BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Jaime Garcia, Max DeMarco, Madex ep318

Episode Date: January 28, 2023

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What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish? Killer panel today, very excited to have all these gents on the show. We'll be bringing them in, introducing them momentarily. But yeah, plenty to chat about this evening. And yeah, we've got some unique people to give you their reasons. Nonetheless, this is live.

Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live Do it live I'll write it and we'll do it live The fucking thing sucks

If you have not already Like subscribe, share all those things help a ton Getting this content in front of more eyeballs I'm 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 Where we are in the market right now

this is timechain calendar.com. We're sitting at 23,052 cockbucks per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up, 4,338 sats. 91.78% of all Bitcoin have been mined, which is 19.27 million of them. And in terms of fees, a little bump right now, 21 stats per byte next block, even if you're willing to wait a little bit, still like 17 stats per bite. So just be aware, use RBF, whatever you've got to do. Shout out to sponsors of the show.

Coinkite.com. Best damn hardware on the game. I love my cold card mark for securing my stack. They've got all kinds of great stuff. Open dimes, block clocks, seat signers, or sorry, tap signers, sats cards, all the great stuff over there. I've got buckets and buckets of coin kite gear. So check them out. Coinkite.com.

You can use code BTC sessions for 5% off. And if you need to learn how to use any of it, I've literally got a tutorial on every single thing here. Up next, we've got start 9.com, your sovereign computing solution. I've shown everybody how to set up your full Bitcoin stack with this thing so you can be running Bitcoin core, your lightning node,

things like Mempool, things like join market, all these peripherals to keep your Bitcoin self-sovereign, but you can also get your digital identity self-sovereign as well. So you can host things like password managers, your photos, your files, and much more.

So you can head over to start9.com. I do have a full tutorial on how to set up your embassy so you can check out the embassy one or if you're looking for something really beefy to host just everything on. The embassy pro is high end. So check them out. Again, start 9.com.

If you're stacking stats and you're looking for a way that has a few special considerations kept in mind, things like doing it peer to peer, things like non-KYC, not having to give up any information in the process, things like instant self-custody. Hottle, Hodel has you covered for that. You can sign up with nothing more than an email address in a couple minutes,

and you can be trading peer-to-peer stacking your sats that way. They do have a lending platform as well, which doesn't get re-hypublicated. So if that's something you're looking to do, then it's the safest way to do it. If that's the road you're going to go down. But, yeah, Hodel, Hottle, have been awesome, and they've been knocking out of the park. I've got a tutorial on this as well, so check them out. And then finally, if you're backing up any more Bitcoin wallet,

get it in steel. You don't want just a piece of paper. You don't want to have to be worrying about fire damage, water damage, all that stuff. So you can check out Privacyprose.io slash BTC sessions. The bill foddle is a nice, robust, sturdy way to get those seed phrases in something a little bit more, again, robust than just a piece of paper flitting around the office. And it gives you that piece of mind. Anyways, enough of my rambling. I think it's time to bring in our guests. So we've got with us, Max. Hi, May and Madex. Welcome, gentlemen.

Good to see you all. Thank you for coming on this show. I think a round of intros are in order. So I'll start you off and I'll just say, who are you and what do you do? I'm going to start with Max. Let me give yourself a little intro. Yeah, sure. First time being here, thanks for having me.

And what am I doing? I would say I'm a Bitcoin filmmaker. So I am traveling around the world. and try to showcase the world what people are building, what this space is really about. I'm shit posting a little bit on Twitter as well, but yeah, mainly I do YouTube videos. Awesome, awesome.

Yeah, I've seen a bunch of your stuff. It's fantastic. If people are unfamiliar, you should probably check it out. But thanks for being here, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, no problem. Maidex, dude, good to see you. How you doing?

Madex, I'm the creative director. at Bull Bitcoin. And I'm a artist in the regular world and also making stuff for the Bitcoin world. Yeah. Been in the space as sort of full-time since probably 2017. And yeah, I'm spaceful on Twitter. I don't know what else. That's plenty, man.

Yeah, again, if you haven't checked out what made X-Men, follow Space Bowl on Twitter and you'll get a taste of it. But, yeah, I love the stuff that you've been working on, and I think it represents Bitcoin well. So, yeah. Yeah, no worries, man. And, Hame, good to see you, man. How are you?

Good to see you, Ben. Good evening, gentlemen. Yeah, I occasionally contribute to Bitcoin magazine on the topic of El Salis. and I occasionally host global Bitcoin Fest Twitter spaces on my spare time. Yeah, and that's, I'm always learning. I'm a student. I'm an expert at nothing. I'm a learner of all things, Bitcoin.

So thanks for the invite. Awesome. Well, dude, glad to have you back. We did meet very briefly in Miami, correct? Yes, very briefly. You know, I managed to miss everybody when I was there. and so it was like, did you really go there, but you're my alibi.

Yeah, yeah. It was impossible to get more than like a few minutes with people. It was just like, you know, there were so many people there. I mean, it was awesome. It was a lot of fun, but yeah, holy shit. There were so many people to talk to. Awesome. Well, we're going to get this show rolling.

Anybody watching that's unfamiliar, this is why are we bullish? Very simple concept. Basically, everybody here comes with a reason why they're bullish. Something that they're excited about. It could be any topic, a personal experience, an application, a piece of news, really anything that they want to rant about, it is their prerogative. So we're going to go by the three R's. Somebody's going to drop a reason why they're bullish.

Then, altogether, we're going to riff on that reason. And then finally, we're going to rotate until everybody gets a turn. Reason, riff, rotate, simple. And I'm going to get us started. So my reason for being bullish this week has to do with the tutorial I put together this week, actually. So I've dove into multi-sig a lot in terms of just like kind of learning how it works and all the different ways you can do it. When if the first time I tried multi-sig, it was like pretty disjointed and you couldn't like port things over to other wallets. It was it was tough to use.

it is getting significantly easier. My main worry before was like, oh shit, if I do a multi-sig, like, what if something happens to me, my family, like, will they know how to access it, all that kind of stuff? But there's always the worry of like a single point of failure. If it's just a single sig, what if somebody gets my seed phrase? Like there's all these considerations when you're thinking of like beyond just yourself, when you're trying to like, you know, insulate your family from, you know, single points of failure and human error. And so up until now, kind of the option was if you're hedging against human error and you want something kind of distributed, collaborative multi-sig was kind of your option, but it came at the

price of privacy, right? So you go to unchained or you go to CASA and it's great, because you have like, they never have control of your money. They've just got like, they've got a just in case key. And they can sign for you if you lose almost everything that you're supposed to actually be responsible for. And so, you know, the prospect of that is nice

because you can say to your family, well, we've got a couple devices and we've got a couple backups and we put them in different places. And even if you lose 75% of that shit, you can still go to unchanged, say, and then say, oh, yeah, you know, I'm, here's proof that I'm next of kin and, you know, Ben died. And, and I have this one key. And that's it. And then they can at least recover your funds. But the issue, the privacy issue of being heavily KYC in the process is it's a bit of a honeypot of information. So like the, the thought for me always was like,

one, and this wasn't a consideration before, but state attack. Now in Canada, I see that as like an actual possibility of like, oh, well, maybe the government will just say we don't like that and then go to the company and say, give us a list of all your users and what they had held with you and then you're coerced into releasing it. And then on top of that, just like, what if a database gets hacked? and it's, you know, here's so-and-so who's been heavily K-Y-Ced, here's where they live, everything, and then here's the ex-pub to their money, and this is how much Bitcoin they have. And then that becomes, like, you know, if you've been around for a little bit, and there's, like, a decent amount of coin in there, all of a sudden somebody can actually

kind of decipher, huh, is it worth, is it worth it for me to make a road trip with my $5 dollar wrench to go visit this guy. So it becomes a worry. And so the thing that I was kind of stoked about that I tried out this week was what Nunchuk wallet has done. And they've done kind of a collaborative multi-sig slash inheritance planning thing in the vein of like unchained or CASA, but it requires no KYC. So you can literally just do it with an email address and that can just be like a dummy email

address or you can and not yet but soon you'll be able to actually just log in with a private key so even less um even less identification involved and the same goes for the the beneficiary like if you're leaving money to to people um you give them some information that allows them to get access to that money down the road uh but they never actually have to identify themselves either and so they can claim it through the application. And nobody knows whose money that is, but they have access to it at the point that you've designated. And just the way that they've kind of put this together,

again, there's lots of fault tolerance so you can lose a lot of the pieces and still be okay. You know, I'm, you know, I feel pretty good about the prospect of a family member being like, I just have this, you know, I have the bits of information that was provided to me and then I have how to claim it and I have a date. And that's it. And you can involve a trustee if you want, like if you want somebody to hold some of the information and give it to your relatives at a certain point in time, you can do that. But you can make it as anonymous as you want and you get to use the technology of Bitcoin to do what the law would

have done without all the bureaucracy. So I guess all in all, I'm kind of just excited about the prospect of Bitcoin taking our old institutions that, you know, some of them, you know, can serve a purpose if we need to use them in that way or if you want to use them in that way. But you can also sidestep in entirely and just say, fuck it, I don't want to give anybody my information. I, you know, I'm going to give the necessary information to my relatives so that they can claim this in the future. And I need no courts to be a part of that process because I am giving this directly to my next of kin. I think that's fantastic.

