BTC Sessions - WTF Did This White House Insider JUST LEAK About US Bitcoin Plans? (What’s Really Going On)

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

A Top White House insider — Scott Bessent — just leaked explosive information about the U.S. government’s real plans for Bitcoin—and it’s not what they’ve been telling the public. If this leak is true, it changes everything for BTC investors and freedom in America.BOOK private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted.https://bitcoinmentor.io/—------------------------------FOLLOW BTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions AQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCpCRYPTOCLOAKShttps://qrco.de/bg5Dvo#btc #bitcoin #crypto

By now, you've probably heard the news. Scott Besson, the current U.S. Treasury Secretary, and the man many believed would spearhead a national Bitcoin Reserve, went on TV this morning and flat out said the government would not be buying Bitcoin. Now, that's a gut punch for the community, especially after months of the administration, hiding up the idea of nation-state accumulation to Bitcoiners before and after the election. His comments even hinted that they may have sold. some Bitcoin along the way. But in just the last few hours, a bombshell update has dropped.

And it might turn the entire story on its head. So what was said, what indicators do we have that the government may have sold some Bitcoin? And what development in the last couple hours changes the whole story? Well, smash that like button and strap in because we're going to break it down for you right now. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your weekly session. All right, I want to welcome, of course, to the stage. My co-host with the most, Mr. Nathan Fitzsimmons of Bitcoin Mentor. How you doing, man? I'm doing pretty good.

Did you see that the Socialist Republic of Canada that were stuck and continued to embarrass itself this week? I did. I saw it from afar because I was doing some traveling. I was at Enriga for the Baltic Honey Badger Conference. And just when you think, it can't get worse. Oh, no. It can get worse. It can get worse.

Absolutely. And they keep illustrating that every step. of the way. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we'll discuss that in a little bit, but let's get to the bottom of what the hell has been going on today because it's a bit of a roller coaster. We had one bit of information this morning that seemed pretty compelling. And then we had a bit of a whip saw here. So first, let's kind of chat about how things have transpired over time here. So, you know, why in the first place is everybody hyped up? So, you know, those of you that are new to the channel that are just kind of tuning in for the first time, you know, what is kind of the overarching theme here?

And it's that, you know, Trump ran on a platform of Bitcoin. This is going to be the Bitcoin capital of the world. And there's going to be a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. And so like here's a clip of Trump. And he's talking about in recent years, the U.S. government selling Bitcoin, that you never sell your Bitcoin. So unfortunately in recent years, the U.S. government has foolishly sold tens of thousands of additional Bitcoin that were worth

billions and billions of dollars had they not sold them, but they did sell them, mostly during the Biden administration. Not a good thing to have done. From this day on, America will follow the rule that every Bitcoin knows very well, never sell your Bitcoin. That's a little phrase that they have. I don't know if that's right or not. Who the hell knows, right?

So again, interesting that he says, mostly under the Biden administration, mostly. So who knows there? But let's kind of continue on, like, what they were saying, you know, before and post-election. Again, you know, he signed an executive order to establish a strategic Bitcoin Reserve. executive order directed the secretaries of treasury and commerce to develop budget neutral strategies for acquiring additional Bitcoin that have no incremental costs on taxpayers. Okay, okay, fair enough. And this is like from the article here on Globe and Mail.

And there's the quote, again, budget neutral strategies that have no incremental costs on taxpayers. What else? What else was promised well? we had Trump's digital assets chief, Bo Hines, again, confirming White House plans for Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, asked about the scale of the reserve and how much Bitcoin the government currently holds. He did not provide any specifics, and we may find out why in a moment. I can't discuss that right now. There are several reasons we're not disclosing that right now. There might be a time when we do, but I will say we want as much as we can possibly get

and we're going to continue to work on that. So again, hinting like, hey, we're figuring this out. We're going to be accumulating Bitcoin aggressively, it would seem. And it's not just the reserve stuff. There's been other moves that are seemingly quite positive. Again, Trump signing executive order to allow Bitcoin into 401Ks. We also had him nominating pro-Bitcoin advocate, Stephen Moran, to the Federal Reserve Board.

