BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? SeedSigner, MMA Fighter Kenny Florian, Bitrefill CEO Sergej Kotliar ep259

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

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Welcome to the show, everybody. Another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish? I just got home from Norway late last night, somewhere between 12 and 1 a.m. And yeah, Rerun to go. Very excited for this panel. I hope you guys are all having a good week. Plenty to talk about some great guests on this show. Two of them first timers.

One of them returning for his second appearance. I believe. So we're going to get this thing rolling. As always, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. We'll do it live.

Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. If you have not already, like, subscribe, share. All those things. Super important. And as always, I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your day.

session. All right, before we bring in our guests, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now, $28,799 per coin. Single U.S. dollar will snag you 3,472 sats. 90.72% of all Bitcoin have been in mind. And in terms of fees, it's been kind of all over the place. Right now, next block is going to cost you 18 sats per byte. But if you're willing to wait about an hour, one sat per bite should still do you just fine. So, you know, if the Mampool clears, might be a good time to open up some lightning channels, do some whirlpool, whatever is on your bucket list

or on your list of things to do today. So with that said, a quick shout out to sponsor the show ShakePay.com. If you're in Canada, easy place to be stacking sats. E transfers in and out with no deposit or withdrawal fees. spread and if you sign up with the link down below after your first hundred bucks, so give you 30 bucks for free. They get the same deal if you refer friends and family and you can then shake your phone

every single day for free sats. They've also got a satsback visa card. So check them out. Links are below. Lendon.io, you can use your Bitcoin for a ton of different services. For myself, primarily it has been used. If there's ever a cash flow issue, I need my hands on dollars, but I don't want to sell my Bitcoin. Well, I can deposit Bitcoin here.

get a loan of dollars within 24 hours. And when I pay back those dollars, I get back the same amount of Bitcoin. They've, of course, got their savings accounts, which, by the way, if you sign up with the link down below and fund your account, you'll get $10 for free. And they've got things like their B2X offering. If you feel a mega bullish, they also are currently rolling out Bitcoin backed mortgages. So peek into that. Canada first and then some select U.S. states coming down the line.

So, yeah, keep an eye out. And again, if you want to check them out, links are below. We've got somebody on here from our sponsor today, Bit Refill. You guys know Bit Refil. They help me so much in living on Bitcoin because I can purchase really any gift cart, my little heart desires with Bitcoin, both on-chain and via Lightning Network. And I earn Sats back as I shop. I also earn Sats back.

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Bit refill. Check them out. Keystone, one of my more used hardware wallets. It is 100% offline. It's all done via QTOP. QR code air gaping. So you can link it with something like Blue Wallet, Sparrow, Specter, whatever it may be. And it just kind of keeps the keys to your money, safe and away from internet connections.

Also really good in a multi-sake, convenient with the QR scanning. So check them out. Links are below. And finally, if you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet, you want to get in solid steel. You don't want it sitting on a piece of paper. So Bill Fottle over at PrivacyPros.i.0 got you covered. And with that, I'm going to stop my. rambling. I'm going to get these guys in. We can start talking about what we're bullish about

because there's plenty of chat about. So we've got Seed Siner. We've got Kenny. We've got Sergei. Welcome, gentlemen. Very happy to have you. I'm going to do a quick round and let you guys introduce yourselves who you are and what you do. So what am I going to just say seed? Is that what I'm going with this episode? That is a that's generally what people use. So this is a first for me. I've never actually appeared in the flesh in an online medium. So no matter what I do, I end up looking like the Unabomber, but it just kind of is what it is. So I go by the NIMS seed signer online. I lead a project that is also called Seed Siner.

And we help people build their own basically functional equivalent of a hardware wallet with off-the-shelf parts. So it's something you can do privately and at home without signaling to anybody that you're using Bitcoin or without landing yourself potentially on like a list of bitcointers through a Bitcoin company. I argue that like it's not just that you can do this, but we have a pretty darn good user experience and it's a solid security assurances for people that are looking to store Bitcoin for a long time. That's kind of our thing is saving with Bitcoin, but that's what I've got.

Dude, I will say that I love it and I've done now two videos on the Seed Signer. I did one and then you rolled out like a total overhaul of the UI and I've got my new case sitting here. Oh, beautiful. This thing is a beast. It's really cool, actually. I used it with, I used it with Sparrow this time. And I ran the gamut and I did like single sig. I did multi-sig.

I did kind of covered everything. So the thing is badass. And it's a fun project just even as a learning tool of like, what you can actually do. It's incredibly valuable. Just as a shout out, Ben, we like immensely appreciate you doing those videos. And I know the time and research that goes into that. So thank you, thank you.

Yeah, no worries. Well, I mean, you guys get to build the cool shit. I just get to test it out. Awesome. Let's go down the line. Sergei, welcome to the show. I just saw you. What, like 48 hours ago.

I'm not sure with the time change. But welcome. you'll let people know who you are and what you do. Yeah. Thanks, man. Happy to be on the show. Yeah, I run Bitreifil. It's the number one thing that people actually buy in the real world with the Bitcoin's.

It's a store where you can buy gift cards for anything online. And it's three clicks and you got whatever it is that you want to buy with your coins. That's what I do. I've been doing this for seven years now and as passionate as ever. Awesome. Yeah, man. It's, again, it's a bit of a lifeline for a lot of people. So I'm glad it's there.

And I'm sure we might chat about it a little bit more later. But Kenny, you are up as well. Happy belated birthday. We'll get everybody in the chat, chiming in with those birthday wishes. But can you let people know who you are and what you do? Yeah, my name is Kenny Floris. I am a martial artist. I fought in the UFC for about seven years.

And I'm also now I was a commentator for them. And now I'm a commentator for another league called a Professional Fighters League. And I also do another show called BattleBots on Discovery Channel. So went from fighting to doing TV stuff and have a podcast and all that stuff. And then I guess I've been a bit coiner since like 2016, 2017. So thanks for having me. Awesome. And also he has a YouTube channel that you subscribe to.

And I was doing a bit of my research. And I saw one where you were demonstrating some shit with I Justine. Oh, yeah, yeah. And she was like, yo, you got to tell them to subscribe. And you're like, I always forget to do that. So anyways, if you're interested in learning a little bit of martial arts, online, then go and look at his YouTube channel. Well, gentlemen, welcome.

I'm so glad to have you all. Everybody watching, if you're unfamiliar, this is why are we bullish. Effectively, the whole gist here is somebody, we're going to go by the three R's. So somebody's going to drop a reason why they're bullish, which can be really anything. Then all together, we're going to riff on that reason.

And then finally, we're going to rotate to the next person until we've all had our turn. So I'm going to get us kicked off here. I'm going to start with my reason for being bullish. And that has to do with where I just came from. So I was just in Oslo, Norway, for the Oslo Freedom Forum, which is put on by the Human Rights Foundation. And so this is just a gathering of human rights activists from around the globe with various causes,

and they're trying to raise awareness for them. find and and bring together tools that can help people for these various causes and and and kind of show the world where parts of the world might need a little bit of help and so because of Alex Gladstein uh Bitcoin has been thrown into the fray amongst these topics and he's brought to light how Bitcoin can be used as a humanitarian tool um in in in a realm where that may not have been possible previously in a world of fiat currency and legacy financial systems that can be co-opted by corrupt governments and totalitarian regimes. And so we've seen through his writing and everything, he's brought attention to a lot of

problems and predatory actions from governments utilizing legacy financial systems. And so he has integrated a lot of Bitcoin content into this Oslo Freedom Forum. He did it definitely back in last October when there was one in Miami, which I was lucky enough to attend and be a part of. And Seed-Siner, you were there as well and got to chat a little bit, which was fantastic. And this was the first one in Oslo since 2019 because of all the shutdowns and everything. So there were some incredible people there, including Sergei, but a ton of awesome bitcoinsers just converged on this city. There were so many incredible contributors to the space.

