BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Tomer, Walton, Obi, Gigi ep194

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

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Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's going on everybody? Welcome to another edition of Why Are We Bullish. I am still on the road. I'm here in Greece, specifically the island of Zacanthos, and I've got a killer panel. Very excited to have everybody on this evening. Of course, please do hit like, subscribe, share. All of those things really help get this content in front of more eyeballs.

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And finally, if you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet, get that backup. up in solid steel. I have heard horror stories in the past where people leave it in paper and you know, you open yourself up to fire damage, water damage, or somebody just discarding it because they don't know what it is. Steel helps mitigate those risks. So be sure to check out the billfall over at privacyprose.io. Enough of my rambling. Let's bring in our panel. All right, Welcome everybody to another episode of Why Are We Bullish. I am still on the road here in Greece. I'm in Zackenthos this week.

And because of my locale, I'm able to get a different set of guests from this side of the pond on the show. And I'm very excited to have my panelists this week. We're going to go down the line, get some intros here, and then we'll dive into our reason for being bullish. So let's start with Obi. Obie, let people know who you are. and what you do. Hey, my name's Obey. I'm the CEO and co-founder of CoinFloor,

the UK's longest running Bitcoin exchange. Awesome. That's exciting. Nice and simple. And Obey, I think, tell me the exchange. Did you guys, you guys kind of got some press like a while back for some. I don't know if you want to briefly mention that too. So, people's one with the longest running exchange.

do provable solvency, proof of reserves. And I think just last week, Bitmex said they're going to do it as well. So that's really good. We're really happy about that. Second thing, a couple of years ago, after a lot of internal conversations and battles, we went back to being Bitcoin only. So we ignored all of the all of the all coins and shit coins

and all of that sort of stuff and went back to Bitcoin only. Best decision ever made. And we're really excited. And then most recently, we just launched our own mobile app and for dollar cost averaging, if you dollar cost average regularly, you go down to zero fees. So we're trying to incentivize dollar cost averaging behavior for people. So excited about all of those things. Fucking A, that's awesome.

Let's keep it rolling then. Tomer, let people know who you are, what you do. Sure. I'm actually from the other side of the pond. I'm from Canada. For the most part, I write about Bitcoin. I have a medium site. I write almost exclusively about Bitcoin.

I wrote one article, which was a takedown of Ethereum, which turned out to be the one popular article I've ever written. I've shared that quite a few times. It went bonkers. So that was great. And it made me enthusiastic about seeing how many people share the same views about Bitcoin and the altcoins that don't, match any of its features. I also, I edit and write for a premium newsletter that, or research report

that Swan Bitcoin puts out. I've been doing that for a couple months, which is new. And that's really it. I write a lot about Bitcoin. I care a lot about it. I've been involved since 2013 and thinking for eight years and then decided to start writing it earlier this year. Inspired by people like Gigi, who's another guest on the show. Awesome. Great. Well, with that said, Let's move down the line to Jordan. I mean, Russell, I mean, Gigi. Let people know who you are, what you do. Yeah, hey, thanks for having me again.

Well, I simply write words and code for Bitcoin. That's what I do. And I'm currently writing code for CT. And so I'm basically in Norway, even though that's not true. I'm in Austria. So I also like to say that's not true because I'm on the internet. That's how it feels. and yeah i've been doing this for the last couple of years and i think you know bitcoin won't go away

so i guess i'm going to keep doing this for the next couple of years awesome well dude i'm glad to have you again uh multiple appearance on the show so welcome back and uh finally walton let people know who you are what you do i'm walton i'm a bitcoin pleb um i'm a champion of uh individuals running their own node, specifically Lightning Node. I'm one of the Plebnet OGs. And for some reason, they became my second family. And it's really grown quite considerably. We've had, I was, I think in the first 40 or 50 members in Plebnet,

We now have over 3,000 in our community. We have over 600 nodes. We've just gone over 5% of the total liquidity of the Lightning Network. We're using tools as the developers are developing them on top of Lightning. It's essentially the community for lightning and Lightning node running. And we've got all the different manufacturers of the different, or the different OS developers, they're all in this community,

all interacting, a kind of neutral, social, strange, educational experiment that we have. And it's, yeah, it's not about me. It's about enabling that sovereignty, that final step of sovereignty for the individual,

which is to be able to make payments with their own Bitcoin without the need for it. any intermediary. Yeah. Plebs. So awesome, man. PLEPS together strong.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's super awesome. I had no idea how big it was. Now, I knew it had grown a ton, but that's awesome to see and here. And yeah, I need some Plebnet help down the line here because now that my node's been running for a while, it's well connected, but I need to. tinker a little bit. I need to optimize, we'll say. So I'll be rich now. There are a lot of tools

that can help you. You just have to spend a little bit of time learning, but you're the master. I will do my best. And yeah, I've got lots of questions. Okay, gentlemen, let's get this thing rolling. So, of course, this is why are we bullish? We go by the three R's. Number one, somebody's going to give a reason why they're feeling bullish. Number two, we're all going to riff on that reason together. And then we're going to, three, rotate to the next person. Very, very simple. I'm going to get us started.

I'm going to share my screen for just a second here because I want people to be fully filled in on what I'm talking about. So I will say that my reason for being bullish is that my hardware wall is that my hardware wallet does not need to be plugged in in order to receive where did you get that hardware wallet is that a new fan is that a new it has to be a matching one so so for those not in the know if you have not been on on bitcoin twitter i just memed this i just memed this earlier today it's so it's so beautiful so those not in the know um this is francis copelan She has Bitcoin derangement syndrome, but we're just going to take a little jaunt down Twitter lane and listen to her latest insight.

And the conviction with which she says it, she said, the point is that unless you or your friend leave your hardware wallets online all the time, even overnight, which is a stupid thing to do, you aren't doing 24-7 payments. You're doing payments within a small time window available to both of you. Suppose you're in New York and you have a friend in Australia. That's a 14 hour time difference. So if you message your friend at 10 a.m. Eastern to say you're sending Bitcoin, your friend isn't going to answer you your message, let alone plug in their wallet. They are asleep. So you have to wait until they are awake.

If they have an online wallet, you can make a payment. But now we're back to stupidly unsafe practices, aren't we? Truth is, there's no such thing as 24-7 peer-to-peer payments. The hype around this is ridiculous. When you actually read it out loud. The thing is, I mean, Walton, you said there were like two British people on this, but unfortunately, you've got Francis on this as well. And she is so embarrassing for British people from school.

It's funny. And the best part was that Nassim Taleb came to back her up and said that she had she had she had the courage and the technical know-how to say this. It's like it's just it's it's so hilariously. What you mean, Mr. Anti-Fragile? Yeah. And his fragility dropped off on Francis because she's. Yeah, yeah.

She literally, she took her. I'm married. Uh, yeah. Can you imagine the, the hell spawn of a no-coiner that that would bring together? other. But I mean, I guess my reason for being bullish is, is the how terrible Bitcoin's critics are. Like, Bitcoin has no good critics at this point. It's just the same recycled arguments over and over again. And if it's not a recycled argument, it's something so stupid like this that is just, it's mind-boggling to see. And I mean, I'm also bullish on the meme fodder that stuff like this

creates because it's like it was chef's kiss all day long watching the response to this. So I don't know. Like what do you guys think about Bitcoin's critics? Like, and what's the deal? Like it's does she, it seems like she legitimately does not understand that you can send a payment to a person and they don't have to be plugged in to receive that. It's so profoundly ignorant for someone who goes on Twitter and has. It has, like, I think she said she knows more about things than other people than even Donald Trump ever said, right? Like, there's a bunch of Twitter feeds where she says, I know more about this than you do.