So I'm going to kind of leave it there and then I'm going to let you guys I'm curious to hear thoughts or questions or if you dove into multi-sig yet or not yet. So anybody who wants to dive in with any thoughts in there, feel free. Yeah, maybe I'm going to start

because I'm just assuming that I'm the youngest here on the panel based on Yeah, I'm 25 with dogs like me. I don't know. But what are you saying is kind of very, very fascinating for me because I like when I talk to to my parents or something, they know how the internet kind of was built and how like more and more functionalities were put on top of the internet. And I mean, we have it now. And that's kind of how I grew up with it. You know, I knew how Instagram work, Facebook and so on.

And what you're saying there is kind of one reason what I'm bullish at because like being in Bitcoin, you always have those questions like, okay, what am I going to do with inheritance? This is not solved yet 100%. What is how do I store it rightly? And there's like, for me, it's super interesting to kind of be part of this process and to see how Bitcoin really evolves. And it's kind of like, I can't keep up with it anymore because like there's just so many new projects happening. And this is like amazing to see. And I for example didn't know that that this solution already exists. I'm definitely going to check out the tutorial afterwards because I, that's a question which I'm like, you know, my family doesn't really know that much about Bitcoin.

But I need to find a way to kind of store it in a safe, safe manner. So for me, I just wanted to add that it's amazing. to see what's happening in the space and how fast everything is happening and being part of this. And also now with Noster, it's kind of similar. I'm new to Noster, but seeing there how, just how projects evolve over time. And I mean, if this keeps in this space, I have no idea where we're going to be in five to 10 years, right? Yeah, yeah. It's progressing quickly.

And you're right. like the the idea of I mean that this is available in and of itself is nice because I think every one of us if we were to think right now okay what what if something happened to me what if I died this second how well would my family fare or you know people that I know fair in trying to actually reclaim my Bitcoin you know it's a good question to ask because it's never You never plan to die, typically, unless you're like the Canadian government is helping you out, then that might be an instance. But other than that, like you typically, you don't plan to die.

So, you know, if you don't make any sort of plans prior, then it can be a bit of a cluster fuck. But hi, man, I'm kind of curious your thoughts. You've got family. You know, does it worry you? like how they get access if something were to happen? You know, I've tried to like walk my wife through a couple of things and she's like, explain it to one of the kids instead. You know, and so yes.

I mean, I think that that's, you know, and as, you know, especially young people who haven't, you know, invested themselves so much into the traditional and legacy system who are choosing to put some of their wealth and savings into Bitcoin, then I think, yeah, like I think it has to be not easy, but like, you know, easy enough for our loved ones to get at it. I'm very excited about this solution. And do you have a tutorial on this one? Yeah, I literally just put it out yesterday morning.

I'm going to have to check it out. Yeah. Because it like multi-sig is one of those topics that I've been staying away from. I'm like like my education is at a level where like I know a lot of basic stuff and I'm really comfortable with it. but now I got to teach somebody else about it. And but, you know, if it comes in the form of multi-sig and it's easy, I think that, you know, yeah, the more power to everybody. So I can't wait to dive into it. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, and you're right to say it's, you know, it's a learning curve. And especially because it's, it's still so early and there's so many different iterations of how to put it together. you can make it as simple or as complicated as you like. And I think that's the worry where people make it too complicated because multi-sig is already pretty, it's pretty secure. So you don't need to make it more complicated than it is. Also, before I get Medex to chime in here,

Yellow wants to know who is Max DeMarco? Do you want to, what were, what were you going by before, Mr. Max? Yeah, my, there was an imposter for like two years of mine. He looked very similar to me. His name was Pleb Music. And I don't know, Maddox, if you remember, but actually we've been, both of us, we've been part of the 21-ism block number seven. I just Googled it.

But this was actually the first podcast that I was ever on. and it was like in the same block because they released like different blocks and they have like different artists of music and physical art and so on and that was the first time that I yeah connected with you Maddox I don't know if you remember but I was that music back then yeah yeah that's awesome yeah no I uh which the reveal of the real name was wonderful by the way Ben people are saying that like their multi-sig is to call you. In my will, call Ben. You hear all the documents called Ben.

I'll charge a, I don't know, what, 51% fee? What do you think? There you go. Higher percent attack. 51% of, yeah, 51% inheritance attack. Yeah, there we go. Medex. I mean, I don't know how much you dove into this stuff.

Like when you think of self-custody and like, what if shit hits the fan and you can't access it, like, are you kind of thinking about that now as like, what if something happens to me, who am I leaving stuff too? And how am I going to do that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. I've had a lot of death in my life. So I'm very familiar to the whole process is what happens when people are gone. And so it's on my mind quite a lot. and also I live pretty fast and aggressively.

So, you know, memento Mori. But I find a lot of these solutions that the real risk is that all the security features just end up locking the people you would intend to have the coins or whoever out of the stashes. And I think the more complex it is, the more likely you are to just burn those coins and they go to nobody. So I'm definitely of the like simple minded approach to these sorts of things. It's a difficult thing for me to get into, you know, on a live show or in a recorded show due to offset reasons.

But I can tell you that just pure simplicity. And the real key to it all is trust with the family members or the person. that you are entrusting the coins to if something happens to you. You know, that it could even be if the trust is strong enough that that person just straight up, you know, has the keys. You know, and like obviously that could be ridiculous, but, you know, I think human relationships are really where all of this, what it all actually comes down to. And I don't know, if you're listening to this and you think that's crazy to just give someone the keys to your stash, then, you know, maybe you've got to work on strengthening the relationships you have with the people around you. Like your family and your brothers and your closest friends, those bonds, especially between men, should almost be romantic in a way. Like, not in a gay way.

We have that now. And like, you have to truly, like, love your brother with all your heart. And though I think that that's where kind of the core to all of this is. So if anything happens to me, there's kind of the closest people in my life that know what to do. And as far as from the tech side of it, it's not very complex. The last thing I would want to do is have. a firm involved. We're seeing all these companies that are popping up that are selling all kinds of services for

managing these types of things. And I understand like families can be very complex and complicated as well and wills can be extremely complicated. But I mean, it's just I would much rather have a trust with, among family members and a plan among family members that in involving any third parties at all. Yeah. I mean, that's fair.

That's totally fair. Max, I think you wanted to jump in here. Yeah. Aren't you concerned about, or I would be, to some extent, concerned about that it's not about the trust that I think they would do something malicious about it, but rather that the handling of the keys somehow isn't in a right way, you know, that maybe they have it. I mean, you can give them a steel plate or whatever, but this is rather for me the risk with just including or giving them my keys.

Like human error. I'm definitely not saying do that. I'm just saying it's an example of like the trust that you should have with the people who are closest to you. And especially if it's somebody that you're considering leaving your wealth to. And just their ability to manage keys or manage the systems that you have in place in order. for your whole inheritance to execute correctly. You know, you've got to be leaving it to someone who can deal with all that sort of stuff. For example, there was a time in my life when my father was very sick.

