BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Neil Jacobs, Econo Alchemist, Chris Alaimo ep252

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

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What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish? All new guests, never been on the show. But I've met all of them before, or at least interacted with them all before in various capacities. So very happy to have them all on. As always, this is live. Anything can happen.

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

If you haven't already, like, subscribe, share, all those things, super important. They really do help the show. Gets it in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. All right, before we bring in our guesses, take a look at where we are in the market really quick. This is the Bitbo.com. dashboard. We're sitting at $39,540 some odd dollars per coin. I personally blame Hodltonot for

tweeting that we'll never see Bitcoin below 40K again. And we will be doomed to bounce back below it until he stops tweeting that shit. So let him know. You can now pick up for a single US dollar. You can grab yourself 2,530 sats, 90.57% of all Bitcoin have been mined. And it terms of fees up a little bit, 10 sats per byte for next block. If you're willing to wait an hour, three sats per bite will do you. Not bad. Shout to the sponsors of the show, shake pay.com. If you're in Canada, super easy way to stack sats with your Fiat.

E transfers in and out. No deposit or withdrawal fees, thin spread. And if you use the link down below after your first $100 purchase, they'll give you $30 for free. You got the same deal if you refer your friends and family. And you can shake your phone every single day for free sats. Not bad. my streak while I was in Miami, unfortunately, building it back, back over 200 sats a day. But we'll make it happen.

We'll make it happen. Lennon I.O, you can use your Bitcoin for a ton of different things in particular. If you're in a pinch and you need dollars and you don't want to sell your Bitcoin, you can use their Bitcoin back loans. You can deposit Bitcoin, get dollars to your bank account within 24 hours. When you pay back those dollars, you have the same number of stats. Of course, they've got their savings accounts, their B2X offering. They're dabbling in Bitcoin more.

mortgages now. So keep an eye out for that. Some new stuff there. Bit refill. This helps me live on Bitcoin personally. I'm sure it helps a bunch of you as well. You can buy any gift card your little hard desires with Bitcoin, both on-chain and via Lightning Network. You're in Sats back as you shop. And if you'd like some more Sats, they do have a referral program to earn some as well. Keystone, one of my faves, one of my hardware wallace that gets regularly used, 100% air-gapped, never plug it into anything internet connected. Everything is offline via QR code. And it keeps the keys to your money safe and away from internet connections.

Definitely upgrade to the Bitcoin-only firmware. And it works great with things like Blue Wallet, Sparrow, Spectrum, awesome in a multi-sig. So check it out. And finally, if you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet, steel is the way to go. Paper, maybe doesn't cut it. Bill Fottle over at Privacy Pro has got you covered there. super easy to use and yeah this is how it back up my wallets with that enough of my rambling i got to get these guys in here so uh uh welcome to econo alchemist neil jacobs chris i hope i don't

butcher your last name alimo yep that's right ah there we go okay awesome uh welcome gentlemen uh all first time guests to the show let's do a quick round of intros econo can you let people know who you are and what you do. Hey, I'm a conno alchemist. I create content related to Bitcoin self-custody and using Bitcoin in a censorship-resistant way. And I do a lot of home mining content as well. I am a content contributor to Bitcoin magazine and I'm an affiliate with upstream data. Nice. Ooh, that that CV there is pretty thick. I enjoy it. Chris, welcome. Can you let people know who you are what you do. Yeah, Chris Llamo. I work for Bitcoin Magazine. I am the Twitch project manager, as well as the live stream producer for Bitcoin Magazine Live. I also helped run the live stream

for the conference. So anyone that was remote, they saw that, that was kind of me in the background and helped, yeah, obviously put on the conference. So how much of a heart attack did you have when you guys got canceled at midnight? Yeah, so I was exhausted that night and I fell asleep at like 11 p.m. and I woke up at 3 a.m. And a panic to like a bunch of miscalls from like Q and CK. And the channel was already restored by them, but I did not sleep well the rest of the night after waking up to all the miscalls.

Yeah, I can imagine. Well, I mean, it worked out, but holy shit, dude. Neil, finally, tell people who you are what you do. So I do a lot of things. I have a podcast Inside Bitcoin with Joe Carlisari. I do some contract work for Swan. running clubhouse rooms. I'm on the board of directors of the SAT center and a new thing I started a new Bitcoin merchant apparel company called phomo21.com check it out. If anyone's listening right

now use the code BTC sessions you'll get 15% off the next week site wide so go for it fomo21.com. Awesome. Maybe I'll have to grab some swag from there too. Well, gentlemen, I appreciate your time and coming. Again, anybody watching who is unfamiliar, this is why are you bullish? Really simple premise. We go by the three hours.

Somebody's going to drop a reason feeling bullish. Then all we're going to riff on that reason. And then finally, we will rotate to the next person until we all get a turn. Really easy. I will be getting us started today. And I've got a reason why I'm feeling

bullish. I want to pull up something really quick. This just dropped earlier today, actually. So, I mean, I'm sure a number of people are familiar with the fact that Ukraine, you know, there was a lot of Bitcoin donations spilling into Ukraine with everything that's been going on. And, you know, they were more than happy to accept those donations and use that as a conduit to get, you know, get money into the country to help with things. However, Ukraine's central bank is banning Bitcoin purchases made with the local currency to prevent capital from fleeing the war ravaged country. So effectively, they're saying Bitcoin for me, but not for thee. If you're an individual, you're effectively capped at how much you can buy in Bitcoin per month.

They don't want you. If you're leaving, they're basically saying that your assets are stuck here. So this is, I mean, I guess government's going to government. And part of me, my initial reaction was central banks can set, you know, set and enact legislation. You know, that was a curious thought to me, although I guess there goes the facade that central banks are separate entities from the actual government. But in the end, the thing that excited me was that there's already just so many solutions that make this move totally irrelevant. And I tweeted them out as well. Like, you know, if you're in Ukraine, here's three immediate solutions that you can use.

Robosats, one I just learned about and started using and just was created in the past couple of months here. over Tor, all done via the Lightning Network. And you basically, again, peer to peer and a ton of different ways that you can pay people. I did demos not only with like bank transfers within Canada, but, but with like Amazon gift cards and tons of other payment rails. And so in that instance, there's no, there's nothing denoting that, that whatever transfer of funds and however it was used, whether it be.

gift card or whether it be an actual bank transfer or whatever it is, there's no actual trace that it was linked to an exchange for Bitcoin. And so this is an easy off ramp that can be enacted immediately. And then, you know, there's no cap on that. There might be individual trade size caps, but you can get around that. And I also said, you know, BISC, another great resource for people to peer to peer to get Bitcoin. And then Hoddle, Hoddle is another example. And there's more out there. So I guess the reason

why I'm bullish is that these types of bans, even in the current state where on a Western front, we don't have to deal with this kind of shit yet. There's already solutions. And I think there's going to continue to be more

and better solutions as time goes on. So I'm just bullish because Bitcoin's kind of like water. It just finds the path of least resistance and we'll go there. And so, you know, the Ukrainian central bank becomes a path of resistance and Bitcoin just flows around it. So I'll open it up to you guys. Were you guys aware?

Did you see this story drop today? And did you have any initial thoughts? Anybody can jump in, by the way. I guess I'll start off. I saw it. And initially I'm like, you know, have fun staying poor Ukraine. But then I have friends. who have family there.

It's like a really shitty situation. So then I started feeling like bad. But then he started feeling bullish about it because I'm like, it must be material enough that the central bank thought it was worth saying. Like people are selling their local currency for Bitcoin. In a big war or else they wouldn't even care. So to me, that's bullish.