I'm an expert. and to not understand that the Bitcoin are on a blockchain or on the blockchain and that you can send them and nobody has to be there to receive them after all this time and to pretend to be an expert is really it's really this it's just like I don't even know what the right expression term for it is because it's not just it's not just ignorant it's so profoundly honest well like is it dishonest or ignorant No, thanks for this, Waltz, it's just a level of ego. This is the meme that I made of it.

That's great. I mean, it's not ignorant or this on. It's just a level of ego, which is so large. You can see that. You can see that from how high her chin. She's looking down on you. You can't perceive your male if you're not at her. Yeah.

I mean, she's, she's, if you ever interacted with her on Twitter, it's just very quick, it's becomes very clear, very quickly that she, the potential for her to be incorrect just does not enter her mind. It's just not possible. But I wonder back to something else you were saying, which was like, um, there are no good critics. I mean, if you went back to 2013, 2011, there were lots of very, very good critics who, I just I think there's a lot of good critics.

I think there's a lot of good. But I would say there were a lot of very good critics back then. But what happens to invariably, anyone who's really good ends up becoming a Bitcoin maximalist. Oh, you see the journey. And so all you're left with, all you're left with, they were good critics. But now you're left with only the people who think

that you cannot send mail to someone without them. than being at home. Yeah. It's natural selection and only the most stubborn or the most stupid remain, you know? And that's what we see right now. And it's quite incredible, you know. And to be fair, I mean, there are actually smart people that have bad Bitcoin takes. So it takes a while to wrap your head around it.

I mean Elon had a very bad take as well, you know, with like, that's just 10x all the parameters. And then, you know, we scale on chain and blah, blah, blah. So it's very easy to say ignorant shit about Bitcoin because it's, It's not necessarily an easy thing to understand. But what I would urge any Bitcoin critic is to just use Bitcoin once. If you use Bitcoin once, if she would have used Bitcoin once, it would have been obvious to her that she does not need to be online to receive Bitcoin.

And I would urge anyone who thinks Bitcoin does a scale or is not fast enough or anything like that. Use Lightning. Download a wallet, you know, download Rees or something like that that sets you up very quickly and just receive your first payment, you know, and just pay something. It blows people's minds and it's obvious that the most outspoken critics, they don't use this stuff. And it's very easy to criticize something if you don't understand. It's amazing. Of course, you know, like, then this will come out.

Yeah. Who like who out of the critics that we have for Bitcoin right now, who, who do you guys think is the best critical thinker around this? I guess is there somebody who's like, okay, well, They're thinking through it, but they don't, they're not sold or like, is there somebody who has some good points or some good concerns like that stands out to you guys? I mean, I think there's valid criticism to be had, but I think it all kind of comes from within because you have to know Bitcoin really well to criticize it properly. There's valid criticism to be had around, you know, like, I mean, privacy, obviously, you know, like everyone like Wexwing, for example, you know, he's working on privacy. He has a lot of valid criticism, how a lot of default on-chain transactions and people use in terms of how to set up their transactions, how this is basically broken or not optimal.

And those people are working on improving that. I think there's also a valid criticism to be had for all the parameters we know nothing about yet, you know? Like it's surprising to me that the MAMPOO is as empty as it is. there is criticism to be had around, you know, a fee market forming and so on. I don't think those criticisms are necessarily valid because we, with every bull cycle, we see a fee market form. And so I wouldn't be worried about it. But there is valid criticism to be had, but I think it doesn't come from the outside because, you know, the critics that come to mind are, you

know, like Peter Schiff, that's not, that's performance art. It's not criticism. One, one thing. No, it's okay. You go. You go. No, no, no. Walton, you go. Go ahead, Walton, and then we'll go, I'll be. We're both being British and polite. I was going to say that. No, no, please, after you. No, after you, sir. A couple of Brits, a couple of Canadians and the Austrian and the man.

Okay. I was going to say, Andrew Polstra and Peter Willett, who are the two people that come to mind, I've read or listened to recently, and they still have many criticisms for Bitcoin, but they're working really hard on resolving those criticisms. You've then got people like Elon Musk who, you're right. He's an intelligent guy, but he's clearly not had the time or spent the time looking at this properly. So he's made it,

he's based his hypothesis on invalid assumptions. And if you start with invalid assumptions, then anything you come out with at the end is potentially going to be nonsense. This is basic argument of formal reasoning. So you've got people like that who I could say maybe, or they have some other agenda where they have to for various sort of political or commercial reasons pretend to not know something. Or you've got people who are within the system

who understand its weaknesses because they are working very hard and resolving it. That's my view. Well. Oh, you're muted. You're silent, Walton. All right, we can't hear you, Walton. Your mic might have gotten unplugged

because it didn't show a mute. thing next to you. Yeah. We cannot hear you. Yeah. You cut. I'm sure it was very profound, whatever you're going to say. Read his lips.

Yeah. And you hear me now. And now we got, yeah. Yeah. So I came to Bitcoin, essentially because I'm a millennial, and I looked at housing prices versus income, and I went, I'm never going to be able to afford to buy a house.

So I came in for, I guess, the hedge against, the relative asset inflation that I was seeing, you know, back in 2018, just looking and going, what can I, what can I do? And I, you know, was introduced a little bit, but I, you know, I read into it more and more. But the reason I stayed and the reason I kind of have kind of tried to talk to more and more and more Bitcoin is because we share a lot of principles. We share a lot of shared beliefs.

and one of the most important ones for me, and it's something I didn't actually have the ideal description for until I read somewhat ironically Ray Dalio's principles was this concept of radical truth. And it's something I've lived my life by, and it's something that's got me in a lot of trouble. It's something that's been damaging to relationships, but it's something that I believe is essential

for optimal communication, that leads to optimal performance, which is something Ray references. One thing I believe about Bitcoiners, particularly that separates them from many other people, is their ability to be open to criticism. And that comes in the form of radical truth, right? If you do something that is questionable, the Bitcoin community will question you. And you better be ready to respond to that, right? Right, right.

And that's a good thing. This is a good thing. People call it toxicity. It's not. This is, sometimes it's premature. Sometimes it's premature. I'll give them that. But this ability for Bitcoiners to be critical of themselves and others and be open to criticism

from others is like iron sharpening iron. It turns, as Obie's saying, and he took the words out on my head, that all the best critics become Bitcoiners. The adversarial thinking actually then further enables things, you know, helps you to maybe improve your security to, you know, if you're a developer, you know, it maybe find, you know, things, ways in which you can contribute to code or, you know, all these different things. But that open communication, the radical truth that many of us believe in, is such a phenomenal quality. Yeah. I think all the bitcoins would agree that, you know, there are things that we just don't know, and we might be wrong. You know, and I think it's very disheartening for most Bitcoin critics that they are so insanely sure. For example, the Bitcoin is going to zero.

If you are so sure, the Bitcoin is going to zero, then short it. Why are you, why are you lamenting about that on Twitter? Why are you profiting from that? You know? And I think it's, for me, for me, it was just weird to see this level of ignorance. Like I was flabbergasted. I was actually kind of impressed, you know? Like I was not even like if I, if I would write like a very bad fanfic or something

and I would have to come up with the worst Bitcoin criticism that I can think of. I wouldn't have been able to think of that. It's so insanely ignorant. It's like it blows my mind. And this is something. where I think, you know, Bitcoin critics just need to do better. And if they won't do better, I think I personally, I will just have to disengage because I don't have time for this except for, you know, like, it's entertainment.