He says Bitcoin should have a meaningful role in the U.S. monetary policy. Now, with that in mind, five days ago, interesting development, White House Crypto Advisor, Bo Heinz, the same guy who's like, we want as much as we can get, he left. He's gone. He steps down. He's no longer, he's pursuing things in the private sector. Well, that's very interesting. And then as of this morning, we have Scott Bessent on Fox Business.

And let's take a listen to what he said this morning. Key this morning. We've got the large gold holding. I doubt we're going to revalue it. But we are going to keep it there again as a store of value for the American people. We've also started to get into the 21st century, a Bitcoin strategic. We're not going to be buying that, but we are going to use confiscated assets and continue to build that up. We're going to stop selling that.

I believe that Bitcoin reserve at today's prices is somewhere between 15 and 20 billion. There's a lot there. So, again, to reiterate, you know, we've got to at first, he said, I doubt we're going to revalue gold. He also then said, we've got to start. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. We're not going to be buying it. We're not going to be buying Bitcoin. But he said that we're going to, basically he said, like, we won't buy it, but if we steal some from people, we'll put it in there.

So that's neat. And then beyond that, he said, and we're going to stop selling it. Might that indicate that there was some selling taking place? And then furthermore, the last thing was the valuation on the Bitcoin that they currently hold, which he said between 15 and $20 billion. Now, Larry Lepard summed it up quite nicely here. He said, okay, so who sold 50,000 coins? At one point, the claim was that the U.S. controlled 210,000 Bitcoin.

And when you math that out with what Besson just said at 15 to 20 billion, the math ain't mathen. When you look at even as recent as December 15th of last year, it would appear that under a filing, they held 198, just over 198,000 Bitcoin. With the price lower than it was at the time when he made this announcement, that was still $23, over $23 and a third billion. So, again, why is there now less than that? And of course, when Bessent spoke, you can see, I think I can see exactly when he said

that it looks like it was right about there. So we saw the price go from the euphoria of some new all-time highs last night. It was last night I got to like 124 and a bit and now we're flitting around $117, you know,

closer to $118,000. So the market did not like that. However, however, this is a, there's been a major change in the past couple of hours and we can only speculate

as to why, but he did say we're not going to be buying Bitcoin and he basically outlined like if we confiscate it, we'll keep it. But not much else other than that. And then the ire of Bitcoiners online was clearly felt because the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, then came out and shared this tweet around 1.45 this afternoon, my time, so a couple hours forward from there.

Bitcoin that has been finally forfeited to the federal government will be the foundation of the strategic Bitcoin Reserve that President Trump established in his March executive order. In addition, the Treasury is committed to exploring budget-neutral pathways to acquire more Bitcoin to expand the reserve and to execute on the president's promise to make the United States the Bitcoin superpower of the world. So it would seem that compared to what he was saying this morning, he's kind of done an about face and gone back to the preexisting narrative that, hey, we're still pursuing ways to accumulate more Bitcoin outside of the way that he spoke of, which was just stealing it from people. You also have Senator Cynthia Lomas chiming in here. Secretary Scott Besant is right. A budget neutral path to building the SBR is the way. We cannot save our country from $37 trillion in debt by purchasing more Bitcoin, but we can revalue gold.

So the opposite of what he said, he said, we're not going to revalue it. She said we can revalue gold reserves to today's prices and transfer the increase in value to build the SBR. America needs the Bitcoin Act. Now, what I'll say is, they don't have that fucking gold. There's no way. There's a reason why they're not keen on that.

It's not there. I don't know. What do you think, Nathan? Well, it's funny that we never got that audit, did we? We never got that audit of Vort Knox. I'm curious how much is there. It's weird to me that this idea keeps getting floated around.

Like, it feels like they're trying to meme it into existence. Like, I don't, I think the first time I ever heard the idea of revaluing the gold came from Luke Groman. I'm not sure if it was one of his kind of brainchilds or it was something that's been considered for a long time, but I feel like that one is getting normalized in the media, and they're going to make some moves on that. I think it's definitely within the realm of possibility.