It sucks for the people there. But like you said, you have, you know, you tweeted out all these ways to kind of navigate around that, a hoddle, huddle, bisque, et cetera. Yeah, I think all governments are trending toward tyranny. And the more they try to like clamp down on the methods that people are finding economic freedom to transact peer to peer. Like the, those methods are just going to keep growing and keep developing and people are going to keep finding ways to route around them, like you said. And yeah, I think that is very bullish. Yeah, we talked about this on Bitcoin Magazine Live. And it's just, it's funny.

They're just trying capital controls. It's like rules for the, but not for me. You know, they're willing to accept donations in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. I don't need to name them here. But, you know, they're trying to beef up their war effort by doing so. But then they restrict their citizens. I have a funny quick bit, if you want about Robosats and stuff. So I was, I got gift cards for my birthday a couple months ago.

and I hit up Matt O'Dell like, hey, what should I use for non-KYC for gift parts? I tried Biss, tried Hoddle-Hoddle. I was getting frustrated with them. It wasn't working out. So he's like, oh, try RoboStats. Little did I know, like, Robosats had only started when I used it like 16 hours ago. So I was quite literally one of the first people to do it. And this ties into you, Ben.

So I was watching your video recently that came out about Robosats. When I first used it, you know how, like, you create a nym and you basically have to copy it. and I put it in a separate notepad. Anyway, I gave a gift card. The person was trying to use it for Amazon. Amazon's very picky with gift cards, and it's not an Amazon gift card. So I kept seeing the charges.

Like I saw the electronic charges like 10 cents, but failed like he's saying, oh, it's not working. Long story short, my tour browser locks up. And I go to copy and paste the nym back in. The copy and paste function was not programmed properly when I was first using it 16 hours in.

So I hop on the telegram chat with like all, like the devs like oh yeah we forgot the program it right if you don't copy and paste it yourself it's not going to work i'm like well guys like i'm watching as like he's using the transactions luckily he like he's like he as it was breaking down he said oh i'm going to try it apple i saw the whole payment that he bought something from apple and then the satch were at least to me so i didn't get you know i literally thought i got the rug pulled out for me like using it in the first like 16 hours of robots that was live and then i'm like odell you didn't tell me this like just drop today.

And he's like, oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. You're like one of the first people to use it. Congrats on being an open source, like, contributor because I message the devs and they're like, yeah, we're going to fix it. I appreciate your near sacrifice for the good of the many that it seemed quite smooth when I used it. I think that your near loss contributed to that smooth experience that I had. So thank you.

You're welcome. I literally message it down. I'm like, oh, it works for Ben when he used the copy paste function. So I guess my contribution was good. Work like a charm. Yeah. They should give you some credit there. Yeah.

No, I've got to say Robosats was a just such a pleasant surprise because, you know, there's tradeoffs with a lot of these things. Like, you know, hoddle, hoddle, you know, you have, you can get like an eBay style, like ratings and stuff like that so that you see how. reliable a certain person is to deal with and so and so forth. But then there's also a record of, you know, you having traded like on that platform. So that's a potential, you know, that somebody could see that down the line. But, you know, in terms of like trading with individuals, it's still peer to peer.

You're not having to upload all your K. K.C everything there. BISC, you know, it's definitely a learning curve. like it's you don't download it and you click and go. It's a little bit more complicated than that. But then like Robosats, the actual flow to it was was quite impressively simple to me. And I think like I really valued that because like other than, you know,

if you're getting a brand newcomer, like say somebody in Ukraine, it's like I need to get some Bitcoin. I need to do it quick. They don't need to really be an expert. They need to get Tor. And then they just need to go to the URL. And then once you're there, like, you know, you could have something like moon wallet and and have a, you know, a lightning wallet accessible to you that you don't really have to understand specifically what's going on. The only hurdle, which is fine because it prevents spam, is you do have to have a small amount of.

Bitcoin to like a thousand sats or something to put up so to take an offer or to post an offer just to prevent spam offers and spoofing and all that kind of stuff. But like the actual trade function of it is is super simple. Putting up your own offer is super simple. Like I thought it was excellent. And for such a young new thing, I've got to say I'm like I'm bullish on non-KYC sats through methods like this and and seeing the progression of how much simpler these solutions will get over time. So yeah, kudos to them. And I mean, again, kudos to the BISC team. Kudles

to hoddle, hoddle, kudos to anybody that enables individuals to get their hands on sats without KYC. So I think it's a much needed thing. And I don't know, where do you guys see this stuff going? Like, what do you think are the hurdles that? need to be cleared to make more people go this kind of route. Unfortunately, I think a lot of it will come down to like reactionary realization that they have a need for it. You know, like I think the Canadian trucker convoy was a good example that opened the eyes of a lot of people as to like how quickly your normal day-to-day activities can suddenly

become criminal activities and the kinds of financial implications that can have on you, how quickly you can be like shut out from your basic financial services, how quickly it can become impossible for you to pay your mortgage or put food on the table. And so, you know, I think the more we see events like that happen and play out and like, you know, kind of like I was saying, the more of these governments trend toward tyranny and keep infringing and encroaching on the rights of individuals to transact peer to peer, the more people are going to wake up to some of these other tools and these peer to peer platforms and these out-of-band payments they can make that don't link their identity to like a legacy system transaction that is linked to Bitcoin.

You're right how quickly things can change. Like I was freaking out thinking, and I'm basically living on a Bitcoin standard. like I have a bank account. I have a credit card. But like I, you know, I don't keep my money in dollars, uh, let alone the Canadian moose shackle up here. It's, it's, but at the same time, I'm then starting to think like, okay, well, what do I rely on that stuff for and how that like, how much of a pain in the ass is this going to be

to navigate if all my shit gets shut down? And, you know, I'm, and I'm somebody that's already on a Bitcoin standard and I'm like, fuck my life is going to be a lot harder right now. if this happens to me, let alone somebody who's just completely entrenched in legacy finance and has no out and doesn't understand Bitcoin whatsoever. That's a death now for them. Yeah. And even expanding on that, like, we don't even have to go as far as the Canadian truckers. We can go to Ukraine and Russia. And either side that you fall on right now, Russians are getting sanctioned by the U.S. and the rest of the world. And Ukrainians, their own government says they want to

help their people. And just the article that Ben pulled up, you know, they're putting capital controls. I know in the article that was written, I believe Namsia, so Bitcoin magazine wrote it, but he was saying in their, I guess, foreign currencies, up to 3,900 American dollars equivalent, you can use it, but they're blocking their own currency. So that just says, you know, they really don't want to help their own citizens. And it's pitiful. It's a shame. It's horrible. It's, yeah, I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, yeah. I know this is a bit of a segue, but also in the, uh, in the realm of privacy is non-KYC SATs. We did have a quick question and maybe I'll put it to Econo here. How important do you think it is to coin join KYC Bitcoin if you have it?

Well, I think it's extremely important because that's the only way you're going to break those deterministic links that irrevocably connect you to that on-chain information. So if you don't, if you don't coin join your KYC funds, then the exchange you bought them from is going to be able to. And you should just assume that they are tracking everything you do with those funds. And so they're going to use a number of on-chain heuristics that make certain assumptions about the ownership of the inputs and outputs of the transactions. And when you start looking at these graphs on a block explorer, like, it's really not that difficult to track somebody on chain. So if you value privacy or if you value like, you know, being able to transact without having to run into someone's permission, well, maintaining your anonymity online is one way to ensure that they're not going to find some off-chain information to you know kind of spend your Bitcoin on.