That's what it is. All right. So let's keep it rolling and let's go down the line now that we've thoroughly roasted Francis and the bad takes that took over Twitter. the past 24 hours. We're going to pass it down the line. So I'm going to go to Obie here. And Obie, I'm going to let you enlighten us on what has you bullish this week? So we just saw the mining difficulty for Bitcoin rise again for two consecutive money difficulty. After China tried to ban or banned mine

mining. And we've also seen at the same time with the infrastructure bill, an attempt by the back door to sort of ban mining, effectively ban mining in the US. Well, at the same time, on the other side of the world, in the southern part of the world, we're seeing in El Salvador and the rest of South America, this explosion of interest in Bitcoin. And where my parents come from in Nigeria, it's incredible. The level of growth in Bitcoin, adoption of Bitcoin is insane. I can give you some numbers, but when polled, half for adults when Paul suggested that they own Bitcoin.

You're seeing, we're talking about people holding Bitcoin in their treasury. Well, unofficially because it's not allowed to do it. It's a company in Nigeria, a standard hold Bitcoin on their treasuries. They use it for remittance or for buying products. importing from China. They use Bitcoin as standard because people in China, companies in China, are not willing to, or uncomfortable often to send to Nigeria. But if they're getting a bearer asset, the trust issue goes. So I'm hearing this well in Southeast Asia, we're seeing this growth. And this is actually really exciting for me because at the beginning of the year, I made a few

predictions like everybody does. And my biggest one was by the end of the year, we're going to start to see the beginnings of the biggest transfer of wealth from the global haves to the global have-nots. i.e. the north of the world, to the south of the world, the world has ever seen. And that's bullish because up until now, all the power in the world is in the hands of a few, the old god, who tend to be in China, maybe, in the US and Western Europe. And now it's going to be decentralized to the other four or five billion people. Southern America, Africa, Southern Europe, Southeast Asia. they're going to have exclusive access in many cases to Bitcoin

because the most regulated and the strongest countries are going to do everything in their power to exclude their own countries from having access to this incredible world. So I'm really bullish about that because if power is decentralized, that means that it leads to a fairer, more inclusive, more powerful world.

It's better for everybody. And that makes me much more bullish than the price. I love this take. especially because of all of the FUD that we've seen lately, because it's easy to forget that, you know, especially living in Western nations, whether it be, you know, Western Europe or whether it be somewhere in North America,

it's easy to forget that despite the trash regulations that come down the pipe, there's an entire rest of the world that is just aching to get on the Bitcoin standard. and that will benefit so much from it that even if it's temporarily crappy for a certain jurisdiction, for a certain period of time, Bitcoin, it doesn't care. It continues to pop out blocks every 10 minutes. And it's just a matter of time before these jurisdictions realize that they're doing more harm to themselves than good.

and they've got to jump on the standard too. But yeah, I love this point. Yeah, I think like I often say, you know, Bitcoin Twitter is like 200 people and it's very US-centric. And the world is a very large place. And to me, it makes all the sense in the world that certain countries that have like, they were not necessarily on the receiving end when it comes to great banking infrastructure. They will leapfrog the first world countries, definitely.

You know, like we saw this also with mobile phones because you don't need like once you can actually leap frock certain infrastructure. You know, like you don't need to build the same infrastructure that the West build up. And for Bitcoin, you don't need much, you know, like you only need communication channels. You only need like a very, very stupid smartphone. And you're already on Bitcoin. And I think we haven't seen anything yet. And what I would add to that point, Gigi, is the banking infrastructure that we have in the West is one of the worst customer experiences that's ever been engineered. it in any industry in the world, right?

Like you to have to go into a bank and send a wire at any time a Bitcoin or does that, they leave and they say, wow, is this ever a terrible experience? Is Bitcoin ever better? So to leapfrog that, especially when you add lightning to it and the self-custody things and the ability to send payments when the other person is not online. What do you mean? What are you talking about? What is to start magic?

When you have all of these? Just think about what. Go on. Yeah, I'll just wrap up quickly. Like I can send, this is, it sounds like I'm making fun of Francis, but the point that I always say is without having to go into any institution, I can send any Bitcoin to anyone in the world I want at any point in time and I don't need anybody's permission and it's going to happen depending on how much I'm prepared to pay for fees or if I've got, if I'm doing

it on lightning, it's going to happen like that. And it's done. And it, you know, and I don't need any intermediaries. I don't need any permission. I'm sovereign and I got freedom. control over my money. And so to see this sort of thing happen in parts of the world where they never even had reliable money at all. And yeah, by the way, I'm sending reliable money, right? Yeah. But where they never even had reliable money and they never had access to really sending it.

So you had to deal locally with whoever would accept it and the whole system was so corrupt. This just blows it away and does it instant. Like it's all the infrastructure is already there. It's purpose designed for these parts of the world. They have currencies in often have currencies with levels of inflation that make the US level of inflation or the Western levels of inflation and not large levels of inflation. They have very low trust in their authorities already, very, very low trust. In growing up, it was growing up, the news every few years of a Nigerian bank going bankrupt was, it was just a very, very common thing. So you were uncomfortable keeping all your money in banks because it was normal for them to go bankrupt. You also have a situation

where they already are used to things like M-Pesa in Kenya, which is digital money payment system. Nigeria has equivalents. There are many Western Africa countries have equipment. So they understand the idea of paying digitally by a mobile phone. The only issue of those are they've seen that they can be censored and they also have eye-watering rates of fees for using them. So Bitcoin comes along, lightning, instant payments.

They want to hold money themselves. They used to hold money. themselves, they're cash economies, but they want to interact, they want to grow big business, they want to be able to compete with the rest of the world. They haven't had a level playing field. This gives them a level playing field. They have the same security assurances if they're holding one cobble, which is like, I don't know, a thousand sats, or they're holding a billion dollars.

You have the same security assurances. They get it, and it's growing like crazy. And so they're going to adopt lightning self-custody. You don't even have to educate them. They figure it out. We're talking about education, and I was talking about this on a Twitter space and Cassel the other day.

And it's like education is not about dumbing down. It's about leveling up. We're just getting people to understand these new technologies and raise them up to understand them, not try to dumb down. And it's really, really exciting. Yeah. And it's also, I think, you know,

if you have to learn this, people will learn, you know. Like, if you realize this is such an insanely powerful and useful tool, it doesn't matter if it takes a little bit of work, you know. Driving cars isn't easy either, you know, when we manage, you know, like it's everyone realizes how powerful it makes you if you are, you have autonomy in the physical space where you can move quickly.

And I think for this, it's similar. And for these people, it's just obvious that they, they need this. And so they're going to learn. And I really love what you said, you know, like it's about leveling up. You want to be, you want to be competent. That's what you want to be. And so people will sit down and learn this stuff. And it's actually not too difficult.

you know like i think we are already at a place where um if if like if you know how like if you know what's happening underneath kind of it all makes sense and it's kind of easy to use so i i'm not worried at all about that it's not just miners who benefit from proving that they've done the work yeah exactly proof of work is everywhere that's proof of work is how the world works basically well and and to the to the leveling up um a bit here it's over time the amount of work that it takes to level up is becoming less and less, right? Like lightning a few years ago to lightning now, it's an entirely different ballgame. Like if you, yes, you can you can jump on Plevnet and you can be routing payments and all that.

Or if you just want to make payments, you can just download. And in a non-custodial way, you can just download an app and and your, you're rolling. You can jump on moon and you can be using main chain and lightning in a unified balance. It's just there's there's so much cool stuff happening and there's people behind the scenes thinking about these things and it's it's early yes. There's lots of work to be done. But seeing the iterations and and the improvements and the path that we're on, it's incredible to behold as it happens. Yeah. I can't wait for the day that you see like Driver's Ed or science or maths or English, you have Bitcoin fundamentals as a course that gets taught with ideally with an economics element. That would be so powerful.

Right. Yeah. I think it's already happening, you know, like the Sailor Academy and also on Safety. Yeah. Like it's it's basically already there, you know, like it's just not nobody knows about it yet. Yeah, and it's it's not in, it's not in your normal run of the mill, you know, government sanctioned school. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, you have to go elsewhere to, you know, you're not going to Fiat school, right? But that, that will probably remain to be the case for a little while. Oh, well, yeah.