Lynn Alden, Matt O'Dell, Nick Carter, Jimmy Song, Stefan Lavera. There was just so many prominent bitterners kind of all in one place. tons of amazing devs that have been building fantastic things. And Bitcoin kind of took, was a little bit more prominent this time around and was basically effort was made to where it applied, show where Bitcoin could help some of these issues. And so a lot of this is summed up pretty well here by a thread on Twitter by Lynn Alden. And so I'm just going to kind of show really quick here.

So she said people from night Kind of like being coy here But people from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Senegal, Togo, Venezuela and Afghanistan Keep telling me here in person How they use Bitcoin to deal with authoritarian bank control Or persistent inflation that continually wrecks their savings

While Westerners on Twitter say it's useless She goes through a few examples here She says for example Ira from Nigeria of the feminist coalition there described in Norway's parliament yesterday how their bank accounts were frozen for protesting police violence and how Bitcoin was used to keep operating

despite that. Maricio, CEO and co-founder of Leden, from Venezuela, explained how we mined Bitcoin, then used the confiscation resistant, self-custodial, and portable attributes of Bitcoin he mined to preserve value and leave Venezuela.

Democracy activist Farida from Togo, she's currently in Exile described how it's hard for the Togolese diaspora to send money to friends and family back in Togo. The money is often seized in banks. So they often had to smuggle physical cash. Bitcoin is now making it easier for them. And I was able to discuss with Farida about things like multi-sig in terms of security.

And she's now using BTC pay server to accept donations, which is amazing. And Lynn goes on to say, many people here, told me they don't use bank accounts in their countries due to them having been seized or frozen in the past, or they held dollar accounts there to protect against local currency hyperinflation, but those dollars were confiscated. Basically, Bitcoin is a tool, like how a VPN can make it easier to send and receive information in a hostile computer network. Bitcoin can make it easier to send, receive, or store value in hostile financial networks. Some people need to understand those tools more than others. It's like having money in the cloud, except the cloud.

provider can't close the account because the cloud provider is decentralized. So anyone with internet access can memorize a seed phrase, travel globally, and be able to access their coins or transfer them to others. And this is, again, just what's being communicated with people there. I spoke with a wonderful lady from Nicaragua whose husband ran in the opposition against the current president, which is who is basically a dictator. and her husband was kidnapped. She hasn't seen him in quite a while.

I'm not sure if she knows exactly where he is. He's not able to see his family. They treat him poorly. He effectively has various forms of torture. And they had issues trying to get money into Nicaragua throughout some of these protests. And so she is now, you know, I had a 45 minute discussion after I led a Bitcoin 101 session of like how to get a Bitcoin

wallet and send and receive transactions. And she's now incredibly interested about using Bitcoin as a tool to be able to get funding into the country and then figure out locally how best to utilize that in peer-to-peer markets to get the goods and the local currency that she needs. and she was just totally unfamiliar with how Bitcoin worked and how she can utilize it. And beyond that, even like some of the basics of Bitcoin that we all take for granted, like I, given that she's from Central America, I brought up the 21 million cap. And her eyes lit up because she's like, it's cat.

It's a limited supply because, you know, a lot of people in places where their currency has been inflated. that's a no-brainer. Like, oh, wow, you have a cap supply. That's important, whereas others in the West may not necessarily latch onto that as quickly and understand the value proposition. So all in all, I think it was a really unique thing to have a conference in an event that was not at all Bitcoin related, that was simply. bringing to light a number of problems that the world's face, that the world faces.

And the only reason that Bitcoin was a part of the topic matter, the subject matter, was because it's a potential solution to some of those problems. And I look forward to seeing more of that going forward where you have a specific event or a specific conference that's discussing a niche topic. And Bitcoin is involved because it somehow relates and somehow helps with that situation. And so I'm bullish because Bitcoin can be used as a humanitarian tool. So I'm going to open it up to you guys. There's no order or anything here.

But whether you have thoughts or questions or whatever it may be or Syriga, if you want to add in anything in your experience, but I know that we're going to get to some of your topic later too. So I don't know. Do you guys have any thoughts there that you might want to dive into? I just throw out, I'm not the first person to make this observation, but Bitcoin is obviously a disruptive new technology. And disruptive new technologies tend to first be the most useful and find the earliest adoption at the fringes of society and at the edges of what we conceive of, you know, the Overton window of acceptable behavior or whatever. So these people that are so brave operating in these adversarial environments don't have access to the same tools that we do.

and whereas people in, you know, the country I live in America may not be so quick to understand the value proposition of permissionless global money that you don't have to, you know, ask anybody to set up an account with or you don't have to get permission to send to any specific person. I think people that are kind of at the fringes of society dealing with some of these horrendous issues where they are. I think it makes sense. It's been that way with, you know, automobiles with personal video recording technology, the internet, like all of these technologies are typically,

you know, taken up by people at the fringes. So it's, it doesn't surprise me, but I'm so happy to see it. Yeah, yeah. You're absolutely right. It's,

it's always people that are in, in dire situations or, or have a need outside of the norm that tend to get to these technologies first. I don't know, Sergei, do you have any thoughts on the topic at hand? A lot. Yeah, also, like, came home really sort of emotional affected, I think, from the whole thing. I mean, look, we do a lot of stuff, and we do a lot of great things for freedom, right? But there are people out there that are literally putting their literal necks on the line.

out there and like being able to just breathe the same air of those people is an incredibly humbling experience and you know knowing that we're working on a thing that is somewhat useful in in that cause is such a humbling experience even though you know we've been doing this for a long time and we know and we've been saying this for years and years and they've been able to freedom and so on but like actually seeing it and talking to the people it's a bit hard to explain to be honest i always like saw the also for the definition it's like yeah yeah you know it was think thanks and this and that and fundraising and charity and this and that and i guess that's great but like um you know you actually have people that are like on the on the barricades there and taking massive personal

I mean, the stories, I mean, there's like people from past events are currently, there are people that are in prison or dead that have attended these things. So, yeah, I think like, to be honest, I wrote a tweet about this as well. Like, what makes me bullish is the other way around, you know, it's what all of this can do for the bitcoins. You know, we sometimes also get lost in this. So we start arguing about, is it a story? of value or is it a medium of exchange and blah blah blah blah blah right um but uh but i mean hey

fuck be quiet there's real people out there they're doing you know real things and this is one of the things to use one of many you know let's also be honest you know it's bitcoin doesn't solve democracy in Belarus itself but it's a tool and it's an incredible tool and uh and uh that enables people to get the work done. I mean, I have origins from the former Soviet Union and speak Russian and so on. And like had a lot of exchanges with, you know, people from the Navalny Foundation and the Belarusian opposition and so on. And they, you know, told me and they were like asking like, hey, our, the Navalny Foundation were like, yeah, you know, we're paying some of our staff who's still in Russia. and we can't pay them because Russia consider us a terrorist organization.