And during that time, I was very, very young. And we had a, my godfather was essentially entrusted with, if anything were to happen. to my dad during that time, that he would basically manage affairs until I was of a certain age. And he was chosen by my dad because of his abilities to manage wealth well, and the trust, obviously, the family trust, right? Yeah. Well, I guess, I mean, this can get complicated, and it's a great subject. but with children, you know, they're not going to be able to boot up a coal card and get it working, you know, at 10 years old or whatever.

So, again, it just comes back to strengthening relationships with people around you and educating the people around you. And, you know, it doesn't have to be, it's just got to be someone who you can trust to execute your wishes, you know, if you're not here anymore. Yeah. I think, and I mean, to your point, in terms of like complexity causing issues, you can almost like evaluate it from like a buckets of risk kind of perspective. Like maybe you have two different methods in which you're bestowing, you know, your Bitcoin to your family. Like, oh, okay, one is like, I've just got a simple, you know, hardware or I've got a seed phrase that's like loaded up with funds. and then it just goes to the family at the end and you just have instructions of where it is.

And then maybe you have something that's more distributed with another part of the stack that kind of hedges against state attack and mismanagement of losing shit. And so, you know, but I completely agree that like you need to make sure that your relationships are strong in an order. you know, obviously anybody that you're entrusting the fruits of your labor to, like, through your entire life, is going to have to be important to you. And you want to have trust in that person to, you know, execute and use that to improve

their lives and the lives of the family that, you know, that were left behind, right? So, yeah. And this is something they're attacking, right? This is their breaking relationships, not only between families. but between, you know, they're fracturing our closest friendships, which should be in place without question. But nowadays, unfortunately, I don't know. Yeah, everybody has to pick a side of the political aisle

and then disown the family members that don't see eye to eye on everything. That seems to be the environment we're in today. So, yeah, yeah, I agree. I think, again, to kind of, you know, before I wrap the topic, here. I think in general, as long as people put more thought and have a decisive plan in place of like, I die tomorrow, what happens? If you haven't taken just a moment to think about that and put something there, at least an existing plan, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be there because you don't want people having to sift through loads of bullshit after you pass in the hopes of

maybe being able to claim a portion of what you left them. So, yeah, I'd encourage people to think about that and take action on that as soon as possible because you never know what's coming down along. Yeah, like it could be today, so definitely as soon as possible. If it's not done now, it'll never get done. And it is very serious, unless you want to donate your staff to all of us, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think your family might be a little bit miffed if you're, you're inheriting.

plan was just general deflation for the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. Yeah. All right, jents. I'm going to wrap my topic here. Again, anybody that's kind of curious about what I was chatting about earlier, there's a tutorial that I dropped yesterday morning on the Nunchuk thing, tons of like multi-sick stuff. And then just in general, you know, you can always go simple with it too.

So with that, we're going to do a rotation. And I'm going to go to Max first, actually, and just a simple question. Why are you bullish, man? Why am I bullish? Good question. Short answer, value for value. Longer answer following now. So I'm coming from the music industry.

So I worked in several labels and I was involved in creating artists, trying to break them in different markets and so on. And I was kind of like, I was kind of desperate in a sense working in this industry because the appreciation of real craftsmanship and really the proof of work isn't really present anymore. It's rather just like, okay, we're going to throw some money at some artists and some TikTok influences or whatever and trying to make money out of it. And this kind of really frustrated me.

And I didn't know why this was the case. I had no idea. I wasn't into Bitcoin or didn't understand first principles good enough to understand why I was so miserable. But then, of course, diving down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, understanding what real art and real craftmanship means and the concept of proof of work kind of led me to this path of, yeah, just understanding what is wrong with a lot of fiat industries. or especially the music industry because it's like i think it's one of the fakesest and most fiat industries out there and so now then having made the transition to creating bitcoin content it's it's kind of astonishing for me the last month or something um because i started yeah creating my own youtube videos and um really i was

talking to some other bitconers and everybody was talking about yeah value for value is the future this is this is going to change your world i didn't believe it i thought yeah this is just some hype up bullshit basically and yeah now i'm trying or i'm just experimenting with value for value so i'm funding my videos myself but it seems like people in the bitcoin industry a bitcoin community they really understand how much work is put into art or in different things. And this is not just for me. It's like I now just experienced it for myself the first time that value for value really works.

And this makes me extremely bullish because I thought, yeah, it's just a concept. But seeing this, I mean, it's not there yet. It's just slowly you get like, I think Ben, you also have some sort of value for value model and get tips and so on. It's like it's nowhere near saying sponsors or anything, but it's just like understanding that the proof of concept is there, that it works and that there might be a future where artists might just be able to finance yourself with value for value without being,

having sponsors who might sense need to self-censor themselves or something. It's just super bullish to me. and so yeah, this is something which is lately on my mind. I like that. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting seeing this shift. I'll chime in momentarily. I think I know MedX will have plenty to say I want to because we didn't get, you know, Jaime hasn't had a moment to chime in in a little bit.

So I'm going to go to you and just kind of get your thoughts on like the state of, you know, if you've dabbled in kind of the value for value stuff yet. And, and, you know, if you know, if you see kind of Fiat culture as having affected artists and the way that people create things. I don't know if you have a finger on the pulse of that much. You know, like the one thing that I always think about is, you know, growing up, you know, with cassette and CD players listening to a lot of rap and punk rock and in my teenage years, I think that the industry really exploited some of these artists

and you know with oh you get tour you get to stay at a hotel and a lot of them didn't like really secure their you know the fruits of the labor through either contracts or you know just money that they could use in store away right and you see a lot of them like you're just having like successful careers and then like nothing go you know like they didn't really didn't take take it all in at the time right and and then eventually all of their the rights to their music is owned by somebody else and it just kind of like seems kind of unfair right you know and had they had I don't opportunity to do things independent through value for value and and you know have like grassroots uh you know fans actually contribute to their to their um you know talent i think maybe they would have secured their their wealth a little bit better at the same time i think

we live in a in a time like right now where um instant gratification like one thing to the other and I think that everybody expects it to be for free or in exchange for your attention through some sort of advertising. And so I like the concept of, say, like, a fountain and even like through Twitter when, you know, strike, kind of put in that tip feature, right? Like, that's all really good because, like, I've, you know,

often enjoyed, videos and, you know, like your videos even, Ben. And I'm like, yeah, I like that. Send some, some sats over and like listening to like toxic happy hour guys. You know, I was like, oh, you know, here is a beer, right? And because I'm, I'm actually enjoying it. And so I think like in concept is good. I think we've got to find ways to really like capture the spirit and kind of like dive into it.

So I'm on board with value for value. I think that we, I like to see it develop even further. Yeah. Yeah. I'd agree. Again, like it's right now, it's not at a place where it's going to replace kind of the existing models. But you could see a world where, say,

down the road, like let's do the realm of podcasts. Okay. Well, right now, or YouTube is probably a better example. So YouTube, like you get, I get, you know, a couple hundred thousand views every month.

And the revenue from YouTube is, is like, laughable for that. If, if I were to have a core audience of, say, between a thousand and two thousand viewers, that every single month donated a single dollar, I would be making more than YouTube gives me for 200,000 views. So like, you know, the YouTube, like, because they're raking away basically everything that they're making on the videos, right? Like for a small career, they don't get to fuck. And so, yeah, there's definitely something to be said that if you have a core audience of people that appreciate what you do, you can make a living on what you do. And it doesn't matter if the whole world appreciates what you do.

It just matters that a group of people really care and, you know, see. value in that and are willing to contribute to that. And I think people kind of underestimate how much of a difference it can make for some people, especially, you know, it's different if you're living in a western city that's expensive to live in. But if you're making content and you're living in a place where the, you know, the standard of living is maybe not up to the, you know, a major, or the cost of living is not that of a major American city. It could be a meaningful amount of money. So, I want to toss to Matex because I feel like you are going to have plenty to say on the quality of arts and how, you know, how it's been affected over the years. But I'll defer to you.