In terms of the response, like, what a nice sort of indication of where Bitcoiners are in terms of political influence? It was wonderfully outlined, I think, with the election Trump, because he did get a lot of support from the libertarian base, especially on Free Ross aspect, but even now, right? There's a lot of people doing quick about faces, a quick 180s if they piss off the Bitcoin crowd, because it's not only just a virulent group that's very passionate about it,

but they've also got the capital behind him. And I bet you there's some donors knocked on his door when he came out. I bet you that that was where the pressure came from. With regards to his initial statements, I'm not sure that he was necessarily lying or maybe downplaying or even misspoke. I thought Joe Consorti had a wonderful point about this as well, that he's a debt salesman. He's got to get people to buy treasuries. And so he's got to walk this line between keeping Bitcoiners and donors happy, getting some potentially into the strategic Bitcoin

reserve, but still being like, look, I'm all about Bitcoin, but I want you to buy my debt. That's what I want you to buy. Yeah. How do you simultaneously stack the soundest money on earth that is a clear replacement for the U.S. dollar and U.S. treasuries while getting people to use U.S. dollars and buy U.S. treasuries. Yes. Guys, we like Bitcoin, but like, have you seen my shit coin? That's exactly. And even to further illustrate, to Senator Lomas's point, one thing I'll disagree with is

you absolutely could just buy Bitcoin. Screw the debt, you know, the budget neutral thing. You want to save the U.S., that's probably the way you actually have to do it, but it ain't going to save necessarily the U.S. dollar. And again, going back to this idea of revaluing the gold, I saw it a wonderful theory kind of floated out there too, because we recently had the very brief window with the tariffs on the gold. And trying to make sense of that,

one idea that I was shown that did kind of, you know, everything lined up for me was the idea of tariff on gold, short-squeeze the gold, re-value by Bitcoin. Do I think that they're going to do that? Not necessarily. Do I think it would be a good idea for them? Yeah, I do. Yeah, yeah.

again and I see people chirping in the chat and I agree like Doug at the end of the day you got to ask yourself do you actually trust this administration and like the answer is never trust any politician right like they they will say one thing

and do the opposite if it suits them better at any point in time and we've seen that time and time again should never be surprised by it and furthermore to kind of round out this topic here it's if you are waiting on government decisions to inform whether or not you're going to obtain, use, and secure Bitcoin, you are doing it wrong. Don't go and wait. Just start learning right now and make sure that you're not only getting Bitcoin, but getting it into your own self-custody.

It is so, so important. If you want help with that, just scan the QR code. There's the learn page that we have set up on the VTC Sessions website. And literally it's just full of skills that you can learn from beginner stuff to intermediate to master. And you can just level up as a bitcoiner. And none of this will matter. None of it will matter because you will be safe in self-custody with your own Bitcoin. And beyond that, if you want to dive deeper, there's playlists for deeper dives on all of the

topics there. So, you know, level up. Don't wait. Don't wait for the government to tell you whether or not Bitcoin's valuable. know it is. We know it's important, and we know that if you are self-sovereign, then you can just sit back and, you know, the news is fun to listen to, but you don't need to be reliant on it. With that, Nathan, on the other side of the jump, did you see the craziness yesterday with the supposed Google ban on Bitcoin wallets requiring licensing and all that, the about phase,

all of the stuff that went down? Oh, yeah, it was incredible to watch. And again, it's just like we have the Treasury Secretary responding to Bitcoiners not being exactly happy. And we have Google responding to Bitcoiners not exactly being happy. But it wasn't really a good day for Google in a number of aspects. So I'm not surprised that things were, again, a little bit of a roller coaster right. I mean, their statements are changing faster than the Bitcoin price. They're more volatile currently than the Bitcoin price.

That's ridiculous. We are going to be touching on that. There's plenty more than just like the initial ban that went on. on and there's a resolution to it. And I didn't realize, like, this was already taking place before people noticed it the other day. And there's some real examples and a follow up to the original article that actually expose it. So we're going to kind of go through that.

And, you know, there's seemingly a positive outcome to it. But, like, is there? We'll see about that. Everybody that's tuning in, again, if you're brand new here, welcome. If you're a returning viewer, welcome. Everybody, if you're enjoying the show, please do smash that like button. We're going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors. And on the other side of the jump, we're also going to give away some sats.