They're literally on the same list as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, right? So it's not a good thing to receive a paycheck from the Navalny Foundation. And she was asking me like, hey, you know, I need to buy Bitcoin. How do I do that? You know, and to be frank, I also think that, I mean, maybe we can expand on that as well. but like I think you know organizations like that they shouldn't have to buy bitcoin there's so much wealth out there's so much wealth out here like yeah their requirements are not even that massive like we should be able to do to see enough bitcoin for them to pay their

guys so they don't have to go on exchanges and buy and personally I think but I mean all in all like you know, having just, you know, a clear shared higher vision among all these people that all have this and that other vision of Bitcoin. But having a higher vision is, you know, hey, yes, okay, that's all the ignore all of the little differences that we sometimes like to argue a lot on the internet and like focus on the big stuff. And like, how can we, how can we do more? how can you make a thing even more useful?

Yeah, I totally agree. Like, it's, it's, who is anybody to argue with you if, if you find Bitcoin useful in a certain way? Like, fuck off. This is how I decided to use it. Yeah. Oh, it's hilarious when, when someone says like, oh, it's, it's such a waste of energy and there's no use, you know, to having Bitcoin.

And typically when you talk about how people are using Bitcoin in these real world applications, especially in countries where they're being financially repressed or whatever, they have nothing to say. Like they don't even realize that that's something that happens outside of the United States. And it's like they have no response typically. I haven't really seen an intelligent response to that. And yeah. And I guess to get back.

to it and I know you were there obviously at the OFF but I thought that Lynn and I just read it I didn't I just saw like little sound bites and stuff like that but I thought Lynn Nick and Darren did a great job of also differentiating Bitcoin from the other cryptocurrencies as far as proof of work and what it means compared to proof of stake and you know it's it's it's bothersome to hear you know cryptocurrencies you know when lumping Bitcoin in there and in a lot of ways when it really is so different. But I thought they did a fantastic job of explaining it and, and really demonstrating why it's different and why it's important. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Lynn had a good, I believe it was on the panel. Is Bitcoin compatible with democracy or something along those lines?

I think that was the one that Lynn, I think that was the total, the title of one of the one of the one. she did. But whatever the panel was that Lynn did, she made a comparison. She said if you strip it all down and you take these systems and you remove the energy equation for proof of work, then it becomes human governance, right? Like the energy required is what prevents the human element from,

taking control and deciding what happens. When you move to proof of stake, it again becomes a game of, of how much wealth and influence do you have is proportional to how much of a vote you have over the direction of the protocol. And so, again, she gets down to the thick of it in a very short sound bite of this is how these things are different.

You know, if you want to use something for, for whatever reason you need to understand how these systems function and what's necessary. And so when she said that in such a concise little sound bite, she's right. The energy involved is what separates the human aspect of the governance. And it grounds it in a indisputable kind of reality-based thing versus a subjective, we decide that this is how it goes kind of thing. So yeah, I thought she did a fantastic job with that. I'm glad you brought that up too.

I'm wondering, Kenny had, did you have much exposure to to kind of, because I'm not super familiar with your kind of Bitcoin journey. What have you, what has been your exposure to Bitcoin in regards to how are how are you utilizing bitcoin versus have you seen uh you know are are were you brought in i guess what was your first exposure to bitcoin and then i'll kind of tug on that thread yeah um well you know i i i got into it um because i saw it as a a way to make money initially right uh i think like a lot of people maybe in the early days is like hey maybe this is a thing and it was kind of like, you know, this is a way to kind of bet on this new network, this new way of doing things.

Let's see what happens. And then like so many others, I think it brings you into this rabbit hole and exposes you to just so many different worlds, I think. And I think it has gone from me wanting to make money to it be. essentially a protest in a lot of ways against how things are things are being done. So, yeah, I think it's, it exposes you to the fact that there is a lot of bullshit that happens. You know, there's a lot of war that happens. There's a lot of corruption that happens.

And, you know, solving the issue of money and, you know, limiting fee. currencies and how they do things, I think takes care of a lot of the issues that we're experiencing right now. And it seems like much of that is really boiling over right now. So, you know, I think that, you know, talking about something that's bullish, you know, while while the price may not indicated, I think, you know, we're seeing kind of financial havoc everywhere where, you know, there's not a whole lot of places for people to park their money. So I think it's an interesting time. Yeah, absolutely. It's, uh, uh, maybe this will, will play, play into, um, the next topic at hand, actually. This is a, a good opportunity to segue here. So I'll, I'll wrap that topic. I'm going to

toss it down the line to seed. And, uh, and I'm going to let you dive into your reason for being bullish. So, so take it away, man. Yeah, no, that, that's a decent segue. And I don't know how long I'm going to monologue on this, but, uh, my reason for being bullish, today was just governments around the world. My government in America included is just general inability to act in any sort of remotely, financially responsible way over the long term, especially over the last 10 years where the debt just in America has not just like doubled, but I think it's close to tripled now up at $30 trillion where, you know, it wasn't long ago that it was hovering around $10 trillion. And it's generally the same in Europe and it's generally

the same in other countries. And I think this provides, you know, one of the biggest tailwinds for Bitcoin because Bitcoin has a predictable, fair monetary policy that is brought about by consensus instead of issued from just a few people at the top that have, you know, relatively speaking, a lot more power than everybody else. So it's just one of the fundamentals of Bitcoin, this decentralized truth-seeking finite supply network that we all believe in. I think governments around the world just making bad decisions is ultimately going to end up working out very well for the orange coin. I absolutely agree.

I wanted to, I was looking sideways here because I wanted to bring up something that's really, really relevant to what you're saying and the total lack of self-awareness of many of these people that are in charge. I think I know where you're going with this. Oh, I bet you too. I bet you watched it on repeat a couple times in awe at just the blatant like denial.

But I'll bring it up. I don't know how good the sound is going to be, but we'll try here. This is Christine Lagarde, the head of the ECB. Excuse the like subtitles here, but it is in the video itself in English. So I'll play it,

or at least like the first part of it. it so we can kind of see. So give me a thumbs up if the audio is okay too, you guys. There is this graph about the balance sheet of the European Central Bank and the money that is on there now. And here it is what I would like to show our viewers and ask the question about is this. This is going over 8 trillion euros now. And isn't what you just told us about the cryptocurrencies?

Don't we see a gigantic bubble here on? your balance sheet with the euro and isn't this graph very nerve-wracking? Well, I can tell you that there is zero crypto assets in the balance sheet of the ECB. That I know. Point number one. Well, I just don't want any ambiguity about it. But you have to think in terms of counterfactual. If we had not decided on March 18th when we put together the pandemic emergency program

and then subsequently increase the volume of commitment that we made to the European Union economies, we would be in a devastated situation. So I don't regret any of that move that we took on that day, which was four months into my job, to significantly increase the size of the balance sheet, because that's all we had. Otherwise, the economy would have collapsed, and it would have been even accelerated by a financial crisis.

It had to do it. It was the COVID crisis. You said that's what we needed to do. But how do you get it? It will come. It will come. In due course. Yeah.

How? In your course, it will come. Yeah? Like no explanation whatsoever. Like, and kudos to that guy for following up with how. One of the things I would point out from that video is the body language of the people involved. Like the guy as he's asking these questions that are very honest, real questions, looks uncomfortable as hell as he's sitting there. and Christine Lagarde's body language is she could not want to be further away from that conversation.