Take it wherever you want based on what Max is saying. Yeah. Well, I mean, so I have a huge amount of criticism for stuff. And just because I have criticism for things doesn't mean I think that, you know, I'm the greatest in the world. world either. My stuff is definitely in development and I'm on my own pursuit of getting better and better and definitely a long way away from mastery or even artistry. I mean, people call me an artist. It's actually kind of frustrating because I think I'm very far away from the title of artist. To me, I see it as kind of, you know, you start and you're an apprentice and then you're working your way up and then

eventually you're pretty skilled at something and then over more time you become a master. And then I I believe that artists is like the highest level of skill in a field, like much higher above mastery even. But like all this stuff is like YouTube not giving shit about its creators and kind of all these behaviors that we're seeing across all of the platforms that claim to be supportive of creative content and people who are creative. It's just a direct result of Fiat. it's a result of essentially sucking brands of the qualities that make those brands

brands, right? So like a brand is developed because a product is good. Product has good quality. The better the brand, the more expensive the brand. It's supposed to be the better the product is, the more expensive it is to create that product. What Fiat does is it goes into these brands, a lot of them very old. We see this great examples of this in the fashion industry and they ride out the brand until it dies, gutting the production costs and gutting the product quality. So if you take like any major designer quality good, like a go yard, say, or St. Laurent or Louis Vuitton, any of those, and you compare a product, you go into a store and you buy something brand new today.

and then you buy that same product from, say, an old vintage store from even the 90s, which was much higher standard of quality, 80s much higher. As you go back in time, the product quality gets better and better because the Fiat system does not care about the product. It doesn't care about the clients. It doesn't care about anybody using the product. It just cares about inflating, basically sucking as much. as it possibly can out of the system.

And lots of people think that this is capitalism. Obviously, it's not, right? Because the incentives are totally, totally rearranged because the money is worthless. So all of these giant corporations, they basically they have to get the sales immediately and they have to make as much money as they possibly can on those sales because the money that they're earning

is just a bucket of melting ice and it's going away. and it's going away. Versus obviously on a Bitcoin standard or any hard money standard. The incentive is to earn the client's sale. And as a buyer, you want to purchase something that you'll never have to repurchase or take as long as possible to repurchase or that can be easily maintained and updated. So like content, again, I can talk a lot about this, but content creators, There's a big reason there isn't, I think, a clear solution to this.

I mean, the value for value economy is great. And I think lots of tools will come together to support this. But it's just, it's really small right now. But it's definitely going to shift as as fiat dies. And I mean, as we see, I think if you're able to get Bitcoin clients for whatever product or service that you're working on, who are bitcoinsers are your clients. That's a good sign that your product is of an extremely high quality because obviously, you know, if I spend the Bitcoin today versus having the Bitcoin tomorrow.

And, you know, but also where this is new and exciting, so a lot of people are buying stuff that's just not very good because it's fun to, you know, we're so used to how shit the fiat economy is and it's fun to use Bitcoin instead of money at the same time. But what will happen is that because we're running on our own mini gold standard, really, like our mini hard money standard is that people who are making crap products in the Bitcoin space will just not retain customers for more than the initial sale. Yeah. Yeah, you're 100% right.

I'll pass it off. No, I love that because you're right. There's a lot of like gimmicky shit that comes out that like you get it and it's kind of this like flimsy falls apart. par or just like breaks easy there's there's plenty of that and like early on i really noticed that when i when people first started kind of watching the channel and i got like a million different oh we're making a hardware wallet do you want to make a video on it review it i just had this pile of shit sitting in my house because i was excited to get free stuff and like try it and then it got there and i was like oh fuck i don't want to make a video on any of this is like i tried a few

And they were awful. Just so bad because everybody just assumed, well, we'll just do like the bare minimum of like something that can create a seed and like and sign transactions. And just like no thought gone into it. Like most of them were like still on legacy addresses. Like didn't have like Segwit even even like Rapside. Like just no features whatsoever. You had to use like a proprietary app and couldn't like use it with anything else. Like all of the bullshit.

shit that you would get with somebody with those incentives that you said where it's just like, oh, we just, we want to move units out the door and we have the Fiat mindset of like, who cares what the product is because we'll just create another to replace it very quickly. And when you get onto that that Bitcoin standard, like Bitcoiners, I think demand more of their money, right? Like you said, when you, when you buy something initially with Bitcoin and it's a ship product, you will never buy it again. But when you buy something with Bitcoin and it's excellent, then one, you're going to keep it. You're going to use it until it's completely trashed.

And then you'll probably get another one. But also in the process of that, you'll tell everybody that, oh, this is the good one. This is the one, even though it's a bit more expensive, it's worth your stats. And then further, you're likely to buy other products created by that person because you know the integrity with which they create whatever they're selling. And I mean, it applies to everything. Like we're talking about art here. We're talking about value to value, value for value. But it applies to even like now that I'm living on Bitcoin,

I started to shift like before I'd get like the IKEA shit for my house. But then when we moved in here, me and my wife decided, okay, my friend is, he's really good at, he does flooring, he does a whole bunch of other stuff. But he also can make furniture. And so we're like, we need a kitchen table. So we got like a good, like slab of granite. And he like carved the wood himself and stained it and everything. And it was way more expensive than getting some shit off IKEA.

But I'm going to have this table. You're never going to have to buy that table again, Ben. Never. And your grandkids' nieces will be sitting around at that table. Yes, 100%. It's going to be in the family for ages. And if we ever decide to move, you know, like that that table is going to be like you can't replace that. Like one, it was created by like one of my best friends and two, the quality and craftsmanship and the backbreaking labor put into making sure it was good because the person cared about me can't be replicated.

So yeah, Bitcoin fixes this. Yes. Yeah, it's definitely important not to. be cheap on a lot of products that are going to get a huge amount of use. And to find somebody who can build it in your local economy is excellent as well. 100% of the time, it's better to spend double the money on something you'll never have to buy again. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. You don't want the crap that breaks. And again, like, in terms of Max, the original topic of the value for value, you know, if people value what they're watching and they, you know, as we begin to shift, there's incentive structures set up there, right? Like, let's in the context of a podcast, if you're doing value for value and you're starting

to get a bit of an income as people are streaming sats each minute of your podcast, there's a very direct incentive not to have shit content because the sats are streaming live. And so if it gets, if it gets boring, they turn off. the money when you suck. So like you want good content, right? And you want to keep that up. And as a listener, you also want to encourage that because if that person isn't supported enough, they might be like, I don't listen, guys, I don't have the time for

this. I got to go, you know, fiat mine and I got to bail on the content that you were listening to. So like it's a dual incentive. It's actually, if you think about it, it's quite interesting because it creates one of the most honest feedback loops that you can ever create. because first of all, it's not only the time that the other people somehow needs to invest, but it's like their labor force or their money, their savings and so on.

So they really need to value whatever you're doing. And therefore, you also will just get the honest feedback. Because I would say, like, if someone asks me, okay, how to start creating in the Bitcoin space or something, I would just say just start because it's like the best free market, in a sense to start anything because you will get honest feedback if people think it's shit they're going to tell you it should and you know as an artist or creator this is actually the best thing that could happen to you because like if you show to your parents or your friends and so everybody's going to say yeah this is the best thing i've ever seen keep working but if you if you really think that

if you really want to get to this artist level as madame said or um try to craft your um skill, whatever it is, you kind of need honest feedback, although it's sometimes very hurtful. And like, especially if you like your ego gets hurt like crazy sometimes. But this is the only way going forward. And therefore, like with this value for value, it creates a very interesting, as I say, incentive structure because you get real, basically lifetime feedback of people who I at least really care about what they think about because I think those are the people who are. most aligned with values that I care about.

So yeah, this makes me extremely bullish. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a great thing. And I think, again, we'll see it evolve over time. It's still early days, as we've said, but there's a lot coming down the pipe. So, yeah, I don't know. And again, like, I'll say here, like, I regularly see people, they're streaming stats to the show, like, and always on every Thursday when I do the news show with Nico, I'll read, like, the boostergrams out of people that,

like boosted the show at certain points. And it's kind of cool to see like, I mean, stats are precious. So even if somebody's parting with like 100 sats or something, it's like, oh, wow, thank you. Like that was, that's, that's an important thing that you did. I know, I know that like the purchasing power of 100 sats right now isn't a big deal, but somebody still took the time to be like, hey, I liked this.

Like that's, you know, and like have shown like some sort of like a monetary representation of that. I think that's, I think that's awesome. So anyways, value for value. I think it's a legit like. Yeah, exactly. Even if it's like a symbolic amount, it's a legit like. Yeah.

