BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Shane Hazel, Nicolas Burtey, BritishHODL - Bitcoin Chat ep378

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

Join Shane Hazel from Swan Bitcoin, Nicolas Burtey of Galoy, and renowned Bitcoin investor and educator BritishHODL in an engaging video discussion. They share their expert insights on why Bitcoin is a promising investment now. Topics include Bitcoin's rising price potential, latest technical innovations, and the declining reliability of traditional financial systems. This video is a treasure trove for those eager to understand Bitcoin's growing influence and why it's gaining momentum as a leading financial solution. Don't miss these industry experts' perspectives on the bright future of Bitcoin. #BitcoinInvestment #BitcoinFuture #FinancialInnovation FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS: https://twitter.com/ShaneTHazel https://twitter.com/nicolasburtey https://twitter.com/BritishHodl 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Nunchuk Wallet and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted mutisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ SEEDOR is one of the most robust metal backups on the market today. Get your SEEDOR starter set today! Use this link for 5% off. https://www.seedor.io/discount/BTCSESSIONS?redirect=%2Fcollections%2Fprodukte For US based customers: https://a.co/d/1DkbfV2 Canadian customers: https://link.thecryptoboutique.ca/BTCSessionsSeedor Start9 is your Bitcoin & lightning node, and full personal server - enabling you to take back control from the gatekeepers of your money and data! Grab Server Lite,One or Pro today and become truly self-sovereign! https://start9.com/ Coinkite offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions HodlHodl is a NON-CUSTODIAL, NON-KYC solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION Free video tutorials not enough? Need some extra hand-holding when mastering self-custody, multisig, coinjoin, running a node, or other skills? Book me for a private session on my website! https://www.btcsessions.ca/ Been watching the show for a while? Like what you see? Help me cover my video costs by sending some sats over on my Geyser Fund page! https://geyser.fund/project/btcsessions

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish? We got a killer panel today. Very excited to have all these gents here. It should be a lot of fun. Of course, we're going to dive into this momentarily. This is live.

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

The fucking thing sucks. If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, and share all those things help at time. That little like button just below the screen. Make sure you give that a tap. Share this on whatever socials you have to be on. That helps bolster the show. And of course, if you have not already, subscribe.

I'm on the quest to 100K subscribers by the end of 2024. That's what I'm looking for. So if you can help me in achieving that goal, that's a huge one. It's been elusive, but hopefully I can get there. guys, thank you so much for being here. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we bring in our panel, let's take a quick look at where we are in the market right now. This is timechain calendar.com. And also at the same time, I'm going to be bringing up the live chat that is now overlaid on the right hand side of the screen. So all of your comments from here on in are going to be

live for the world to see for better or worse. So anyways, timechain calendar.com. We're sitting at $36,628.000 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 2,730 sats. In terms of fees, looks like 105 sats per byte next block, anytime fee is 24 sats per byte, and the Mempool is purging anything below 11 sats per bite. So that's a little bit better than it was earlier today.

but still be aware that Mempool has been crazy lately. And actually it is a little bit lower now, 86s per bite. So yeah, it is what it is. Anyways, and in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.55 million of them. That's 93.07% of the total supply. Shout out to sponsor the show, hoddlehottle.com. If you are buying Bitcoin and you have the following priorities in mind, peer-to-peer, instant self-custody, no K-YC, then this is an easy way to do it. You can sign up with nothing more than an email address. Once you're in,

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So these plug and play devices, you can host things like Bitcoin Core, your Lightning Node, mempool.com, dot space, join market. You can also run files, passwords, photos, nostrilays, and clients. And actually, they've recently added some AI stuff as well that you can self-host. They have everything from entry-level devices all the way up to what I'm running, which is the Start-9 server pure. So you can check them out at Start9.com. And the Pure, I think they just reduced in price by a couple hundred bucks.

And you could get an additional 18% off if you use my code, BTC sessions with a plus sign at the end. And that is specifically for the Pure. Anyways, guys, enough of my rambling. I want to get in my panel here so that we can get rolling on things. I want to welcome to the stage, Mr. British Hoddle, also Shane Hazel, and from Goloie. Nicholas, and I got to say, is it Bertie, or am I saying that incorrectly? How do you say it?

Do you want to say the English way or the French way? Let's hear the French way, see how bad I was. Nicola Burte. Boaté. Yes. Boet. Okay, all right. So close.

Not great. This is the improvement. should be made, we'll say, on my part. But, dude, thank you all so much for being here. I appreciate all of you taking the time out to be here. And for those unfamiliar, I think let's go around and do a quick round of intros. Who are you and what do you do? And then we'll dive into the show.

So British Hoddle, I'll toss it to you. Can you give yourself a quick little intro? Yeah. So firstly, it's my honor to be here. You're the only channel that I watched when I was trying to figure out how do I do this thing in 2020 when I was transitioning, I guess, from, that's a weird word to use, I guess, nowadays. But transitioning from trad-fi of real estate stocks and gold into Bitcoin. And your channel was the only one that gave me the confidence to actually first self-custody by Bitcoin. So it's an honor to be here.

Firstly, I'm going to say that. Secondly, yeah, that's my background. I'm traditional assets started off in real estate, negotiating property deals at a very young age with my dad. And then that transition to equities and then gold. And then, you know, realize I had my wake up moment when it comes to Bitcoin in 2020. So I'm relatively new to the game, but I come with experience from TridFi and, you know, that's try and bring that to Bitcoin. Awesome. Well, dude, I'm really glad to have you.

And I'm sure you'll say it later. in the show, so I don't want to spoil it. But I've really taken to your single line piece of advice that you give people. And maybe we'll get that in a moment. But we'll save it for a second here. I'm going to toss it next to Nicholas. And welcome.

And can you give yourself a little intro? Yeah, thanks for having you today. I'm the founder of a company called Gallery. We are building software for Bitcoin, for organization to become sovereign. The first product we have been working on for the last couple of years is called Blink Wallet, formerly known as Bitcoin Beach Wallet.

I guess we're going to talk a little bit about that. Today, we also organized a conference called adopting Bitcoin. We just did the third session in Esavadol last week. I think it went quite well. So, yeah, I'm doing a couple of things in the Bitcoin space. Awesome, awesome. And I've tried Blink, and I actually did a video on it. I can't recall how long ago it was, maybe a few months back or earlier this year for sure.

But yeah, it's really cool. There's a lot of awesome features, and you guys have baked in even more stuff since then. So, yeah, you guys are doing some good work, and you know, you tackled or tackled. tackling El Salvador and now the world. So good job. Yeah, thanks. Awesome. And finally I'll toss it to Shane.

Dude, welcome back. Returning to the show again. Can you give yourself a little intro? I give myself a little intro. Thanks for having me first and foremost. I really appreciate it. Always good to be with you, Ben, and the rest of you guys. I'm Shane Hazel.

I work on the Swan Private Team. I also run a couple of podcasts with some amazing guys. the first one that I'd probably say is the Bitcoin Veterans Podcast. It's starting to really catch fire. I see a lot of these guys out in the chat. So what's up, guys? And I also run radical. I've done some things in politics in the past.

And just I don't know, I'm excited about Bitcoin and everything that's going on. The fact that you've got a show that just talks about being bullish and why everybody is, even in, you know, crabbing fair markets and everything else is a, it's a great place to be. So thanks for having us, Ben. Yeah, thanks for being here. And I've got to say, Shane, you had me on your show a while back, and you did your like intro and like all of the, the, your, I think you might have the most epic intro to a podcast I've ever seen. Like, there's like eagles and, and like flags and shit going on. And it was very American, very, very, very libertarian, very American. Have you seen the one for, uh,

the Bitcoin veterans, uh, yet? I have not seen that intro screen. Oh, it's, it's probably just. is good. It'll get you going. I got to see that. I mean, I felt like I wanted to mount a bald eagle and crush a beer can on my head. And, and, you know, like, I'm Canadian. So that's saying a lot. You're going to fit right in in North Georgia down here, my last. Awesome. Well, guys, thank you for being here again. We're going to dive in for everybody that's in the chat. Of course, I see the chat going wild. Thank you all for being here and being a part. of the show. I will be highlighting, I will be, see, Shane, there's already people saying Bitcoin Veterans has an epic intro, so I'm going to have to go and investigate. I'm going to have to

check that out. And again, also Tyler Durdens saying the same thing, Veterans Info, intro is amazing. So, nonetheless, this show, for those that maybe are tuning in the first, for the first time, and aren't familiar, this is why are we bullish? So very simple premise to the show. Each one of us comes with a reason why we are bullish about Bitcoin. And this can be really anything. It could be a personal experience. It could be a news item. It could be a new app or development or a movie that we saw or just really anything that has made us excited in the moment or in the last little bit. And so the structure of the show, basically, the flow of the show is, number one, somebody's going to drop their reason why they are bullish. This is their chance to rant and get whatever

they have on top of their mind off the chest. Number two, all together, we're going to riff on that reason. We're going to comment, ask questions, go down whatever rabbit holes we decide to go down. And then finally, once we put a bow on that reason, number three, we're going to rotate to the next person until we've all had a turn. So reason, riff, rotate, the three R's simple. So I'm going to get us started today. And this is, I'm going to file it under the category of personal experience, I suppose, or ongoing personal experience. And so, funny enough, Shane, so this, this relates to, you know, swan in a way, in and around like Shane earlier this year, or earlier this week, you know, you guys kind of sounded the alarm like, yo, banks are starting

to do things that they weren't previously doing, right? And so that was in and around privacy practices for individual bitcoins. If you're somebody that uses coin join in any way, shape, or form, there has been a proposal, I believe, through FinCEN, basically saying that even the most basic of basic privacy practices is like using new addresses every time you do anything, that would be slap down if this were to go through, which I don't think that it will be taken to that extent.

However, banks appear to have been proactive, actively already saying if you're doing any sort of privacy practice like using coin join, then we want to know about it. We want exchanges to be on top of it. And if you are, then we want perhaps potentially you to shut their accounts. And this doesn't just apply to you guys. This applies to everyone, you know, like potentially in the U.S. right now. And so this is a big problem. And so I saw two things. Well, there's two things about this. Number one, I saw a lot of people like dog piling and almost like blaming Swan, which I found silly because it applies to everybody.

And you guys have been pretty vocal about it like, hey, we need to comment on this and try to make sure that this doesn't happen. But I saw a lot of people dogpiling, but also not offering any action to take. They were, you know, bitching without helping in any way. And so I saw this and I was like, you know, first of all, yes, like the, the Jan was putting out like, hey, if you want to comment on this, which I believe there's now over 1100 comments, it's probably even more since I last saw, which is great. But also, bitcoins need to step the fuck up and they need to start local and they need to start building with each other and not relying on asking permission anymore.