I think she's actually turning, kind of turning her back to him as she's kind of fielding the questions. And then after she gives, you know, what she believes is like a stock answer, she turns around and smiles at him, which is kind of this like, it's a psychological technique of like building rapport or trying to gain some sort of approval, which American politicians. do that a lot too. There was something I think about Kamala Harris doing that. It was kind of tied in with her like wild laughing she does sometimes. But these kind of just weird

personality tics that these people exhibit that you know is normal, I don't know, it's weird and frightening and laughable all at the same time. It sounds like we've read a few of the same books about, about, I can't remember

what the, what's that subject matter where you're learning about like visual cues of people's body language and how how to mirror people like if people are mirroring each other then that's a sign that you're working or if you look at the positioning of people's feet or body you know it means that they're trying to exit a conversation or they're open to the conversation right right and that's uh i i'm not sure about what the particular study is or the book is but in my i'm a retired police officer So we're always watching how people are communicating where their hands are, what their body's doing. And we're trying to figure out, are they going to run?

Are they going to attack me? Like, are they trying to lie to me or what's going on? So there's just, it is some things that you pick up over time. But yeah, there's some great resources out there about it too. Yeah. Yeah, there's been a few pretty good ones. Yeah, it's astounding to watch because, again, it's just further showing. And I don't know if it's willful.

Like are they just between a rock and a hard place and they have to seem like they know the path? Or is, was it absolute ignorance? And now they're just trying to save face. And they still think that they can correct it. Like, I don't know the answer to this. Like, what do you guys think? Is it, is it just incompetence or is it malicious in any way, shape, or form? Like, do they know what they're doing?

that they're kind of screwed. I think the stage has been set over the last 20 to 30 years by the fiscal actions of, you know, America and other global powers. And the stage is set for her performance. I don't think, like, they ask, you know, what would you do if Jay Powell? If you were Jay Powell, I've heard, you know, Lynn Alden and some of the other people asked this, like, what would you do if they were them? They basically don't have any choice. Like, the whole thing has been put into motion long before they came to power. And I think she just kind of, has a part that she has to play. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

It's like hot potato, or musical chairs. Like, who's going to get, who's going to get stuck with the shit under the stick, being the person that is in power when it all implodes, I suppose. I don't know if there's any good answer here. And do they care, is the question, like, do they care, or are they just trying to get to the end of their term? I think they do. I mean, the town, you know, it's very easy to always assume evil geniusness, right?

And don't attribute to evil geniusness that which can be explained by stupidity. But also, you know, never forget the capability of a person to not understand something if they're willing to directly depends and then not understanding it. I think you said it very well with a designer that in a lot of ways it doesn't really matter what she does and I don't even know what she could have done differently I guess she could have not taken the job right and so maybe that is the question is like

do you want to take the job at the head of the ECB because you are going to be doing a lot of lying to the public but on the other one, someone could do it. I don't know. It's tough. I mean, it's just indicative of the paradigm that we're in. And it is what it is.

And hey, you know, the economy didn't fully implode yet. Kenny, what's your read? Yeah. Yeah. I would assume, you know, they're kind of delaying the inevitable and seeing if they can get away with it and see if there's a way out of this mess without moving into something like Bitcoin. But I think more than anything else, I think, you know, we are the ultimate creatures of habit. And a lot of us would like to think that we're open-minded and this and that.

But I think when you're stuck in a system and when that system has been working or it's at least been functional for a long period of time, it's hard for you to look outside of it. especially when it means that you're going to remove people that, that, you know, are, have a big vested interest in that older system and in that structure. So I think that it's hard for people to look outside of that and see that different perspective and to see a new way of doing things. And I think it has a lot to do with, you know, incompetence, a lack of information, and just a lack of having an open mind and really doing the proper work, I think. Yeah, yeah.

I always question if they know. Not necessarily whether it's malice or incompetence, but if they now know, like that conversation. there seemed like again with the discomfort of that exchange it seemed like it there was knowledge there that didn't she didn't she say something that like her son has bitcoin or something like that didn't yeah yeah yeah why did she say they own zero crypto assets that was weird and hilarious yeah like She was saying like, you know, this, this did happen because we own Bitcoin. Like she had to clarify.

She made a stronger argument. Yeah. I tend to like describe the situation with the economy a little bit. I mean, like, you know, it's unknown, right? Who knows? Maybe the Keynesians were right. Like it's a little bit like we're sitting in a jet plane. Right.

30,000 feet in the air. And there's like two. super senior pilots. They both have 30 years of experience. And one of them says that everything is fine. We're just going steady. We're going to get to New York. You know, everything's

going to be fine. And the other one, holy shit, we're going to get, we're fucking crashing and we need to pull up. And it's like, and they're both like, you know, very well-reputable experience and so on. And we're just sitting there's like, it's an uncomfortable seat to be in. Even like even if, you know, No, the crashing pilot is right or wrong or whatever, but like, you don't want to be a plane like that.

And suddenly the world is in. And the average of the two opinions just ends up being stay the course. It's not great, yeah. Stay the course and see what happens. And that seems like what we're getting. People raising the alarm bells, people saying, no, no, no, keep doing more of what we're doing. And maybe even more, let's do what we're doing twice as hard. and and we're getting the status quo,

which is not not really going to do anything. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how we, it does feel like shit is, is getting closer to hitting the fan, but, you know, if these guys are good at doing anything, it is winding up and kicking that motherfucking can

so far down the road. And compounding all the problems that we have right now. So I don't know. We'll see what happens, but it's, uh, it does seem like they're not going to get out all those rate hikes this year. I was, I would venture to say that's not going to happen. They're already like the Fed is already, who is the, who is the Fed board member that that basically came out and said, well, you know, if we hike a little bit like we can talk of me, if it does what we need it to do and and things start you know the inflation kind of gets muted we can maybe

start cutting he's already talking about cutting rates again uh by the beginning of next year um and they've they've done one have they they did the one hike right like that's that's it maybe two right was it did they do the second one yet i don't know i thought it was two but maybe no no they didn't okay yeah so no i'm saying i don't know but it's oh okay okay What is so crazy to me is like how much all of the mainstream economists try to read into like, you know, all of the signaling. We listen to what Jay Powell says, but then, you know, he'll kind of trot out somebody to back channel him a week later that say, oh, we want to signal that we're leaving the door open to this. And then, you know, the following week, a different Federal Reserve president in a different reserve district will have a slightly different take on it. And then people even be reading into like Jay Powell's tie color and his facial expression.

And like, it's, why can't we just have an honest depiction of what is happening in the economy and what makes sense? It's such an over politicized. Like, I, it. Beam us, like, imagine beaming yourself to a thousand years from now and what people are going to look back on and look at those articles where there's analysis of a tie color to, to try and determine how our money would function. and think of how fucking crazy that's going to sound to people. They're like, wait, you didn't just have a transparent set of rules of how the money worked.

You had to like guess what a few people in a boardroom were going to decide on based on like the vernacular that they used to see if they were trying to pull the wool over your eyes or not. You wanted to check the tie colors and the body length. Like this is the system that we work in. And nobody bats a fucking eye about it. Everybody's like, oh, yeah. This is, yeah, well, you know, maybe the tie does have something to say.

