to one of my Bitcoin meetups

I was still a hardcore libertarian and he's like well you should come to the Bitcoin meetup. I'm like, all right. And then I got a real rundown from someone who knew what they were talking about. And then I started buying it back when you could buy it at ATMs and there was no KYC or anything like that. So 2014 is when I actually jumped in. And then I kind of just sat on it and totally forgot about it. Ignored it until 2017. And then the, um, the ETH pre-sale happened. It was in like 2016 or maybe in 2015 when the ETH pre-sale happened. But yeah. I loaded up on Eath with my brother because it was the new Bitcoin killer, so I should buy it.

And thank God I did. I'm just being honest. So I didn't get burned very hard on that. It actually ended up stacking a lot of Bitcoin for me. But yeah, then I started listening to Krista Rose on Bitcoin Uncensored. And for the real OGs out there, they'll know Krista Rose, Bitcoin Uncensored, on Seth. These guys would just,

it was like the most uncomfortable interviews you have ever met or ever seen or listened to with shit coiners. I mean, it was just listening to those guys back then was the perfect deprogramming of shitcoining. That had talking to Ruben a lot, who is my co-hosts over onash podcast. And he's probably the smartest person I know personally. So that kind of deprogrammed me.

out and into the Bitcoin Maxi you see here today. But that is sort of my my Bitcoin journey very briefly put. That's interesting. Yeah. You can probably still find my old posts on if the Mises.org forums are still there. I was posting under the Texas trigger

at the time. So if there are archives somewhere, you could probably find some post to me talking about how retarded Bitcoiners were. That's great. Tip, what about you? How did you get to where you are right now? like your learning process.

Yeah, I would have to say that I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my partner, James. Like you would not get tip if there was no James. He was, I think, in Bitcoin for a better part of a decade. And like, I think I just had the opportunity to watch him kind of go through the cycles. I was there kind of learning. But I wasn't too interested at the time. I just kind of thought like it's like, you know, another asset, another craze or whatever it is. we both went through the shit coin kind of, you know, hype together and like, oh, like, what can we do in this space?

But it was kind of just like, I was focused on doing my own thing as well, and it was kind of just there. But I think the moment that I was really like hardcore orange pill, like the moment that Bitcoin just like meant the world to me was actually watching Alex Gladstein's video. I think why Bitcoin matters for human rights. I think it was by collaboration with reason. And I remember that moment. And we were driving to James' parents' house. And James, like, oh, have you seen this new video by Alex Gladstein? And I was in the car watching the video.

And I think there was this moment when he was talking about, like, and this is why it matters. Like, this is how many people it's helping. And, like, in my heart, like, I felt like teary. And I felt like I was going to cry. And I was like, oh, my God, this is what Bitcoin means. And it was just like, because in my journey, like, I watched my dad, like, you know, I grew up watching my dad fight corruption and this is just such a topic so close to my heart that like it like Bitcoin is just like the answer and so from then on I think this was like at the start of the year

I couldn't focus on my job I couldn't focus on like finding startups or venture capital or anything like that it was just like this fiat world and then there was Bitcoin and so like I just I quit my job like I just like I have to leave I have to focus on Bitcoin this is the answer to everything that I'm searching for my whole life and so that's why I rap now That's fantastic. And I think everybody gets that point. Yeah, Jamie. It's hard to focus, hey?

Yeah. It's like you get to this point and you're like, your old job is just this fuzz over your eyes as you're trying to focus on something else. It's so difficult to. And I think everybody here, like Jamie, you, Haley, Tip, like Colin, obviously. I think he just dropped for a moment. He'll be back.

But yeah, I think a lot of people go through that, that, oh, my God, how am I going to function anymore? It was like a philosophical rabbit hole that was like this existential crisis thing. Like it was just like all consuming, you know, like that's how I felt it was crazy powerful. Yeah. It's it's really hard to continue. on when you see that. And you begin to kind of see the cracks in in society nowadays when you see how the current system is structured because Bitcoin has you ask all those questions. So it's, yeah, it's pretty interesting. Haley, thank you for that topic. I think it's a fantastic

one to touch on. And I'm glad we went down the rabbit hole of educational journeys to get to where we are right now. I think I'm going to jump to our next topic. now. Everybody that's watching right now, of course, smash that like button. Give this a share. Love Tip. Her videos are so cool and just what we need to help newbies start the Bitcoin conversation. Yeah. And then Gareth, it's a cross between an enlightenment and a complete nervous breakdown. Yeah, absolutely, man. You said it well. Totally. Yeah. So we're going to jump to our next topic. Jamie, that is going to be you. So what has you feeling bullish this week?