Yeah. But, you know, there is kind of a caveat there. I should, you know, I think if we're going to be honest about it, we'll have to recognize that there are certain on off ramps that have taken like aggressive stances toward privacy tools. And so there have been instances where like bottle pay had a whirlpool output come onto their platform and they flagged it. right just because it was related to a coin joint how uh i wonder how how how onerous can people like because i mean there's things like um ricochet where you have multiple hops before it lands in

the destination address like it then becomes um just a game of uh you know cat and mouse of of how how onerous and how far back are they willing to look on the chain and i mean if it gets to a certain point where it's like if you look far enough back on on the bitcoin blockchain a certain number of hops then you're more or less tainting a large percentage of the entire base of the entire monetary base and saying oh we're not we're not willing to accept you know 20% of existing bitcoin because it was linked to something at some point in its history um you know if you had if you had to do that with $20 bills. I mean, you'd have a lot of $20 bills you had to set fire too. But yeah, and it's like a totally arbitrary like set of rules that they apply to define taint.

And it varies from company to company. And, you know, there's just no like legal clarity that says, you know, all money transmitters have to abide by these rules. And I think it's kind of a good thing. we don't have that legal clarity, but unfortunately what you see are these companies that try to like proactively go above and beyond their current set of regulations. And so you see them doing funny things like blocking coin joins when there's really no legal grounds for them to do it. They're just doing it because they're, I think they're trying to build regulatory moats around their business and get an edge over their competitors. And unfortunately, that puts the end user at a disadvantage. You know, it just hurts the people trying to use the services.

Now, before we start rotating and everything, I'm going to bring up one other thing just in the realm of since we kind of went down the no KYC, down the coin join route. Another privacy aspect that Cortic in the chat brings up is dust transactions, where somebody sends a small number of sats to an address that you are known to own. And if you're not privy to that and you don't have settings within your wallets to prevent stuff like this or segregate those funds, that tiny amount of Bitcoin can be used to kind of track what you do from that on in because it combines with some of your other sats. And it's basically like, like, you know, an ink bomb in your Bitcoin wallet. And then anything that it touches, that ink will rub off and kind of have an impact.

that it's owned by you. So, I mean, there are, what wallets out there right now have, like, does every wallet or do a lot of wallets have like dust limits and things like that? Or is that still a pretty niche thing in terms of, like, you can segregate dust and certain, I know, like, Samurai does that. I think Sparrow, maybe? I don't know. I know for sure, because just because I've been the victim of a dust attack, and it was in

my samurai wallet. So I know for sure samurai wallet, like has ways to handle dust built into the application. I haven't seen it happen in any of my other wallet. So I don't really have that experience like with Sparrow or some of the others. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, like my thought with dust is like if you get dust in your wallet, like you want to break that that common input ownership heuristic, you know,

and you can do that by making collaborative transactions. And then any external observer, someone tracking the dust, for example, isn't going to be able to know which of those outputs the dust is part of at this point. Right. So, you know, I think samurai wallet is just miles ahead when it comes to handling situations like that. Yeah. It's interesting. And also it's important to, you know, if you're worried about stuff like this,

It's important to have wallets where you can actually see your individual UTXOs. And so, like, I mean, might be getting a little too technical here for some that are watching. But basically, what I mean by that is every time you receive Bitcoin into your wallet, it's not like you just have a singular balance. It's kind of more like if you had a physical wallet and you received a $20 bill and a $10 bill. Those amounts are separate within your wallet. But then when you go to spend them in tandem, it's kind of more like you're creating new bills from them. So if you wanted to spend $25 out of that 30 that you had, you're effectively destroying the original bills and creating a $25 bill and a $5 bill. So they do get combined through that action.

But yeah, if somebody sends you a small amount of Bitcoin to an address that you apparently own as you go to spend that in tandem with other. then it can kind of link to what you own. And so if you are dealing with a wallet that just shows a singular balance and doesn't give you any further insight, that's a problem. But if you're dealing with a wallet where you see like, oh, I just got, you know, a hundred sats, you'll be like, what the hell is this? I'm not going to touch that. Or you'll take some evasive action to make sure that people aren't tracking what you're doing.

So, yeah, and there's other solutions. Like there's, you know, we were, there's a bit of a kerfuffle on, on Twitter the other day, but I was talking to a Paynims. And, you know, Paynum is basically a way of having a link between you and another individual. And that individual can independently create a receiving address for you to send you funds without you having to publicly post that in a forum. So you could post a NIM, like a username is maybe perhaps a term that might be familiar to people rather than a NIM. But basically, it's a publicly identifiable way for somebody to connect with you and send you money without saying, here's an address.

So there are ways around preventing this kind of stuff. And I am bullish on the trajectory for Bitcoin privacy because with all, I feel like privacy became a huge issue to a lot of people this year in particular. And we already have all of these tools. And I'd like to liken it to scaling in 2017. You know, it was top of mind for everybody. It was like this, we have to do this or Bitcoin is screwed and look at everything that has come out of it since. Look how many, you know, we did get Segwit.

we got the Lightning Network, which did not exist at the time. You know, you have, if you choose to use them, there are side chains. There's other options there. But there's been so much movement in scaling when really no tools were available then. Think five years out from now. When we already have a ton of privacy tools at our fingertips right now, but privacy has just become kind of like front and center as one of the big issues in Bitcoin. I can only imagine the incredible tools that we're going to have in, you know, five years.

So yeah, super bullish on that. I'm going to round out this topic, though, and we'll get a rotation in here. Again, everybody in the chat, thank you for continuing to be here and keep those messages coming. I'll try and pull them up as I see them. But, Econo, you are actually up next for your reason for being bullish. So I'm going to let you have a little rant. What are you excited about this week? Dude, I'm going to go with home mining. It's one of my favorite subjects, and I've just been completely obsessed with it for like the last year and a year and a half. You know, I'm I'm excited about or bullish on home mining because it solves problems for people. You know, if you don't want to use KYC services because of the risks, the risks of the,

the custodian shutting you out of your account or the risk of the custodian being the victim of a data breach that then leaks your personal information to God knows where. You know, you can use mining as a way to acquire Bitcoin without having to provide anyone KYC information. And, you know, essentially what you're doing is you're taking your Fiat money and paying your electricity bill, which is returning sats to you in return for that through the miners. So I just think for anyone who, you know, is concerned about KYC, I think mining at home is a great way to come up with that revenue stream where you don't have to give information to anybody.

And, you know, you don't have to interact in any trades with anybody to do that. You can just get your mining rewards deposited. So that's the primary reason and bullish. on it, you know, and like from there, over the course of the last year, the narrative used to be that you can't mine at home. You can't compete with the big miners. Your electricity is too expensive. You'd be better off just buying at an exchange. And those narratives have really been destroyed over the last year. And there's just been this like renaissance in people sharing the ways that they've incorporated miners into their home, the problems that they face, the solutions that they came up with.

And now we're getting to this point where people are like, you know, these, they're coming up with ways to integrate the minor into their central air system, into their clothes dryer. They're using them to like dry food like beef jerky or mushrooms. And it's like, now we're starting to see people like not only are they getting non-KYC Bitcoin. and like participating in self-custody by default. But now they're like starting to figure out ways to like use the byproducts of the miner like the heat to offset other energy costs like natural gas or you know just to do other creative things.

So I just think that that is extremely bullish because, man, it's like an avalanche that can't be stopped at this point. I love that. This has been on my radar for a little bit. I feel like mining is my blind spot, right? Like that's the thing that I have the least experience. It's like I'd be going in like a total noob trying to figure it out bit by bit. So that's kind of a goal of mine this year to, okay, how do you get hardware?