It's insane to me. Yeah. So I think, let's round this one out. I mean, the consensus here is that it's not going well. We'll just say that. And I agree. is a massive tail win for Bitcoin. Even if not reflected in the price currently, you know, you look at, you look at the value of gold in Weimar and it was volatile as hell. It ping ponged a lot

before the currency was not worth anything. So. And I've been, I'll just quickly say like, I've never been a huge believer in Plan B's analysis, but there is one thing that I like an analogy that he uses and that the price of Bitcoin, and you could also kind of say prices in general of assets that are being weighed in real time globally by people with, you know, individual financial needs and emotions and macro circumstances and all of that is, what does he call it, a drunk man walking a dog? Yeah. So it's just like things are going to move irrationally and unpredictably at times,

but overall there is a pattern that we can discern from it. And with Bitcoin, that's over time, number go up. Yes, agreed. I won't get into it, but I had a bit of an argument with somebody today on Twitter. Who would have guessed? It never happens. He was talking about, you know, how you'd be better off if you bought, you know, whatever other coins. And then he quoted, he didn't run the numbers.

and and he was he was saying that uh bitcoin has had no gains over the past two years and then when you actually check that it's up like 200% over the past they're like from this day to two years ago it's it's it's tripled the price that it was so yeah anyways yeah over time and and this is where people lose it right this is where the the average person that just sees the headlines. They see a couple headlines of Bitcoin went to the moon. And then they see a whole bunch of headlines of Bitcoin crashed. And they think the most recent thing that they've seen is the trend.

But it's not. It's the noise. So yeah, they need to zoom out and tune into the signal of what's actually happening, I suppose. But I digress. Let's do another rotation here. We'll round that one up. round that one up and just say, again, things are not going well for legacy financial systems. But we'll toss it to Sergei, and I'm going to let you have a little rant about what you are feeling in terms of what has he excited and interested right now.

Well, my head is still spinning a little bit. Maybe a little bit to get back to the also topic, but a little different way. I think I mean Bitcoin is an amazing tool for charity Yeah Right I mean

You know there's a lot of people That have made gains And so on And there's people that have Bitcoin That they got somehow And so on And you just send them out

To whatever charity Anywhere in the world You know And they can use it as Bitcoin In many cases They will use it as Bitcoin As part of their endeavors and all that stuff like really got me thinking about how and I'm happy

that I'm having this conversation with a pro fighter and a cop but like very often I mean I haven't been here for a long time very often I mean there are you know critiques that are you know it's some small extent right that you can raise about it. Oh it can be used. for bad things, right? Can be used for crime or, or, you know, hey, it's a glorified Wall Street bet type investment

that just gets people, and so on. Or it kills the planet with the energy consumption and so on. And like, I very often feel like Bitcoin is very often end up on the defensive. You know,

like, oh, you know, it's not so bad with the planet, some of it's renewable, right? Or, you know, hey, chain analysis said that it 99% not crime. So that's great. But like, I really feel like, you know,

there are so many things that this thing of ours achieves. And the same way that, you know, if you accidentally offend someone, you know, if you start apologizing, they're just going to keep coming at you, right? Like, kind of got me thinking a lot that like we should really, you know, push Bitcoin, not in a defensive, no, it's not so bad, but push in an offensive and aggressive way.

Like, look, here's the things that it gets done, you know, and not just from the pushing narrative. Like, I actually feel like, I mean, look, we're the number seven largest currency in the world. You know, we're not even the size of a small country. we're a size of a medium country. All right. You know, like, if we all put our,

and then, you know, you're at events, like the Oslo Freedom Forum where there's people that are talking about things that are like very objectively good, right? Like, undisputably.

There is like nobody who's going, no sensible person that's going to disagree with any of it. You know, hey, people and this and that country what democracy, yes and you know and like i really think this is a big opportunity you know if we all uh sort of make an effort for it to really push you know to make bitcoin be a force not just a tool right it is

already a tool and that's great but like an actual force you know of uh of making the changes in in the outside world and just by the wealth and power and utility that we've we've amassed in this community. Like, if we figure out how to channel this really powerfully, like,

I think that is the way forward. You know, not apologizing for things that are, you know, trade-offs and explaining cost benefit and whatever. But like, look,

yes, it has certain costs. Here's what we achieve. Here's where it's worth it. And the one of this agrees, yeah they can do the weighing of the cost and benefits but like I don't know I have a lot of like half-baked ideas in my head but I figured I'd drop this one here as well like should Bitcoin be the I mean currently the US of A is I think the most

international generous country but maybe it should be Bitcoin like yeah I I like the I like the road you're going down here with the topic. It's, you're right. The conversation that needs to be had is not just, oh, you know, Bitcoin uses too much energy

or whatever, you know, half-baked kind of argument. There is. It's, it's, what has it given in exchange for that energy? And what has been possible, Right. And so you can go down now and you can list a number of things that it's been used for in terms of humanitarian efforts that would not be possible otherwise.

And then you can say, should we trade that? Should that have not been possible? So I'm going to, I had a conversation. And maybe I'll actually, I'll save this part. But there. There was a girl and she's an activist. She, she, she, she, the last thing that she did, and she was based in Poland when she did this, but on the outside of, outside of the war, there was an effort to get protective equipment to people in Ukraine. So helmets and vests so that you, you know, wouldn't get shot. everywhere else just to get the money to purchase the items

to then get them into Ukraine was going to take a couple weeks her effort got thousands of pieces of protective equipment into Ukraine on day two of the war because she used

Bitcoin so the question would then be to somebody that says Bitcoin uses too much energy, okay. Are you okay with trading that for that protective equipment, not getting there and potentially saving thousands of lives? Because a little too much energy in your opinion was used to get that done. Some people will, that's a much more difficult question to answer than just, oh, it used a lot of energy.

And I don't understand who is using it for anything. So I just think that's a lot versus, well, here's where one of the instances where it was used. You know, same thing with the lady I was talking about in Nicaragua. Same thing with people sending remittances back to El Salvador. Same thing with, you know, people in Belarus trying to kind of rise up against the current ruler there, unable to send money to and from because all the any protest or bank accounts have been shut down. There's there's a laundry list of things that Bitcoin have been used for where there were no other options. So I think if we had that list and we could say well, here's a list in the past year because usually the time frame is oh, Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy as

this sized country in the average year. Okay, well, cool. Is that energy worth it? Here's the list of things that have happened in the past calendar year. I think that would be a great kind of continuing resource to be updated. I don't know.

So I have kind of a parallel thought that this is something I wrestled with a lot when I first started learning about Bitcoin in 2013. And a little bit more about my background, I worked in a digital forensics lab for 12 years. And that is where I first heard about Bitcoin. And it came up in the context of an investigation. It was a relatively benign investigation with a high schooler,

buying, you know, weed off of the Silk Road with Bitcoin that he was mining with a GPU from a gaming computer guy in his basement. So not the most tragic use case. but as I started to dig into Bitcoin and what it was capable of and whatnot, the bulk of my career was spent investigating crimes against children. And it started to become a parent that in some tiny way on the dark net, like child pornography was starting to be bought and sold using cryptocurrencies,

and Bitcoin was in the mix as one of those. And I was like really conflicted about that. Because with drugs and the Silk Road, you can make, you know, these kind of arguments from like, I'm blanking on the term, people who just don't believe in laws. People should be able to ingest whatever in their body that they want to, libertarian kind of views. But, you know, obviously having seen, you know, the tragedy of children being abused firsthand and seeing Bitcoin, you know, having the potential to play a role in that bothered me a lot. and was kind of a cognitive hurdle for me, kind of like fully buying into the concept of Bitcoin, but what helped me kind of reframe that

was thinking about automobiles. I know this is going to sound like a weird jump, but thinking about automobiles and their use throughout the world. And I'm not even talking about environmental concerns or pollution, but automobiles every day around the world kill dozens, if not hundreds of people. like if there were not people riding in automobiles like that would literally save dozens if not hundreds of lives every day around the world but if you flip that around think of how much good has come out of the invention of the automobile and how much more productive we've been able to build societies and automobiles can get people to medical treatments that are routine or emergencies automobiles enable people to express their freedom to travel throughout their own country and the world. world. It enables them to visit family and distant places. We can all travel to jobs and they have