So get out your lightning wallets. We will be right back in one minute. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC sessions to sign up today. And you can share your own personalized referral link to earn commissions. If you've been around Bitcoin for more than a minute, you've definitely seen something made by crypto cloaks.

Since 2017, they've been the go-to for badass 3D printed Bitcoin gear from customer. whole mining rigs to sleek hardware wallet bounce that make your setup look pro. I've been stacking Cloaks gear for years, and most recently I grabbed their gamma case for my miner. Let me tell you, it turns some heads. You can customize everything, and of course, the legendary Bitcoin grenade, yeah, that's them. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code to visit Cryptocloaks.com and stack your own custom cloaks gear today. Debify is the best and easiest way to borrow against your

Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Funds are held in a multi-sig escrow where you hold a key, and the platform allows for excellent hardware like the cold card Mark 4 and the Q. You have access to flexible conditions, the best rates, and institutional-grade liquidity. If you're looking to make use of your capital, don't sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it. You can head over to Debify.com to check them out, or simply scan the QR code on the screen. All right. We are right back in and we're going to give away some sats before we outline what in the hell happened with Google banning Bitcoin wallets from their app store the other day. So we're over here on Bitcoin Well. Awesome place to be stacking stats in Canada and the U.S. And the way it works, also they have Bitcoin Well points. And so when you sign up by Bitcoin, refer friends, you're in points and you can easily use them to grab yourself some swag.

Or you can use points to toss a coin in the well. and every time you do, you have a chance to win up to a million sats. So all you need right now is a lightning wallet. And in that wallet, you're going to scan the QR code. Whoever scans this QR code first will steal whatever amount of sats we get from everyone else. So you've got to be quick on the draw here. But whoever scans this is going to get away with 378 sats. If you do snag them first, let us know in the chat.

We love to hear it. But with that, let's talk about what the hell happen. the other day with Google because it was, again, also a roller coaster. Like the whip saw was, yeah, I've got some whiplash from it. But Google Play Store bans

wallets that don't have a banking license. So, this is, there's an update here and we'll go through that in a sec, but they say Google Play Store introduced a policy that requires any software wallet developer to obtain a license before publishing cryptocurrency app, wallet apps,

to the Google Play Store to ensure a safe and compliant ecosystem for users. That sounds so pretty. The policy targets 15 jurisdictions, including the EU and the United States, laying out which regulations Google Play Store expects software wallet developers to comply with. This includes being a registered money service business with FinCEN in the U.S., as well as obtaining a mica license in the EU. again for forcing AML and KYC I'm non-Costodia wallets in the U.S.

Basically again, registering with FinCEN as a money service business or with a state as a money service transmitter. And a federal or state chartered bank entity would be the only other people that can get around that. And then you'd have to adhere to AML and KYC all of this stuff. which is crazy. And the interesting thing is once this article started, again, receiving the ire of Bitcoin's, people went insane over this thing. Rightfully so. Rightfully so because like the policy was crazy.

Like you had to register if you're in Canada. It was with FinTrack, you know, all of these different things. Even if you were like it just specified any Bitcoin wallet, it didn't differentiate between exchanges. that hold other people's money and self-custody. However, you know, not only do Bitcoiners get mad, market didn't like it either. Here's Eric Yiggs. Great backlashing everyone and you see the Google price

just like wick down, pretty alphabet rather, all of a sudden right around the time that news broke and then kind of come back to normal. But at the same time, we were also seeing for the first time Bitcoin's market cap flipping alphabet, aka Google. So while we were enjoying our fresh all-time highs the other night, we were also enjoying a fresh slapping of Google

as we surpass them. And their drop in market cap may have also contributed to that flippinging. So it's a matter of time before we're up there and we're knocking on the door of gold. I think that Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia, I mean, they've got it coming no matter what. Gold will be a harder one to tackle because the leap between Nvidia and gold right now is large.

A bit of a 5x there. So it's a bit of a stretch at the, it's like the last five pounds, you know? You lose the first quite easy, but getting the number one spot will take a little while. But realistically, like, Nvidia is less than a 2x above where Bitcoin currently is. And in Bitcoin's, history, that's not really outside the realm of possibility.