And so when I saw people bitching without offering any action, it kind of pissed me off. And so I tweeted out this. I said, I said, stop bitching and take some initiative. Asking permission has never worked. And so I said, anyone in Calgary, which is the city I live in, that wants to bootstrap a local Bitcoin circular economy with me, it's happening. Here comes the Saturday Sat Market, help me build it. And so I put up a page, a couple places, one on the Orange Pill app, which you can just like find local bitconers near you. And so I said, this is what I want to do.

Can you help? I'm looking for merchants and people that are just interested in coming and basically starting to live on a Bitcoin standard. just a circular economy. And then I also had a meetup page that went up for it as well. And so what ended up happening is I got in 24 hours less, actually, in less than 24 hours, I got a ton of interest around this. And I just want to read you guys kind of some of the responses that I got. And I'm just pulling it up here in terms of people.

Number one, I got so many emails and people reaching out saying that they just wanted to help in any way. There's a lot of passionate people. And I have people from not just in my city, but from outside, like outlying areas. And when I say outlying areas, I mean there's people that are making. I know there's two groups of people that are making a seven-hour drive into Calgary to come to this event to be part of it and to be a merchant at it. And I know another guy that's flying from Vancouver to Calgary, which if you were driving, that's 12 hours. It's an hour and a half flight. And he's coming into Calgary specifically to help bootstrap this circular economy. And I want to detail some of the

different types of merchants that I've got because it's all sorts. I've got somebody, that's from a company called Mountain View Grainery. They have to do grains and flour and all that stuff. I've got Dominion North, which does carpentry, construction, and rentals. I've got Rocky Sausage House. Rocky Sausage House, they obviously do sausage and meat. I've got a few different artists that are doing just like apparel and then physical art. I've got a couple that are doing Inuit carvings.

And so like lots of art pieces and everything. I've got a dude that sell solar panels that coming down. I've got a few bakers that are bringing like sourdough and other baked goods. I've got a company driving in for seven hours that does specifically a reseller of Bitcoin hardware wallets, books, apparel, all of that kind of stuff. I've got a candy shop. I've got three different farmers that are bringing a mix of chicken, eggs, beef, lamb, dairy, all of it. I've got a guy who's a plumbing and heating expert. I've got financial coaching experts.

I've got somebody who sells wedding packages at his ranch to do weddings. I've got somebody that is flying in that does Bitcoin for gift cards. And then I've got even the other day, I'm sitting there getting my haircut and I'm telling my barber about this, this thing that I'm doing in December. and he's like, oh, cool. Do you need a barber? And so now it looks like my barber is now coming to be part of the Saturday Sat Market. There are almost 25 different merchants currently.

It's still a month away that are partaking in the Saturday Sat Market, the first one. And my favorite thing about this in terms of the asking permission never works is let's say we start doing this and you have people that are you know living on earning and you know very importantly

obviously saving in Bitcoin because that's a big part of it that's how you kind of get out of that fiat rat race but like if you're living on Bitcoin it also prevents you from financial institutions telling you no right and so what I'm excited about is when we do this, my plan is not to say, come here every X amount of time to go and get all of your

goods for Bitcoin. No, the plan is, I want you to meet these people. I want you to build relationships with these people so we all know each other. And then it doesn't fucking matter if somebody kicks down the door and says you're not allowed to do this anymore. What are you going to do? Make sure that we can't contact each other ever again. I'm not going to be able to go to my friend and buy eggs and send them some sats no fucking way and so that's the vision here is i want to create a community of like-minded people that cannot be trampled on and once those connections are made they can't be undone you know you you have stuff i have sats that who's to say that you coming over for a sunday brunch isn't also me buying some eggs for sats nobody can say for sure

maybe you just brought them for fun. So anyways, that's why I'm bullish. I'm very excited about for the first time building a Bitcoin circular economy where I am. I think it will be possible for others to do. And my last thing is I want to say to people, don't wait for somebody else to do this, because that's kind of what I was doing. And this week in the news cycle made me say, and everybody else should ask themselves, If not you, then who?

Because somebody has to do it, and it may as well be you. So if you're watching this right now, go, if there's not a local meetup, start one. If there is one, start standing up and saying, hey, I'm looking for the following thing in Bitcoin. And if somebody's at the meetup that does that thing, you'll be damn sure that they're willing to accept stats for it. And if they don't do it, but they know somebody who does, what's going to come up the next time they're in conversation with that person, even if they're not a big. Bitcoiner. Oh, is it a Bitcoin meetup? Some dudes looking for a barber that will accept Bitcoin. That guy's going to be curious. He may not jump on it right away, but that's going to be his first touchpoint with Bitcoin. And so I implore you to go and start doing these things. And if you've got a good

community already, then you have enough to start something like this. So that's where I'm at. Gentlemen, I'm going to let any of you dive in wherever you want. I'm just going to open it up. Um, do any of you have thoughts on this, uh, that, that want to tag in? I have so many thoughts if you guys don't mind. I mean, the fact that I just went from six to midnight over here. Like just, what a great speech. Um, no, I mean, and maybe a little bit of a weird flex with the, uh, the, the, the, the barbers and having haircuts as me and British are sitting here, We're like having probably been around barbers for a while. Gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen that are out there, this is the perfect opportunity.

I think Ben has showed a tremendous amount of testicular fortitude in saying, we're done asking for fucking permission. We don't give a shit what FinCEN send or any of these other people have to say. Bitcoin is what we know. We know what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is one of those things where if we want to have a goddamn transaction, then that's what we're going to have. And you can't stop us. The beautiful thing about what's going on in this space now is you guys are starting to recognize that we are early. We've talked about a lot of this kind of stuff with Citadel's out there in the past.

And, you know, markets, I think kind of plays right into the same role as, you know, a lot of people will get caught up like, well, how are you going to do this and what is this going to be? And who is going to, you know, pull this thing off? And hey, listen, it's you. We are the few. We are early. people that are now planting flags all over the world. And so if you want to do something or if you want to see something, you have the prime real estate.

It is, it is almost a blank slate out there right now in terms of a market. If you want to slap Bitcoin on it, whether it's Bitcoin homeschool or Bitcoin veterans or, um, whatever it is, is you have a chance to plant a flag, like literally and, and, and just go out. stake it and then do the work. Get it done. Invite as many people as you can. I saw all these tweets last week, Ben.

And, you know, I think I retweeted actually all of them. And then I saw the fact that you got like all of the ranchers in, you know, Calgary. And I was just like, wow, dude. There's a lot of ranchers. I didn't quite get all of them. But I got a subset. I'm just being facetious, obviously. But the idea that, you know, this happened within, what, 24 hours.

48 hours and you know he's got buy-in he's got a mission he's got understanding he's got people from different backgrounds this is just to show you the power and i know ben's got some reach out there but it didn't come because he was just you know well you know i you know i think i'll do this one day it came with a lot of effort it came with a lot of time it came with a lot of expertise some understanding and when you know you start to apply all those kind of things especially over time havings, you name it. You get something that's extremely powerful. And now that you're networking and having people meet, I got to tell you, man, kudos to you. Hats off. Way to go. I mean, I would be bullish as hell right now with those things happening. And I will tell you, we're working on some

things like my kids attend these markets down here where they're all little entrepreneurs and introducing Bitcoin to those markets so that the localities around my community start to that, hey, there is an appetite for this. This isn't scary internet money. This is just something that you need to understand in terms of practical application. And once you understand the practical application of holding your own keys, being able to transfer and doing some K-YC or some management of UTXO, like that's really easy stuff.

And people just, they kind of look at it. I think there's a lot of fud out there that scares people away. I think a lot of it is just hard work that scares people away. But at the end of the day, you know, go out there. If you want to see this thing succeed, you've got to make it succeed. And it's not a foregone conclusion yet. But at the same time, I think the odds are in your favor. If you're willing to put in the work, you're willing to do a little advertisement,

and you're willing to work with other people. So great and great job, Ben. Thanks, man. Thanks. Nicholas, I'm curious about your thoughts on this, because, again, you guys are, you've been in the thick of it. you're bootstrapping a lot of these things to places that already are circular economies going. So I'm curious your thoughts. Yeah, my first thought is thinking about the, so first the idea of starting circular

economy like in the US when in Canada feels harder than in emerging wetries. And, you know, There is a concept of if you're a place and you don't necessarily agree in the direction of the country, you have the voice versus exit, right, like a concept that I guess Palajir has related. Well, if you're in Canada, you know, I've met so many Canadian people, whether in Portugal over the last two years or in Salvador or, you know, And it seems that most Canadian have had enough with what's been happening in the last couple of years. And they choose to exit, right? They didn't choose the voice option.

To a point where like, okay, is Canada, you know, not, you know, is it falling or not? But for me, the first, I mean, trying to boot-up the circular economy, I guess in Canada is the concept of, okay, no, I'm not going to leave. because I disagree with the direction. It's going. I'm going to actually do something and stay here and try to change the, I guess, my environment, right? And I love the idea because I, yeah, I mean, I guess it might be one of the first initiative in Canada.

Yeah, I guess it's probably not as, I'm not saying it's easy in El Salvador, sense by far, but it's maybe somewhat easier to actually, and your Bitcoin could be split into two concepts. There is, you know, the buy Bitcoin, the US Bitcoin. I'm willing to use Bitcoin camp. So be able to use Bitcoin as a payment system, which by the way is, I think, essential to as you're highlighted, to the success of Bitcoin because if the on-warp of one get, you know, cut out, if you can use Bitcoin, it doesn't. doesn't matter.

Yeah. I think that a circular economy is really key. But yeah, building a circular economy in places where I guess in Canada, you know, everybody or most people have a bank account. Like, you know, payment system typically works great. There is no too much friction. And so it takes more education maybe to have someone sees the value of Bitcoin as a payment system versus in a place where it's a place where you know, you know, it's a business.

People use cash, but the reason they use cash is just because the bank don't fund their business. And there is an appealing value proposition to Bitcoin in a lot of emerging country. So yeah, I'm really looking to where it's going. I think it's an interesting development. And I wish, you know, there will be more of that type of development in Canada, in Europe, in the US. I think it's very needed. Yeah. I hope to see more of it.