That's fine. That's part of the. Yeah, this is fine. If we didn't, we'd have folks like Francis. dictating how to teach you about Bitcoin. She'd become the minister of Bitcoin education. First of all, everybody plug in your hardware wallets, okay. All right, let's keep this rolling.

I love that topic. Thank you, Obey, for bringing that up. We're going to jump next to Tomer. Tomer, take a moment. Let us know why you're feeling bullish. Yeah, well, I mean, you talked about critics, and Obie talked about other Bitcoin users. And for me, it's the thing.

that makes me the most bullish is the Bitcoin plebs and the conviction that people have now and the reason for their conviction. It's not before the people who had conviction, it was about getting wealthy. It was about Lamborghinis, right? Like when nobody is talking about Lamborghinis now, everyone is talking about freedom and fairness and justice. And those are things that matter a lot more to people than a fancy car than a toy that they'll be tired with. You're not going to get tired of being free and you're not going to get tired of living in a world with justice. And that's what everything that I see happening, the Bitcoin meetups I go to, that's what the bitcoins want to talk about. That's what they want to hear about. They want to, and they're critical

thinkers, as we discuss. They want to explore topics. They're prepared to admit, as Walton, you said, every one of them is prepared to admit, I don't know X. I don't know why. And nobody, and in many cases, nobody knows these things. So we're on a journey to discover the truth. And it'll take however long it actually takes to discover the truth. And, um, and, and that's, and that's really lovely, right? Like, we're not, uh, we're not convicted in our answers that we have all the right answers. We're convicted in our quest for the truth. And I like, I changed my Twitter profile. I said, I'm a slayer of lies. And that's what I, that's just what I want to, that's what I want to do is like tear down all of the dishonesty that our world is infected with and, and,

and help people see that if they don't know the truth, they don't have to make up an answer, Francis, right? Like, you can, you can, we can admit that we don't know things, and we can learn from there, right? We don't know how to solve every problem in Bitcoin, but by admitting that where a problem might be, we can turn our heads to it and figure it out. And that's the most amazing things about people.

And that's the thing that really is distinguishing bitcoins right now from, I don't want to say from everybody else in the world, but from the other powers that be in the world, we just have this truth machine and this truth community. And it's pursuing the truth that freedom is better than enslavement. That makes me real bullish. I think it's such a great thing to be bullish on. You know, I mean, many bitcoins are bullish on Bitcoiners and bullish on the PLPS.

And I think what's so beautiful to me is that the PLEPS truly are PLEPS. I just was at the conference this weekend. in Germany and it was only about like 150 or 200 people something like that and I talked and drank with so many clubs we had such a great time and those are just really your you know regular people that just want to they're fed up with the bullshit and they just want to have sound money and they want to you know like be free in with their finances they don't want anyone else to tell them what they can spend money on or what they can do with their money and this is such a strong movement I think most people are still underestimating that.

And I think we are at the stage now where everyone knows a Bitcoiner, but you don't necessarily know that you know a Bitcoin. And I think there will come a time where, you know, like, I think if it gets rough out there, I think like with other social movements previously, I think, you know, the PLEB army will rise to the occasion. And there will, you know, like political pressure will be there, I think. And it's already very hard. to be against Bitcoin because there are so many Bitcoiners,

but it will be exponentially harder. Like with every passing day, it gets exponentially harder. I love that you mentioned also that Bitcoiners aren't necessarily in it for wealth. Like obviously over the long term, we anticipate Bitcoin becoming and continuing to be a better form of money. And for purchasing power to appreciate, but that's not the, the focus and you see that in the mentality because bitcoiners are are oddly juxtaposed uh to a

background of of shikor crypto bros that are like you know 100x gains in a month and they're there everybody is like oh i'm flipping this for that and they don't there's no conviction in anything that they're like and even if they say that oh yeah i'm convicted when it comes to this coin and this coin. It's flavor of the week, right? And they do want their lambos. And then you see Bitcoiners, you get somebody like, I saw a

post from Alex Spetsky and he was like in a gym and he was working out and somebody zoomed in on his socks and there were holes in them and they're like, dude, you need new socks. He's like, no man, got to stack sets. They can't afford new socks. Like

that's it. I mean, Bitcoiners made saving cool again. That's what the goal. Bitcoin enabled saving again. We couldn't save in an inflationary currency. And so it forced people into the markets. People aren't investors because they want to be. They're investors because they have to be.

People are just trying to maintain their store of their time and their energy that is the true scarce things to them. and Bitcoin has finally enabled that and what I found is that it actually motivates me to work because I don't work more and more and more because I need to at an increasing rate

I do it because I feel like I'm being rewarded for it because I'm able to store that in a way that isn't going to melt away I think you said this before but other cryptocurrencies is this is not going to be in Bitcoin only because back in 2011, I first heard of Bitcoin and I just saw it as a technology, really interesting technology at time.

It was you had blockchain, the only blockchain, and you had proof of work, really interesting tech. And then a few years later, I realized what was more important was the economy, the economics. So, you know, you have the 21 million fixed supplies. you know, sound money and ideal money theory and around it. But then eventually I decided to stay and stay with Bitcoin because of the philosophy. It's the low time preference of sovereignty. And these ideas and philosophies are so different from everything else we see in the space. In fact, almost everything else is basically the existing with a bit of tech around it.

And 10 times more dystopian, if not a hundred times more dystopian than what we are right now. If those things were ever seen what you want, it would be a horrible, horrible, horrible world. You know, so whereas with Bitcoin, it actually, and you had it with Michael Saylor, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a whole philosophy of a way of living. And everybody who gets into Bitcoin and understands. starts changing their behavior. They start being more patient, more stoic, more analytical, questioning of authority, which holds them to account. All of these good things that lead to a more meritocratic society. That's why it must win.

That's why it has to win. And that's why we have to do everything possible to get as many people onto this and into this path as we possibly can. can whether we the money does not matter it's the mission and that's why we're really excited about it yeah yeah sorry i i i just want to quickly mention that's that's like what uh shout out to fryer has for that this long ago bitcoin bitcoin will succeed because it has to succeed you know bitcoin will succeed because it must there is no alternative you know so we must do anything everything in our power to make it succeed and also to contrast it to shit coins and kind of the rest of the world, you know, I include, you know,

fiat currencies in the shit coin basket too. It's, it's American huddles that is so beautiful, you know, like shitcoinism is nihilism, you know, it's just, you know, you want to have fiat gains and, and, you know, blow it on hookers and blow in lambos. And as you said, you know, Bitcoin is hope. And I also think Bitcoin is optimism. I think MVP still, still his name on Twitter is deterministic optimism. It's Bitcoin is. relentless optimistic, you know, it's relentless optimism. And you really feel that. And I think most Bitcoiners nowadays, they are truly in it to fix the money, not for the money itself. They're in it to fix the money. And that's something to behold. Yeah. My last comment on the money, fix the

world. Yeah. Exactly. I'd written like four or five articles in the series I called Who Are the Bitcoins. And I really wanted to dig into this because the process of becoming a Bitcoinser, I have one article in there that it changes you. And I try to describe why and how because you have to be curious. You have to learn about economics. You have to learn about the technology. You have to learn about the philosophy, as you guys were saying. And the process of and you have to learn about the value of telling the truth.

And so that process, the article is called rich or poor, Bitcoiners have what money can't buy. It makes you more intelligent. It makes you more honest. It makes you more truthful. It changes you. And so you end up and it makes you a person who is worthy of having friends and being somebody else's friend. And so I point out Bitcoiners actually, whether you have a lot of Bitcoin or not, you have things that money can't buy because money can't buy integrity. It cannot buy intelligence.