But yes, it was fun to see Google take a hit in the market, both in terms of the leaderboard and that wick down. It didn't quite reset the same height because again, apparently going after Bitcoin is bad for business. Indeed. And they did an about face, actually. Here's an update from Lola who wrote the original article. So Google has changed its play store policy in response to our reporting.

Here is why this is a big deal for developers. Since our story yesterday, several people reached out to me about Google Play Store delisting non-custodial wallets well before the policy in question came into effect in July. Asking for local licenses under what was previously known as their blockchain-based content policy, one of these wallets was Electrum Wallet, the mobile version, who thankfully documented their ordeal with the Google Play Store publicly. It seems that as soon as a local jurisdiction codified licensing requirements for software wallets, Google wanted to see that the developers obtained sent license, making no distinction between

custodial and non-custodial wallets. If no license was provided, it appears that Google auto-band flagged wallets for policy violations, leaving it up to developers to prove that they did not need a license under local laws. In the case of Electrum, getting their wallet back into the Play Store took over 100 days. That's 100 days in which no new installs were possible while existing users weren't able to pull updates. A big deal seeing how some updates push critical security fixes. By fixing their newest policy to now specifically exempt non-custodial wallets, non-custodial

developers will no longer have to prove that they don't need a license if they are flagged, but can simply point to the fact that they are non-custodial, referencing Google's own policy. Never thought I'd say this, but thank you, Google, for fixing this. And thanks everyone who helped raise hell to make it happen. And the tweet from Google responding directly to the original article, thanks for flagging this. Non-custodial wallets are not in the scope of Google plays cryptocurrency exchange and software wallets policy. We are updating the help center to make this clear. So once again, Bitcoin is for the win. Now, that said, Google's also dabbling in the Bitcoin space in other ways at the same time.

They just took an 8% stake in Bitcoin Miner, Terawolf. This is, and I'll share the article here, this is a $3.7 billion deal. And so they've landed an infrastructure deal, 10-year AI hosting deal. Google is taking a stake in the company as it helps fund the project. Terawolf, who owns and operates industrial-scale data centers in the U.S., which are tailor for high-performance, compute, hosting, and Bitcoin mining. Again, they announced that it signed two 10-year co-location agreements with Fluid Stack, and this is a mix of AI in Bitcoin mining, but yeah, they're deploying more than 200 megawatts

of IT load, and yeah, 3.7 billion in contracted revenue over the initial 10-year terms. And yeah, Google's got a stake in that. Interesting. Nonetheless, it's not all roses. I think it's important that Bitcoiners, like, for every little win, we also need to remain vigilant. There's still plenty of bad stuff on the horizon. And we need to keep raising shit over stuff like this. So, you know, you've got a Democratic senator introducing a Senate bill to tighten controls on Bitcoin ATMs.

If passed, the bill would require ATM operators to obtain a money, transmeter license and collect detailed consumer information for each transaction. Not great. You know, you can see that coming a mile away. Of course, they're going to be wanting to do that. This one really scary. As much as I don't give a shit about Ethereum, I do give a shit about people being arrested for writing code, let alone writing reports about code.

And that's exactly what happened here. There's a developer. He was arrested at passport control in Turkey over his contributions not to tornado cash to a paper that assessed the efficacy of privacy on Ethereum and tornado cash. So he basically just wrote a paper saying, like, is tornado cash effective for, you know, a privacy on Ethereum? And he was arrested. He did end up being released, but he was held for a while, specifically. specifically because of this reason, which is crazy. And of course, unfortunately, the actual original case, Roman Storm, who created Tornado Cash,

he was found guilty of unlicensed money transmission conspiracy. Now, he wasn't found guilty under a couple other things. They could not reach a decision on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and violate U.S. sanctions. So it resulted in a mistrial on those two, but he was. found guilty of unlicensed money transmission conspiracy. And, you know, they can appeal that. I'm sure they will appeal that, but that's unfortunate. And then outside of that, again, still guys, the samurai well-out developers,