And I hope maybe through, again, you're right, like in a Western country, it's almost a little bit more difficult to convince people to try and experiment like this, right? It's the hardcore bit corners that are going to do it first. And it's way more difficult to convince your average person who's still, you know, sleepwalking through Fiat land and, you know, using PayPal and Venmo and they've got their debit card. whatever on their meeting they're not they're not super keen to bother trying anything because as far as they know the system is kind of working for them even though it's broken as hell um they they're still just sleep walking through it so it is more difficult i think to to do it here because people still feel they have something to lose by trying um but i think i and i think this is where bitcoin has gone wrong in the past we

We've taken so much time trying to convince people that don't give a shit about Bitcoin to accept Bitcoin. And when now I feel like we've hit a threshold where there's enough of us where we can build that economy ourselves amongst ourselves. And then people can come to it when they're ready, when they see it, when they get it. We can still go on orange people, orange pill people. But, you know, there's enough people going to me to me. that are excited about Bitcoin, that would be more than happy to earn some Bitcoin that we've got enough here. Let's work together and just make it happen. So yeah, British, I am curious about your thoughts in and around that as well. So where are you at with this whole circular

economy thing? What do you think? So first things first, I think that you, the intention with which you are setting this up is great, right? It is, you are already spending money on X. Why not spend it with someone who actually understands Bitcoin? I think that part is absolutely great. The part where it differs from my message and the purpose of why I even started a YouTube channel is I'm talking to people like my parents, right? There's immigrants to the United Kingdom, spent 35 years doing the right right thing, quote unquote, you know, working hard, saving up, buying properties to try and look after their two sons, only to find out that the properties need to be worth 70% more than they are today because of the amount of pounds printed. So I like the idea of what you're doing.

I think it makes a lot of sense. I would say it's much more important for people to actually get to one Bitcoin first if they're not there yet. And then anything past that can turn into, you spend your Bitcoin or you help people out. But I think the premise of a circular economy has to come, if you're going to do it, the way that you are doing it, which I think is great, has to be a spend and replace perspective. I don't think anyone should be taking a stack and trying to high-five some what I like to call happy hippies just to feel like they're taking part in some community before they've gotten to one Bitcoin. Yeah.

I think, and I think what you hit on there is correct in that. this living, let's say living on a Bitcoin standard, it only is feasible and it only works when you've already got good fiscal habits for yourself. When you're already spending less than you earn and you're already saving the excess in Bitcoin. Because for myself, if I'm earning Bitcoin, but I'm spending more than I earn every single month. And at the end of the day, I have no Bitcoin, right? And so for people may be in countries where it's, you know, saving is pretty much not possible based on on opportunities that are present. Like if you're in a third world country and you're barely able to transact, then you're, you may be coming to Bitcoin for

entirely different reasons in that you just you just can't transact and you can't transact on a global level you can't you really can't do anything and so then it might you know it's then bitcoin is something very different to you than something uh what it is to somebody in a western country but as somebody from a western country i think the idea you know of what you're preaching of you need to You need to save your excess. You need to save that in something that won't disappear. You need to actually save it in the soundest money that humanity has ever seen. And if you take that extra step of going on to a Bitcoin standard or a quasi-Bitcoin standard,

or if you're, you know, I, in my opinion, there's, you can't be more bullish than being entirely on a Bitcoin standard because then there's no opportunity cost because all the your entire income is Bitcoin. It's like you couldn't go. And then every every expenditure from then on in is a conscious decision of do I want to to exchange these sats for this thing? And if it's frinkety bullshit, you're not going to do it. Yeah.

Like I don't agree with, you know, going to places and buying pieces of shit. art that you don't really want, right? Like, just to take part in the community. I don't think that's smart, especially if you're, once you can, by the way, get to one Bitcoin, then do whatever the hell you want to do, right? So you get to one Bitcoin, then you want to hire a boat in Miami and put strippers on it and whatever, you go, you go do that. As long as that one Bitcoin is safe and secure.

Let me know we have boat ports. But my, my, my point is that, you know, get to one Bitcoin first. like let's let's stop all this let's stop all this happy hippie horse shit like get to one Bitcoin that's the one thing that's going to matter but I love the way that you're doing it you're talking about buying things you're already going to buy right and then

I'm assuming you're a proponent of this spend and replace so you're not actually the one question that I do have about that is what happens to the tax liability because the people that I talk to will be concerned about that right they're not $10 a month DCA gang as I like to call them like they're these people

have a lot of Bitcoin and they're worried about, you know, every single time I transact with it, I now need to lug a capital gain against that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that's something to discuss with an accountant. I will go any further than that. Real quick, Ben, well, we got you on the spot here. In terms of, you know, some questions about, you know, how you went about this. I know, a lot of people get nervous about taking action, you know, the idea of failure in the background. I think you've probably progressed against this, you know, in the past and, you know, had, you know, just amazing wins. But for, you know, the common person who's out there that, you know, is looking at this going,

boy, you know, actually Ben, he dove off the deep end and he started to try to network and organize something. And I don't know what your past is and being able to do that or having done that. But organizing a market of people coming together to have something like this circular economy with Bitcoin. you know how did you go about it and why why do you think it is being met with such success i think is the question um well i don't say it's successful yet because it hasn't happened um i can guarantee you it will not go 100% smoothly uh there's going to be obviously problems and i i think that was kind of coming into it i had to just commit to the fact that i'm going to fuck some things up there's going to be a few things that go wrong.

But again, I was saying this. I was in spaces earlier and I was saying how there's a good phrase that I've heard thrown around when it comes to self-custody and stuff like that and where people don't take action. It's where you get into analysis paralysis, where you overanalyze all of the different options and it seems so overwhelming that you do nothing. And so I kind of applied that to this. And I was like, well, I could sit around and hum and ha over every single little logistic and then do nothing because I'm too worried.

Or I can just toss it out there, you know, hopefully get some people that are interested and then really start to get everything, you know, the amount of support that I've had in terms of people just willing to volunteer their time. to make it happen has been overwhelming. And I think, you know, I obviously there's an advantage of, you know, having like a YouTube channel that people have been using to educate themselves on various things for a number of years. But I think even still, you can still start locally on a smaller scale and build to that point. You can still, you know, meet local people as. I said, have your local meetup and start with those basic steps of saying, hey, I'm looking for the following thing and I'm willing to pay in Bitcoin. And then going from there. And then when it

seems like, okay, we got a group of people, maybe you just do a small thing, you know, in a small location and just, you know, have fun. The other thing that I think you can do is you can also because there's a lot of people that are just bitcoinsers that don't realize it yet. And some of those people are people that love cash transactions. And so if you were to have a market that was Bitcoin and cash, then, you know, there's going to be people, especially if you're in a place that has foot traffic, you know, and you have a sign that says, you know, farmer's market, cash and Bitcoin only. People, you know, a bunch of people have cash.

They're like, great. And they'll come in. And then they'll go, holy shit, every single one of these people accepts Bitcoin. And then that's touchpoint number one. get curious. And that's all you need, right? It's the same mentality, the same idea of, I don't need somebody giving me permission or telling me no or monitoring every single thing I do whenever I buy a carton of eggs. That same mentality will permeate through the different groups. And I think a lot of those, oh, I love cash markets, people will realize, oh, Bitcoin's like, it's kind of like cash.

I can just, you know, I own it. I have it. You know, nobody can tell me no when I'm using cash, you know, all those types of things. So I think you can find people that from a values perspective are tangential to Bitcoin. And then you can perhaps bring them in as well if you don't currently have a subset of Bitcoiners. And then just teach the people that are there. You know, my goal here, like my barber, he's not super well versed with Bitcoin. but I said, I basically said like every person there needs to be able to accept Bitcoin,

which I'll show you how to do. But at the end of the day, if you don't want Bitcoin, myself or any other person there is going to be more than happy to trade their cash for any Bitcoin that you made at the end of the day. And so then all of a sudden you also create a peer-to-peer cash to Bitcoin market. So you've kind of killed two birds with one stone. So that's kind of what I'm thinking. Maybe one follow-up question of that is, have you had anybody that's reached out because you've done this that's coming to the Saturday market?

It said just wildly excited about the fact that you're doing this. Can you share that? I've got a handful of emails. And I've literally like even while we've been sitting on this call, I've got from spaces earlier, some DMs sitting here being like, hey, I'm so excited that you're doing this. and I'm going to come down. How can I help? I'm at your disposal. I'm stoked to throw in whatever you need. I think a lot of Bitcoiners were just kind of waiting for it to materialize by itself.

And so I guess the message here today is it won't. You need to do it. So go do it. I have a question. And I guess who knows where the fees would be the month. Yes. But do you think you will be using custodial wallet or non-custodial wallet?

I mean, I present it would be lightning, you know, only or any lightning? So by default, I'm going to get people, I want to get people set up on kind of two options in terms of lightning wallets. So in the in the non-custodial realm, because there's, a baked in point of sale, I'll probably set them up on Breeze and just say, oh, you can have like a little terminal here and it's, you know, that's easy. Of course, like on-chain fees are going to be all over the place. And so that's going to take some, hey, just so you know, like, and I'll have to gauge it closer to for the people that are unfamiliar and say like, hey,

if you're accepting via breeze, the first transaction might be like, you know, you got a channel set up fee and everything like that. And I just tend to refer to it. as there's a connection fee and then after that it'll be regular lightning transactions unless you know you run out I try not to overcomplicate it but I just say like hey a channel of liquidity or a channel of Bitcoin is is open to you and then you can use that um the other thing that uh I'll probably do is have a you know if people just don't want to deal with it and then they're especially if they're not keeping the Bitcoin afterwards if they're not at that level yet, then yeah, whatever, like a custodial option and then they're going to be

transferring it to somebody's self-custodial lightning wallet afterwards and getting cash for it. Yeah, so it may be a mix of both depending on where the person's at. If they're going to get their first transaction and $10 of it, it's going to be scraped away, and that's going to be their first 4A into Bitcoin. That's probably not ideal. So the answer is we will see. where we're at, you know, in and around the 10th, 12th of December. And I'll let you know.

Yeah. And then put we'll decide. Yeah. Yes, we'll see. But, but yeah, like ideally self-custodial lightning. And then with some exceptions, I'll kind of explain the trade-offs with each. Because I'm going to do a training session with anybody who wants to learn how to accept Bitcoin before the market. So, um, I actually really, I'll actually really like that point.

The point that you've made, which is if a business person who's selling at that event, then, you know, needs to exchange that into cash, somebody at the event can actually do it. Because there's nothing, there is nothing, Ben, that infuriates me more than paying someone in Bitcoin knowing they're going to convert it into Fiat. Yes. That infuriates the shit out of me. I would rather just give you the Fiat. Why would I give you a stamp on the network that I gave my Bitcoin to a traitor? Why would I do that? I'll just give me a Fiat.

So I really love that part of it. Yeah, fair enough. Awesome. All right, Jets, I want to put a bull on this topic and move on. Sorry, I took up so much time on it. I'm super passionate about it. But nonetheless, we're going to do a rotation. And I'm going to toss it over to Shane.

And Shane, I'm going to cue you up with the question. That's why are you bullish? Take it away. Boy, God, there's so many reasons out there. I got to say, I've got a few thousand of them right now. And they all circle around this Bitcoin Veterans podcast that we started. Myself, Alex Stanzet got together. I've known Alex for a while now.