How do you, you know, get set up in a way that isn't blasting out your eardrums? You know, like whatever solutions you come up with, making sure that it makes economic sense. like in the okay so for example in the chat here dan uh cost barrier to entry for home mining is a bit ouchy is it i don't know like can you answer that is that uh yeah i mean i think i think it definitely can be you know i think a lot of people can look at it um and say wow you know 8500 bucks for a new gen miner like i can't afford that and yeah maybe you can't afford like one lump sum amount i'm not gonna say that isn't like a life-changing amount of money for a lot of people because it is. But I would say, you know, that you don't have to spend that much.

Like you can start with an S-9. And I think there's a lot of advantages to starting with a smaller minor like an S-9, one being that it's a low-cost barrier to entry. Like you don't have to put a lot of money up. You can get an S-9 for five to $600 bucks. And then like that machine is, going to give you like your basic understanding of ASIC technology. So you're going to have a way better grasp on how to deal with noise, how to deal with heat. You're going to learn a lot about

electrical, how to hook it up to your pool. And so if you can learn those basic skills in like a really low risk investment, like a $500 S9, then when you're ready and you've saved up some money, like then maybe you can upgrade to a new generation minor if you think that that move makes sense for you. And, you know, the other thing I would say is, like, you can buy miners with Bitcoin. So, like, let's say you have $8,500 worth of Bitcoin. Well, you know, you think about what your plans are with that Bitcoin for the next two years. Are you just going to leave it in cold storage? And if the answer is yes, then, you know, maybe you want to think about putting that Bitcoin to work, buying an ASIC with it, earning that Bitcoin back over that two-year time frame, and then

taking those Bitcoin rewards, putting them back in cold storage, and then you've got a machine that's going to continue running, and you'll be continuing to stack non-KYC Bitcoin on top of it. So, you know, I think it just depends how you want to approach that and, you know, what your economic landscape looks like. But I wouldn't let the price necessarily just scare you off. I think it's definitely worth, like, digging into and figuring that out for yourself. That's awesome. Chris or Neil, have you guys dabbled in mining ever?

Do you know people that mine? Like, what's your level of experience there? Yeah. I'll let Neil go first. Go ahead. No, I personally haven't mined myself. It's hard for me, especially new people coming into Bitcoin. They all hear mining and they think I have my own personal money printer.

And like, it's hard to really suggest to anyone new, like spend. thousands of dollars on a miner and instead of just buying bitcoin because we know like most people who get into mining over the long run so many of them have said i wish i just bought bitcoin instead not everyone but most so it's hard i think the the killer advantage of it is the no k yc bitcoin that that's really other than that like i would rather just buy bitcoin personally but definitely just to know how it works i should probably like from a very technical perspective. I'm doing myself a disservice by myself not doing it for so long. Do the S-9 approach then, I guess. Yeah. What do those run like these days?

I think you were saying, what, 500 bucks? Yeah, like five or 600 bucks. Yeah. Right. Maybe I'll mess around. Yeah. Chris, you were going to say. Yeah, no, definitely kind of a blind spot for me. Before I join Bitcoin magazine, I do have a better understanding the energy sector. I was a waste to energy engineer for four years prior to joining Bitcoin Magazine. One of the last projects I was working on there was actually trying to get them set up with miners at one of our facilities. We are an energy producer. We have really cheap electricity. But it definitely helped open my eyes. So we are a waste energy facility in the United States and Europe who was the company that I worked for. And some of the prices would make your jaw drop in terms of kilowatt hours.

like we were getting one of our plants was 1.5 cent per kilowatt hour. And I was like, guys, we need to start mining like yesterday. And then then like when I started digging into the numbers, you kind of your eyes, you know, you get pulled back behind the curtain and you see the man behind the curtain. Those numbers were based on subsidies from the government. So we weren't allowed to mine for Bitcoin because that was reserved for people in municipalities. So really it was closer to like six to eight to nine cents. for kilowatt hours, which is more understandable and reasonable.

But we did have a couple of facilities that were in the sub 4 cent kilowatt hour region that we were able to mine and we weren't going to be penalized by not hitting our government contracts. But I think mining's awesome. You're getting like econo-alchemists said better than I, but you're getting non-KYC sats. You're using your stats that were in cold storage or dollars if you have them for that lump sum. And then you're trying to be entrepreneur, though. You're trying to reduce noise. You're trying to use excess heat to heat water heaters or, you know, what is it?

For meat, for curing meat or anything like that. And like just some of the things that I see on Twitter, like the immersion miners or people using hot water heaters and they're running the water back into the tank to preheat them. I mean, it's incredible. Being an engineer myself as a degree and, you know, my previous life, it's really kind of cool to see the two combined. But definitely a weak spot for me. There's one guy at my meetup that actually mines Bitcoin.

He has a bunch of miners. And he loves when he, I hate saying this. He loves what people give him fiat just to pay the bills. He's like, I hate this, but like I need it to pay. They don't accept Bitcoin yet for,

for, sats yet for my electric bill. But he's like, I do kind of need him unless I want to sell Bitcoin. So he's like, it's an alternative to selling Bitcoin. To do it, he'd rather just sell it to people at the meetup and we give him cash to do so.

Awesome. I'm going to pull one, one other question here from the funny story. This is my buddy. He happens to be in town right now from out of town. and he's staying at my house. So I don't know if he's in the house right now or if he's out for the day, but he might be in my basement watching.

Anyways, Dave wanted to know in regards to linking up to a mining pool. And he's asking, like, is that KYC in any way? So maybe, O'Connell, maybe you can answer, like, what information is involved in linking up to a mining pool? Yeah, so the short answer here, is no, it's not KYC. So KYC is like a very specific process enforced by regulations that money transmitters, exchanges and brokers have to comply with. Mining pools do not have the obligation of complying with KYC AML regulations. So no, you're not required to KYC yourself with

pools. I guess I should say that like as like a small individual home miner. Like if you're going with like foundry and you're like you know at a bigger scale yeah that's a different ballgame but just to clarify i'm speaking about like an individual with an s9 who links up to slush pool or f2 pool you're not going to have to provide kyc information so they they they might require an email address if if that's the case i recommend using a burner email address and you know there's a a couple different things you want to think about at this point because you're making a network connection to that pool and you're receiving on-chain sats from that pool. So if you think about like every contact leaves a trace and you're concerned about privacy and you're concerned about

any of these can these potential or these traces potentially linking you to something you don't want to be linked to, there's precautions that you can take to safeguard yourself. So on the network side of it, I recommend mining with the VPN. And I wrote a guide. You can find on my website, econoalchemist.com. It's also published on Bitcoin Magazine's website, so you can find it on there. But it's about home mining with a VPN. And that's going to provide you a safeguard from your ISP, seeing where your traffic is going. And it's going to prevent the mining pool from seeing your IP address. And then, you know, on the on-chain side of it, I recommend whirlpooling your mining rewards to break those deterministic links like we talked about earlier. And then you gain that

forward-looking anonymity. And so I can spend my mining rewards to BTC sessions and he's not going to know that I'm mining Bitcoin or I can prevent slush pool from knowing that I'm spending money with BTC sessions, for example. Interesting. Okay. Well, I've got lots to learn. I've got work cut out for me. You'll probably be getting a few DMs multiple times as I, you know, kind of puts my way through it. That's what I'm here for, man. Hit me up. I'm going to give you one last question before we do a rotation here. If I'm looking to get hardware, what are some of the routes I can go to get my hands on an ASIC? Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, upstream data has a web store and they're selling A6 there.