I would say so many things. I'm just bullish every day. But more specifically, what's going on in El Salvador. So just yesterday was one month since they made Bitcoin legal tender. And since then, like half the nation has already downloaded the Chevo app. That's three million people. Is the population six million? Yeah. Just right. right around that. Yeah. So that's like a pretty big number. And then I saw this other statistic that 2.5 million Salvadorans living in the United States

will eventually be sending remittances through Chivo. That is a significant number. And it's just extremely powerful because all of Latin America is going to watch how they implemented this. And they're going to start doing it too. So imagine I'm just ready. I think we're all ready for the dominoes to fall. It would be crucial for Bitcoin to get into these other countries. And also, like, what you mentioned earlier, like over in Africa.

And I mean, I mean, the whole world really needs it. But what's going on in El Salvador is just, it's fascinating. I think it's a little bit soon to try and really make judgment calls in the situation because it's really tough. The education component is really tough. Like I was telling Chimberra in Bitcoin Beach this the other day, I'm like, you know, if there were teams of hundreds of people going into El Salvador to like train everybody, it would be a little different. But you have to have a lot of resources for that, right? So it's a process.

It takes time. And hopefully more people will get educated, read more. you know, the Spanish community is now doing podcasts and they're sharing more stories. And so, yeah, I'm super excited. I think it's going to go well eventually and I'm excited for the rest of the world to fall behind them. Yeah. It's unique in El Salvador because you've kind of got two, it's coming from two ends of the spectrum too. You've got this initial grassroots movement with Bitcoin Beach.

where it's just a small community kind of bubbling up in Alzante. And then you've got now coming from like a more top-down approach where obviously, you know, the government has like, hey, we're, we're, this is legal tender. And some Bitcoin has have kind of pushed against the, the, um, enforcement type measures around that. Now, I mean, granted as an individual, uh, or a business owner, you don't have to hold Bitcoin.

It's an effort for people to accept Bitcoin and choose to swap it to U.S. dollars immediately if they want to. But, you know, Bitcoin is a very averse to any sort of use of force in a lot of instances. But that said, the world is kind of watching here. And I guess we'll see how it continues to play out. I love that it was started as a grassroots thing in small communities. I like seeing that around the world. And I'm moderately curious as to, one, how this plays out down there if we see another kind of cycle as we've seen in the past,

where it's a huge boom followed by a bust because that could look spectacularly bad, you know, if massive boom for the end of the year and then it's like a two year bear market after that that may not look great on the world stage. So hopefully that's not the case. But also I'm really curious as to because they're not going to be the last country to do this. And I'm really curious about what's next.

You hear rumblings in other locales but a lot of it seems to just be like, oh, we're just going to kind of give our stamp of this exists and it's official that you're allowed to own it and some sort of regulatory clarity. But I'm curious about the next country to say this is legal tender. And I don't know where that'll be or how long it'll take. But let's, I don't know, what do you, you know, Colin Haley, tip, what do you feel about what, what Jamie's talking about in El Salvador?

What are you interested in? What are you worried about? Well, I saw another data point that prior to this, only 1.9 million people in El Salvador had a bank account and 1.3 million were using a debit card. So it's just really exciting to see actual data that shows that Bitcoin is helping the unbanked there and giving them a real opportunity. What's that data point? What exactly was the data point? The numbers? Yeah.

Oh, it was 1.9 million had a bank account. at 1.3 million we're using a debit card. Damn. So millions of people without bank accounts or access like debit cards and all of that. So inside of a month, they onboarded more people to Bitcoin than have bank accounts? Wild. That's interesting. I mean, I guess when you only have to download an app, it's not as.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm skeptical about. a lot of the hype around El Salvador just because I've been burned too many times by hype in this space. And it seems like the internet infrastructure is a real problem. Not to say that that wouldn't still be a problem with the traditional banking system as well, but it seems like there's a huge hurdle to overcome there.

Also, I don't know how reliable the numbers are out of the government in El Salvador. door. So I think we have to take a grain of salt there, not get ahead of ourselves too much. And what would you like to see? I'm sorry? What would you like to see? Like what would you see that in your eyes would be like, damn, that's, okay, that's going well. That's a success.