Obviously, I work with Alex over at Swan. But a lot of people don't really realize, I guess, that both Alex and I are veterans. And when we started talking behind the scenes, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. He's, you know, running things like the shooting ranges at some of the Miami conferences down there, getting some people involved. I was lucky enough this year to go out there and be part of the cadre, the instructors, you know, with my background. And so to see it unfolding, to see it happening and see the networking and what it is as an offshoot, you know, we had been talking for a while about some things. I've run this thing called Brave. It's a post-traumatic experience for, you know, it started as, you know, for veterans, but now it's grown into something bigger than that.

And, you know, he's, he's very spun up on training people in terms of the way of, you know, firearms and how to safely employ them and keep them in your own your own house and your life and so we were talking behind the scenes and we both agreed that you know the the veterans market in terms of bitcoin was completely missing we just really hadn't seen this this force come out that would that was really serving in it was talking to it and we we kind of you know just more and more behind the scenes started plotting and I said, you know, like, you know, maybe a show, maybe, maybe something to start galvanizing this to put a forefront on it. And sure enough, in July of this year, we launched

the first show of Bitcoin veterans. It's real simple. It's like I say in the intro is like, we're Bitcoiners, we're veterans. This is, this is not hard. But what it does in terms of coming together and bringing guys like, you got to understand, in America alone, there's 16 plus million veterans out there. And that is a giant network. Now, start to, you know, cross-pollinate with all the other veterans that are around the world, especially, you know, the guys that we know firsthand from, you know, this, this terrible thing that we've been doing for the last 20-plus years around the world in terms of

imperialism. And we've met a lot of each other. You know, we know who we are, whether it's in America, we know Canada, we know the, you know, the British. We know everybody in the NATO countries. You know, a lot of people in the Middle East and Australia, just all around the world, you've got this very tight network of guys that have seen some things that know some things that understand firsthand just how terrible the state is and what their mission is, right?

Their mission is perpetual war. So to be guys that have seen that firsthand that can come together, can speak intelligently to it, and at the same time propose some solutions, is incredibly powerful. But I think the most powerful thing about this is there's something that I don't think a lot of people really understand about veterans in general. Like it's like what does it mean to go out and, you know, sign your line, sign your name to a dotted line and in a contract and say,

hey, listen, you can take everything up into my life. My rights are gone. My time is gone. It is yours for the state. And the reason that people do that. And, you know, what perpetuated, you know, like for myself, you know, is there was this love. It was a love for our fellow man. It was this understanding that, you know, there are some people that cannot stand up for

themselves. There are people that need to stand up for others. There are people that are well equipped to do this. And it's just something that I think in the core being that, you know, you know, despite the indoctrination, which I'll get to you in a minute. But because, you know, you were, I think just born. with this innate sense to protect. You know,

and that's, that's kind of, you know, I think what's been attacked and what's missing in a lot of modern culture is this, this masculinity, this, you know, thing that is frowned on by a lot of status,

a lot of progressives and things like that, where these guys have this love for their fellow man, to the point where in woman that they would, they would lay down their lives for those. And that self-sovereignty, the freedom, the justice that a lot of us, especially here in America, we're indoctrinated with, and then it was twisted and perverted,

is now come full circle for these guys. And in a time where you've got, you know, 22 suicides a day here in America for veterans, it paints this picture of a very nihilistic world, you know, this, hey, we're going to have to fight our way out of this. We're going to have to, you know, fight our way back into, you know, some grace and some freedom. this gives all of these guys a passion and a mission and some sense of purpose for the first time since maybe leaving the service maybe a lot of them that are still in and so now that we've stood this up we're 21 episodes in the last episode we had you know Cory Clipson the CEO of Swan and then before that Preston Prystead Pish another veteran and we've had you know Randy Kelly

and just all these amazing veterans come into the show. start sharing their stories and share their story, their Bitcoin stories as well to show people exactly, you know, what Bitcoin can do in terms of giving you mission, in terms of giving you purpose for your fellow man again, taking that, you know, that idea that maybe got perverted and twisted and, and very manipulated, you know, possibly to the point where, you know, you'd kind of give it up and pulling these guys back from the brink. to be able to to pull those guys back from the brink and then set them on another course and another mission that you know we we is you know uh i guess 30 40 20 year olds whatever we are um you know

we're not going to see you know the full ramifications of bitcoin we're going to we're going to die somewhere along the line but to get this started to be a part of these you know what i consider like quote unquote founding fathers um this is a point where it is just, I don't know, it's gotten to the point now where we are growing and there's been this matchbox, this lit behind it. We've got, you know, I don't know, we've got the northeast, we've got the southeast, we've got the Midwest, we've got the Northwest, we've got the West Coast. Now we've got worldwide in terms of different groups of veterans that have come into this movement. And what's sprung out of it has just been absolutely amazing. First and foremost, it's decentralized.

It's just like Bitcoin, obviously. These guys have different skills, different tasks. They understand how to move not only goods and services, but people around the world. When you talk about how we're organized within the U.S. military, there's admin, there's Intel, there's operations, there's logistics, there's future planning, there's training. There's all of these different aspects of it. And without going into great detail, the numbers have swelled so much within 21 weeks of doing this that we've had to start to branch into other groups. And with that, we've had a number of 501c3s for anybody that's not in America. Those are charitable organizations that are being stood up.

So we have organizations within Bitcoin veterans that are standing up. There is Operation Bitcoin, which Gabe, one of our hosts, and it's created in Operation Bitcoin. is a skill bridge type of movement where guys who are either in or our veterans can get trained in Bitcoin can get trained in different areas of the Bitcoin industry and then serve their first six months with some aid to go out there and learn. Corey came out just this Wednesday and said, hey, listen, we're going to sponsor Operation Bitcoin. So big shout out to Gabe and Operation Bitcoin for starting that. It's a great transition for guys out there. I obviously host Brave. Brave's another 501c3 where we're getting

guys the help that they need in terms of kind of correcting, you know, some of the post-traumatic stress that we have, learning how to not only deal with it, but live with it, mature with it throughout their lives and then obviously be, you know, good stewards and leaders within their communities after they get done with this. And there's, you know, obviously some stuff that we do out here. We call it 10,000 hours of therapy and about six hours with some, some, some cutting edge medical practices. Then we've got the Warrior Project, which Alex is heading up, and that's, that's, you know, all about training guys with firearms.

And Mike Hobart is putting together the security side of this. So, you know, as we grow and we go through halvings and Bitcoin has more purchasing power, you've got a lot of these guys that are reinvesting and looking at how are we going to protect each other when we are close. close in proximity at conferences, networks, how are we going to do this in a decentralized fashion, but at the same time provide absolutely, you know, I'd say deadly, you know, reaction time for anybody that would try to come into a space and disrupt it with, you know, violence. So when I say we've got, you know, a million things going on in the background and how this thing

is growing and exploding, like we're white knuckle right now. It's like grabbing a Mustang out in the middle of a prairie. and holding on for dear life as this thing is starting to move and then organizing it more as a rudder, you know, more than that force grip and just letting these guys do what they do. And this has just been something that I've been, you know, just tickled the death with the see the reception of it, to see the energy behind it,

the fact that we've already tapped into this network and got things going. So to see this being adopted, to see the network not only expand, and grow and infiltrate other networks that are out there in the best most peaceful way possible. To see that coming to the Bitcoin space with the fervor and the ferocity, the, you know, the, the, the, the spirit of a true warrior, you know, to see this coming, boy, it's just, it's one of those things that stirs, it's, it's, it's something to be, you know, it's not only, you know, bullish on, but proud of at the end of the day. And, you know, hats off to everybody. who's in the Bitcoin community. I know, you know, a lot of what we talk about on the veteran side is kind of glamorous and, you know, it gets, you know, it gets movies and stuff made. What doesn't get talked about a lot is the guys that are putting in the long, long hours in terms of coding,

in terms of putting together networks and things that, you know, are way above our heads. What we want to do is make sure that you guys are not only safe doing that. We want to make sure that you've got it protected, you know, space and network amongst the citadels and everything else we're setting up. So am I bullish on Bitcoin? Yeah, for a ton of reasons just within the Bitcoin veterans community alone. But as it expands into the rest of Bitcoin, I am super bullish. I love it, man. I don't want to tag in too much because I want the other gents to be able to comment.

But I just want to say one thing I think is super poetic is you're a group of guys that were thrust into this system like you said that propagates. perpetual war. And now the same group of guys is now championing a system that basically financially and peacefully prevents a system of perpetual war continuing to exist. So I think that's a unique perspective of it. You can't fund war forever if you can't print money and extort your populace, unbeknownst to them. And that's what Bitcoin gives us if we were to get on a Bitcoin standard. So let's go do that. Gentlemen, I'm going to let you guys pipe in here.

Whoever wants to dive in, Nicholas or British, whoever. Yeah, like one of the, I think that's amazing. It's the first time I've heard about this, the project that you're working on. I think that's phenomenal. I, one of the things that really pisses me off about my country is the way that we treat our military vets. And we don't have the same pride and the public pride that you guys have in America. But we have, you know, some of the stories that I hear, I've got a couple friends that used to be ex-special forces in the UK. And the type of stories that I hear about, you know, these guys are lucky.

They've made it out. They've made a transition and they've moved on with their careers, et cetera, et cetera. or the amount of guys that have done things to protect people that didn't even know that they were being protected. And now they end up either homeless or sleeping on families, couches and this, that and the other, it's absolutely sickening. And I wish, you know, if only that they knew that there is Bitcoin out there. And whenever they send their paycheck home, somebody can squirrel a little bit away into Bitcoin. And it's something that's independent of the system itself. You know, one of the stories, I don't know whether you guys know this, but the Iranian embassy in London was, there was a siege on there, right?

This was back in the late 80s, 90s, and basically a bunch of terrorists walked in, captured everyone and were refusing to let people out. They finally shot someone, and then the prime minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher, gave the sign for our special forces to deal with that. they went in, they killed every single person inside of 10 minutes that was causing a problem. On the way out, one of the guys, one of the terrorists came out, found his way out with people, right? And they were about to shoot him, but there was cameras. So they couldn't do that. Today, the Special Forces operator who went in there to deal with the situation, almost shot this guy, is struggling to get a home to live in from the government.