productive economies. Like there are these huge benefits that arise from automobiles and the internal combustion engine that honestly, like exceed far and above, sadly, the fact that every day, you know, some people die in car crashes. And the potential for the usefulness and the freedom-enabling technology that Bitcoin is, I think far out shines like it being used for

illicit purposes or what some people perceive as a wasteful energy footprint. I think the you know, we're still in such early innings, but the massive for good that Bitcoin can bring to the world just like the massive usefulness and productiveness the automobile brings to our lives

like the potential is so huge and we're so early and we don't have it yet. But I think this speaks to what you're saying about focusing on the positive use cases of Bitcoin that people, it's a lifeline for people in certain, you know, people are just having the government robbing, you know, robbing them blind through inflation where in these countries were inflation is out of control or people who are trying to raise for dissonant activities or, you know, I could go on and on. But that, that would what you were saying just kind of like brought that to mind with like, yes, there's some. It's a tool. There are some things that it can be used that are deleterious or negative, but overall, the power and the potential for positive impact that this has is just staggering. Yeah. I think this might be a good opportunity to segue into what Kenny was going to touch on as well.

So maybe I'll toss it to you, man, and like this will kind of flow into your reason for being bullish, but is going to result in many more tangential conversations. Yeah. You know, I know this has been talked about before, but it seems like the conversation has restarted again. I guess there's a story today that Russia is actively discussing the use of, you know, having Bitcoin be, you know, how they trade energy. And I guess I think it was with the countries that they're friendly with like China or Turkey or whatever. But I'm bullish on that because. I think, you know, at the end of the day, what we're really, what the market is trying to figure out is what is the value of this thing. What is the value of Bitcoin? And, you know, I think it's amazing when you go down to, you know, the level of individuals that are able to, you know, save themselves from inflation or other financial, you know, limitations. But when you start to see large countries, start to talk about the use of Bitcoin. I find that very interesting. The fact that they have the ability to bypass the traditional financial infrastructure, I think that is going to open up a conversation for other countries to start to really think about.

And I think it's going to make some people pissed off, obviously, because of Russia and what's going on. But I do think it's going to open up a whole can of worms for a lot of different countries. And I see that overall as a very positive thing. And I think that it's going to lead to many more to start to think about that and to start to do that. And the biggest thing is getting the knowledge about it. and understanding it and seeing it, seeing that it's, you know, a faster way of doing things.

It's a way of bypassing an infrastructure where one country or a set of countries can determine whether you're in in the group or not. Whether you get cut out or whether you're accepted, should, I guess it opens up the other question is like should one country or set of countries be making the decision of who gets to trade? who gets to be a part of Swift or not. I don't know. Yeah, it's, yeah, you're right, the Russia thing.

So this is Bitcoin magazine, by the way, but Russia's, Russia actively discussing the use of cryptocurrency in international trade, Russia's Ministry of Finance is actively considering the use of digital currencies for international payments, a government official reportedly said. So obviously, that is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, even if it ends up being a nothing burger, the mere fact that it's being discussed, again, it brings up the age old Bitcoin is bad because it's used for insert thing that people don't like. But in the end, again, it's just it's an apolitical tool. And so this is this is a conversation I actually had at the Oslo Freedom Forum with somebody, one of one of the people. involved with the Human Rights Foundation and organizing it.

And we got into a discussion. You know, she didn't know, she knew that I was involved in some way, but, you know, I said, oh, I'm one of the Bitcoin people here that's talking about that. And she's like, oh, that's super interesting. And we kind of got into a discussion. And so I said that pretty soon, the Human Rights Foundation is going to have two conflicting viewpoints that they're going to have to contend with. Because on stage earlier that day, before I had this conversation, there was somebody on stage saying,

hey, we've got a list of ETFs out there in the market. And we've got like an ESG compliance list in relation to the ETFs or like a score that we've assigned them. based on if your investments are helping contribute to bad people from bad regimes doing bad things. And so the thought would is that, well, if I own something that is enriching somebody that I don't like, then I can sell it and in turn hurt that person. But at the same time, they have a Bitcoin track that highlights all of the use cases. of Bitcoin to help people that are in dire need. So the issue is, obviously Bitcoin can, has, and will be used by bad people.

It's not a question. And the interpretation of who is a bad person or who is a bad regime is going to be, at times, somewhat ambiguous. US. But I basically said you've got the current system. And in the current system, you can have a quote unquote good government that's in control of everything, able to entirely control the monetary system in their jurisdiction. And they can use their good powers to clamp down and prevent bad people from doing bad things. But that means the inverse is also true. You can have a bad totalitarian regime clamp down in their jurisdiction and prevent good people from doing good things.

Then you have to juxtapose the opposite system, this new competing system, where everything is flat across the board. Everyone has equal access. So that means that those bad totalitarian governments, they're going to be able to use it. But it also means that good citizens trying to do good things in those, in those realms are also going to be able to use it. And the inverse is true. You're going to have good governments that can use Bitcoin.

And then you're going to have citizens doing bad things within those jurisdictions that can also use it. So the question is, and it's not even really a question because it's just going to happen because it exists now. But what they're going to have to grapple with is that this system is different, is that everybody has access to it. and that you're going to have to just start from a role-based society and everybody's going to be able to use the money for what they see fit.

And if something illegal happens in that jurisdiction, it will have to be dealt with through a process. And some of those processes will be fair and some of them won't. It won't fix everything, but it will give everyone access to money equally and at least give people in totalitarian regime. a fighting chance to fund their efforts. And as we got into this conversation,

you know, the girl that I was talking to, I believe would have been probably somebody that more so from the left side of the political spectrum. And I brought up that I had helped with setting up the fundraiser page for the Canadian truckers. And she was kind of taken aback by that. She didn't know what to do with that at first, it seemed. And then, but then the thing that I liked about it is, is by the end of the conversation,

she kind of realized that it wasn't as black and white as she previously saw it. I kind of explained like, listen, like, what's the vaccination rate in Norway? She said, it's 90 something percent. I said, well, it's basically the same in Canada. We're one of the most vaccinated countries on earth. And I was like, what are the, what are the regulations here? She said, well, there's no vaccine requirement. There's no testing requirement.

There's no masking requirement when traveling to and from the country. I said, did you know that within Canada right now, even domestically to get on a plane, you must be vaccinated. And on top of that, we only have a single land border of which you must be vaccinated to cross. And on top of that, if you're unvaccinated, which is roughly 10% of, of the population. If you had any sort of a government job, you were fired. And there are other professions, which you now can't work.

And then in some other professions, they just decided, hey, like, we're going to fire you as well. So there's a large portion of the population that currently right now still, when like large parts of the globe are now effectively completely open, including the country she resided in, are still. jobless, unable to travel domestically, and unable to leave if they do not like that. And it kind of shifted her thinking as to how Bitcoin was used as a tool in that particular protest and how the government maybe might have possibly overreached a little bit in their use of the Emergencies Act to start seizing bank accounts of people protesting.

And so it kind of shifted her thinking and it kind of brought her to down that rabbit hole of, do I need to stop thinking of things from a top down, we enforce the laws and then everybody abides by them rather than a ground up because she seemed very averse to the ground up nature of Bitcoin. And she thought, well, what if we just had the good governments implement it? And then so, yeah, I mean, I'll finish out my thoughts here with something that Jeff Booth used when he was down in El Salvador. He met with a bunch of people that that do not like the government in El Salvador, which is, again, totally their prerogative. And I'd say in some instances justified.