What kind of things would you like to see? I think it's not a specific thing. And that's a fair question because I think you need to have goalposts if you're going to criticize. I think for me it's more of a time thing, you know. And I guess that brings me to my other fear, and that is with Naibu Kelly. You know, he's sort of a strong man, some might even say authoritarian leader. And Bitcoiners are kind of lying, lionizing this guy.

And, you know, it's in our financial interest to lionize him. and that can lead you to maybe hype people that you may regret hyping in the future. You know, these kinds of leaders have a tendency to be fair weather friends to people or projects or entities when the political wins make it advantageous to do so. And so the right pressures are put somewhere or all of a sudden his people having Bitcoin is not conducive to his authority anymore. And that's kind of the point of Bitcoin.

It is regulatory arbitrage at the end of the day. And right now that regulatory arbitrage may be advantageous to his regime or his administration. But, you know, the whole point, of Bitcoin is kind of to take away power from people in government. At least that's what I signed up for. And that's why I like it. And it remains to be seen whether it will always be advantageous to regimes like his. So I just think we should proceed cautiously in our optimism there. and just be ready for the fact that maybe tomorrow

he is not going to be the friend that we think he is. And I don't want to make an enemy out of him either. I don't think we should be mean to him on Twitter or tell him he's an asshole or something like that. But I'm just saying, you know... You're treading carefully. Yeah. People who lead governments in South America haven't always been the greatest champions of freedom.

And that's true of almost any government, but especially South America. And so I just, yeah, just a little grain of salt there in the optimism. The interesting thing would be if down the line, if down the line he was no longer favorable in the eyes of the people or tried to do something that was not in their best interests, but Bitcoin having been taught to the entirety of the country by that point was then used as a tool to kind of subvert his policies or or as as the opposition to raise money to to kind of go head to head. Because as we've learned, like anybody can use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is for enemies. Bitcoin is for friends. Bitcoin is for everybody on that spectrum. And so, yes, bad people can use it. Good people can use it. Everybody in between can use it.

So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how he handles this. We'll see what these policies look like moving forward. And we'll see if they take a wrong turn, if Bitcoin can still be used to push back against them anyways. So I don't know. It's got a random thought on how we could kind of maybe loosely track or benchmark El Salvador's progress over time,

not talking about the leaders, but the actual progress of the country. And I think it'll be interesting to measure El Salvador against New Zealand for a proxy of growth because we have kind of similar population size around like 5 to 6 million people. But New Zealand's GDP per capita is 10 times El Salvador. It's like 40,000 per person versus 4,000.

And New Zealand's land size is 10 times El Salvador as well. So with New Zealand, there's more physical land. Our main export is dairy and agriculture. But now El Salvadorians have access to digital land, which is Bitcoin, the most scarcest land in the world. So it would be just interesting to measure how long it would take for El Salvador, GDP per capita to reach New Zealand, like 10x. And it's kind of like a proxy for how long will it take a developing country to get to

the level of a developed country today through Bitcoin. So that could be like one way that we can measure that progress. But I don't know. What do you guys think? Yeah. I mean, population-wise, and what I'm kind of curious about, too, is what kind of industry they can build around this, right? They're dabbling in their, they're volcanoed, their volcano mining and all that. I'm wondering what kind of, given the policies that he's put out so far, hey, no capital gains tax, no tax on Bitcoin is bringing business. there um that'll be yeah we'll see we'll see what what that does to their GDP um and if also

if it affects uh locals like if it's if it's positive for them and they're they're getting work because of it um yeah it's i mean we're watching this experiment in real time uh i agree i agree with the idea of definitely not glorifying um the individual but rather uh the medium itself, right? Like, Bitcoiners are big on, on not, we, we don't praise, sometimes we do, but I want to say that Bitcoiners like good ideas. They don't like specific people. And so that's why Bitcoiners are so quick to slay their heroes, you know, Trace Mayer starts shilling, you know, some, some privacy coin at a Bitcoin conference and, you know, and he kind of just, disappears because of the pushback.

It's done, son. Yeah, yeah. So it's, you know, and sometimes that can be, that pushback can be a little over the top, depending on the instance. But yeah, Bitcoiners celebrate good ideas, not individuals in my experience so far. So, you know, if Buceli did something really off base, I think Bitcoiners would just say, well, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. We're glad that 6 million people now use Bitcoin.