Yeah. It's the, it does away with the, the Fiat click, right? It's, it's an actual, again, it had a like now has tangible backing. We can say. Yeah. Anyway, so I love this talk. topic. I'm sure we could riff on it more. But I want to get rotating. I want to, I'm going to break it up a little bit because I have a feeling that that Medex will go down the, down the road of art, kind of in the same realm. So I'm going to put like an in-betweener. I'm going to, I'm going to jump to Jaime first. And then we'll go to May next after. So Jaime, I again, simple question. Why are you bullish? Take it away. Sure. I mean, mine's quite simple and predictable. I just got back from being in El Salvador for six weeks. And, you know, I'm pretty bullish on El Salvador as a choice tourism destination and as a business hub for Latin America. I think that, you know, a lot of people are skeptical. A lot of people are maybe waiting at sea. And other people are super pumped. Some people that.

are like maybe overly pumped. But, you know, I got to be down there. Experience it. Like, maybe from a little bit different perspective than most Bitcoiners. Because I think like most Bitcoiners go down there, like already like, okay, like, let's see what it's like. And they're like in their Bitcoin bubble. And they're like, oh, you're not accepting Bitcoin.

And, you know, or like, you know, just going to the Bitcoin places where I was returning Salvadoran. and like for me it was like a cathartic experience kind of like as a homecoming home family reunion and and i got to experience el salvador maybe in a little bit of a different way but definitely bitcoin is ubiquitous uh in in the sense that um everybody knows about it some people have have opinions on it positive negative some people accept it others don't and uh but i'm bullish on it i i think that it's got the country's got a lot of amazing things going for it beach i don't have to say anything about that i think it's you know anybody who serves loves it great viewpoints from their

mountains um hikes uh amazing food if you like steak oh my god like there that's the least thing that i would expect to find there is like a good steak steaks are amazing no shortage of eggs by the way i know that there's like there's like all of a sudden there's like shortage of eggs everywhere in the world. There's like two aisles dedicated to eggs in the supermarket and you go to street markets. There's no shortage of eggs. There's a lot of activities for families, young people, old people, there's everything for all. It's got some challenges.

Like, you know, my dad's in a wheelchair. He couldn't get around because it's very hilly and it's not very wheelchair friendly there. But definitely it's a place to go. a lot of us, Salvadorans who have been out of the country for many years are returning, deciding to invest in the country. Many who were not Bitcoiners,

like me, became Bitcoiners as a result. And again, caveat, huge challenges in terms of adoption. I've written about Chivo and it hurts me because, like, I know some of the, the people that work very hard, but it's still one of the experiences that has left people

with a sour taste in her mouth and turned away from Bitcoin. And even my one experience, getting a machivo wallet when I was down there, it took me like the entire six weeks. So I'll maybe write about that at a later point. But yeah, there's lots of education to take on. There's a lot of scams taking place.

a lot of from like the cryptos you know like yeah and so there's there's challenges there for sure but you know what like max's topic uh v4v when it comes to el salvador or go down there if you like it you know if you don't you don't have to come back and so and i think bitcoin's part of the the big story here i was actually very surprised well not maybe surprised but happy to see that they repaid their 2023 bond. Like many said they wouldn't, but they did that. And they also passed the digital assets law.

Like when I return, I haven't really taken a deep look at it, but that sets them up for the volcano bonds. Not pro or con, but like definitely interesting to see some of that, some of those things happen. Especially those of us who are more like cautious about government involvement in Bitcoin.

You know, you know, I think skepticism is warranted, but, you know, nobody else is doing it. And, you know, you got to kind of think outside of the box. And, you know, I think that they're doing that to a certain degree. So that's what I'm bullish about. Awesome. So I wanted to you up with a question and then I'll get the other guys to chime in, your thoughts, questions, whatever.

What would you say in terms of like, not the ground up aspect, of like Bitcoin Beach, but I'm talking about in terms of what has been done from a top-down perspective, I kind of want to go to both ends of the spectrum in terms of like the positives and the negatives. So what would you say, one, is like the most positive aspect of the fact that this country has taken or, you know, part of the country has a top-down approach. And what do you feel like came of that that maybe could not? have happened bottom up.

And then what do you think is kind of like the biggest misstep or like, you know, the worst part of having a top down approach? So I think the the top down approach, I guess, pro is that, you know, in theory, there is the infrastructure to support, you know, purchases and Bitcoin businesses to to operate quite easily, right? So, for example, banks are required to, you know, make it easy for the average person to transact and convert into Fiat, because at the end of the day, you still need cash flow,

and that's all happening in Fiat for the most part. You know, I think the fact that there's policy around how to handle some of these things and that it's non-taxable. I think that's a big pro. I think that, you know, like a lot of jurisdictions would want that. I mean, I think after this, Ben, I'm going to have to talk to you, be about an accountant because I went down there. I spent some stats.

I don't know what kind of implication that's going to have for me right now. So. So then, you know, like, you don't have to worry about any of that down there because that's, That's all they can care of. I think the misstep, the huge misstep, is the lack of education. And maybe the rushing of Chivo, right? Because I think that that's just turned a lot of people off, right? Without education, people don't like, because if you think about it this way,

El Salvador's got the most stable Fiat currency in the world. I mean, we can argue that it's not, right? But, you know, like, compared to, like, say, like Argentina or, you know, some other, like, the Turkish lira and things in Lebanon, the currency in Lebanon, it's fairly stable because it's the U.S. dollar. So when you were down there, they actually experience, like, things compared to the U.S. and Canada are very affordable. Like I went and like hauled at the at the supermarket like fruits and like vegetables. And I'm like, oh my God, this would easily be like $65 here. So so I think but people don't know why they need Bitcoin or you know how to use it or what it means. And I think that the lack of education I think left people like, I don't need this or this is not for me.

This is for foreigners. And I think in some ways it's a detriment. The good news is that the bottom-up approach, me pretty much of Bitcoin, Beach. There's actually lots of little communities forming, not just in San Salvador, but in the east of the country, in the north of the country, some remote areas.

And it's really like spurring a lot of people to take it upon themselves. And most people, most absolutely. average Salvadorians, they may not understand it, but they think positively about it in the way that, you know, this is for later down the road. And I'm going to have to learn at some point. I think it sets a country. I, you know, I'll be honest, I was, I hung around with a group of very privileged, not my family, but like other friends of mine that are very privileged Salvadorians, it's for them that it doesn't work because they don't need it. I mean, they, they, they got

it all figured out you know they got all the privilege all the money so so yeah oh bitcoin you have you know and and you know it's like a nuisance to them because it doesn't affect them either way yeah huh that's very interesting i want to open it up to uh max and madex whoever wants to dive in questions comments whatever yeah i think i it's pretty interesting what's going on down there um i mean i'm just So I think it would be quite maybe both culture shock and also just it'd be very interesting to go down there and see what it's like. Because obviously Bitcoin stems from American ideas and to see how it's landing in sort of these different parts of the world. And so sort of aggressively would be very interesting. I think that's great what you said about how sort of the wealthy.

the wealthy class is indifferent to it and they see it as a nuisance and i thought that was very well put in something that we're kind of forgetting about a lot um in in not just what's going on in el salvador but around the world um is that you know for for the uh i guess the i don't want to call them elites but for the high high class society people um They've already got the game on lock. And it can be, there's examples I have of people in my life who are extremely good, I guess, fiat players and have secured massive wealth, generational wealth for their families. And they're not even too worried about the inflation.