And the terrorist has done his time in the United Kingdom, has a government-funded house and lives on welfare. That pisses me off to a level that... I don't really talk about my patriotism too much, but I absolutely support our special forces and our military and everything else, that everything else that they're doing. I'm not stupid enough to think that my ability to sit in London somewhere cozy smoking a cigar, you know, doesn't come from someone laying in a ditch

waiting to do something that I wouldn't be able to do, right? I think there is, so I'm very, very happy to hear that and I'd love to support it in any way that I can. So let me know. Awesome. That's cool. Nicholas, I'd love to get your, you know, any thoughts, anything you want to toss in here. Yeah, first thing, Shenz, said that surprised me, that there is 50 million veterans in the United States, like that's 20% of the population. That seems to be a, did I understood quickly? That sounds to be a completely crazy. I think he said 15 or 16 million. 16. Oh, 16. Okay. So it's like 5% of the population. Okay. That's a lot. A lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow. I think that's a fantastic initiative. Yeah, I want to listen to some episodes. I'm hearing about this for the first time. Yeah. I mean, the things that related to me is I remember attending a bit block boom in 2020. That was in New Stone at the time. And like doing a conference in 2020, there was not so many people there.

I guess summer 2020. But a lot of the guys there was like ex-military. And I remember there was some of the most passionate people. And I discussed with a couple of veterans and it seems the more horror story they had, the more they were into Bitcoin. So I guess it's called it very well with what you're saying is that this is probably a population prime

to Bitcoin adoption for sure. Yeah, man. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting. I was seeing in the chat here, I'm losing the message now, but somebody who is saying how it's, it's crazy how Bitcoin is so many different things to so many people and appeals to groups that you would never, there we go, here it is. Also, what a great username. Can we just recommend? food in the cereal for a second. But nonetheless, Bitcoin is wild. It means so many different things to so many different people of all ages, racist nationalities, et cetera. How can one not be moved by the unity of trying to make a better future? And for somebody with a username of pooed in the cereal,

he can be very well-spoken. So thanks for that. Yeah, we don't see. Awesome. Well, Shane, I love this. again, it's such a cool group of people and like all the people in there

awesome too. Like I watched the veterans panel at Pacific and it was a blast and Mike wasn't there but I've met him and he's awesome. And yeah man, keep doing it. Keep doing what you're doing because I think it brings a lot of value to a lot of people. Yeah. And real quick, you know, real special if you guys don't know the guys out there,

Mike Cobart, Alex Stanzig, Jordan Gambrell, and Gabe Lord. Those guys are, you know, kind of the guys that, you know, we, we hand-selected and got together and picked for this for, you know, for a lot of reasons. But they are movers, they're shakers, you know, find them on. If you're out there in Bitcoin, you probably know who most of these guys are. Operation Libertos is the only one. That's Jordan. So if you want to go out there and follow those guys, they've got some great content.

BT or Bitcoin veterans on. on Twitter is where you can find those guys. And yeah, we appreciate all the help we can get. And we're looking at, you know, really helping you guys out too. So this is an amazing give, take type of relationship out there. Awesome. Well, that's great. And again, anybody that's interested, you know, all these guys, their Twitter handles

are in the show notes and you can find everything that they're doing from there. But yeah, I think what an awesome topic. I'm so glad you brought that up. I'm going to put a bow on this one so that we can get to everybody's topic. I'm going to toss it over to Nicholas. And same question goes to you, man. Why are you bullish? Take it away.

So many reasons. As I just said in the introduction, we did a conference last week called Adopting Bitcoin. And there was a couple of things that came out of the conference. The first one is I see someone in the chat, you know, G2O. I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly. Living in Berlin currently, I want to touch on this quickly. And I guess it's related to your story with this sessions about quoting local circular economy. So Berlin, El Salvador, not Berlin, Germany, is a town in El Salvador.

It's a small town in the mountain. It has very different characteristics that may be Bitcoin Beach, that more people know, or San Salvador, which is a capital city, it's a ton of about 25,000 people. It's like one hour from the cost. It's in altitude, so the temperature is much cooler than it is from the sea. And the project of creating a local circular economy there was created a couple of months ago. And now it's literally exploding. there is more than 80 merchants in the areas that accept Bitcoin, out of, I don't know, 150 or something.

So like in a couple of months, now half of the city is, however the merchant are on the Bitcoin, accepting Bitcoin. I would not say that in a stage where it's Bitcoin preferred yet, you know, for a lot of them, it's Bitcoin accepted. And, you know, it's Bitcoin accepted, Bitcoin preferred, and then Bitcoin only, right? the type of like steps. But I think what's very interesting to me is the speed at which now this type of initiative are going. Now we're talking about a few months to go from zero to having a couple bitconer, you know, go there and saying like, you know, it might be a good place to start something here.

And, you know, now there is about 15 people, 15 bitconers that moved there, like from, you know, foreigners that move to this place. And this place is actually a lot of, you know, people that want to live on a Bitcoin standard. And I think this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yeah, I'm actually very bullish about that. So I guess that's one of the reasons I'm bullish. And at the conference, that was a project where everybody was talking about. And there is like on Twitter there was a chart a couple of months ago where I guess

Andrew on our team makes this chart for there's like about 40 or 50 Bitcoin circular economies you know it was just like making a whiper yeah all that yeah and and the interesting thing but this project in Berlin was a project that everyone was talking about as a conference yeah and it was not on this board because this ball was quite like over the summer and you know the project was not even on under the order this time and so seeing that in a couple of months you know you can see such a high adoption in the city out of nowhere I think for me is is very appealing like you said it two months like a few months and it's just you know half the city behalf of half the the town yeah have the merchant I mean

to be fair you know I have the merchant doesn't mean it's south of the town. Because now you have to also convert the people that are not merchant and it takes a bit more time. But yeah, we're talking about, you know, the project starts over the summer, basically. I know we are entering the winter and almost like half of it. And maybe it would be, you know, one of the places where, okay, 100% of the merchant in six months, I said, Bitcoin next year. So that's one reason. But that was an aparthe.

I think the main reason, you know, that, you know, that, you know, that. We did an announcement last week. That actually is a reflection of the fact that we tried to onboard in El Salvador for the last two years, merchants to Bitcoin all over the country. And it's not easy. The main challenges, like if we look back,

El Salvador as adopting Bitcoin as to some extent the worst time ever. It was Q4 2021. It was at the time Bitcoin was at 60K. And this is why, you know, Buckel is, okay, we're going on the, you know, adding Bitcoin as a legal founder. And so a lot of the experience that merchants have had with Bitcoin is, you know, okay, I get some Bitcoin maybe from, from Kono or I bought some Bitcoin at this time and actually

lose money. So that's one of the issues that we are seeing is that. the adoption two years ago, you know, and the adoption today, like it had not materially improved. And so we have interviewed many merchants, Troy, turned to say, okay, why are not accepting Bitcoin, you know, what's the harder? And, you know, beyond the price dropping, you know, because they're on being on boarded as a, you know, when it was all the time high, and from here, you know, they've seen the savings that, you know, deteriorate. Another reason is that they say, like, Okay, look, if I'm having, let's say I'm a small chenda,

a chanda is a small merchant like a corner shop. And I'm receiving, I don't know, $2,000 per month. Let's say to keep it simple. And let's say 2% of, you know, 80%, 90% is in cash, 2% is in Bitcoin. Now I'm having like $40 per month. And the rate is that I cannot save those $40. I mean, I mean, some may, but you know,

So it is most, they don't have the financial capacity to be able to save those Bitcoin. And so what they need to do is, okay, I need to cash it out so that I can pay my bill, I can pay my supplier. And it's quite a thing for them more friction to accept Bitcoin versus not accepting Bitcoin because it's such a small percentage that they say, okay, I need to go to the ATM, maybe I need to pay a non-shane transaction, you know, maybe the ATM doesn't work, bit sort of cash. So you know what? After a few months, I'm like, it's my life would be easier if I stopped accepting Bitcoin. And so we really reflected on that and we said, I mean,

if you want to create a circular economy, we need to go to the next step, which is like, it's good to have those merchants accept Bitcoin. It's really step one. It's what you're doing. But now you need to go, those merchants need to pay this supplier in Bitcoin. Like this is the next step to create this circular economy. And so we have been able to work with a distributor Amorasan, which is a second distributor in El Salvador, to actually accept Bitcoin. And now this distributor is onboarding the merchants I work with

to receive payment in Bitcoin. And it's a distributor who, which has more than 40,000 merchant in El Salvador and Guatemala. And now they're saying, okay, we, so imagine, if you have 40,000 merchants, physical location, you need to collect cash on those 40,000 location, which is costing also a lot of money. So it's also a pain point, right?

And so we approach them by saying, you know what? Like if you accept, if you work with the merchants, and they accept Bitcoin over lightning, and now they can use digital payment, we can help your P&L, right? You can help inquire with your profit because you don't need, you will not need to visit all this location every week, right? And there is about, I think, 150 people that are dedicated to collecting cash. So it's costing a lot of money. And it seems to be, I think, a armor vehicle and all that. Like it's causing a significant line in their PNs.

And so now they are like they want to incentivize merchant to accept Bitcoin. And they actually, this distributor actually want to give a discount to the Tienda is they pay in Bitcoin because they understand that look, it will make their operation more profitable. And so we're doing a actually in Berlin, but also in San Salvador and in in a few other places. Right now we are experimenting, but the distributor is giving 5% discount if you if you pay in Bitcoin versus zero if you pay in cash, right? I know it's becoming like this Bitcoin accepted here to Bitcoin preferred because now like,

you know what? Like if I get to acquire Bitcoin over the month and I can pay my billion Bitcoin, I get a discount for that. And it's better to get Bitcoin versus cash. And so I think this is such a bullish initiative. I'm very excited about this. We'll see where this go over the next. year, like we just started, you know, couple of months ago.

But I'm, yeah, I think this is a great, um, a great step for Bitcoin adoption in Sado. Yeah. I love the, again, the breakdown of, uh, you know, Bitcoin accepted, Bitcoin preferred, uh, Bitcoin only. I like that. And I also, again, like the point that you drove home around at the end of the day. If, if, if this is their method of being able to accept digital payments, that That also allows them, you know, if they prefer to be in dollars and that still gives them that, you know, they still get to use the network and then, and then gradually understand maybe that long-term Bitcoin is a good savings mechanism if they can do that. If it's if it's cutting down on their costs as is, then I mean, that's that's a wonderful thing in and of itself.

Like I think I think what we may see even just globally in general is that people will want to incentivize others to pay them in Bitcoin first. That'll probably be the first thing that you see in general where people say Bitcoin preferred. And they may even say, oh, 5% discount if you pay in Bitcoin, 10% Bitcoin discount. You may get instances like that, you know. And even I just did that the other day. So like when I booked my one-on-one sessions with people, I bumped up my PayPal charge because PayPal scrapes away a whole bunch of money every time I get paid. So I was like, all right, well, I'll just up my fee whenever I accept Fiat.