It cannot buy real friends. It cannot buy love. And so this is like this is what we're actually talking about here, right? The transformation of becoming a bit. And if you reject those things and those lessons, then you end up outside, as we said, about like the shit coiner's or the Bitcoin critics who can't who suffer. from this derangement syndrome of I don't want to live in a world where I have to acknowledge the truth as true. I want to make up an imaginary pretend world that you can print money out of nothing and that some value will come from somewhere, where, who I don't, and I'm not, I'm going to pretend I don't know.

Yeah. I think most people have to go through what some people call an ego death before they can join the Bitcoin. That's so true. Essentially, essentially what you have to do is you have to admit. not only to yourself, but probably to someone who might be bugging you about Bitcoin, that you were wrong and you were so, so, so wrong. Yeah.

And people could have been so, so, so right, but you still can be right. Yeah. If you admit that to yourself. The best thing, like the best feature in Bitcoin is the longer it takes you to admit that, the more painful it will be. So that's like it's just the pain will increase and increase and increase. A beautiful feature, a beautiful feature about Bitcoin is as soon as you say you're ready, Bitcoin, Bitcoin lets you in.

Bitcoin doesn't, Bitcoin does not say, well, you owe me this, you owe me that. Bitcoin is permissionless. And no matter what you tried to do to Bitcoin, Bitcoin will not hold a grip. The Dunning Kruger effect is more true for Bitcoin than for anything else. I one of the most deeply insidious things that I regularly see is when Bitcoin Tina replies to somebody with you will buy in at a much higher price because he is he is actually like making them so angry by saying that that they purposely will not buy it for a longer period of time and hurting themselves even more the best thing you can say to a butter no-coiner I guess but I think it's so like it sounds like crazy talk

when you first hear this that Bitcoin changes you and that makes you more so he can't so on and so forth and I wish that we we just had recently the chance to talk to Jordan Peterson and he's all about

the transformation of the individual and so on and so forth and I think Bitcoin has a very large role to play and I wish we would have had the time to talk about this some more because I think most people frame it as the lowering of time preference and that's that's definitely you know that's definitely the case

bitcoin is when when it when it comes to opportunity cost bitcoin is the ultimate judge you know like it's there's this website you know bitcoin or shit.com and you can buy you know you're the new airports or whatever but you could also buy bitcoin and it lists all the stupid things that you probably bought and how much bitcoin you would have if you would have set instead but what i think what is the most interesting thing to me is that also to use bitcoin properly. It will teach you that you have to take responsibility, right? Like Mount Gox taught this a lot of people, not your keys, not your Bitcoin, you know? And you will have to become Bitcoin to use Bitcoin properly. And it sounds so outrageous. But you will have to learn to hold your

own keys and you will have to learn to run your own note because nobody can tell you what Bitcoin is. You have to define this for yourself. You have to find out for yourself what Bitcoin is to you. And also, this is an endless process. Bitcoin will change in the future and we will have a new soft fork or a new fork, whatever. And you will have to define the consensus rules yourself. Only you can say what Bitcoin is. And this process of becoming Bitcoin and taking on the responsibility, I think this is, most people do not understand what's going on here.

And it's, you know, like that's also why Bitcoin, nobody can interfere with you and Bitcoin because Bitcoin is you, you know, like you can have 12 words in your head. nobody can steal this from you and you run your own note nobody can take this away from you and if it comes to it you only have to find you know another person to play bitcoin with and this is bitcoin you know like that's that's how it works and i think it's it's it's quite a fascinating thing that most people don't understand i think this is this this this has a part to play of the transformation of the individual because you actually have to kind of become one with bitcoin to truly use it to its fullest potential. I actually think Bitcoin might be the single biggest, and I know we don't really like

the whole ESG talk, but that actually Bitcoin might be the single best thing for the environment globally because of how it changes time preference. And I've written a little bit about this before on Twitter, but essentially it makes you really, really, really consider your buying decisions. Now, I bought a dog before I ever bought Bitcoin. And I worked it out. I looked it up. I call him whole coiner now and he's worth every single set but you know you look at some some other object in your something inanimate

something that is not one of your loved ones and you go do I really really need that and with Bitcoin you actually decide no I don't need that I'm going to continue to try and build my store of my energy and my time for the future such that I can take something back of an equivalent value

from the market in the future, and it not be something that I don't need. So actually, it will, people adopting Bitcoin more and more and more will drive down this rampant consumerism that actually is the biggest cause of environmental problems globally. I'd like to, since Gigi brought it up, really quick before we round out this topic, let's just do a couple clicks of Bitcoinershit.com. Since you mentioned it, shout out to Rohan. Can everybody see my screen right now? Yeah, yeah.

Okay, cool. So anybody that's listening to this on the pod later, Bitcoin or shit.com, I'm going to get you guys and myself, I'm going to click. It says if you bought Bitcoin instead of fucking stupid shit, you'd have, and then add like a dollar amount in an amount of Bitcoin. So I'm going to click. And when I click, I'll read what it is. And if you own this item, put up your hand.

It doesn't mean you bought it when it was brand new, but hey, okay. Oh, God. If you bought Bitcoin instead of a fucking PlayStation Vita, you'd have $876,000 or 18.73 Bitcoin. Did anybody get a PSVita? No. No, no, no, you did. Okay. Well, good for you guys.

All right. Next, if you got Bitcoin instead of a fucking porno premium, we have 14. I don't have a hand, but I, I have something that floats. Yeah, I can't say that I paid for that. One of the plebs changed their node name to Pornhub.com recently. I was very confused because it's one of my connection. I'm going, what?

And then all right, it's just, it's just P. It's awesome. Let's do one more here. Okay. If you bought Bitcoin instead of a fucking Apple HomePod, you'd have $1,600 or 0.03 Bitcoin. Anybody? No?

I don't understand why any bitcoins have kind of listening devices in the right in the house. I'm shocked that anyone has an election. Okay, I'm wearing a beat solo head HD right now and I just go. There you go. You've got almost 4,000 bit. I bought it earlier this year. I bought it early this year. I didn't buy it originally. Not when they first came out. Yeah. So so I paid my $199 for it.

Anybody listening? The funniest one was if you bought a Bitcoin instead of, um, um, um, um, um, Bitcoin for dummies. That was the fun of it. So anybody out there with Beats Solo HD that bought them when they first came out, you'd have $186 million or just shy of $4,000 Bitcoin. So yeah. This is, I mean, it highlights the consumerism that we live in.

And when your money doesn't hold its value or increase in value over time. time, yeah, of course you're going to buy all this crap consistently. And I mean, I've had, like, we didn't have an example here, but there's tons of dumb shit that I bought previously that I didn't need. And, you know, you learned. But we learned. Yeah, you learned. Let's keep it going.

Gigi, I know you were talking a little bit, but I want to pass it. Oh, sorry. Oh, Obi. Sorry, you were breaking up. No, it's breaking an intellectual stable. I'll try and sort of out, Karen. Okay, go on, no worries. So, Gigi, I'm going to pass it to you.

My friend, what has you feeling bullish this week? Let's start our second to last topic. So I'm insanely bullish on lightning. Like, you guys have no idea. There's so much awesome stuff being built. And what I think hit yesterday or two days ago is the lightning address, which is an email address that you can pay lightning payments to. And it's built up on LNURL. And it's such a cool little smart protocol using existing like other protocols that already exist to throw something together that if you own a domain and you have an email address and you have control over this email address, you can set up a combination of, you know, like DNS records and some other things that allows you,

allows other wallets to understand this address and you basically have something like a lightning cash tag you know like you you like i haven't set it up yet but in the future you will be able just to send me lightning payments to a high at their ggcom for example and it's it's so awesome what's going on there and this is just the tip of the iceberg you know like the last couple of weeks i also worked with the podcasting 2.0 guys the guys from podcast index and the fact that streaming payments work and exist and that you can listen to a podcast and stream Satoshis to different people, you know, all across the world and that this works already.