We'll see. Yeah, it does seem a little inconsistently applied. I remember reading some comments from Michael Saylor saying that, you know, he wanted there to be, oh, man, I forget, like, stop calling it a privacy coin. We need to make Bitcoin compliant. And no one gave a shit. No one gave a shit that he was making these kinds of comments. And, you know, the defense's word, I don't, I want to.

steel man him. You know, he, he, maybe you might say that, well, he's just trying to prime this thing for major adoption among institutions. And if you start talking about privacy features, then you're going to scare him off. And that may be true. But I got the impression that he didn't want to work on the privacy end of Bitcoin. And that to me is really crucial. Like, we need better privacy in Bitcoin, full stop. And, we should be honest about that. Now maybe you need the, you know, the the, the spokespeople out front trying to orange pill the institutions, you know, to maybe not discuss that part of it so much. But eventually they're going to find out about it. Eventually you're going to have to tell them if you're going to start adding better privacy to Bitcoin, better fungibility. They're going to know. And they're either going to be okay with it or they're going to leave. So, I don't know what the best strategy is. I mean, I'm a utilitarian about this stuff.

You know, do what's best for adoption long term. But, you know, just with speaking about slaying their heroes, it does seem a little bit, it seems to track greatly about who is pumping your bags the hardest. And Michael Saylor, if he does one thing, it is pump Bitcoin bags. So God bless him. I'm glad he does it.

It's good for me. but I again you know you you die a hero you live long to see yourself become the villain and I'm not saying he's a villain yet but those kinds of comments give me pause frankly that's fair that's fair um okay so I'm I'm conscious of time here I'm going to round out this topic uh Jamie thank you for bringing that up we could talk about uh I'm sure we'll continue to talk about El Salvador for many years to come. Tip, I know you're tight on time, so you are going to be up next

for your reason for being bullish. So I hand the stage to you. What are you excited about this week? I think we're looping back full circle to the beginning because I tuned in on the Oslo Freedom Forum live stream and there was a handful of human rights activists, you know, sharing their stories. I think it was just, it was really incredible

just to kind of see how aligned the purpose of Bitcoin is to like the mission of activists, no matter like what regime they're fighting, their beliefs, their background. And so at the same time, Ben, you mentioned that there was a Bitcoin Academy. And I think it was just so important to know that in that same room, there are Bitcoiners there who are sharing their knowledge and the tool that is Bitcoin to help activists with their struggles. And so the reason I'm bullish on Bitcoin today is, because of Bitcoiners.

It's the people who choose to back and build for Bitcoin. And just kind of reflecting on my own journey of the people like I've been inspired by and learned from, they all have this kind of underlying commonality, which are they genuinely care enough to learn about the bigger picture, and they genuinely care enough to listen to other people's stories and then to teach their learnings as well. There's this kind of just like, with Bitcoiners,

there's this kind of like genuine concern for humanity, over kind of maximizing their own economic status or economic power. And I think that's really rare, maybe because I've spent too long in the financial industry. But I was reading an article that Alan Farrington wrote, and he said, like, Bitcoiners have soul in the game. And he wrote, like, it's not just that Bitcoiners care, it's that people who care become Bitcoiners. And he gave an example of Elizabeth Stark, and he said, like, she could have, you know, spun her intellect into making billions more dollars by selling out to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, but she didn't. And it made me think of like Jack Dorsey, who could have gone down the Facebook

Libra coin route instead of interoperating with lightning or, you know, Jack Mallors could have launched in Europe instead of El Salvador. And so it's like, it's these like decisions that Bitcoiners make that like profoundly, it's like profoundly rooted in this kind of this bigger vision of a bigger a picture of improving humanity as a whole for centuries as opposed to kind of like amplifying their own power for decades. And if I can take it further, I think like Bitcoin's also kind of like a magnet for people across so many different disciplines as well, which creates this like clash of ideas and kind of challenge concepts that have been siloed for decades. Like an example is Kenzyan economics, which attempts to like solve real world problems from a very abstract

way of thinking. I was just talking to my partner who record this term Ceteris peribis, which was constantly used when we're like studying economics. And that term means holding all things equal. So if X increases, Y decreases, Ceteris peribus, holding all things equals. But the world like, the world doesn't work like that. You can't hold things equal to see a certain relationship. And this concept, the setterus peribus concept is being ripped apart by like physicists and mathematicians who are now Bitcoiners. and think like Austrian economics, which is more rooted in kind of observation of the individual, might be a better insight to solving some of the problems that we face today. So like TLDR is like not only