And then if you're going to pay me in Bitcoin, it'll be, you know, it'll be reduced by X percent. I think we'll probably see that more gradually as as people kind of understand some of the benefits there. But I'm curious to get your, you guys, your thoughts in and around this as well. Yeah, I think that adoption growing is extremely important. I'm proud to see the work. It's not the main message that I focus on because it's not the audience that I'm speaking to. But I love the work that's going on to allow more people to seamlessly integrate Bitcoin into their business operations and everything that they're doing.

I said this on a YouTube video that, you know, rich people need Bitcoin more than poor people, but poor people need Bitcoin adoption more than rich people. And I think that's what, you know, people are doing and spending their life and their time on. And what's more better than that? That's a beautiful thing about Bitcoin, right? You can come from any perspective that you're in and you can add value to what Bitcoin is. It's absolutely magical. And I highly commend everyone who is working to help.

more people utilize Bitcoin as a transaction tool because it then breaks them free. Well, forget breaks them free as a capitalist. It puts people into the capitalist economy, right? People that didn't have a chance to scale their capitalism. It allows them to have a fully scalable capitalist opportunity in the world. And there's nothing better than giving someone the opportunity to make something of their life. And that's what, you know, Nicola. this is doing and what everyone else is doing. And I think it's absolutely fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And you're right. Bitcoin is a lot of different things to different people. And I just want to address one thing that I saw in the chat. Somebody said, stop using PayPal as soon as possible.

Believe me, it's not by choice. It's literally the only, because I get a lot of people that are very new to Bitcoin to the point where they don't even know how to send it yet. And so when I get those people if they're not in Canada, there's no easy way to accept payment from them. And yeah, at the end of the day, who knows? I never leave money in PayPal. Like, it's in and it's out immediately. So no, PayPal will never get a dime of my money other than perhaps one payment, one time, and then they'll never be used again. So yeah, don't worry. I'm sure they'll get me at some point. I'll say something about central banks, and that will be it for me. I'll be cut off. But nonetheless, yes, PayPal sucks. With that, Shane, I'm curious your thoughts here as well.

Yeah, this upgrade in the human species communication protocol is one of those things that I just, I always love seeing how it gets applied in different ways. This incentive structure, this positive incentive structure that is reinforced in the Bitcoin community is one of those things. where, you know, Nicholas, when you were talking about incentivizing people to use Bitcoin over Fiat and to stop with the, you know, the old rails and get into something that is newer for them. And you're cutting down on something that I think is very hard for a lot of people to wrap their minds around. And it's a friction point is if you guys are removing friction points through a positive incentive structure, this is something that goes a long way in terms of building community at your local level like

you know like ben's doing up in calgary like to be able to have this all taking place and to see how it works and how you know especially you guys that are coding a lot of this uh this incentive structure if you just kind of you know lean into what bitcoin is and you start to really understand like look you know there is a positive incentive structure how How are we going to apply this at a market or in our own lives? You start to see how you're doing this. And just an amazing job going into this market that is El Salvador. And if anybody's really looking at how amazing it is, you look at Buckele's running for reelection again.

Right. Or I should say he's running for. for re-election. And the fact that this country is doing as well as it is, is because of guys like Nicholas, you know, guys that are going out there and cutting down on the friction, helping adoption, helping people to actually use this in a practical way within their local communities. There's nothing that can be, there's nothing more important than this kind of work. Because what you're doing is you're taking, you know, these people who were unbanked, these people who were subject to this this fiat standard, especially, you know, being wrecked by

American, you know, money printing. And you're writing that for the first time in, in our history as, as, you know, as, you know, here in the States, but really as the first time as a global community, you're able to write the ship by just cutting down on friction points in a positive incentive structure that is the basic human, you know, protocol for communication. That is an amazing thing to be able to say is like, you know, Buceli and El Salvador is being more and more successful because of what you were doing and adding to this. And that means, you know, like, yes, the country's great and the fact that they've adopted Bitcoin and they're moving along. But really the touch point is those people who are for the first time not thinking about fleeing a country that are not worried about the gangs and the, the violence. that was there.

And the people that are repatriating, the first time for a long time, that people from El Salvador are coming back to El Salvador and saying, listen, my future is brighter here than anywhere else. And I can do more things because of people like Nicholas that are creating a, you know, a much easier way to transact in Bitcoin.

So, man, bravo, Nicholas. Just amazing job. Indeed. Thanks. I just want to take a minute to respond to, which you showed all about. I know that in the UK, it's, you know, payment

is not something that you may be thinking too much about. But the reason I think it's quite important, if you think about the game theory about Bitcoin. And BTC said about this with a swan, right? And the idea of, OK, you know, in the US, It seems that if you want to use Bitcoin in some ways, like, you know, the bank would not be happy about it. What you see is that, you know, they at some point, not today, I mean, at least not in a very frontal way, maybe it's subtle, right? But there is the idea that, hey, you know, this on-wamp, maybe closing door, right?

maybe the off-wamp also. And what this means is that if you have no way to being un-wamp and off-wamp, but if you have a way to use Bitcoin, it doesn't matter, right? Like you can just, like if you're living in a country where you can just pay everything in Bitcoin, you don't need us on-warp and off-wamp, right? And building this payment system really make it that Bitcoin can live its own life, even if at some point there is the place where you can buy Bitcoin or the place you can buy or sell Bitcoin are no longer available.

And I think it's very important to understand how we know, and I know it's a meme to some extent, but the fact that you can buy Bitcoin with a coffee make Bitcoin stronger, right? Because if a lot of people can buy Bitcoin, can pay coffee with Bitcoin or do stuff with a Bitcoin, it's make Bitcoin stronger. And I think it's something that is very not very well understood for people that focus solely on the number go up. Not to say it's not important. I think it's key, and it's how you get a lot of people, especially in Europe, in America, to get into Bitcoin number go up is the way you get started.

The way you get most interested. But the US Bitcoin is equally important if you really think to the game series. Yeah, I see your point. It's just, you know, with a country like the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA, etc., etc., everything you're saying makes sense in a country like El Salvador, where they've basically passed a law to state that there's no transaction cost, i.e. a tax on Bitcoin. But in the United Kingdom, until you remove the tax on Bitcoin, there is no incentive to use it as a transaction tool because you have a tax liability every single time you use it. So while it makes sense for certain small countries like El Salvador to do that, it absolutely makes zero sense for anyone in the United Kingdom to do that. The cost of accounting for it, it will surpass the benefit and the feel good that you get from transacting with it.

While I agree, every transaction that happens on Bitcoin makes Bitcoin stronger. From my perspective, for the majority of the world where we're, oh, majority of the developed, world where we're at is we're at the store of value point right now. Once we surpass the store of value point, we will then get to a point where countries, a big G20 nation, will turn around and say, okay, we're going to remove the taxes from Bitcoin. And at that point, you start turning it into a transaction tool and it can catch on fire. But up until now, I mean, what's El Salvador's economy? And from a grant, it's a great, it's a great project, but you have to remember the U.S. dollar is still the reserve currency of El Salvador. Bitcoin is, you can spend Bitcoin referenced in U.S.

dollars, right? You're not referencing it in Satoshi's. That's extremely important to remember from a financial, from a financial world perspective. So when El Salvador turns around and takes it to the next level, that will be an important step, because that will be the real proof point that can you actually break away from the U.S. dollar system or not. And then secondly, when a G20, country removes the taxes on Bitcoin to be able to use it as a transaction tool, that will happen then, right? Up until then, it's amazing. It's unbelievable what's going on in El Salvador, but a lot more things have to happen for it to be, for that work that you guys are doing, which is so important to be relevant and catch on fire everywhere else in the world.

The thing that I would love to see happen is if somebody were to do those podcasting apps where you stream sats and you listen and you literally pay X number of sats per minute and just have like if you could, if there's some accounting software that will track all of that. and the tiny like fractions of a penny that you're spending every single time listening to a podcast so that you're not getting totally screwed on it or anything. But then print it and send that in and then they can deal with the paperwork. If that's how stingy they want to get with it, you know, give them some extra paperwork to deal with in the meantime. I think that'd be fun. That would be hilarious.

It's unfortunate that we're actually going to get AI tools like the inland revenue. in the United Kingdom is now working to a point where they've got AI tools to figure out your taxes. That's why I don't live in the UK, right? It doesn't make sense. As a UK citizen, I'm taxed on my residency, not on my citizenship, unlike, and just like, just like in Canada, right? Unlike, sorry, Shane, for the Americans out there, you're taxed on your passport, unfortunately.

Yeah, all of these tools are coming out. It's going to get tougher and tougher. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, Shane, I got to say. say it's little crazy that Uncle Sam will follow you guys to the ends of the earth. You're like one of the only two, I think there's two nations on earth that will do that. They've become the wild girlfriend, right? And that's the thing is they're desperate.

And I think that's another case to be bullish. You know, I'm not going to monopolize any more time. But it's one of those things where when you see absolutely just how flawed this damn system is, especially here in America that has the reserve currency of the world, that's imploding, by the way, to see how desperate they are to make a couple of sense here or there, whatever it is by exploiting people that are poor, people that are dwindlingly in the middle class,

the fact that that's where they're at, the fact that they're going to chase down people that are working on Bitcoin and everything else, hey, good job, guys, like amazing. The fact that they're this desperate, it's a good sign, you know, and we're doing it without firing a shot. So more power.

I love it. All right. So gentlemen, I'm going to put a bow on this topic as well. And we're going to move on to our final one. And I'll just, I'll just cue it up right away. British,

I'm going to you. And I'm going to ask the same question as everybody. Why are you bullish? So I was reading in the comments and someone said, see what's not happening on this stream right now is Fiat bullishness. So I guess that's what you kept me love. because that's my world. So now we can get into the greedy side of people's lives

and realize that the one thing I'm bullish about today, it just happened as we, like a couple hours before we got on the stream, is the fact that the SEC has written to all of these ETF suppliers and ask them to basically make the application, the ETF, a cash creates ETF. That is the smartest move that the SEC has done to rid fraud from the Bitcoin space so far. And all of these doom and gloom boomers are out here on Twitter and everywhere

talking shit about this thing, trying to say this is going to be ripe for manipulation, all this other stuff. This is the smartest move that the SEC has made. And the fact that they actually went out there and have told people this, ETF is coming. ETF is coming. And what that makes, listen, again, I'll say it again. the people that I'm talking to, I think there's a lot of people

that are doing a lot of great work caring for all of the poor people in the world. I care for the rich people, right? I'm here to help the people that might not, I'm not talking about multi-billionaires, I'm talking about your parents, my parents, who have got a couple million dollar portfolio,

and they're rich, right? They might not want to admit it because it sounds douchey, but they're rich. And those people who are sitting there going, I've built all this wealth, and I don't know where this is going to end up. I'm getting to the end of my life and I'm having to downsize

when because of the work I've done, I should be upsizing my life, right? That's who I'm talking to. And for those people, the ETF is coming and that's extremely bullish. And what the SEC did today, what they've been doing for the last few days is absolutely bush.