And this is, you know, like this is basically day zero of lightning, you know, like it just has started and it will only get better. And another thing that has been insanely bullish is also part of the LNURL specification, that since you are a bitcoyner, you already have a private key and you can use this private key to authenticate yourself to online services. And for example, stackcladot news, like the Bitcoin. Hecker News, like Stackern use is an awesome site, uses that. And you can just, you can log in with GitHub, you can log in with Twitter, or you can

log in with Lightning. And you click the thing and the QR code pops up and you scan the QR code and you're logged in. It's so amazing. And like, just be aware that this exists because this is only bound to grow and it has be so bullish. And you heard it here first, Bitcoin is not only digital real estate. Yeah. It is so much more.

You shared that login thing the other day. And I was like, oh, what the hell is this? And I clicked on it. And it was like, oh, try logging in with Breeze wallet. And I literally just scanned it. And it asked me, I think it said, do you want to authenticate or something? And then I hit yes. And it's, and it's the website was like, congratulations.

You logged in anonymously to this website. Yeah, it blows your mind, right? It blows your mind. That's why I built this because I saw it on second use and I'm like, nobody knows about this. Why does nobody know about this? And so I built this lightning login. Notlife page, which just is a demo and a showcase and some explanations.

some links to libraries and documentation. Shout out to Fiat jeff, who basically built all this, all this stuff. I just, you know, like I just threw it together and made it look kind of nice

so that you can spam it on Twitter. And I plan in the future every single service that forces me to come up with a username and the password, especially if it is in the Lightning ecosystem, I will just, I will destroy you on social media.

I will spam this link and I will demand that I can log in with Lightning because it's so amazing. And it's only, you know, like, it's, the first couple of standards that are built up on lightning.

We will, so much more is coming down the pipe and we can iterate so quickly because we don't necessarily need any changes on the base layer. It's amazing. If this stuff doesn't have you bullish, you just, you don't know enough yet. Yeah. I think that this is, oh, I'll just go quickly all the time you really start using lightning, it's again like the first time you ever used Bitcoin or the first time you ever used the internet or when you lose your virginity on one of these things, it's like, wow.

It's incredible. Like I, and I tried to use it. I bought this shirt with Lightning. And when I first started getting into Lightning, I was looking for all these opportunities. And I was filling up gas at the gas station. I'm like, you have to authenticate your payment. You have to pre-deposit $200 so that you can then pump some gas. And then you have to get a return.

And it's a very big. Well, you just stream, you know, scan my thing. And I can stream gas while I stream Stoches back to the gas station. And there's like, there's all these things that you're actually streaming, right? There's a stream of gas going into your car. There's a stream of electricity coming into my house. There's a stream of water coming into my house. So even just the streaming applications when you start to think about it.

Yeah. At the conference in Germany, we had, it wasn't streaming yet, but almost. And you can see what this is going. There was like a beer thingy where you just pay with lightning. And it's simply the beer starts streaming. The beer starts running. And it was 21 sets of beer. And someone actually managed to spend over over $1 by just drinking beer.

thing. So calculated, I think Moscow time is currently like 22 or something, 2,200. So it was a lot of beers. If one beer costs 21 sets and you get over one dollar. I had thought about this, but you can stream like half a pint, a quarter of a pint, like 0.26157th of a pint, like whatever, whatever you want. Per sip. To me, lightning really completes the concept from the white paper of having that peer-to-peer intermediary free currency. And it's just phenomenal what is already available on it. You've got companies out there like Zebedee with JC and Michael creating connections from the layer two lightning level to applications on top.

So you can play Counter-Strike. and earn Satoshi's as you play in a dynamic way. I've been playing a little bit of lightning poker with some friends. We've made, create a little club a few months back. We've been playing regularly. There's going to be now a lightning poker tournament, a TabConf in November. We're going to raise a load of money,

and money's going to go to charities to support core devs. Because, you know, the Bitcoin community really cares about, contributing back to it because it makes us all stronger and it makes it just makes a great society and that's what I look forward to I mean I so I spent before Bitcoin I spent maybe 15 years working in CTO various European e-commerce companies sort of dot com 1 and dot com 2 multinational e-commerce. And what I realized when I saw Bitcoin, I was

at that time, very early on, you could still make payments with Bitcoin and pay relative of fees, etc. I could see that as this scales and you reach critical mass, it would be such a no-brainer for a merchant to receive payments in Bitcoin.

Everybody talks about the fees for paying by credit card or debit cards, two, three percent or so on. But that's just one of the costs. The other issue you have is that you don't necessarily have access to that money for 45 days. So you now have to take out a loan, you have to take out a loan invoice financing to cover the gap. There's interest on that. That's another cost that you have as a merchant.

It's a bearer assets. So you have immediate ability to use that money. So you don't have that 45 day delay. You also have a risk, which is a cost, because there's all the mechanisms for the buyer to get their money back 10, 20, 30 days later. And so you have to calculate that risk and put a cost onto that. And the other cost is accounting. So as an exchange, we have to do the accounting of the crypto side and the accounting of the fiat side. And I can tell you that there's no exaggeration at 90 to 95% of our costs are all the fiat accounting.

because when you make payments for things, they disappear into the banking system, they get the lay, their reconciliation. All the intermediaries taking that cut. Yeah. You're doing double entry accounting, that on the crypto side,

it's 100,000 entry accounting. Every single node is validating that. You have, in eight and a half years, we haven't had a Satoshi of difference. It always adds up exactly with zero need to pay for an army of accountants. So when you add all these costs, I think it's no exaggeration to say once you have a sufficient number of your clients, of your customers by crypto, it will save you between somewhere between five on the conservator

into 10% overall over receiving money in the Fiat system. So the only issue was for the user, it needs to be cheap and fast. Lightning solves that. So now Lightning solves that. And, you know, As the technologist, I've wanted to wait until it's got to a certain level of maturity. And now what I see is like error rates and when you want to send payments, even at half of Bitcoin or above are very, very low. It's got to a level of maturity that we can now start interracing in and using it for our customers. I think you're going to find other exchanges are going to look at it now. In the last six months, it's just gone from growing really well to it's not sure enough.

We can integrate it and other people will be doing that as well. And it's really exciting because soon as you give a merchant the two options and as a critical mass of users, wait for them to do one accounting return, one quarter and see the difference. And the whole team, we're always rushing to me our year-end return. And this one was pressing a button. That alone will be like, okay, we've got to incentivize customers to pay in Bitcoin. They will offer discounts to receive money in Bitcoin because it makes so much more sense. Yeah, I was just about to say that.

We already see this. There are some like Moved the VPN provider, for example, offers a 10% discount if you pay Bitcoin. I think if you as a merchant know Bitcoin and are a Bitcoiner, you will happily take the better money. You know, it's way less friction because why would I want to receive Fiat? I have to buy Bitcoin with it anyway. So if I get Bitcoin directly, I can I can happily give a discount. And just so that it's out there again, I think, you know, if you're a baller, I think 20, one percent discount is not outrageous. I think it should be the default. Right. I was going to add one

other maybe the flip. It's two things because they're both sides of the same coin. One is lightning, of course, solves the fungibility problem. And it solves it because we agree with whoever we open a channel with that the Satoshi's in that channel are perfectly fungible. Like if I open a channel with you, Walton, there's an agreement, but in you accepting that channel that those are not tainted point and you can choose to reject it. You can do some chain analytics if you choose, but those Satoshis are never leaving our channel, right? When I pay Gigi, it's because I've agreed with you that those Satoshes are fungible and you've agreed with the next person downstream and so on and so forth that those coins are fun. And so we are self-sovereign in determining which coins are or aren't

tainted. I personally have a view that none are, but other people might have a view and they're they're welcome to not open a channel with someone whose coins they believe are tainted. And that's no problem. They'll never receive tainted coins on lightning because they only opened up channels with other counterparties whose coins they deem to be clean. And so it completely solves the whole problem of fungibility. And it doesn't give it in the hands of some chain analytics company or some government. It's us as self-sovereign.