But because of that, they don't like Bitcoin. And so he went and he chatted with him. He had a talk and people came and they asked him a ton of questions and he answered them truthfully as to the best of his ability. And near the end of the conversation, they started conceding, well, okay, we see how it could be used in certain instances and B is for good. But you've been very positive about this. And the last question they asked him was, what's the worst thing about Bitcoin? And his answer broke their brains because what he said was, The worst thing about Bitcoin is that you have to be okay with the fact that the person you hate can use it.

And not only that, but the person you hate using it makes it better and stronger for you. And they didn't really know what to do with that because how do you grapple with that? So I'll leave it there. I'll leave it open to you guys to further comment on any of this topic. I don't know. I think I'm, I mean, fundamentally, you're absolutely right, Kenny, that they can and that probably at some point will. I'm personally, I'm super happy. I fully expected that when the war breaks out, we would have a narrative that Bitcoin is for Russia evading sanctions. I'm incredibly happy that it hasn't happened I think the article is a big nothing burger

Keyword is considering okay I'm considering lots of things right now like yeah you know that means nothing but like I think I mean it's a little bit like Satoshi and Wikileaks you know they kick the ordinance nest but like this isn't Wikileaks

this is Russia it's not the truckers this is the currently most hated country in the world. And one thing I know is that the Americans take their OFAC stuff very seriously. And so, like, yes, one day, rogue states will be using Bitcoin in a big way. It is inevitable. I'd rather postpone it as much as possible because I think that, like, it will be. be under that flag, we might see some really draconian regulation in the US of A. And the USA has a lot of influence on the financial systems in the rest of the world.

And we would very quickly descend into the cipherpoint Bitcoin. But, you know, say goodbye to everything that has an American domain and a login, basically. And I, you know, I rather, you know, postpone that inevitable conflict. And I'm very happy that currently, like, Bitcoin is just well by individuals trying to get out of Russia or people, like, supporting their family in Russia. All of these things, I think, are uncontroversial for most people with basic values. But, yeah, like, the big geopolitical conflict with the USA, we can avoid it. I would rather avoid it. You know, better tomorrow than today and better in 10 years.

You know, the more it grows. I think it's still a lot of stuff that we, you know, unfortunately, you know, the circular economy is small. A lot of Bitcoin is centralized. A lot of the things is regulated. And I mean, there is a decent argument for a bring it all on. You know, I was before, before Oslo, I was in Prague and the, I was listening to talk by Amir Taki, one of the earliest Bitcoin developers in the sort of 10 era.

And he's, you know, cyphopunk extremist calling all his projects dark, dark wallet and dark market. And he's very like, bring it, you know, like ban everything. Let's build a complete parallel society. this is like so and it's a compelling vision uh you know and and it brings good arguments yeah but uh i don't know like would the would the american bit corners get by without cornbase like yeah i hope so you know maybe it would actually be better for the circular economy would grow by a lot yeah but but it's tough like it's it's a big trade-off uh I think.

And there's a. Yeah. I don't know. I'm happy that particular bear hasn't been poached because like even with all of the different regulations, like the U.S. could have been much meaner to Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if we want that. But there's definitely a good argument for it.

Yeah. I'll maybe I'll cede, what do you think? about this. Are you, so I, I'm thinking about the, they kind of flip the script. So we're talking about like,

would the world lose its mind, basically if Russia started asking for payments for oil and Bitcoin or started meaningfully accumulating Bitcoin or transacting a Bitcoin, like could the rest of the world deal with that kind of a thing? And the complete opposite of that question is kind of like, um, one that I've run into in my own kind of journey. the Bitcoin space because you would consider Russia and America, you know, ideologically,

they're probably totally opposed to one another, like, or even China in America, like one's a very top-down totalitarian society where the government decides what the rules are and America's theoretically more of a bottom-up society where individuals decide like what kind of lives they want to live and they vote for people that they believe are emblematic of those things. And it's kind of this clash of civilizations and Bitcoin, as Jeff Booth might have pointed out, is like, not just good money for you, but it's good money for your enemy as well. And I have run into this personally where collaborators in things that I've been working on, I've, you know, you work long hours and you get to meet people in person and you sit down with beers and you have long conversations

about the world and what you like and what you don't like. And this is how middle age guys talk. and like get off my lawn type stuff. And I have sat down and talked with some people that fundamentally have some very different political beliefs from me. And before Bitcoin and some sort of other context, like I might have just stood up and been like, I'm sorry, we're just too far apart. We're not in the same tribe. I don't need to be in this conversation.

But you do you. great life. But the magic of Bitcoin is that like we have this shared thing that we both believe in, that we're both working towards, uh, you know, bringing to the next level in terms of global adoption or awareness or just building tools that, that make it more usable for people. Like, Bitcoin is something that gave me a touch point and something in common with people that otherwise I'd probably have a lot to disagree with. And just having that. little thing in common, um,

uh, like transformed the interaction to where instead of assuming that, you know, they're either stupid or, you know, just a bad faith actor or, you know,

the things we tell ourselves about people we don't agree with. Like Bitcoin, what I'm, the core of what I'm trying to get to is that Bitcoin allowed me to assume good faith in someone else who had very different beliefs about things that are important to me. And, I think that's the flip side of kind of what we were approaching this originally from is like,

you know, it's your enemy's money, but, you know, is it possible that this particular truth telling can help us find common ground with our enemies? That's kind of what was floating through my head. I like that. Not everybody in the American establishment is into Bitcoin and would use it to find common ground with the Russian government, right? And that's the problem.

Yes, but you say it's true, but there are people out there that don't like Bitcoin. And this is like a pretty big I mean, Bitcoin will be fine. Don't get me wrong, even if that happened. You know, and all of these arguments would still be true. And it

would be fine already, but it would be tricky for, I guess, for the two of you. guys or somewhere in the U.S. And that's a little bit of, I guess, of my little Pollyanna kind of mind take, but I wonder if from a grassroots

level, like, you know, over a decade, two decades, does this bubble up to where, like, countries that originally thought they had so little in common, like societies are transformed by honest money to the point that maybe they don't have as much discord between these two civilizations

as they originally thought. Time will tell. A big picture, of course. Of course, the question is do we want to get their bottom up or top down, right? Especially if some of the tops are seen as highly problematic in their geopolitical environment. That's the question. And there is something very likable about, I mean, even if Salvador is ended up in that problem, right, that it was introduced top down and suddenly it caused a lot of these random and weird issues

that were not the case when Bitcoin was just a community effort of enthusiasts and Rosonte. So, I don't know. You know, yes, in the end, governments will use Bitcoin. That is inevitable the way there. I mean, to be honest, it's kind of a meaningless discussion. None of us have any influence. Yeah, we'll find out just like the rest of the world. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, again, I love the general topic. And I think I lean towards, you know, it's always interesting seeing these rumblings on the geopolitical front. But I do fundamentally, like what Seed was describing, I think that requires that person to person interaction where it's not just like a blanket, like flag. It's actually a human being that you're interacting with. And so I hope we see a good amount of bottom up before we see too much of the top down because starting with the top down, it will make it a messier situation on the way to a Bitcoin standard. But we'll see. So I think what I'm going to do now is I'm going to start rounding this out. I'm going to go just once more around the panel here. And all I'm going to ask you is just any final thought you may have about anything that we discussed. And then a special challenge to each of you, which would be a recommendation for people to check out,

which could be any resource or piece of material that you found useful in your Bitcoin learning. And it doesn't have to be specifically Bitcoin, but some sort of a topic that's tangential to it or whatever that may be. It could be an article. It could be a video. It could be a podcast. It could be a movie. It could be an app or a whatever it may be. And so just whatever you like, we'll dive down that.