It tells me that an ETF, it's on the way at this point. They're actually telling these people how to, I mean, basically, there's two types of ETFs, right? One is a cash create ETF, and this is just a mechanism of acquiring the asset when you actually, when shares are bought. And the other one is an in-kind ETF, right? The cash creates ETF is very simple. What they've basically instructed them to do is say, the authorized party on the application has to take that cash and send it to the ETF provider who then has to go out into the market and actually acquire the Bitcoin. The other way to do it when you're dealing with equities and everything else is you say, okay, I have.

I already have a bunch of these and I'm just going to send you the equities. So now the authorized party can be responsible for acquiring the underlying asset. You don't want to do that because imagine someone, you buy some shares of a Bitcoin ETF and whoever the authorized party is goes outside of the bounds of the United States regulatory like the environment and buys Bitcoin from somewhere in Hong Kong that's been attached to terrorist financing and all this other stuff. Right. So what the SEC's done here is extremely smart.

They've said, we want to cash create ETF, which means that the ETF provider is responsible for acquiring the Bitcoin. They must receive the cash. Then they must go to their stated acquiring partners, which is going to be like Fidelity, Coinbase, et cetera, et cetera. And those U.S. regulated entities must acquire that Bitcoin in a regulated fashion. This is extremely bullish today. So that's what I'm bullish on today. There's a bunch of other reasons. I'm more bullish listening to you guys as well, right?

So we can talk about all of it. But the ETF is coming. People need to understand what this is going to do to price. And anyone who's sitting around here, high-fiving happy hippies thinking that they're taking part and not getting to one Bitcoin is going to miss out. And they're going to miss out. And they'll never be able to get it again.

We can all talk about the happy horse shit, right? But my dad went to, my dad immigrated to London, bought a bunch of properties. etc, et cetera, et cetera. I can't buy the same properties again, but I can buy properties. With Bitcoin, my children and my grandchildren will never, ever be able to buy the same amount of Bitcoin because it's a international asset. It's not like properties where if I miss the capital, the best area in London, I can go to the best area in New York and still buy properties, right? Or whatever the up-and-coming space is. Bitcoin is international.

It's everywhere and nowhere at the exact same time. And if you don't get to one Bitcoin, your children and their children are going to curse you out while you're dead. Because they will never ever, outside of a miracle, they will never ever be able to acquire the amount of Bitcoin that you can acquire today. So focus on what's actually important for your progeny, which is getting as much of the hardest asset humanity is ever known under your belt. And the fact that the SEC did this today means that your time is, it's bullish and it should be scaring the shit out of you because it means that your time is running out. And that's extremely important. And that's why I'm bullish. I love it.

I have a question for you. How? So in the context of this, it's basically saying like, you know, we we need you do to obtain the Bitcoin in a way where we can actually check that you've obtained it. And then it's right. there. And so in your opinion, how difficult is, is it for the legacy financial system and for some of these entities to get cute with it and do some weird rehypothecation? Is that exceedingly difficult? It's extremely difficult. Is it possible? Absolutely. Because it's always, if you have a mortgage on your house, you're re-hypothicating your house. So it is possible,

but it's extremely difficult. The first thing is the United States has a law, which means that only 140% of the assets, you can only re-hypothecate up to 140%. So everyone's trying to say you can print an unlimited amount of papers. They're just an idiot, right? It's a thousand dollar net worth they're talking. So the US has the single best regulation

for financial products anywhere in the world. That is why the entire world is waiting for US markets to accept this, waiting for the SEC to approve this. So it is absolutely possible for people to get cute. But just like the GLD ETF, where everyone goes on about JPMorgan doing this, that and the other to GLD and SLV, the biggest lawsuit they've ever had is for something called spoofing. Spoofing basically means they go into the market. If the price is $2,000, they'll place some orders on either side of that $2,000.

As the price moves up to that or down to that, they'll close their orders. That's it. So everyone talking about gold and silver manipulation through the ETS is just a moron. You don't understand how financial markets work. The manipulation, if you want to call it that, happens through the futures markets. And we've had Bitcoin futures markets for years. So the ETF coming in is actually going to bring more capital into the market. It's going to lower the cost of acquiring the Bitcoin, and Bitcoin's already at a low cost of acquisition anyway.

But more capital coming in brings more eyeables to the space. lowers fraud in the space. This is absolutely bullish for Bitcoin. And in your opinion, the fact that we've only had futures and not spot for the last little bit, have we been kind of getting screwed in that way? Absolutely disgusting. It's absolutely disgusting. And there is no reason.

Well, then again, I say there's no reason, right? But look what happened with FTX, right? Gary Gensler said it himself. I want to clean up what's going on before any of these tools get. exposed to the world. And the futures, he knows who's going to be using futures. There's not that many retail clients using futures. There's a lot of retail clients using spot ETS. So they had to clean up the world, basically, before they got into, you know, before they got into approving a spot Bitcoin ETF. And that's what he's done. And now with this move, this move tells me,

the one today tells me that the SEC fully understands exactly where the fraud might occur in the Bitcoin space. And they're plugging the holes. And this is extremely bullish. Interesting. The one thing I wanted to say in around this and I'll get the other gentleman's perspectives on this is the beautiful thing about Bitcoin in and around, as I guess we're affirming it, if people get cute, is Bitcoin is probably one of the best tools to show

people the FAFO rule, which is the fuck around and find out rule. If you fuck around with Bitcoin and you try to get cute with it, because you can audit it 24-7, because you can demand instant delivery, all of these things about Bitcoin, and because it's fixed supply and there's no backstop, there's no buddy to bail you out, that's why we've seen these failures happen so quickly. And they've happened again and again at a larger and larger level. That's why FTCS could only string it along for so long, bullshitting their way through buying and obtaining Bitcoin for people who thought they own Bitcoin is because at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding.

And when there's no Bitcoin there, you can't fake that. You can't fake that for long before people figure it out. And so if anybody gets cute at those higher echelons, they're going to find out. I just wanted to, you know, say like, you might hear some thunder in the background here, but I wanted to say, you know, any company that is going to be offering leverage on a Bitcoin product, like let's say BlackRock, right, their I-Share's team says, hey, why don't we do some, why don't we do some, like, as you said, cute things with this asset? Their risk analyst, like people on Twitter really think that BlackRock doesn't have a smart team of people

that understand what this asset is, right? Everyone thinks on Twitter that Twitter is smarter than BlackRock in terms of risk analysis and volatility. You guys, like, I don't understand it. They have, I guarantee you, a couple hundred nerds whose life it is to sit there and analyze what would happen to their portfolio every cent by cent movement to the Bitcoin price based on the sharp ratios and everything else that they've calculated. You don't think people don't think that they've done this before they decide to open up an ETF. So there, anyone who's trying to offer any of these cute leverage opportunities to, to people with an ETF, you're going to like, there's, there will be people in place to go, stop being stupid because the risk is just not worth it. They have it with every other asset.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm going to let the other gentleman chime in here. Do you guys have anything that you wanted to add in or ask or whatever? Yeah, the question is, I guess, there's actually two of them. First and foremost, because, you know, we know Gensler's been in this for a long time. Like he's been talking about this since his MIT days. He knows very well what Bitcoin is. Do you think this is more of a matter of fact of Gensler is kind of slow rolling this to decompress the spring that is Bitcoin.

I mean, in terms of really watching the amount of capital flow that's coming out of institutions into the Bitcoin space, do you think he's tried to slow roll this as long as possible to prevent a massive unwinding quickly? I actually, if that's his goal, he's doing a terrible job at it, because every day that goes by, there's more and more interest. I'm sure you guys are noticing it at Swan, right? Like, there's every single day that goes by during this. bare market, shit coins have been assassinated, right? All of this rhetoric around foreign exchanges have been assassinated. Bitcoin's a mainstream asset. It's spoken about on CNBC almost every single damn day. Now you've got BlackRock coming out and putting their name behind it.

It's just, it is now an institutional asset. So if he's been trying to do that, he's doing a terrible job. For me, the way I look at it is the spring is just getting tighter and tighter and tighter. I guess the second part of that question is, is we kind of saw some things come out, which I think a lot of us suspected with the FTCS trial out there. Sandbank print freed and the rest of those guys were, I guess, in support of suppressing the price by kind of slow bleeding a lot of what was going on with, you know, them selling Bitcoin into the market. Do you think the same thing is going on with finance? Listen, let's put it like this. Let's get into my conspiracy theory, 10-4-ha-days, right? I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but let me ask you a question, right?

If you were the United States of America and you're the person in charge of controlling this $900 trillion empire, right? Do you really want money flowing to a Chinese controlled exchange? I don't. If that's my empire to protect, I don't want money flowing through a Chinese controlled exchange. Let's pretend we have a Muppet for a president and the rest of the administration that it's ready to sell America right down the damn to. You're a military guy, so you know that the president is just a puppet master. Like, he's just a puppet, right? So at the end of the day, you know, like, if anything, give me your perspective on this.

I actually think Biden, when it comes to the semiconductors, was much tougher on China than Trump was. And I'm a Trump guy. I was wearing a Make America Great Again in London in the first election. And I'm not even, my vote doesn't even matter, right? That's how much of a Trump guy I was. So, like, I think Biden's been tougher. Biden signed an executive order and said, if you're an American working for a Chinese semiconductor company from this day, if you don't quit, we will take your passport.

That's, that's balsy, right? And obviously, we all know Biden didn't do that, right? We know this, okay? So if Biden didn't do that, I don't think he's in China. of what happens to Binance. I think there's a group of people in place that are extremely competent that are managing a $900 trillion empire where 85% of every transaction the world goes through the U.S. dollar. I think they know exactly what's going on. I think all of these things will be a setup. Just like FTX blowing up. FTX blowing up, you know, people, people I heard

some stupid shit like, what if the ETF is going to do what FTX was doing? It's like, you've got to be an absolute moron to think that. They were literally illegally selling assets out from one of their clients into the market to suppress the price of Bitcoin. That does not happen with US products. Yeah. Well, I want to, I don't know, Nicholas, if you have anything to tag in here, anything to add, anything that you wanted to say. Yeah. Final thoughts. Quick question. Two, two thoughts, actually. I mean, for me, the thing that would make me bullish on ETF is if there is some kind of proof of whether of. I think that's the most important thing. If we don't have this, like, for me, the fact it's cash or like in kind, I don't think it matters. Like, because

I mean, in kind, like, if you can contribute Bitcoin to get a Bitcoin ETF, first, I think why would you want to do that? I think there is no reason. Except maybe GBTC, right, like a grey scale with 600,000 Bitcoin, maybe it means that they won't be able to convert to ETF? I'm not too sure. I'm not into this. You've got good question.