You know, full disclosure, I am affiliated with them. Steve, Steve lives like 10 minutes from me. So maybe I should be kicking. Yeah, dude, you could just drive over there and pick one up from him, I'm sure. And they take Bitcoin too. So you don't have to link the purchase of that hardware to like a legacy system transaction. So yeah, I mean, upstream data, mine farm buy, kabum racks, blockware solutions.

there's a lot of good vendors out there. And there's a telegram channel called Hardware Market Verified Listings, where all the vendors in there have given the channel admin their personal information. So there is like a layer of accountability for the people that are allowed to post ads in there. That's not like a 100% guarantee against scammers. But that's a good place to look and start seeing what some prices are. And, you know, I've worked, you know, I've met Kabumra. I've personally worked with blockware solutions, mine farm buy and upstream data myself.

So like I can say with 100% confidence that all those dudes are legit and they'll take care of you. Awesome. I think I think Steve might be getting a phone call tonight. We'll see. But yeah, that's definitely a blind spot for me. And I guess I'm just going to be diving into that. Got to get one of those black boxes too. We'll see how that goes.

Awesome. All right. Well, let's round out that conversation and let's do a rotation. Again, everybody in the chat, keep them coming. By the way, Icono, a friend of mine who actually came down to the conference. He actually won a trip down through Shakepay. They paid for his tickets and flights and accommodation and all of it with him and a friend. But he said that he started home mining based on your guys. So you've been planting. That's awesome. Planting orange pills everywhere. Oh, yeah.

That's great to hear. Thank you. Yeah. No worries. Cool. All right. Well, let's rotate then. Chris, you are up.

What has you feeling bullish this week, man? Take us on a journey. Yeah. So I'm going to selfishly say the Bitcoin 2020 conference. I know we're a couple weeks out from it now. Yeah. I mean, all in all, I didn't get to go to Bitcoin 2021. I had my buddy's wedding that weekend.

But I remember seeing the. Jack Mallor's announcement and like getting teared up, celebrating, drinking at the wedding, and being pumped up watching it virtually. But being able to be at Bitcoin Magazine and help host it, you know, I've had nothing but kind things to say. There is a lot to improve for 2023 and us as a team are debriefing and talking about that now. But it's just so great hanging out with Bitcoiners. I got to meet Neil in person. I got to meet Ben in person. I don't think I got to meet you, but there was a bunch of people I didn't get to meet that were there.

It's just hard to meet everyone when there's 25,000 people. But yet just seeing a lot of the projects like Seed Siner, like I mentioned earlier, Keith Mukai, I like have a lot of respect for he's kind of a developer for Seed Siner. I was looking forward to the impervious browser. I know the launch of that was pushed back a little bit. But just being around Bitcoiners and Ben, I think you've mentioned this once before, like being around people that have the same, we have the same base level of like understanding and truth in the basis of Bitcoin that even if you differ ideologically,

politically religion, race, whatever. Like, as long as you all believe in that core belief, you can get along with anyone. I think it's, you know, not to say there's not debates in the space. There's plenty, but I think it's because we care so much. And, you know, like I said, it was just so great hanging out Bitcoiners, being surrounded by people like, I truly say I love and care for. And, you know, we're fighting together against the central banks and all the people that are trying to harm us and everyone else.

Neil, I'm going to toss it to you and I'm going to ask you. like what some of your favorite parts of being down there were. What were some of the things that you got to go and be a part of and see? I don't know. What did you take away from Bitcoin 2020? Yeah. So I thought it was very well done. It's become like quite the huge production.

Sorry, something went off on my computer just now. I kind of, even from last year, 12,000 felt like small compared to this, even though 12,000 was a lot. And it's, it made me kind of appreciate the smaller conferences more. I was just that, um, unconfiscatable last March and not to like shit on the conference. Um, I'm super bullish how many people came, 25,000 people when the price is kind of like, you know, chopping along at 40,000 people call it a bear market, whatever they want to say. Um, to have that many people.

show up is incredible. Mostly, I'm more there for the connections, the networking, than like, I don't, I listen to one speaker for like 30 seconds. Like I'm there to like hang out and talk with other Bitcoiners, but never actually about Bitcoin. That's what I find the most. When I'm at Bitcoin conferences, we never talk about Bitcoin because what more can we talk about when it comes to Bitcoin between us?

I mean, we can, but you know what I'm saying. And it ends up being other conversations, and it's just great. Awesome. Yeah, it was a hell of a time for sure. I did get to some of the talks. The ones that, so I mean, I, of course, I moderated a talk on soft forks with Jeremy Rubin and with Paul Stork and Jimmy's song. So that was, that was fun.

and I had to try and expertly ask questions that made it seem like I fully understood what was just said in the prior question. So I heard on Clubhouse earlier today that I managed to fool people into believing that. So I guess I did an okay job there. But I did catch some of the stuff. You know, open, I'm so glad that the open source stage exists. existed. And just in saying that, it was impressive to me that there were so many stages going simultaneously with so much different content. So like the app was a godsend because you could

literally just go through what was going on. And every time you see a talk that you like, you just tap it, it gets added to your schedule for the whole weekend. And you could just you know, follow wherever you need to go. I mean, granted, I kind of sucked at doing that. I tried to catch as much as I can. I did get to see a home mining panel, which was really cool. I did, I got to see the one that was moderated by Foss, which I think you should probably just make Foss the moderator for every talk because dude was so hyped up.

He didn't sit down the entire time. The rest of the panel sat in their chairs and he, paste around. And then I like how he started it because he had a Canadian flag like upside down holding it by the flagpole with like a like whatever the piece of wood at the end was. And he's like, all right, listen up. If anybody starts talking about shit coins, I'm going to come along and I'm going to give you a love tap. And he's saying this to a panel of billionaires. So I think we need some more Foss energy as a moderator. And yeah, I mean, I watch Samson Mao's announcement. I watched Jack Mallor's announcement. And I did get to some other talks.

And but again, like the social aspect of it. It's like a it's like a family reunion going to these things, right? Like you just see all of these people that are like minded and and sharing a lot of the same values. And you just, maybe that's part of it. You know, why why you don't necessarily need to be talking about Bitcoin is because you just, you kind of already understand each other on that level unless there's like a new piece of. information that you're kind of discussing back and forth, you kind of already know what's up. And so you just like mesh on on other exterior topics to that. But I will say it was, it was an awesome experience.

And I don't know, I was, I was super glad I got to come down. And that the, that news desk was, was fucking great. I really enjoyed being on that. It was a lot of fun. So, yeah, I don't know. I'll talk to you, Akana. What were your experiences down there like? I really didn't know what to expect. That was my first Bitcoin conference that I'd ever been to. I had done like a couple of local meetups. But, you know, I was, you know, like Neil's saying, the social aspect, like meeting some of these people that I've spent so much time with online interacting with only knowing them by their avatar and then like getting to meet them face to face for the first time. That was just like the highlight for me was just meeting.

of these people. I met Ronan Minor, Hoddle Tarantula, I met J.P. Sears, Nick Zabo, I shook his hand. I met NVK, Alex Gladstein, Jacques, Jocamo. Dude, like the list just goes on and on and on. You know, and I was hanging out with Odell and coin heated and John Stephanopoulos and Diverter, no K.C for the home mining panel. Dude, it was just amazing being able to chill out and bro down with those dudes and like just shoot the shit you know that's what it was all about for me um as far as like the talks go i really didn't see that many talks but i did spend a good amount of time after the conference catching up on youtube um because there was a lot going on that i did have a genuine interest in but just for whatever reason couldn't make it um you know i also had my family with me and our

two my wife and our two little kids so that was um you know taken up some of my bandwidth and but yeah dude it was just great to get down there and see everybody that's that's and that's and that's uh you know you can reserve a good chunk of the flight home for that stuff too right like if you're missing right i made note of the talks that i i was like fuck i wish i would like the the meme warfare one i was like oh i got a so i i downloaded a bunch of them and just like saved them on my phone and on my laptop and just watch them on my flights home just to make sure I felt like I got, you know, got all the socials and I got the talks. But, you know, it is really cool getting in the room to see the talks.