There just seems to be so much trust still in the system. And I guess it's because, you know, partly it's the system that made them wealthy. So maybe that's why they have so much trust in it. But I find that when facing those sorts of people, like high net worth individuals, and talking about Bitcoin, it's sort of the problem, like all the problems of inflation in fiat and government abusing money land on the poorest classes. And so it's kind of that there's definitely. like a knowledge that you got to really educate them on kind of what's going on and you know

they understand it at a macro level but it's kind of it's interesting that that's that if you're playing the fiat game well it's actually a better system than bitcoin in every way yeah and i should actually reframe that because it's not like every person who's privileged or already like you know wealthy that doesn't is it either indifferent or doesn't like bitcoin there's some people who are actually like see this as an opportunity and they're like yeah yeah no like i think this is good you know and and we're going to hedge our bets and position ourselves in a way that if this takes off then we're not um so there's some astute people there and but but i think it's because of the top down approach that's a opportunity yeah for sure yeah yeah uh max i'll let you

dive in too if you want to yeah i mean i was a month ago i was in el salvador and i kind of experienced it or i was there for the first time and i also published a video about this on my youtube channel which is kind of going into this um what happened wrong and i talked to some locust with it and they said that like one of the biggest missteps was um basically they didn't know what's happening with Bitcoin, they had no idea what a Bitcoin was. And they knew that like 21 years ago, the El Salvadoran Cologne was just like, was put from one day off the other. Basically, it wasn't in circulation anymore.

It wasn't being able as legal tender. And they switched to the dollar. So they told me that basically they had no idea what's going to happen with Bitcoin. Now they thought, okay, this is they, the older people at least had already this experience. okay, everything got way more expensive when we had the US dollar. And why do we do this Bitcoin experiment now? So I think it's for us looking at El Salvador and some people are like, yeah, they fucked up or anything. I would say we need to understand this is like a total new culture.

They have other experiences that we have. And Bitcoin fixes a problem or like Bitcoin is there. to fix the problem if you have a problem. And I would say in El Salvador, there are some people who already Bitcoin solves a problem for them. Maybe they are able to save something, maybe invest a little bit or something like this. But in El Salvador, there's also a lot of people who they don't have any problem. They just try to kind of survive day by day in a sense.

And so it's basically natural that they won't be the first ones jumping onto the Bitcoin train. Having said that, I got to say. say that it was still amazing being there, seeing like the Bitcoin adoption because like after one year, I think there are like some, some numbers thrown around that it's like 20% accepted in businesses or let's just say 10%, you know, like even if it's 10% if you say that's the lower ballpark, this is amazing for a country which just introduced Bitcoin one year ago. So this makes me extremely bullish.

even though we have some hiccups here and there, I think that's totally normal. And it's just an opportunity for everybody in this world to, yeah, get their own learnings. It's the top down approach to right one. How do we roll out wallets? Do we want to do this? I think it's just normal.

As I said, in the beginning of the podcast, right? We see everything being developed, like in the internet stages. And it's normal that some things work, some things won't work. and we just got to learn about it or learn from it. By the way, Max, I Orange Pill, our surfing instructor, his name is Jose Diaz. He also goes by Bamba Surf. And he's got an interesting story. So his sister was an Olympic hopeful for the surf, for the Salvadoran surf team.

and, you know, just a few short weeks before the qualifiers to the Tokyo Olympics, there's not a cloud in the sky and lightning hits her in the water. And they had like this huge, this huge ceremony. And, you know, she was like, she was very hopeful. Like, I'm not sure if she was expected to medal, but she was one of the best in the world at surfing. Her name was Cathy Diaz. and so he shared his story with us and then you know like it just touched me and my whole family and then I said hey like do you okay so time to pay do you accept Bitcoin it's like ah you know

so it took like about five minutes to show him you know how to go through the whole process and then he's like all right you know this was easy and and so now he's like you got you got to tell all your friends that I'm accepting Bitcoin now so you got to go to El Tunko and and take some lessons from Bamba. That's awesome. Yeah, we should have this attitude everywhere we go. So wherever you are in the world listening to this, when you're at the restaurant,

ask to pay your bill in Bitcoin. When you're at the store, ask to pay in Bitcoin. If you're on like a listing site, like in America, we have Craigslist. In Canada, we have Kijiji. Always, always, every single time I'm about to perform a transaction. I present the opportunity for it to be settled in Bitcoin. Most of the time you get no,

but every once in a while, you'll get someone who will take it. And then, A, you've potentially made another friend because you've connected with someone who's running Bitcoin that you otherwise wouldn't have. You would have just had a settled transaction on Fiat. But also, you know, I've had it where people are at businesses,

where the business won't take the Bitcoin, but they'll take my Bitcoin. So, like, I was picking up some truck parts, and I asked, as usual, and the guy said, well, no, we don't take Bitcoin as a company, but I'll definitely take Bitcoin. And so I said, okay, so I paid him at the register at this business with Bitcoins, and then I guess, I don't know how he did it, but I guess at the end of the day, he just covered the difference in Fiat. and must have paid the bill with his fiat card. But definitely always, always, like, if you think of yourself as a bitcoiner, every single transaction that you are about to partake in,

you should be propositioning Bitcoin. As simple as, like, getting a coffee in the morning to, you know, buying a vehicle or just every time. It should be the first thing that comes to your mind. And that, you know, if we're all doing that, it's going to help things kind of go a lot a lot smoother because everybody will remember especially as bitcoin continues doing what it's going to do they'll remember that time where oh i almost sold my seed you for bitcoin um yeah like i could have had you know everybody in the space has got that story now

um and so i think it's important to just be giving those to other people and then you're just planting that seed because again there's a lot of us and if all of us us around the world are asking everywhere we go, then people are thinking about it. And then, you know, maybe it takes two or three times, but you know, somewhere along the line, someone that you're going to ask the right person and they're either going to accept in that moment or they're going to kind of, that'll be their entrance into the rabbit hole. Be like, holy shit, like someone just offered to pay in Bitcoin. Like, you know, maybe this is a real thing.

It's not just a pump and dump scam. Right. Yeah. And go to go just a little bit further down that, go to your, go to your local meetups and find locals, like find people that are already into Bitcoin and ask what they do. What do you? Yeah. Yeah. Do you make something? Do you, you know, do you have a company? Do you produce something? And, you know, or request. Like this is, I'm starting to do this now at the Calgary meetup here. I go and, and I've managed. to like insert myself into the beginning of the meetings now where at the beginning we'll take five minutes and it'll just like I tend to go up and I'll be like hey I'm looking for the following and I want to be able to pay in Bitcoin. So the last one I went to I found a guy where I can get my eggs. I already have a rancher in southern Alberta where I buy my beef. So I filled my I filled my

freezer and I paid in Bitcoin. And so like eggs is the next thing. I wouldn't mind finding like a bakery and then just like things that you know the just in case kind of things like what if I need a plumber or like a mechanic or some you know something like that where um you know whatever at my need so um go to your local meetups figure out what you would need what you'd like to become self-sufficient in forge those relationships to made X's earlier points create relationships with people and then you become self-sufficient and you become that sovereign individual that's kind of of like exterior to the state, right? You forge a local community with people and you help sustain each other instead of becoming reliant on the teat of the state, I think.

Yeah. And if there's anybody out there listening, I'm searching for someone who accepts sets for creating thumbnails or making AI things. So if you want to work and know some stuff, reach out to me. Yeah. Love it. Love it. All right. If you're great at AI, uh, Rabinstein is pretty good at that. Yeah. Do you do that stuff or are you more into physical art? Yeah, he's, he works with his hands. He's got the calluses.

Awesome. Okay, well, Jaime, thank you for that topic. El Salvador is on the list. I got to get down there. I have much traveling to do. But, you know, it will be soon. I just got to figure out. I got to like buckle down and figure out exactly when and I will let you know when it's happening.

But with that, let's do our final rotation. I'm going to toss it to Madex. And yeah, I'll cue you up with the same question last time. Why are you bullish? Well, I'm bullish because there was just another block. And settlement happens every 10 minutes. I'm 100% bullish on Bitcoin permanently. I'll reference a sign-filled episode, though.

I got a lot of problems with you people, and now you're going to hear about them. Although I'm bullish on Bitcoin, I'm not bullish on Bitcoiners. I think there's a very, very unhealthy state of chill that sort of comes from really believing in the number go up technology. Although it exists and I believe in it myself, it should not be a crutch or a reason to forget what we're supposed to be doing here, which is creating and building and hustling and making. Like the name of the game is to acquire wealth for yourself and your family. And if you're just waiting for number to go up,

then like what you're just, I can't even, I'm not sure, how can, how aggressively can we swear on this? But you need to fucking give your head a shake and figure out what you can do to be productive in this civilization. So I think like we can't like we have to be figuring out. Remember that like it's still money. Bitcoin is just a tool. Money is a tool.