did Bitcoiners care, but like our diversity of thought is so broad and deep. Like we see Bitcoiners explain decentralized network using mycelium. We see kind of like Kartashev civilization, which is an old concept be brought back in the concept like context of like scaling humanity across space, You kind of see art clash with economics, like politics, challenged by math and logic. And like Twitter spaces is kind of like this ancient Greek courtyard where philosophers are just kind of like discussing ideas and stuff. And so I think like Bitcoin's just, I guess, waking up people from across different walks of life and background and like us here today, like question, learning, debating and kind of like evolving our brains. So not only do true Bitcoiners care, but they kind of bring intellectual diversity and honesty and the truth always wins. And that's why Bitcoin will always win and that's why I am bullish forever.

I love that. And Tip, hey, while you have the stage here, you said something that people, not that Bitcoiners care, but people who care come to Bitcoin. I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind commenting on kind of your previous experiences with in and around the human rights realm with your family that that kind of put you in that caring mindset and seeing Bitcoin as a thing that can help in that realm. So yeah. Yeah. So when I was growing up, my dad actually became deputy prime minister of Thailand. And I watched him kind of, it was a very. really tough journey. He got in and he thought he could make a difference as every new politician

thought and he was just kind of kind of pushed out of his own party because he wasn't, I guess, like, you know, he wasn't corrupt. He just didn't want to take bribes and he was just like, I'm going to make changes and this and that and kind of just really upset kind of the, I guess, the existing structure. So he actually had to quit. and for a while he was trying to create his own political party as well and I went and kind of help him like rally and kind of went up and down the country and it was like it was like just watching him kind of struggle

and this proof of his work of him trying to make a difference and he just couldn't he couldn't do it because he was a proof of stake system he couldn't buy the votes and so he won one seat from proof of work but then the proof of state guys won this whole kind of election and to me like it was just it was so unfair to see that level of corruption and so much hard work going unnoticed and it was just like there was a quote like underdeveloped countries aren't underdeveloped they're over exploited kind of tying back to what you said at the beginning with kind of the monetary colonization and it's to me like kind of growing up in both new zealand and thailand and seeing kind of the disparity between like inequality like I guess That's the thing that drives me and gets me really upset and passionate at the same time because you kind of see, you see the work going into it. And you just want to help make society better, I guess. And it's just not working until Bitcoin.

Yeah, yeah. And it's, I think this is also to chat about, or some of the earlier topics, too, about, you know, can Bitcoiners be a little harsh sometimes versus what? welcoming and and you know there's there's a little bit of both but i think this is part of why too because as you said um people who care come to bitcoin and those that maybe don't care and and come into the realm um as they drift towards bitcoin they begin to care more um and and kind of open their eyes to uh i suppose what's truly at stake with all of this. And it's, it's interesting to see those, those journeys of, of how the, the, the touch points and, and the entry points of where people come in and their demeanor at that

time, you know, I, I came in, number go up, right? And so, you know, yeah, then, then I'm, I'm, I'm kind of looking at some, some other crap along the way until I start hearing from, from people that have a different demeanor, a different mindset. And that kind of set me on the straight narrow. But whereas, you know, somebody like yourself, others that have come into the space, depending on on where they come in, who they hear from first, they may be coming in from a different perspective of, hey, this is important for people around the globe that maybe need this to help. And it's maybe it's not just a speculative look at it. Maybe it's, you know, I genuinely want to help somebody. So I don't know, I know tip, you're really

tight on time, but before Tip runs out of time, does anybody have anything that they'd like to touch on that she said? Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that come into Bitcoin, you know, they care about the tech, you know, but really it's it's a number go up thing. But I think that's mostly a developed nations kind of thing. It's number go up. But if you come from a place that really struggles with their fiat system, it's more that number doesn't go down kind of thing. And that that sounds kind of like the same thing, but it really isn't in practice. And so I think a lot of people like Tip come through it.

And they're the ones who really care. There's a lot of people in Bitcoin who don't. I mean, they just care about number go up. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, and it depends on the crowd you're in, right? If you're at a conference and it's mid bull market, you're going to see a lot more of the NGU Lambo crowd.