The house of Tomer Strohite opens up a channel with a house of Alton and it'll stay for 100,000 years and because we've we've agreed to do that let's this do you have a flag already and all the chest i'm i'm a proper citadel house soon it's coming your lightning is early right but my my lightning channels are open for not just for my life and forever turning strolytes it will be a very cool that's awesome yeah so those of you that are watching or listening that have not dove down the lightning rabbit hole it's time friends you got to try it out you know you can start as basic as just getting a mobile app and and testing out some payments there's some great ones non-custodial ones uh breeze is great phoenix is pretty awesome moon is a good one all of those

yeah wallet of satoshi is an easy like instant instant onboarding where you don't have to really do anything um there's there's so many options out there And then if you decide to dive down the rabbit hole and manage a lightning node later on, that's a whole other can of worms that is equally fun and exciting as your first dive into Bitcoin. So check it out. Please do it's, you're going to love it. But with that, we're going to jump to Walton now. Dude, you have our final reason for being bullish this week. Gigi, thank you for your, I'm so glad you brought up lightning.

But Walton, it's off to you. what has you excited. It's a good thing I have a pen and paper here because I was going to talk about landing, but I've got some other ideas. So the thing that makes me most bullish about Bitcoin, and it's kind of always has been, certainly this year, but for a number of months, is actually Bitcoiners themselves,

specifically their creativity. And I think the reason why the creativity is so phenomenal comes back to what we talked about earlier. you about criticism. The idea that, you know, we can sharpen our ideas with diamond hands and diamond mines, not diamond mines, diamond brains, maybe. But it applies to so many different things. I think Bitcoin, the creativity of Satoshi was particularly in game theory. I think Bitcoin, more than anything else is a phenomenal revolution of the game theory where actors that may have interests that are competing or against others actually contribute to the overall security.

When you look at miners, certainly that's very much the case, The creativity of Bitcoin is, you know, started with Satoshi, but it's evolved so much. We have so many people who are able to write phenomenal words or speak great words, people who are able to create visual words, means. We have, you know, phenomenal people who can build all these different solutions that can build new technology on top of Bitcoin, like lightning or on top of lightning, all these other tools to help node runners,

to help merchants, to help applications. We have great researchers, great educators. And there's a place for everyone. If you're intellectually honest, if you want to iterate on solid foundations. And if you're humble enough, as you said before. To be open to the criticism, exactly, then there's a place for you. And there always will be.

And it's never too late to join this community. And it's never too late to buy Bitcoin. Buy Bitcoin. I like that you brought up the creativity aspect. I want to give a shout out to somebody that was just on. the pod with Gigi and Jordan Peterson, Richard James, who did recently just dropped Petro Dollars, which was another great self-contained like 30-minute film, which is fantastic, and just kind of documents kind of the fruition of the U.S. dollars, effect of pegging, a coercive pegging to oil.

And it's, it's very informative. It's excellent. And he's done a, I think that's a third film now, but he's, he's fantastic. And hats off to him. It's based on an article by Alex Gladstein. Big portions of the film are narrated from the, the Bitcoin Audible version by narrated by Guy Swan. And then there's also excerpts. I think I heard Nick Carter in there and Alex Gladstein himself. So anyways, it's awesome. Shout out to him. for his creative mind and putting that together. Yeah, shout out to him. If you haven't seen the movie, I'd definitely watch it, Petra Dollar. And the other one was hard money, I think. And I think he also did one about the anatomy of the state, I think. Yeah. Something like that. But I also want to tag on to what Walton said about the game theory and Gladstein, Alex Gladstein said this beautifully, like Bitcoin is a machine that transforms greed into freedom, you know, like, that's i think everyone in bitcoin is perfectly fine with acting in his own self-interest well i i would

argue most most bitcoins are actually not that insanely selfish but you know the game theory is set up in a way that that you kind of have to be selfish and you support the system with your greed and with yourself selfishness uh definitely from the mining and security perspective also from the set stacking perspective you know we are all we're all selfish when it comes to to stacking sets, I think. And I think that it's such an unappreciated aspect of the whole system, the game theory behind it. And of course, you know, like it goes beyond it. I think the game theory in Lightning is something to behold too. So if you've never read that. Sorry, briefly, G.G. The fee market in Lightning is the only free market economy in the world right now. There you go.

And it's happening. It's happening. And you can be a part of it if you join play. Yeah, it's something to behold. And yeah, I can just encourage everyone to think about these issues and, you know, like read the material and read the lightning white paper, you know, like it's amazing how this works and what kind of game theory is at play. So that makes it all work. Homer, Obi, any thoughts on the creativity of Bikwinners? Yeah, it was beautiful the way you recited it, Walton, kind of doing this litany or this inventing. of the different types of creativity that the community keeps growing into. And it is like a branching tree, which keeps branching and branching and branching and

welcoming more and more people with more and more skills. Like I've been, like I say, I get a geographically decentralized. Totally. And society. New society. Yeah. It's a new society of that all you have to do to enter this society, you can be anywhere in the world is to be honest and put in work.

And, and it's honest work. Like this is the moral code of Bitcoin, honest, good honest work and more and more people. And I think this, we're kind of at the stage because I wanted to work in Bitcoin since I first heard about it and fell down the rabbit hole. And the only opportunities were to work at exchanges. It also sold shitcoins. And I felt I wouldn't do it because I'd be working against Bitcoin if I was doing that. And now things have gotten to the point where I can say I'm going to write and there's going to be somebody who might pay me sometime for writing. but the work is good, honest work.

And I appreciate it. And I get together at Bitcoin meetups, and more and more of the people are finding work opportunities at companies that do something that support Bitcoin and Bitcoin only. Some are Fiat miners, right? They run a restaurant. They do something else. They collect Fiat and they turn it into Bitcoin,

which is perfectly moral as well. But it's also really, really exciting to see, I won't list off all. the companies, but I was at a small Bitcoin meetup the other day. And there were people there who were working at Kasa. This was in Canada. So there were people there working at Bohl Bitcoin at Hodel, Hodel, at Leden. And it was just really, really nice to see that people are finding a way to work within the ecosystem, providing more and more value. And so this really, this is a frontier that's being developed. And there's more and more stores, if you will,

in this new frontier. So I think it's, I think it really is glorious. And we, we're, we're, we watch it grow exponentially, right? It's not, I, the fact that I'm actually getting together with people and everybody is getting an opportunity to earn, earn money by working for Bitcoin is really profound. Obey, go ahead. I would go. So I've tweeted about meme artists in coin for a while now.

And I'm fortunate enough to know a good few. there's a lot in the UK. We're really talented, like Pokemon fun people. So, I mean, just like there's loads and I'll miss out of the RDBC as mentioned earlier. You've got Chief Monkeys, self-banked, you've got Bitcoin meme hub. You've got some really interesting meme artists out there. But not just that. You've got people who do incredible podcasts like Daniel Prince and Once Bitter and Max bit by bit, and you guys, BTC sessions, of course.