It's not the end all be all for anything that we're putting together. And just because you are saving in Bitcoin or you're earning Bitcoin doesn't mean you have this guarantee that, you know, you're going to be financially wealthy. 100% realistically, this bear market could last five years. It could get worse. It could go way down. Who knows what's going to happen. But if you are producing wealth, if you're acquiring cash flow, you can only be happy about

bare markets. You can only be happy about the price being lower. So, you know, if you're upset about Bitcoin crashing, then you're probably a fucking lazy piece of shit. You better get it floated out ASAP. You need your income to be fucking rolling so that you're excited about bear markets and you hope they last. Every day I'm looking at the price of Bitcoin. I'm hoping it's going down. I don't want to bull run, you know, it happen because, A, if it goes too fast, you know, it'll come back down afterwards because it takes so long to really understand what's going on and what we're up to here to really understand why Bitcoin

has value that, you know, these super fast boosts. Like when Bitcoin pumps 25%, 30%, I just see that as a whole bunch of people who have no idea what they're dealing with, getting into the market. And those people will 100% of the time, maybe 99% of the time be selling at some point. So that's kind of, that's like my primary, you know, Bitcoin is extremely exciting, especially if you're new in the space. And, you know, it's really awesome to kind of go through the repeated realizations of what, you know, Bitcoin is extremely exciting. of what this has the power to do for civilization. But at the same time, I'm prepared for a number to never go up. I'm prepared to build myself out in the same way that I would be building myself out

if we were stuck on a Fiat standard. And on the Fiat standard, you even have to overdrive, work your ass off because the money that you're earning is obviously worthless, as we all know. So just waiting for the price to go up is a bad strategy. You should expect it to be going down and you should be happy when it goes down. And that's pretty much, I guess that's, again, I can talk a lot about this. I can keep going into other details. But I just think everyone in the community needs to step it up and, you know, put a lot more effort in.

And let's just not crutch on, you know, Bitcoin fixes this. Bitcoin fixes that. It's us that fixes things. It's us the actors on the network that fixed up. Yeah. I love that the sentiment of don't get complacent. And again, like the idea of if you're just waiting on number, number go up, I mean, that's, that's all losing battle. Because if you're only, if you're only, you know, basically guarantee of the future is that, then you're going to spend.

end away all of your Bitcoin, right? Whereas if you focus on kind of the lessons that Bitcoin can give you of, you know, work hard, be productive, spend less than you earn, and then save in an asset that can't be debased, that's a much better way of looking at things instead of like, you know, scrape together some funds, buy as many sets as you can, and then just like sit on your thumb, right? Like you have to have a better outlook than that.

And I think that's kind of, I've kind of had that progression over the past, especially the past couple of years of like, okay, I need to do more than what you've just described. I need to actually, you know, work hard. I need to actually do those things of being financially responsible on top of saving in sound money. Right? because if you could thrive in a fiat standard, then you're going to thrive even more on a Bitcoin standard in terms of those lessons, like you said,

having to work so hard because your money is such shit. You know, imagine what you can accomplish when your money's good if you're productive. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's good advice. And I don't know, I'm curious comments from Max and Jaime. Yeah, I just want to say, like, and the thing is what you just said, Ben, like, anybody in here can contribute something to the Bitcoin space.

Like, whatever you can do, there is so, there are so many opportunities to also earn sads in a sense, as we said before. Like you, like, you can, I totally agree with you, what you said, Maddox. Like, they're just waiting for a number go up. That's not the right attitude. You should create some value for some people. And I think the cool thing about the Bitcoin space is that there is so much opportunities right now. Like you can put basically project any skill that you have in the Fiat world or something onto the Bitcoin world. You know, like I, that was one of my, I just want to speak for myself.

But like I was a musician. I had no idea what the fuck I should do in the Bitcoin space. You know, like I had no idea about coding. I'm not technical at all. But I wanted to do something. And so you just got to. grind your way through it somehow and like you know we see yellow in the chat you know he's shit posting for companies getting stats you know there are so many fucking opportunities out there

you just got to grind it and find your own angle because um i think the bitcoin space uh even though if we're in the bear market they still value um good work as we said before so i can just encourage everybody to try to find their own niche and try as a side hustle maybe and yeah it doesn't have to be in the bitcoin space either i mean it's just the idea is to be looking at what what is the industry that you're working in now and if it's something that you enjoy doing or you're skilled at it needs to be elevating yourself in that space that you're already in and yet there's crossover contributions that can be made in to build something for bitcoin or help bitcoin in some kind of way but the biggest opportunity coming from Bitcoin is a marketplace of people who appreciate quality work.

So your focus should be improving your skills on whatever it is, whatever your discipline is, so that you can essentially earn, well, position yourself better in whatever Fiat universe you're in, but also just in your own skill sets and then have something, a quality product to offer to the Bitcoin space, you know, whatever, whatever it is, if you're an electrician, like be the best goddamn electrician that you possibly can be and you know figure out how you can use that base skill as an electrician to you know continue to build and acquire wealth for yourself and your family yeah it's again it's a question of of quality and and who's going to be willing to spend their sats on you why why would somebody spend their sats on you are you the best goddamn

electrician out there yeah then that's worth it because i know the quality of your work is going to hold up as I plug in my M30 plus and my S-19s to all of the work that you've just done. So yeah, or just your regular house. But yeah, I think it's important, quality of work and Bitcoin incentivizes that directly. Jaime, I want to get your thoughts in here too. Yeah. So for me, I think it's really important that people don't ape in without a plan. I think that like, you know, this is very personal.

So if it doesn't resonate with the panel, that's cool too. But like for me, like not losing my ability to make Fiat so that I can save in Bitcoin is hugely important. So I'm going to continue to do everything that I can so that I can be the best that I can be at my current Fiat job. Right. Yeah. Eventually, I mean, if, you know, an opportunity presents itself in and the Bitcoin, space fine but I think it's it's it's people people need to to to kind of like what we've all been saying stay true to you know your your financial responsibility and whatnot also at the same time take a moment to to enjoy life you know I happen to think that we may get some

some chances but you don't get this chance again you know and so if you don't get this chance again and so you know enjoy the fruit of your hard work and labor and then put some away for for future generations and later in life but but no i i completely agree with uh with maddox on this yeah yeah yeah yeah it's work it's work hard play hard i mean the balance part is is extremely important we need to stop and appreciate everything that's going on um you know but the the hustle and drive has got to be in there and i think what you're saying about staying in your fiae industry like as a bitcoiner it doesn't mean you have to work in bitcoin whatever you're up to already like maybe you need to make a change if so do that but if you're already in a good place and

there is a climb that can be made in that place like just own it and double down and kind of accept where you are and because like the biggest rewards that we can get is being extremely good at, you know, the jobs that we undertake. So just whatever sector it is, like, just be the best you can at it. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. And, you know, people, I don't respect anyone based on the amount of money they have or the amount of whatever. The only thing that I respect is the quality of their work.

and so, you know, that there is no, there is no job on earth that you cannot become a master of. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I think that's a great, great place to kind of round this topic as well. Again, like, I think, I think it's nice once in a while to have that, like, you know, slap in the face reality check. of like, make sure you're, you know, like Bitcoin's great, but make sure you're also like on the right trajectory, like examine your life so that the values of Bitcoin, um, extrapolate out into your values and how you lead your own life and, you know, your financial responsibility and

your responsibilities to your family and so and so forth. I think that's, I think that's fantastic. What I like to do at the end of every show is just do a quick round, uh, get, everybody at Leo a minute or two to get any final thoughts that you may have had on anything that was said through the show and then also I like to I typically like to offer up you guys

to give a piece of advice or a recommendation or whatever it may be to the people watching that you think is valuable so like it could be you know a news article or a podcast or a video or a book or

an application or a website or a site or even just a life lesson that you've come across over, over, you know, over time that you think would be valuable to the people watching. So, you know, I'll kind of get my final thoughts first.

I mean, everything that we've talked about today is, um, in and around how society kind of shapes our incentives and how we respond to them, um, whether it be through art, whether it be through, you know,

the, how the government, structures things around us and whether it be just kind of us responding to external stimuli, how responsible are you with that? Are you going to be still responsible? Are you gambling still even though you're dealing with sound money? And so I think the great thing about Bitcoin is it makes people have these moments where they step back and say, you know, am I, am I exuding the values that I actually want to exude? Am I living my life in a responsible way?