But I mean, even just like the floor there, I really enjoyed the art gallery too. That was really cool. The bizarre was, you know, there's some eclectic stuff in there. But there's also some really good Bitcoin stuff too. The book signings were awesome. So many people with good books. I'm very upset that I did. catch a copy of Tomer's coffee table book, but I'll have to reach out to him and get him to send me one.

But yeah, I've got a ton of reading material from there. And yeah, that expo hall was like overwhelming. There was so much to look at in there. And like upstream data had the black box with two S-9s running in it. So it was just really cool to be able to see that, like to see people being able to see that in person for the first time. You know, I've got one, so I've seen it. But seeing other people's reaction when like, it's totally quiet and then they open the lid and they can hear them and just getting that noise difference. And then the slush pool dudes were at their booth and I got to meet them. And

Ronan Dojo had their booth. And Ben, that's where I met you. Yeah. I was picking mine up. It's humming behind me right now. Awesome. Yeah, dude. It was just great. You know, and What's Minor had their like hydro version of a minor that they, announced and that was on display in one of the booths too. So just being able to see that stuff and meet those people and get your hands on it just makes it really tangible and fun. And I don't know, just that that was a great experience for those aspects to me. Yeah, yeah.

That exhibition hall was insane. Like I went on the, um, the industry day. Uh, and I just, that was what I did. I was like, okay. I'm going to, and I stupidly. came thinking like, okay, I've got a few things to like external events to go to today. So I'll hit this thing for three hours in the morning and I'll be good. I was like, Jesus Christ.

So then I came back in the afternoon for another couple hours to like hit some of the things I missed. Still didn't get to everything. But like a day dedicated to just the exhibition hall would be good. I'm going to give two notes for next year for Bitcoin. I'm going to pitch them to you right now, Chris. All right. One is if there's another musical festival thing going on, make it so that all of the exhibition hall people, like all of the booths and everything, stay open for that. Like, there were some that were open, but it would be good if the entire thing was still buzzing.

Because there's an entire host of new people that walked through that door. And I think a lot of the people who had booths didn't realize that there still be people around. could be interested in that stuff. And you could probably follow a fair amount of people into that. So, yeah, having that available during the San Money Fest would be awesome. And then I have a special request that you go back to the silky soft t-shirts that you had from 21 and 19. Because they were very comfortable those years. I wasn't quite as silky smooth this year.

Yeah, no, I'll definitely make note of that. I think it, I think there was kind of a miscommunication. Well, there's two things. It was kind of a miscommunication that the Expo Hall was going to be open. But we were really tight on security the entire week. And I know with the music festival, they were worried about people, you know, using particular recreational activities and things getting out of hand there. So I think it was kind of an idea to like, let's not go full into exhibition hall. But definitely something noted to do. As for the silky shirts, I'll talk to the guys in the store and we'll get the old brand. We might have to bump up the prices, maybe a little bit, a few bucks here. there or a couple sats here and there to do so. But definitely voted. I mean, it's worth it. I'd rather have the low time preference. I'd rather buy a shirt that I'm going to wear for like 10 years that's still going to feel good than buy a shirt that I'm going to wash a couple times and be upset about.

Sure. The lower time preference shirts for sure. I appreciate all the feedback from all you guys. Like I said, I'm on the video team and we've been slaving away these last two weeks to get out of all the panels. I know there was kind of a mishap that happened this week. in terms of accidentally tape, like there were strikes against people's YouTube accounts. If it makes you feel any better, I run the amateur investors account and I work for the company

and I got a strike. So we are working to rectify it is kind of a thing that swept across all of it. I'm like, guys, I work for the company and I got a strike. So like promise me we will rectify this. It will not go against your YouTube accounts. I apologize for the mix up for all of that. Yeah, I appreciate you guys taking quick action to rectify that and, you know, owning the mistake and, you know, moving on. Shit happens. And sorry, I don't know if I should cuss on here or not. You can say whatever fuck you want. Yeah. I saw your comment of kind of Alchemist. So I was like, oh, man, I'm going to be on here and he's in a rosy for it.

I didn't put it out. I'm not going to throw my coworker under the bus. It was kind of an algorithmic issue. So we are working to rectify that as soon as possible. We were kind of working all yesterday and today. And it will be fixed. I promise anyone that we've given contact to or worked with in the past. Your accounts will not be docs. We were just trying to stop all of the fake accounts of ours and or other accounts that are just trying to make it look like us and reuse our content and scam people. So I apologize. It was kind of a drag net thing. No worries, dude. I figured it was something like that. I'm just glad you didn't like double down and say, no, we own the rights to that video. Yeah. We're working to fix it. I'm sorry.

Oh, good. Awesome. All right. Well, let's do our last rotation here. And again, everybody in the comments. Thank you for being here. Shout out to Kit. Nice to meet you down there too Kit from Bitcoin magazine. She's in the chat there as well. But yeah, let's jump to know. Dude, what are you bullish about? What has you excited takeaway? Okay.

So it's going to sound bearish, but it is bullish and I'll get there why. So the title, I read an article earlier in the week, Bitcoin tribalism is holding the crypto industry back. Ripple CEO says. And he went on to say that Bitcoin Maximism. has meant that the crypto industry has fractured representation in Washington, D.C. So which I say, this is great. We've been wanting to, you know, draw a line in the sand between Bitcoin and all the other,

you know, crap that's out there. But, you know, last August of 2021, when that infrastructure bill came in and it had all that crypto, you know, language, digital asset, whatever language in it, as a bitcorner, I felt underrepresented. it. In my own country, I didn't feel like Bitcoin was being fought for. You had, you know, organizations like Coin Center, but, you know, they're not really Bitcoin focused. So, you know, out of that came things like Sat Center, the BTC Inc, right, the BTC Policy Institute, the Bitcoin Today Coalition, I think it's called. So you have like representation now for Bitcoiners.

I'm totally for it. I know there's some Bitcoiners who are like, oh, we shouldn't get involved in any of this stuff. Well, blah, blah. But I like to repeat something that Bitcoin Tina one said to me, and he said, Bitcoin may be anti-fragile, but Bitcoiners aren't anti-fragile. So you want the path of least resistance.

And if we could have people who, you know, closely align with us fighting on our behalf, like I'm all for it. And I'm happy that these ripple people are, upset. I mean, we saw like Chris Larson a month ago. He's trying to like buy off the ESG people and Greenpeace to come after Bitcoin. This is great. This is fantastic. I do love the differentiation like that. What was the quote there, you know, that Bitcoin maximalism has caused crypto. Fracture. He said, Carlinghouse said such maximalism.

has meant the crypto industry has fractured representation when it comes to lobbying U.S. lawmakers. Yes, that's correct. I'm pretty sure that was your opinion. Everything in D.C. right now is relatively positive for Bitcoiners, in my opinion. You know, from Gary Gensler being the SEC chair, he knows Bitcoin, better than a lot of Bitcoiners know Bitcoin. So I think the whole government banning Bitcoin in the U.S. is a fud narrative that really just doesn't have much legs.