And if you're at, you know, Bitcoin 2023 in the midst of a bare market coming down from 300 grand to like 80 and Bitcoin is dead, you'll get more of the people that are, they're just going to weather every storm and they're there for slightly different reasons. Yeah. Well, and the BCH hard fork and the BSV fork that happened thereafter is, I mean, I don't want to mischaracterize them, but I think for a lot of people, and especially the companies that were running in the space at the time, that was all the proof you needed that it was about number go up. It's more transaction throughout. Let's pay fewer fees. I don't want to pay for this service. I don't want to pay for this network. they didn't care about privacy. They didn't care about smart optimization.

It's just I don't want to pay fees. That's what it was about. Or I want to fork this coin so I can get double the coins and then go dump them. Yeah. It is what it is. It is what it is. Yeah. Haley, Jamie, any thoughts for tip before she has to run?

I was just really inspired by yourself. story. So thank you for sharing that. And something that's really special to me about Bitcoin is just a variety of roles and what people do in the space. Like you think of something more traditional and it's very like rigid. But in Bitcoin, like people can help in so many different types of ways and you don't necessarily need to be a developer to like help Bitcoin. So it's just really cool to see everyone here doing different things. Yes, I loved your story as well. And hopefully we can connect after and get to know each other more and I'm totally going to find you on TikTok. I put out a TikTok video on Bitcoin and I want to do more, but I just haven't done it yet.

So we got to talk, girl. Awesome. Thank you guys. Thanks so much for having me on. See you. Yeah, thanks. I'll check out yourself. Bye.

It's been interesting. Awesome. Bye. And yeah, well, thanks Tip for being on. We do have one more reason for being bullish. It'll be a four person panel for the end here. And I do, I did love tips reasons. So that's fantastic.

But Colin, dude, you got the floor. Let's round it out. Sure. Yeah, my reason for being bullish. Yes. Well, I've noticed in some of the comments I'm already getting hate for my Buckele comments and one of them referenced that, well, there's all these other horrible countries doing horrible things and you dare question Buckelly.

Well, let's see if you can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time on the what aboutism. So China, I am, you know, some of us are bullish. because of adoption in some countries. I'm bullish because of the anti-adoption and others, and specifically China. I think it was a wonderful thing when China kicked out all the miners. Not a good thing for freedom among Chinese people, but I think just for the project of Bitcoin, it was really good to get that hashing power out of the country and into a more varied geographical locations such as the United States, Canada, Eastern Europe.

Even South America looks like now to some degree. If it had all just moved to the states, then we would just have the same problem, but with a maybe slightly better regime. But yeah, there continued crackdown on all things crypto. And the response to this China fud is getting better and better. You know,

it really used to just fuck the market. And now it's, It's Bitcoin's Honey Badger is really showing lately. It's like they have to invent a new ban every week. It's like, well, we're going to ban transactions this time. It's like, didn't you do that last week? Like, what did you change? It sounds like you're just rebanding it the same way as you did last week.

And the market doesn't give a shit. It doesn't care. And that's amazing. And we now no longer have to listen to the mindings. concentration, FUD, which, to be fair, was if you, if you, there was a sophisticated version of that argument that had teeth that you could actually point to and say, yeah, yeah, that's an area of improvement for Bitcoin for sure. Bitcoin's not perfect. And now that has gone away. And with it, it's like killing two birds with one stone

because the whole Bitcoin energy usage, polluting climate change, global warming arguments are also getting knocked down that much more now that it's gone. And so I am bullish that China and the CCP have banned Bitcoin because fuck them and they just made the biggest mistake they have ever made. I mean, think about the implications of what they have just done. If we're right, if we're wrong, then I'm an idiot and they're going to have the last laugh. But if I'm right, they just gave up the biggest geopolitical advantage they had probably ever that they could ever have by pushing everyone out. Because even if they reverse all these decisions, every single miner is going to think twice,

even if it has amazingly cheap electricity is going to think twice about moving their operations there because there's always that serious risk of regime uncertainty that comes from having to move all your shit back over there and get it set up again. And it's not encouraging that they would ever change this policy. You see China, and I spent a lot of time in China, you see the government getting more and more inward looking. It looks like a China of the past before the 70s when they opened up. They're reverting back to the way they were in the 40s, 50s and early 60s, where they're banning effeminate men from acting in movies because they're not macho enough.