they pled guilty to unlicensed money transmission. And that's really, really shitty. Like, I mean, how do you feel, Nathan? When it comes to these things, like we're getting some wins, but there's still these looming dark clouds with stories like this. Well, I'm reminded that, you know, Bitcoin had a good, good reaction to what happened with Google and to what happened with Scott Besant. And Bitcoin has that anti-fragile nature, but that anti-fragile nature isn't just a passive thing

that you allow it to happen, that anti-fragile nature comes from people reacting and then taking steps to get around those hurdles or to prepare for what's coming. So it's another reminder that, like, if you have not dove into maybe some of the more advanced tools or privacy tools or things that are out there, it's time to start exploring them to make sure that if Google decides not to list a wallet, that you're not screwed, that you have other options available, that you know where to go, they're kind of prepared in advance, that it's your actions today in response to these sort of things that build out that anti-fragile nature. And I don't think this is the end of it.

I mean, there's no way the state is going down without a fight necessarily. I find it unbelievably tragic. I feel particularly like for the samurai wallet developer guys, the taking the plea deal, it's like, I get it. You were in a cage for like 900, sorry, 4161 days or something like that. I can see why they just want to be done with it and kind of move on and do their time, regardless how they actually, you know, even if they feel that they are in fact guilty, whether or not I think that they are in fact guilty. So, you know, we're going to have wins.

Getting Ross out was a win. We're still going to take some hits. The battle's not over yet. And it's kind of up to us to continue to highlight these issues and to talk about them and to, again, keep up with the skills that is necessary to get around. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, harkening back to the Google Play thing, like, had that actually remained true,

and they hadn't done an about face and said, actually, you know what, this is fine, what would people have done? Well, number one, already, if you're on an iPhone, you don't have really much options. It's like you've got the apps, app store. And if it's available, you have progressive web apps where basically it's through the

browser, but it looks like an app on your home screen. That's pretty much it. That's what you've got. Now, if you're on Android phone, you have some more options. So you can use something like Obtanium. This allows you to, again, install and update apps directly from their release pages and receive notifications when new releases are made available. I've had this. Actually, I was talking to Seth for privacy about this, and he recommended checking out Optenium. Francis Pugliad also uses this.

And so, again, FDroid is another option to be able to get apps on an Android phone without having to use the Google Play Store. Now, furthermore, in the realm of freedom technologies, we've also seen the creation of the Zapp Store. So this is at zapstore.dev. Zapstore.dev. And you can download and install this app store.

And the cool thing about it is that it's integrated with Nostor, which is basically a censorship-resistant social graph. So think of you own your contacts yourself, uses public and private key cryptography. And not only that, that allows that rather than just kind of a Trust Me, bro, instance of, well, is this uploaded by the right person? They can basically anybody that's a developer in uploading, they upload and sign with their nostril key.

So there's like this social proof with it and your social graph can directly vouch for the developers and, oh, I've used this and it's safe. And so you actually have direct feedback from your connections as to the efficacy and safety of different applications. And of course, with that built-in Bitcoin, you can directly tip the developers and Bitcoin and Lightning, which is really cool. But I'm super bullish on this.

I think that's great. Again, if you're on Android, you can add the Zab Store, no problem. If you want to go outside of even Android, you can also change the OS on your phone. You can de-google your phone with something like Graphene OS. And so, you know, there's a couple steps

to go through. Maybe I'll have to make a video on how to do this, but Graphene OS is an option. Calix OS is another option, but yeah, you can choose alternatives to Android and iOS, right? There's more out there. And then even just beyond that, something's not available where you are. You need to start looking at things like VPNs. I did make a tutorial on how to use Mulvad VPN, which does not require any personal information. And you can pay with Bitcoin. So I think that that's an important thing. that you should be looking into because, again, if you're in a place that doesn't allow certain things like Canada blocking news on Facebook and Instagram, you know, you can just click a little drop down and say that you're somewhere else that doesn't censor news and enjoy that or get

the app that you need. So again, it's really important that you pick up these skills and you learn, again, I'm going to, I'm shilling this all day and night here. the learn page just just start you know learn the skill set learn what you need to know so that you can continue to be self-sovereign in the face of people telling you otherwise and so um we're we're going to talk a little bit more about the insanity of the canadian government because as bad as things can be seemingly at times in the u.s canada's always there to step in and say hold my beer. So any last minute thoughts on just people leveling up before we do a quick jump? No, I'd say like learn from my mistakes. Don't sleep on Noster as well, too. I did not give