But we saw what just happened in Canada. We see what happens in other countries. Things could turn very quickly with different administrations coming in. So it's important to, you know, practice, you know, go by best practices no matter how good times are. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think there is some merit for, you know, you're talking about all these groups getting together and trying to influence legislation and everything. And I mean, I myself and I'm sure many bitcoins have been super disillusioned by by politics and politicians over the past number of years. I mean, that's a no-brainer, obviously.

That said, like I am, so here in Canada, I'm cautiously optimistic. with, you know, somebody like Pierre Pahliav running to, one, be the leader of his party, but two, then in line to be running for prime minister if that ends up being the case. And, you know, earlier on, there was kind of some more of those like blanket buzzword statements, like blockchain capital of the world, crypto, you know, all. all that kind of stuff. But he seems to be refining that quite a bit to specify Bitcoin. Like there's somebody asking him about crypto banking and everything.

And he's specified. Like I support Bitcoin. And I think that's because he, some of the people who have his ear are people like Greg Foss and Jeff Booth. And there's a ton of, like, you know, there's a ton of great Canadian Bitcoin. that I know are actively mobilizing, trying to kind of help not only gain support for him, but also ensure that he understands what is going on there.

He seems to have a clear understanding of like sound money and that you can't just like paper you way out of economic problems. it's just ensuring that he also has a clear understanding of the fact that Bitcoin is entirely different from the heaps of trash out there. So, you know, again, I'm cautiously optimistic about that. I feel like in terms of Canada, given how quickly things went right down the shitter this year, I feel like that's kind of like a final hurrah to like. like see if we can start to move that pendulum back the other way. And I think this is kind of like a big last push for for a number of people. But I've met a lot of bitcoins that have just,

they just got the hell out of dodge like in the past even like four months here. I was in Costa Rica. I met two different people that packed up their entire families and moved down to Costa Rica. Francis has been there for a long time as soon as shit got crazy here. There's another Bitcoin mechanic who works with Start 9. He was in on the West Coast and then he got the hell out of there. And now he's down in Mexico, I think. There's been a lot of people that have basically taken off.

And I mean, Bitcoiners are all about that plan B, right? Just having that, well, you know, if shit goes sideways and I got to have a you know, for the first time in my life, I've now begun, I had never entertained the idea of living in another place. And now I'm kind of actively pursuing a second passport, which I think is important to have regardless of kind of how things go. But yeah, you're right. Like it is, it is bullish that that people are mobilizing and trying to, to hedge. for when the game doesn't go in their favor, but also actively trying to shift the game in their favor.

If you take both approaches, then at least you've got two potential good outcomes. But if you take one, then you've only got the hedge, right? Yeah, when you're trying to separate, it's kind of antithetical because Bitcoin, you're separating money from state. And yet we're saying we need to influence the state or advocate for Bitcoin on behalf of ourselves.

against the state or for you know what i'm trying to say anyways um but if we could at least stop them from infringing upon us that's something um it doesn't necessarily mean like we or asking for permission but just like stopping them from like messing with our good thing over here like why not do it well and there's there's a um there's an element of that that trojan horse aspect of it like really what you need is you need favorable led to that gives a lot of freedom that makes it super easy for everybody to get into Bitcoin for a period of time to the point where if negative legislation then comes out later, it's already too late. Like for instance, like look at El Salvador. If enough time passes where basically everybody in El Salvador is eventually or the vast majority of them are using Bitcoin in some capacity, it won't matter what legislation comes out later.

It's too late at that point. Everybody's using it. Everybody has a wallet. Everybody's dealing peer to peer or hopefully using, at least holding their own keys down the road. It becomes that you pushed it past a point of no return. And so I think that's kind of the impetus here is trying to get some of that favorable legislation and get regular day-to-day people to understand things that we've been discussing here. holding your own keys, you know, doing things that help your own privacy, perhaps mining your own coins, all of these types of things so that when the time comes

where shit hits the fan and you need to have all of those things, they're already in place. And it becomes a lot more resistant to that tyranny of the state. I think we've kind of like in the U.S. past that point of no return. And like, it might not seem that way. And I'm not saying, like, don't keep fighting. But look, we have Janet Yellen, like, a week or so ago, like, say how, like, she admired Satoshi's invention. I'm paraphrasing. It's like, wait, what?

Did everyone else think that was a deep fake? Because I did. I thought it was a I love Bitcoin by my shit coin pitch. Yeah. It was crazy. And like, like I said, SEC chair, Bitcoin, senators, Bitcoin. I think, you know, maybe five, 10 years from now, we'll look back on this time and say, oh, yeah, it was kind of obvious that, like, Bitcoin had reached its, like, escape velocity. Not in terms of price, but in terms of not being able to be held back.

But I guess we'll see. I watched that video a few times, and I literally thought it was a deep fake. Like, the first two times I watched it was like, this isn't real. Like, someone, I thought yellow, yellow shout out to you. I thought you, like, made that or something like that. I was like, oh, or Brecky or someone like that. But I'll kick it over to a condomat alchemist now. That's the one where she was like paraphrasing the white paper, right?

Yeah, I totally thought that was a deep fake. I had no idea that was real. But yeah, you know, I think it is good to have Bitcoin distinguished from the other cryptocurrencies. You know, from the mining perspective, I do kind of foresee that as like them trying to, especially like the proof of state guys like with ripple like trying to to segregate bitcoin from everyone else so they can kind of get more of an attack surface around it so that they can say look it's proof of work mining i feel like that's why they're trying to distinguish it like that's

totally different than everything else that we're doing um and so you know when when it comes down to regulations, I guess my biggest concern is that like some regulation gets passed that makes what I'm doing today that's perfectly legal. Like tomorrow makes it illegal. So I'm just very cautious about like shoehorning any sort of like legacy system regulations into the Bitcoin space. I would hate to see some sort of like ESG requirement come down that like makes minors have to have licenses in the states that they operate in and say, like, you can't operate a minor at home unless you're licensed and you have to comply with these federal regulations and your machines have to be so efficient. And if they're not up to this energy star standard, you have to

replace your inventory. Like, I just think the more of those regulations get their clause into a free market, the more it like disrupts the natural free market economics that make, especially Bitcoin mining such a vibrant marketplace. absolutely what uh do you see a world in which you know something like that happens what happens to home mining does it just like does it continue to exist like or does it does a black market get created where people are just like low key running you know a few s19s in a black box somewhere yeah i i think we see like a black market split you know if you know just look at like China, for example. The government of China said, no more mining within the borders of China.

And they like meant it this time and people responded. But it came out after the fact that as much as 20% of the overall network hash rate was still going on within the borders of China. So these were illegal miners, you know. And I just think that that's going to happen everywhere. You know, certainly if the laws changed overnight in the United States, I'll tell you right now, I'm not going to unplug my minors. I will continue running them. And if I'm going to be classified as a criminal because of that, you know, like, so call me a criminal and I'll deal with the consequences when they come up. But I'm not going to let those laws deter me from engaging in something that's perfectly legal today because I, you know, I know that's right. And just because a law comes out

that says, I have to have a license to do it now, like that doesn't change the fact that it's right. I'm running code. I'm running a computer. I'm just hash it. I'm not going to stop doing that. So I guess maybe I'm just like a little bit more open to accepting those risks when it comes down to it. But yeah, I would operate in a black market. And I think a lot of other people would too.

I kind of equate it to like cocaine, for example. Like that's illegal in almost every country on earth. Yeah, it's still a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. So I think Bitcoin mining will continue. Yeah. Yeah. I think it'll be pretty resilient. You know, that's, this is why I want to dive into it now so that I'm prepared if there's ever shit legislation like that.