They're telling children how many hours of games they can play or how much time they can spend on TikTok. They're revoking the visas of English teachers because they don't want Westerners influencing their youth. And that's to their detriment. because if you don't have native speakers, excuse me, if you don't have native speakers teaching them English, who are they going to learn from? They're going to learn from other Chinese people and their society is going to be more closed off because of it. I'm sorry, but English is the national, international language right now.

And that's going to hurt their society. And what are they doing now? Instead of going to English classes with native speakers, they're being put into thoughts of she classes. Okay. This is the death growl of a dying authoritarian regime. In my opinion, I could be wrong. And a lot of people have predicted this for a long time. And I'm no expert. Okay. So I'm an idiot. Don't listen to what I'm saying. I'm just telling you what I think. I wonder if what we are seeing is similar to what happened to Soviet Union. No one expected the Soviet Union to collapse until it did. And it collapsed very quickly. And they're shutting on. power to their own factories because they have power shortages, which may tell you why they actually banned all the Bitcoin mining. So it doesn't actually look very good for them. And that's good for everyone else, especially if you want to mine Bitcoin, you don't want to do it in China. That's good for Bitcoin. And if that regime fails, I hope that's good for the Chinese.

Unfortunately, history is littered with dying regimes or dead regimes that were replaced by even worse ones. So I fear for the people of China, they're very close to my heart. I know many Chinese people. I've studied with them. I've studied in China. And I fear for them and their future, especially now that they have no escape hatch out of that horrible, horrible, stupid financial system that is just leveraged to a hilt on just totally insane real estate. And we're seeing that with Evergrands.

So it's, I guess it's more, I'm bullish on Bitcoin because I'm not bullish on China and they just made a huge mistake and they continue to blunder on this. But that's kind of how I feel. It's interesting that again, and I'm going to bring up a chart here, here's the hash rate. Here's the hash rate of Bitcoin. Right. Look at it. It basically, it's just about fully recovered from the absolute peak and from the massive drop that we saw after China band it.

Honeybatcher doesn't care. What did everyone say when they said they banned, if China banned mining, it would kill Bitcoin. Bullshit. TikTok next block, right? It just kept on pumping away. Wrong again. Add it to the list of obituaries for Bitcoin, the growing one. Well, to see that FUD disappear.

And now we have a perfect case study for what happens when one of the largest nations on Earth bans Bitcoin mining. Nothing. Nothing. It takes a hit and hash rate. We have a few slow blocks. The difficulty adjustment kicks in. And then the hash rate migrates to friendlier places on the globe. That's about it.

Yeah, and so and somebody had a comment on what you were saying here. I'm going to bring it up on the bottom. Agreed with most. However, USA is killing itself off with the whole us versus them, blues versus red, blood versus Cripps, Republicans versus Democrats, the accident backs. China don't have to do much. We're going to do their job for them. That's fair.

Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. But yeah, yeah, it's. I'm not bullish on the U.S. the way. Again, it's, can you chew bubble gum and walk at the same time? Just because I'm criticizing one regime doesn't mean I don't have criticisms for plenty of others. The world is full of bad regimes run by dumb people that I am insulted. Tell me how I should live my life

when actually smart people go out and what do they do? They don't go, they don't go work for the government. Look at Tip. Tips Dad. What did he learn? He learned the hard way. You don't ask for permission. You don't. You just build around it. That's the only way. And that's what Bitcoin is. Yeah.

I like that. Perfect case study that Honey Badger don't care. It doesn't. It doesn't care. It's just really unfortunate for the Chinese people. I mean, millions of people are getting robbed. Billions.

Billions. Yeah. And I know they're not the only nation dealing with this. It's just so sad. But they can still use Bitcoin. someone else pointed out and it's true they can still use bitcoin in china it's just it's not legal but okay yeah yeah honey badger doesn't care same thing in cairo same thing in uh egypt my friend was like you know he follows my stuff on it on social media he's like jamie like i want bitcoin but like it's

banned here and then i posted something on twitter about it and my my egyptian friends were like no like you can have bitcoin you just you just do it you know um so i shared with him like hey Your neighbors have Bitcoin. We got a secondary reply from that. Cheers. I'm American here who lived in Shenzhen for seven years. I don't like what I see as well. But hey, I'm BTC all the way.

Cheers to all of you. Thanks, Chris. Wow. So these are YouTube tips? Yes, by the way. Thank you. I've never seen that. That was very kind.