Sometimes it takes some time. Like, you know, it's not like I got into Bitcoin and then like the moment I started down that rabbit hole, I was like, oh, I'm a changed man. But it did manifest over time. And I feel that I'm still learning. I'm still kind of growing. but my values have shifted in a direction that I'm happy with, and I want to see them keep going that way.

So that's what I'll say about that in terms of final thoughts. And then in terms of recommendations, challenges or whatever for people to check out, based on my earlier topic, again, if you want to check out that Nunchuk video, go check it out. But at the very least, I have a playlist of all kinds of multisig stuff. So if you're curious in that realm, then go take a look at that. But the major challenge that I would issue to everybody is immediately after you've done this, take a pat of paper and write what you would like to happen.

If something were to happen to you today, how would you like it? How easy would you like it to be for your family to be able to get the sats that you've left? That's what I'm going to go to you first. Any final thoughts? And then if you do have a recommendation, then toss it out there. Yeah, final thought, I would say, just embrace, just embrace obstacles. Try to embrace as many obstacles as you can in life. Don't shy away from them.

Because whatever you're trying to accomplish, those obstacles are there for a reason. They are there for you. to gain understanding about yourself, about the work, about life, or whatever it is. So try not to shy away from them, but try to embrace them. The only thing that can happen is that you'll come out stronger. And recommendation that I would say, based on my topic, Value for Value, there's a very good article from Gigi. It's on his blog, there at Gigi.com.

check it out. It really explains what the philosophy behind value for value is and give it a shot. Maybe send some sets to Ben if you've been in in this live stream. Even if it's just 100 sets, it's as we said, a good like. It's an appreciation of Ben's work. I love what you're doing, Ben. Thanks, man. Yeah, other than that, it was nice with all of you. And yeah, I love you too. Yellow out there. Shout out to you're handsome as well. Little yellow furry.

Yellow. Club music was more handsome than Max. And then Sanehated Jaime. And he wants to know if Maddox is the same height as him, yellow, or if it's more a art showcase on the camera angle. I love it. There we go. Yeah, he's the same height as yellow, I think. Badex, you're up next.

Final thoughts, any recommendation you might have. Go ahead. Yeah, I think overall, I think Bitcoin's in a very good spot. And I think it's in an even better spot if personally you just accept that it's only a tool. And it's a tool that helps us and makes a little. lot of things better, but we still have to, you know, live out our lives. And I would say definitely find some outlets that allow you to have, have those kind of peaceful moments to experience the beauty of this world that we live in outside of this whole very broken civilization that

we're all working hard to kind of make an impact on. For just on my notes, when, on my last appearance. I was down in Los Angeles at a cigar lounge with Bitcoin brains. And we were speaking with some gentlemen in there about Bitcoin. And they were masters of Fiat and definitely very successful in the Fiat world. And one of them made the comment that, you know, that we're all just pussies for dealing with Bitcoin and we should all just sell cocaine. And I thought that kind of stood on my like hustle side.

of things where it's like, hey, guys, name of the game is a firewall, so do whatever you got to do. Obviously, I'm selling art so you can use sell cocaine as a discount code on madex.art. And then I just wanted to give a shout out, I guess, for something to check out. If you haven't already, I know Start 9 is sponsored the show. But this is the third most important component kind of in the pillars of sovereignty. The first most important pillar, obviously, is Bitcoin is money. They need to not be able to fuck with the money. The second most important pillar is the ability for us to defend ourselves,

which is way, way, way spearing ahead in the whole 3DA community. And then the third and final most important pillar is communications. They need to not be able to block communications or stop the flow of communications. It's kind of defeating censorship. And Start 9 is really on the front lines of the. this and they are extremely passionate about pulling this whole thing off. And, you know, everyone in that company is putting it all, is going all in to make this kind of third pillar of sovereignty with communications possible.

So I would 100% say if you don't have an embassy for a node to definitely look into it, look into the embassy pros. These guys are just, we may not be able to clearly see it now, but it'll be one of, they'll be one of the most important. And this whole sector is certainly the most important component to a sovereign future. And then obviously, if you're in Canada, bullbitcoin.com, you just got to use it or talk to somebody who uses it and you'll understand right away why it's the best option for, if you're, if you're a bitcoiner in in Canada.

Awesome. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, so I guess that's kind of my summary. Thank you very much, Ben, for having me on here. And this is my first time appearing, I guess, other than that last little drop in. So it's definitely kind of been an experience for me to kind of not hide behind a mic. Maddox, quick little question. Did you pair your cigar with anything? Did I pair my cigar?

Yeah. What did you have? At the time, Woodford, that's usually my go-to. for wearing. It's just something that all the lounges will certainly have. But I'm currently not drinking. This has been, I'm on day 27 of not drinking. So I've just been smoking for you. Good for you. I'm without the booze instead. I recommend it to anyone that the whole lack of booze in your life thing. And I've seen nothing but positive results from it. I'm doing a thread at 30 days and I'll do another thread at 16. Anyway,

I can talk a lot. That's awesome. I love it. I'm glad you came on. It's been a long time coming, so we'll be doing it again for sure. But I'll toss it to, Amy. So final thoughts, recommendations, take it away. Yeah, you know, like for me, it was great to be down in El Salvador for six weeks. It just experienced it. I think like now that the hype is over, now it's the time to go.

I think that the hype has subsided and you get to see. like the more genuine part of the country and, and, you know, the more genuine side of people. And I think in also, it's become safer. So, you know,

I would, I would never throw this recommendation even like three years ago. But I would say, go. Have a good time. So I get, and I guess, you know,

my other recommendation would be, when I was down there, I found out that one of my favorite children's book, was inspired by the volcanoes in El Salvador. It's The Little Prince by Antoine Sanex-Burie. And the book is about relationships. The book is about being creative and thinking outside of the box by having that creativity of a kid's mentality and mindset

rather than the stuck adult world. and yeah like and I think that I would say that in some ways that's what El Salvador is doing and and one of the other things is too is not to focus on money but on time which funny enough that's what Big one is all about is like it's not really about the money it's about storing your time appropriately and so I would recommend that book to anybody and it's it's a children's book but it's like adults can also enjoy it. And if you have children, read it to them, you know, because it has many, many good life lessons in there.

And it's not like, oh, here's the lesson. It's a book where you can like, there's many lessons to be had. And if you do happen to indulge, every once in a while, I tried a nice rum in El Salvador. Actually, from what the mall, it's called Sakapa. So I would say that Maddox, if you do indulge at any, any point, you know, responsibly, that is a very nice pair. And I don't smoke cigars, but, you know, I hear that it's a nice pairing.

So thanks, Ben, for inviting me. And, yeah, everybody, have a nice weekend. Awesome. All right, gentlemen, again, thank you all so much for being here. Had a blast. Great conversation. Everybody watching, all of their Twitter handles are in the show notes down below. So make sure you follow all of them.

And gentlemen, thanks again. You're welcome back anytime. Thank you. Thanks, Ben. See you guys soon. Later, guys. Awesome. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for being here and watching. Hope you liked it all.

Make sure you, again, follow them all. Links are down below for their Twitter handles. And maybe I forgot to ask if they're all on Noster or not. But maybe search them up there too. Of course, again, like, subscribe, share. All that stuff helps a ton getting the show in front of more eyeballs. If you want to help the show in another way, you can hit up the sponsors that I mentioned down below.

That was Coin Kite, Start 9, Hottle, Hottle, and Privacy Pros. You can also hit me up on my website, BTCSessions.C.com. If you're going through tutorials, all the free stuff online, and you find you just need a little bit of extra handholding, and you want to do like a one-on-one. You can book me through there. And yeah, you can do an hour at a time,

and I can basically help you through. Whatever you need, whether it be self-custody, multi-sig lightning nodes, all that kind of stuff. And then finally, if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip. Value for value at my strike page. Strike.me slash BTC sessions. You don't need strike there.

You can just go there with whatever lightning wall you want. You type in any amount you want. Hit the tip button. You'll see a lightning invoice or if you prefer tap to the right. You see a big regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. See you guys next time for your daily session.