So I guess my record, my final thought here, again, would just be, I'm happy to see Bitcoin being introduced into the human rights and, into that sphere because I do think it is particularly useful for that. And I'm seeing more and more of that. And I think a good number of people, even just over this past week, have gotten more curious. It's still small. Don't get me wrong. There was a lot of Bitcoiners there.

And oftentimes the Bitcoiners would be a good chunk of the crowd and a Bitcoin talk. but all you need is a few it's like those early andreas ontonopoulos talks where he's he's standing in a room and there's like four people there you know and and and those people mattered those people were the ones that got interested and then tried something and it worked and then they told others and so i i think on the human rights front um that's important too because the people that noticed and the people that are acting on it now can help a lot of people. And that word will spread when people start to ask, well, how the hell did you do that? How the hell did you get value into the country so that you could get the resources that you needed? And the answer in many cases, hopefully will be

Bitcoin if it applies. So I'll leave that there. And then in terms of recommendations, I've been listening to, I'm not a big, what's a Lex Friedman podcast listener. Oh, you took mine. Well, it depends. We'll see which one it is. On the way home, I was listening to Sailor on Lex Friedman. And I thought it was a pretty good conversation because they get into a lot of different stuff.

But it's been a while since, you know, because you listened to when he first started showing up on the scene. I literally listened to every friggin thing that he was on because I found him all this takes very useful. But this is a good conversation. It's a lengthy one, but worth a listen if you've got like three and a half hours to kill or if you're doing some busy work and can have some sailor in your ear, then it could be a good one. So I'll toss it to a seed and hopefully I didn't just screw you. But any final thoughts and any recommendations?

I'm going to go backwards first. and I'm going to go with the recommendations first. And it was, in fact, the episode with Michael Saylor on Lex Friedman. But the Safety and episode that he recently did was a close second as well. And I haven't gotten all the way through the Safety and episode, but it's so entertaining because Safe has this confidence and, you know, he just has this belief in what he's talking about. And Lex Friedman is constantly trying to counteract that. by saying like, oh, I respect your hubris, but like we can't necessarily accept this all as being true.

So it's very entertaining. But I'll tell you what I did with the Sailor episode. I'm a big fan of Michael Sailors, too. It feels like I don't listen to a ton of podcasts these days, but it feels like once you've heard, and I'm probably falling into this circumstance too, but once you've heard somebody do two or three interviews, you kind of understand what they're about and you've heard like most of what their stories are and that kind of stuff. but Michael Saylor has the ability to speak intelligently about so many different topics that whenever I hear a different interview from him, I pick up, you know, easily three or four things that I haven't heard him say before and that I didn't know before.

He has such just tremendous recall for information and to be able to assemble different things and put them together. What I did with that Saylor podcast on Lex Friedman was I would put it on as I was going to sleep. and I'd every night I would start it 15 minutes later so that you know

and I'd set a timer and it would fall you know it'd turn off about an hour after I turned it on but I got through the whole thing kind of just listening to it 15 minutes at a time

and maybe while I was sleeping I even got like a little bit more out of it just in my subconscious but yeah the Lex Friedman stuff I'm totally on board with that and he does a great job of trying to contain

safety to moose's rampant maximalism. Just to get an idea of how much he contained it, one of the quote. This is the best. This is the best. Ethereum is the mother asshole

from which all of the other shit coins sprang. So it's worth to listen. I haven't gotten to that quote yet. But I'm looking forward to it now. Because I want to hear Alex's response to it.

So I kind of in summation, just want to thank both of you in addition to Ben for being here for this conversation. I didn't mention it earlier, but Sergey, I am late to the party with bit refill, but I used it a month or two ago. And it was a huge solution for a challenge that I had with some Bitcoin that I wanted to spend, you know, on a online retailer. and the fact that like it worked seamlessly. So you just pull up the website. I didn't realize it at the time, but I didn't even have to put in an email address. The workflow was just so smooth.

And I was able to convert Bitcoin into, you know, gift card credits like, you know, without giving up any of my identity. And it was such a great experience. I'm late to the party, but I'm a big fan of bit refill. and thank you, thank you for all of your work on it. And to Kenny, of course, happy bladed birthday.

When I tell my two boys that I was on a YouTube show with Kenny from BattleBots, like they're going to be really excited. So I am excited to share that with them after this. I don't remember what else I'm supposed to say, but I've really enjoyed this guys and thanks so much. Awesome. Sergei, how about yourself? Final thoughts and a recommendation if you have one.

My final thought is that Bitcoin is a tool for freedom, and it can be even more of a tool for freedom. And let's make that happen. I think that that's my closing thoughts. In terms of recommendations, I don't know. Recently, I found out that there's a lot of people that have been in the space for several years that actually haven't read, you know, Satoshi's writings and things like that. There's a book of it called The Book of Satoshi, mandatory reading, homework, you know,

and read some of the old influencers, you know, from before the 2017 gang arrived. There's a lot of stuff. Ben was talking about Andreas and Panopoulos, but like search up Amir Taki on YouTube and listen to some of his stuff. Yeah, or, you know, yeah, read the mailing list posts.

There's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of things that we're still kind of discussing that was all discussed in 2010 already. And just, I guess, a reminder that the basics are important. Don't forget those. I'm sorry, Kenny can weigh in on the importance of basics in martial arts. You know, basic crunch and basic blocks, right? And all of that. So I guess that's my recommendation. Read Satoshi.

Read all of his forum posts. There are not so many. Awesome. Kenny, you're up. We'll ask final thoughts and recommendations. Yeah, you know, I guess as a guy who comes from martial arts background, I tend to see a lot of things in terms of that, I guess combat and self-defense and Bitcoin for me is the ultimate self-defense.

So for it and in a lot of different ways, which makes it just genius. I'll say that. And then I guess I'll have a very unoriginal recommendation for those that haven't read the sovereign individual. I think that is a good place to start. And it's amazing how prescient that book is, considering it was written in like the late 90s. And it talks about a lot of what's kind of going on, I think. And you can relate it to the power of Bitcoin in 2022 and what it's doing.

So that was it. So thank you guys so much. I love listening to these types of podcasts. It was great to be a part of it and learn so much from you guys. So thank you. Awesome. Well, yeah, I had an absolute blast. Thank you guys all for being here.

and of course you're welcome back anytime so have a good night guys okay awesome all right and everybody watching thank you so much for being here friday is always the best part of the week i get to just chill out with bitcoins and shoot the shit it's awesome uh so kudos to everyone uh that was on uh you can find them all all of their twitter handles are down below so give them all follow and uh and see what they're up to. And yeah, what a good rip. I'm so glad that I made it home for Friday to do this. So with that, of course, if you haven't already, like, subscribe, share the usual. Those are all super important things. They really do help the show. If you want to help the show in another way, you can always, of course, hit the previously mentioned sponsors in the show notes down below.

Those were Shake Pay, Ledin, Bit Refill, Keystone, Bill Fottle, and Privacy Pro. And then finally, if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip at my strike page, rather, strike. Dot me slash BTC sessions. Go there, type in any amount you want, hit the tip button. You'll be greeted with a lightning invoice or if you prefer, tap to the right and you'll see a 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.

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