Thanks, dude. But yeah, it's again, Bitcoin will continue to road around. this kind of stuff, right? It doesn't care. I'm sure this isn't the last we've seen of it. We see nations regularly ban in some way, shape, or form, but they, it's never super effective, right?

When you have to clarify that something's banned again and again since 2013, it means that your ban isn't working. So what can you say? Yeah. Ban harder. Yeah, exactly. Ban more. again, ban it in 800 different ways.

Yeah. Haley, I don't know. Did you have any thoughts on what Colin was talking about in regards to whether it be various jurisdictions or specifically China banning Bitcoin and it just keeping on ticking? I definitely agree that it's good for like the energy fund and forcing people to get a little bit more creative and how they mine and like what energy sources they use and trying to find cheaper energy sources. So I think that that's definitely been a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. And hey, you know, you'll, Haley, I guarantee you and Jimmy, you too, you guys both, you know,

class of 2021 or close to, you guys will live to see China ban again. I guarantee it. We've seen plenty of them. There's probably a few more coming down the pipe at some point. So actually, Why not? Does that make you a, does it, I wonder how many China bands does it take for you to endure to become an OG? I think it's like four or five because they're so, there's like some weird tootsie pop joke in here somewhere. How many China bands does it take to get to the center of a Bitcoin boom? Yeah, something along those lines. Yeah, this has been great.

I think I'm going to wrap it there. We'll do a round of final thoughts for everything and then and then we'll stick a stick a fork in it. Guys, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate all your time and tip, even though you're not here. Thank you for spending the time today. Let's just go down the line one more time. You guys can let people know who you are and where to find you and then just any final thoughts that you have.

So Haley, I'll toss it to you first. Yes, I'm Haley. I work at SquareCrypto and you can find me on Twitter at HBurco where you can follow ScoreCrypto on Twitter. And yeah, this has been great getting to meet everyone and talk about all the things and just feeling good after this. Awesome. Well, thanks for being here.

Colin, how about you? Oh, yeah, me. You can find me at PrivacyPros. On our blog or you can read my stuff there. You can read my stuff over at buy Bitcoinworldwide.com. You can also listen to me on the Unhash Podcast. It's Unhashpodcast.com, and you can follow me on Twitter over at Colin underscore Alds.

Awesome, awesome. And Jamie, you're the last one. Who are you? What do you do? And where can people find you? Any final thoughts that you may have? Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me, Ben. This has been amazing.

I love meeting new bitcoinsers. You can find me on Twitter at Jamie Stuckard. And then my new podcast is the Bitcoin Blonde podcast. It's at Bitcoin Blonde underscore. I have two episodes out. I recorded my third one. So I'm still super fresh. And I just wanted to say to anyone who's new to Bitcoin, it may seem like extremely

overwhelming, but just stick with it and be patient because before you know it, like after a few weeks, a couple months, like you'll have a much better understanding. and it does get easier. Yeah. You should have been on the Bitcoin Blonde podcast. He's an aspiring blonde. I would love to have that. Yeah, do I count? Do I count with this?

Yeah, you're aspiring. Awesome. But Colin, you have the same name as my brother. And you have a deep, deep understanding of Bitcoin. So if you're around and you want to be on a podcast, let me know. Yeah, hit me up. I don't know how deep my understanding is, but let me know if you want to happen to do it. Awesome. Well, guys, thank you very much.

You're all welcome back anytime. And people that are watching this, all of their Twitter profiles are linked in the show notes down below. Thanks, guys. I'll see you guys. Thanks. Bye. Thank you. Bye. All right. And everybody watching, again, thank you so much for being here. Always the best part of my week. You know, it's great. Just chilling and chatting with Bitcoiners

and to cap off a Friday. As always, please do hit like, subscribe, and share all of those things. Really, really do help get this content in front of more people. If you want to help with a show in another way, you can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. That was ShakePay, Ledden, Bit Refill, Keystone. And of course, one of our guests, Colin, co-founder of Bill Fottle, aka PrivacyPros.com, check them out as well. You know, get those backups and solid steel. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip at my strike page.

That is strike.me slash BTC sessions. When you get there, you can type in any amount you want. You hit the tip button. You'll be greeted with a lightning QR code or if you tap to the right, a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening wherever you may be. I'll see you guys next time for your daily session. as Bitcoin.