Let me just handle them one at a time because they're in-depth and complicated as well. So in terms of proof of reserves, ETF has to put out their audits, right? That has to be there. And it's always audited by third parties that are licensed to audit,

et cetera, et cetera. So that part is always there. as far as one Bitcoin equaling one Bitcoin, I completely agree with you, right? But when you're dealing with a financial system, you've got to make sure you haven't got Bitcoin that's been touched by, you know, I don't know, terrorist financing or other companies or stolen Bitcoin or this, that and the other. And that's why they want it purchased, you know, purview of the United States. Cool. Sorry, did it? Yeah, we're still here.

Everybody's still here, right? Yeah. Okay, cool. We just had a little chop or I had a little chop on my end. Awesome. Okay. Are there any, before we kind of round out to any final thoughts for everybody, are there any other things that anybody wanted to touch on in the ETF vein or in this general vein before I go to final thoughts? Get your position now. Don't wait. What are you doing?

Actually, if anything British, I might have you give your, what I would say is excellent advice. What would the piece of advice that you give people be? Listen, there's only three rules to Bitcoin, right? It's step number one, you buy Bitcoin. Step number two, shut the fuck up. And step number three, you get fabulously wealthy. That's it. And everyone's fucking it up.

That's it. That's how simple this shit is and everyone's messing it up. Think about it. Why are we on the live YouTube to talk about it? I love it. All right. Awesome. Okay.

So gentlemen, the way I like to round out every show is just do a quick round of any final thought that you may have, anything that you didn't get off or anything you want to summarize that you previously said. But number two is recommendations. And when I say recommendations, what I mean is. It can be a variety of things. It could be maybe you read a book or you listened to a podcast or saw a video that you really liked. Maybe there's an app that you're using that you really like, a device that you really like,

or maybe there's a piece of a life advice or something that you think people would value from you that you think people should go out and do. So I will give final thoughts and a recommendation first, and then I'll go down the line and get you guys. So number one, final thoughts. I mean, I'm super excited the eclectic mix that we have here, right? And it just goes to show that Bitcoin doesn't just appeal to one group of people. It appeals to people from all walks of life everywhere. And one of the unique things that I've noticed is that I think it has,

It has gone to, in terms of wealth, it has gone to the outer fringes on both edges and is working its way in. And what I mean is you have people that are kind of some of the most either impoverished or separated from the traditional financial system and cut off that are recognizing Bitcoin as a tool that can help them. And then you have people at the other far end whose job it is to preserve purchasing power and protect capital that are also recognizing that Bitcoin is an excellent tool for them to do so. And it's working its way inwards to that middle class. And there's the libertarians

and the cypherpunks and the weirdos in the middle that have figured it out maybe a little bit early than the rest. But those unique kind of separate fringes of people are in a unique position to understand it perhaps first. My recommendation to everybody, number one, if you're in Calgary, you need to reach out to me and you need to be at the Saturday Sat Market next month. It is December 16th. It'll be in the morning through the early afternoon. We will have forthcoming information on the venue.

But if you are a vendor that wants to be there and loves the idea of earning some SATs for what you do, please reach out to me. If you're a person that just wants to come, then please just come. And you can find it two places. Number one would be on the Orange Pill app. So if you're in and around Calgary, just look at the events page and you'll be able to see it. It looks, and I'm just going to show it really quick, it looks a whole bunch like this, but it'll be on your phone.

Same deal. So just go there and check it out. And that'll give you information. I'll update it as we have it. And the other place that you can go is if you're not currently on the OrangePill app, you can also go to meetup.com. and you can search it out there. It's called the Saturday Sat Market,

and you can see that it's hosted by me. And so you'll be able to say that you're coming there as well and make your way down. And then thirdly, you can reach out to me via email, and you can shoot me an email at contact at bTCSessions.ca. Got the Canadian flare there. So, yeah, contact at btc sessions.com. And let me know that you want to be involved.

and anybody that wants to volunteer or help in any capacity, I'd love to have you because this is a group effort. And yeah, let's make it happen. So I'll leave that there. I'm going to toss it to Shane. Shane, final thoughts, recommendations? What do you got? Oh, there's so much.

Here we go. All right. So first and foremost, I just can't thank Ben enough for having all of us on and everything you're doing. If you guys aren't following, if you are on YouTube, or Twitter or any of these other places. Go smash the like button, smash the follow button, and follow Ben.

Like, Ben's on a mission. And I'm going to tell you right now, like, Ben, I don't know if you're, if you're ready for, you know, the bigger picture here in terms of what you're going to mean

to humanity in terms of history. Ben's going to be that guy that a lot of people study and they go back in time and they say, dude, look at this guy with his, you know, his bleach tip that just has laid it out for all of the cavemen transitioning from the fiat world into the bitcoin world and i think that's going to go a long

way like you're going to be studied in history so go out there smash and follow all that kind of stuff um i am the some of the stuff that's going on in terms of what i i guess love in in this space um the people that are that are moving the people that are taking action the people that are that are figuring out as they go along and giving you know they're they're two they're two bucks to the right like go out and continue to do that kind of stuff um the the guys from cold card um i got to tell you the guys that i work with over at swan um if if you are looking for a a place to work work in your community work at changing the lives of the people who are closest to you you know if you know the good people that are that are out there that you've had common experiences with that are you know

salt to the earth, get up and just, you know, try to be the best person they can on a daily basis. Go change their lives. Take some time out of your, out of your busy schedule and change somebody's life, you know, whether it's four years, 10 years, how many every years from now? They're going to remember you. Their kids are going to remember you. That's the thing that's, that's important, I think, in this space. And so outside of that, guys, I'm just privileged to be here. Ben, thanks again for having me on, man. And Nicholas and British, man. Thank you, for being here as well. It's been a real pleasure hanging out and talking, you know, hats off to you. Thanks again, Ben. Yeah, man. That was, thank you for that. And you're too

kind. I appreciate it. But, you know, I have the luxury of standing on the shoulders of giants with a bunch of other people that came before. So, you know, just happy to have everybody here and keep at it, I guess. But I'm going to toss it to Nicholas as well. Dude, any final thoughts, recommendations that you may have. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, Shane already said it, but I think the education from BITCation are awesome, thinking about self-custody. I think it's a great resources. On our end, we have quite a bit of resources on building local communities. So if you want to learn about that, go to galore.com.

or blink.sv. Yeah, and if you have not used lightning yet, you know, try blink. I guess this is a way we're building. You should try to see that it works. It's just better than, you know, lightning is better than any other payment system, I believe. It's ready for prime time. So if you're not educated with lightning, yeah, go get twang it out.

Awesome. I love it. Yeah, you got to get on the lightning train. You got to educate yourself. I think it's always good to be privy to the tools that are out there before you absolutely need them and you're scrambling to learn them, right? It's better to be prepared. And there's always going to be a degree to which you're not fully prepared. But if you start now, you'll be far better off.

Yeah, we'll toss it down the line to British. You get the final word, my friend. Any final thoughts, recommendations? Go ahead. Firstly, I want to echo everything that Shane said about you. I think everyone should be subscribed to your channel. on to understand how they should protect their Bitcoin. I think it basically if Ben doesn't like it, I don't give a shit about it.

That's my attitude. So if if Ben ever says that your product is shit, like it will just disappear from my consciousness in three seconds. So that's how powerful Ben is in my mind. I don't know about everyone else is. But that's where I hold you. That's where I learned my stuff from, right? So I want to echo everything here to say, secondly, look, you guys already know, everyone

is watching this, you know, if you haven't understood by. now that you need to take the time to understand Bitcoin, there's nothing more I can say. So the one thing that I want to leave, there's the last thing that I want to say is this. One of the most powerful questions that I have ever asked myself is what do I want the last 10 years of my life to look like? And I think that's extremely important because then it starts focusing your North Star. Now, you might change it and adapt it, but I think, you know, having a North Star is extremely important. So I want everyone who's sitting here, you know, either has Bitcoin, going to learn about

Bitcoin, thinks Bitcoin stupid, whatever it is, to focus on what do you, like, figure out exactly what you want the last 10 years of your life to look like and then work backwards in creating whatever you want to create for that last 10 years and make it look the way that you want it to look. That's the most important thing. My perspectives, everyone else on this show's perspectives are irrelevant. What do you want your life to look like and what do you need to do in order to get there? And ultimately, just stop wasting time. If you're a bitcoiner and you're not getting, you haven't gotten to at least one Bitcoin yet and you know you're slacking, you don't even need me to tell you. You look at yourself deep in your own eyes every morning in the mirror and you know you're

fucking up because you haven't gotten to one Bitcoin yet. You know, get to that one Bitcoin. because if you don't, you know, it's not going to be you that regrets it, right? It's not going to be you that's not going to be you that's disappointed. It's going to be your progeny that's disappointed. And that's the worst. I can't imagine anything worse than that. So, yeah, and ultimately there's only three rules to Bitcoin. Step number one, you buy Bitcoin.

Step number two, you shut the fuck up. And step number three, you get fabulously wealthy. I love it. What a great way to cap off the show. Gentlemen, I appreciate all of you. What a fantastic rip this was. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Everybody watching all of these guys, their handles are in these show notes.

So please go give them a follow and you can find everything you're doing that they're up to from there. But guys, thank you so much for your time this evening. I appreciate you all. Cheers, guys. Have a good one. All right. And everybody watching, thank you so much for being here. As always, I'll throw it out there one last time.

Hit that like button if you have not already. It's just below the screen here. That would be a huge solid for me. You can also share this wherever you may be, subscribe to the channel. I'm on the crusade to 100K subscribers. I've set a goal for myself by the end of 2024. I want to be there. So if you can help me in that journey, that would be huge.

Thank you guys so much already. Everybody in the chat, you guys were killing it today. It was just messages flying left, right, and center. So thank you for that. I really do appreciate it. If you want to help the show in another way, of course, You can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors there in the show notes down below. Those are, do I have them up here?

Yeah, those are hoddle, hoddle, coin kite, Ced, or Nunchai, I can start nine. They're all down below. And then lastly, if you need some help, if you're working through your Bitcoin education, you're learning self-custy, maybe you're diving to multisic or lightning or your node or privacy tools, whatever it may be. You can hit me up there is a QR code on the screen right now, which you can scan. That'll take you directly to a website where you can book me for one-on-one sessions. super easy to do.

And yeah, I can handhold you through. Of course, all of the content is free online. So of course, please do go check out the free videos. I think it's very important that all that education be free and accessible to everybody. But if you do need some handholding, then I'm always here. If you're listening to this on the pod and you can't scan the QR, it's just BTCSessions.ca, and you'll find me there. Anyways, guys, with that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening.

wherever you may be. And I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.