But, and I also, I didn't do any public speaking for, until a few years ago. And since then, I've, I, now, in the last few years, I've done a lot of public speaking. I write also a weekly article for BTC Times. I'll be doing it for about a year. And all of this sort of creative, creative energy has come from this passion around doing something and being part of this movement

related to Bitcoin. And I think that's where everybody, all these meme artists are getting their energy from. It's really interesting for me to, I mean, I run an exchange, but my view is actually when we look back on it, we're going to realize that the meme artists, the educators, the people who are talking about it are actually going to be the most important element for why Bitcoin succeeded and will continue to succeed because it is a philosophy

and philosophy requires sharing by information, by imagery and so on. Any other philosophers stood the test of thousands of years. They've had very strong words and images and sounds and songs and so on. And this is where you see it, all the way through

the internet or YouTube songs that we had years ago that we still remember and to all of the writing and all the imagery. And I think that the educational aspects of those and the power of those is what is going to cause Bitcoin to... It's a cultural revolution. Just briefly. I think I like to say that Bitcoin

takes care of the future and it enables you to focus on your present. And I think what you referenced there, Obe, about people, being able to kind of explore their creativity is probably as a result of that. Their future is more liberated and so they have the headspace

to achieve these higher states of actualization and creativity. Yeah, and it's a phenomenal thing. I just, I bet you, anyone, in a hundred years' time, I mean, we're very passionate about exchange and I'm sure Jack Manners is passionate about strike and so on. but in a hundred years time, there will be different businesses. But there will be an image from Bitcoin meme hub or RDBTC or self-banked.

I can bet you there will be some images or memes or songs. They will be still around. It's the history. It's the history. Jal Tong or something like, well, you know, a hundred times were still being played. You know, you'll be going into halls and they'll be like, he'll be singing, reciting me songs. Yeah.

And that's a passion. That's been powerful. If I could jump forward in time, if I could freeze myself and jump forward 100 years and be peeking over the historian shoulder as he analyzed a meme of Elon with dildo eyes, it would just. It would be. Someone lasts longer than others. Timeless. It's art. I would just want to add, like, when you mentioned Chief Monkey, you know, one of my first lightning transactions, and I, he, along with Yonut Vox, created this work of art that they sold at, I think, at a conference.

And they made a book out of it. And I couldn't afford, I couldn't afford the actual multi-coin thing. But I was able to buy this over lightning and Yonat put it together for me. And I live across the pond. And we didn't have to go through exchange rates. She accepted lightning and I was able to send lightning. And it was really beautiful. It's a beautiful piece.

I'm going to take much better care of it than I had been planning now because I know it needs to last for hundreds of years. I'm going to preserve it as part of the record. But the ability for us to connect with one another globally is exactly what Walton was talking about. And you just concretize it perfectly from another personal experience of mine, which is I wanted to reach out to another Bitcoinser. And now we've established a friendship and a relationship. And we talk reasonably often about things. And the borders are not an obstacle. And there's no obstacles.

And we can exchange value with one another. Yeah. I think it's so spot on what Obie said. And I 100% agree. And I think it's really something because, you know, a lot of people say there is no Bitcoin community. And I don't actually know where I stand on that because it kind of is true and it kind of isn't true. But it's definitely you need something to rally around.

And I think the meme artist and the shared culture, is definitely something to rally around. We saw how important this was with the user activated soft fork, you know, and it will be important going forward because, again, no one can tell you, there is no one in the world who can tell you what Bitcoin is. You have to decide it for yourself. So you need to convince your brothers and sisters what your view of Bitcoin is. And memes are excellent at that, you know, memes are information warfare.

And I always like to say, of course we need to make use of information warfare, because Bitcoin is pure information. That's what it is. It's an informational construct. The only thing you can do about Bitcoin is to fight it with bad information. And that's what we currently see being played out. The mainstream media attacks it with bad information. The politicians attack it with bad information.

The legislators attack it with bad information. And we, Bitcoiners, we create a counter-narrative with good information, with memes and with articles and writing and other things. And this is where this battle field is being played out. And this is also where the culture grows. We don't have churches. we have Bitcoin Twitter, you know, and and this is this is where, yeah, but I'm serious, you know, this is where the songs are playing. This is where, like, it's exactly right what you,

what you said, you know, and it's, it's a new thing and it's a weird thing, but memes play such an important role. Like, it's, man, I love it. Yeah. Can I just ask? We're about a hundred times funnier than any one of our detractors. Totally. Yeah, we just have best memes and it's not even close. It's not easy. Not yet. Nobody else has a good meme. Has Francis, to come full circle, has Francis walked back her comment? Or does she still use this? She instead turned her account private today, thereby essentially blocking all of Bitcoin

Twitter. Unless she plugs in. Imagine her engagement is going to be much lower now. Yeah. I mean, that's the right move, right? Just unplug your Twitter account. I mean, you know, it's obvious. That way, no.

Nobody can send you any bad tweets. Exactly. Yeah. And thereby proving your point. Yeah. I think now that we brought it full circle, this is a great place to wrap up. Gentlemen, this has been an absolute pleasure. Again, always the best part of my week sitting and chilling out with some Bitcoiners talking about things we're so excited about.

And for a show called Why Are We Bullish, I love how seldom the price is even mentioned because there's so much more to be. Yeah. There's so much more to be bullished them. You meet one equals one and it always will do. That's the only price you need to know. Yeah, exactly. So gentlemen, I will say thank you so much. Let's go down the line one more time.

If you can just who you are, what you do, where people can find you, that kind of thing. It would be great. Obi, to you first. Obi, coin floor is our exchange and you can find me on Twitter. I've been known in Twitter for a while, so my Twitter handles OBI, OBI. And you can also find weekly on BTC Times as well. Awesome. Yes, check out BTC Times.

It's solid. Tomer, how about yourself? I write a lot about Bitcoin on Medium. So tomorstrolight.medium.com. There's some really fun pieces. There's a lot of short pieces. There's some profound pieces that I try to dive into really interesting philosophical issues about Bitcoin. And I'm at Tomer Strolight on Twitter.

And I try to shit post as often. I can. Awesome. Awesome. Gigi, how are you? I'm ThereGG on Twitter. I don't even have to try shit posting. It comes natural. That's basically all I do. And my writing is on their gG.com. And I also wrote a book called 21 Lessons, which you can read online on 21Lessons.com. And yeah, I'm currently working on my new book, 21 ways. And yeah, the rest is on GitHub. So I'm writing code too, but, you know, only 144 blocks in the day. So, It's difficult to do everything at once. Awesome.

And Walton, take us away. I essentially live on Clubhouse. You can also find me on Twitter. Both are at AEHW1. I'm sure you see it in a tweet. I am an educator. I like to talk about principles. I like to talk about economics.

I like to talk about game theory. I like to talk about technology. I like to make memes and the key thing that I champion is Plebner which is the community focused on enabling the last step towards being fully sovereign in Bitcoin

and that is running your own lightning node you can do this anonymously even if you're in the community but it's the place to find the best connections, the best girth, as we call it. Yes. And the best community.

And to further that education, Plebnet are actually going to be co-hosting a space at Tab Conf in November with Start 9, the Independence Village, focused on helping people achieve that independence digitally. I'm also going to be there as the MC. So it's going to be my first Bitcoin conference. I'm very excited. So yeah, be it at TabCon for November. DM me if you want a discount link. Awesome. Everybody, thank you so much for being here.

And anybody watching, of course, all of their Twitter profiles are going to be linked in these show notes. So be sure to check them out. Thank you guys so much. Thank you guys. much for watching and or listening if you're on the pod afterwards. Of course, please do hit like, subscribe, and share all of those things help so much. They help get this show in front of more eyeballs. If you want to help with the show in another way, you can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors

down below. That was Ledden, Bit Buy, BitRefill, Keystone, Bill Fottle over at PrivacyPros.I.O. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always draw me a Bitcoin tip at my strike. dot me page that is strike.me. slash btc sessions when you get there you can type in any amount you like you hit the tip button you will be greeted with one a QR lightning URL or if you click to the right a regular bitcoin QR code and whatever tickles your fancy thank you guys again as always and have a wonderful day or evening wherever you may be i'm ben with the btc sessions i'll see you guys next time for your daily session.