So I can just, you know, I wonder then what kind of underground. I wonder how much that black box is going to cost me at that point. It'll be a premium, I'm sure. So let's get it while it's cheap, I suppose. Awesome. Well, Jets, I think the time has come to maybe do a quick round of final thoughts here. Anything that you want to, you know, any of your final thoughts for the day, anything that you want to mention, point people to. And maybe I'll give you a little challenge of if you want to recommend a piece of content that you've found useful in your Bitcoin journey, whatever that may be, whether it be a, a, book or an article or a video or something like that.

If there's something that you've found particularly useful, then let people know. In terms of mine final thoughts, I mean, I really enjoy this conversation. It kind of ran the gamut of just about everything, you know, from the politics of it to the, you know, the social aspect of it, to the technical and the resilience of Bitcoin. So yeah, I really enjoyed it all. I don't think I have any major points to make at the end. I'll use this opportunity to shill the fact that I'm going to be in Colona and Vancouver in July doing workshops. I'm doing some beginner ones, which probably wouldn't apply to most people watching here unless you're like brand new to Bitcoin, just on the basics of self-custody,

which is like a three-hour morning workshop. But then the afternoon one, I'm doing from 1 to 5 p.m., a deep dive on cold card, just like every facet of how to use your cold card, partially signed Bitcoin transaction, basically go from zero to hero in an afternoon. So that's kind of the goal there. I'll be in Colonna on July 9th. I just booked the space, and I will be dropping that on my Twitter and my website tomorrow. maybe Monday, I guess.

And then Vancouver figuring out the venue, but that will be July 16th. So anyways, that's my, that's my riff. I will toss it to Econo. Final thoughts, anything you want to point people towards, let a rip. Yeah. Well, you know, first of all, thanks for having me. This has been a blast. I'm very, like, honored to have been invited to participate.

And, you know, for everyone listening, like, if you're, at all interested in learning about mining. I've got some great resources on my website, econoalchemist.com. I've also published some technical guides for upstream data, and you can find a couple of those on upstream data's website, which is upstreamdata.ca. And I've also got like a GitHub repository, so you can go to econoalchemist.gith.gith.comist.gith.com. I've got some stuff in there that I don't have on my website. But there's a ton of material to learn about mining, And, you know, if you're at all on the fence about it, just be open-minded about it and learn about it. And feel free to reach out any time and ask questions.

And, you know, as far as like content that I would point people to, like just in general, like self-custody, self-hosted, open source, like take control over your own keys, non-KYC acquisition or procurement of Bitcoin. I would point everybody to Bitcoin Q&A. His Twitter handle is Bitcoin Q underscore A. The dude's got a website called Bitcoinser.com. And it's just packed full of awesome resources that span everything. Like how to buy non-KYC Bitcoin to how to set up your wallet. I mean, the dude's just a powerhouse.

So I definitely recommend people check that out. Awesome. I just typed all of those things into the chat. So people can find them there. Awesome. Well, thanks for being on, man. Let's do a quick rotate to Chris. Any final thoughts? Anything that you want to recommend for anybody. Yeah, Ben, thank you once again for having us on. It was a pleasure to meet you in person. Neil, thank you for having me over for the Pled party down in Miami. That was a blast,

meeting all the plebs and hanging out and drinking in the late after hours post-conference one of the days. It was a pleasure talking to you, Alconno Alchemist. In terms of things for people coming into the space, Preston Pish, you know, I really respect because he kind of comes from the legacy financial. I got to thank him in person down in Miami saying he really orange-pilled me. I was kind of more in the legacy route and kind of went orange-pilled. I'd say his episode with Michael Saylor, the mastermind in terms of Bitcoin. I know many people have listened to it already on his podcast. I think it was episode three or five for the investors podcast.

I highly recommend you listen to that, even if you're an advanced Bitcoiner, just Michael Saylor's thoughts on economics and just when he was really, getting into Bitcoin or clever. And then Econo Alchemist took one of mine, Bitcoin Q&A, his Bitcoiner's guide gives you all the non-KYC routes, setting up a wallet, setting up multi-sig. I mean, the dude's a beast. He works for, I'll shill his thing real quick, foundation devices. I bought one down there, the passport 2.0. So I haven't used it yet, but it looked really cool. I want to get it in my setup along with my cold card and other wallets I have. And then selfishly, I'll shill Bitcoin magazine. You can get your tickets for Bitcoin

2023. They're out already. You just go to b.tc forward slash conference forward slash 2023. Like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We put out all the content there. I apologize for the mishap for everyone with the strikes on YouTube. We are rectifying it. We will fix it. And it's been a pleasure

being here, Ben, Neil and Ocano Alchemist. Awesome. Well, dude, thank you very much as well. And it's a hefty list. I need to go through again but yeah highly again i'll echo everything that you uh you dropped there um all excellent resources so definitely check them out and uh with that toss it to neal final thoughts any recommendations all yours all right three recommendations and this is not just me sucking up but btc sessions

any nobs watching watch his youtube videos you are very easy for me to just recommend on like clubhouse in the mornings when we have beginners and i've gotten and like annoyed walking through. Oh, BTC Sessions has a video for this. Even if I haven't watched it, I know you definitely have a video for it. So definitely doves go to that.

I really love Bitcoin Tina's talk with CK back in the end of 2019. Definitely, it's a four-part series. Well, it turned into like a five-part series. But a four-part series that Tina did with CK at Bitcoin Magazine. Check that out.

And then also for people newer to Bitcoin. I feel the price of tomorrow with Jeff Booth's book is really good because it's not like heavy Bitcoin, but it really gets you thinking about network effects and exponential technologies, which is, you know, Bitcoin helps fuel Bitcoin. So it gives you a really good perspective, but also relating things, not Bitcoin. So yeah. Oh, and again, I'll show my company, FOMO21.com, buy Bitcoin merch. And Chris, we could hook you guys up with shirts, maybe. They're very comfortable. Very comfortable. We would love to. Are they? Yeah. I got to send you. So I'll, I sent you a discount code. I'll send you Chris and Econo free codes. You could get like T-shirts off the site for free.

Thank you, Neil. I appreciate that. No problem. I'll DM you on Twitter. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks, dude. That's, that's awesome. All right. Well, gentlemen, once again, I will say thank you. This was an awesome conversation. Really enjoyed it. And yeah, I don't know. There's nothing else to say. Thank you all for being on here. And of course,

all of you are welcome back anytime. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. Cheers. All right. I'm going to drop your audio and video, but I will see you guys again soon

and I'll show you guys a DM afterwards. So see you guys later. Thanks. See you. Awesome. All right. Everybody watching, thank you so much

for joining me. I hope you enjoyed. Awesome panel. Love those guys. Cool to have them all on at the same time. And yeah, check out those links, those recommendations that they're dropping. An unusually long list of excellent resources that were dropped there. Normally people would give one or maybe one and now you've got a plethora of things to check out. So I recommend you check out all of them. As for me, thank you all for being here. Of course, really, really great seeing you guys always on a Friday evening. Best part of my week, always, always. So, yeah, with that, of course, if you haven't already, like, sub, share, all those things. Again, really do help.

If you want to help in another way, you can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. Shake pay, leaden, bit refill, Keystone, Bill Fottle, they're all down there. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip either on Twitter or at my strike page, strike.me slash BTC sessions. When you go there, you can type in anything you like. And when you hit the tip button, you'll be gritted with a lightning invoice or if you tap to the right, a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I'm out.

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