that as much credit or time, particularly when it first came out. And I had a wonderful conversation with Roland from Albi Hub just this week drop. And I went and double check because I was pretty sure it's there. But LB Hub, incredible, Noster Wallet Connect, the other things that you can do with it, very, very helpful. And Zapp Store is in fact on the LB Hub store as well, too. just verified that it's there. So another great place to sync up and get that going. Yeah, yeah, super awesome. On the other side of the jump, Canada made some insane moves this past week,

just in terms of like draconian, like a whole new type of lockdown. It's pretty wild. We're going to chat about that. And a number of other things, you know, a reason why Bitcoin only, there's a major privacy-focused cryptocurrency that is experienced a 51% attack. If you don't know what that is, we'll also reiterate that. But we'll be back in one minute.

Quick shout out to our sponsors. Stay tuned. And if you haven't already, please do smash that like button. We'll see you guys in a sec. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin

with secure self-custody. Aqua also supports lightning and liquid network, making fast, cheap Bitcoin payments and asset transfers easier than ever. Plus, it even supports stable coins giving you ultimate flexibility. Build on open source code, Aqua is transparent, trustworthy, and perfect for beginner and pros alike. Ready to upgrade your Bitcoin experience? Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen now to download Aqua Wallet today. Securing your Bitcoin doesn't have to be complicated or invasive.

With Nunchuk's Honey Badger plan, you get stated. of the art multi-sig with built-in inheritance planning and no KYC required. Nunchuk is trusted by users to secure billions of dollars in Bitcoin. The Honey Badger Plan offers 204 assisted multi-sig guiding you step by step on mobile or desktop. It works seamlessly with hardware wallets like TapSigner, Cold Card, Jade, and plenty of others, so you're always in control. Plus, with non-KYC inheritance planning, you can ensure your Bitcoin goes to your loved ones, no private info needed.

Take control of your Bitcoin today. Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen to check out the Honeybadger plan. Coin Kite has been in the game for years creating hands down the best and most secure hardware when it comes to securing your Bitcoin. The cold card Q is an absolute powerhouse and my daily driver and it's ideal for newcomers and advanced users alike. The tap signer gives you a low-cost user-friendly option for those. just getting started or for convenience when traveling. You can head to coin kite.com and use code BTC sessions for discounts or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away.

All right. We are back in. Nathan, I got a question for you. Do you like the woods? I do. Occasionally I like to escape from in front of the computer screen and go outside, touch grass, have some sun. Usually feels a little bit better.

Why, Ben, do you ask? Do you like getting $25,000 fine for enjoy? the woods? I don't. Usually especially, you know, young family, kids over on this side. I look for activities. They're a little bit cheaper. That's why I would normally go to said woods or on a path or outside in general.

It's usually within my budget. Yeah. Well, it might be outside of your budget if you are in Nova Scotia, who has basically done from what I can tell is the first Canadian climate lockdown. Now, why is this? They indicate worry. over forest fires and have told citizens that you are not allowed to basically go into the woods, whether it be for hiking or fishing or camping or really any reason.

There are some government approved areas, specific campgrounds. So as long as it gets the green check of approval from the government for a very specific spot, you may be able to experience some woods. But outside of that, if you go to the woods, including if you own land that has woods, if you go into your own woods, you can receive a $25,000 fine. And so what we see here on the screen, this gentleman, absolute legend, Jeff Evely, And what he did is he said, I want to challenge this in court. But in order to do so, I need to get the fine.

So he walked in to the office of the conservation officers in Nova Scotia. And he said, I'm aware that there's a fine for walking into the woods. I want to be cordial about this and polite. But I want to inform you guys that I would like to get this fine so that I can fight it in court. So there are woods out back on the other side of the office. If you guys want to follow me out there just to document this, I'm going to record as well. I'm going to go in the woods. And they're like, sir, if you go in the woods, we're going to have to give you that fine.

He's like, I'm aware. So do you guys want to like follow me out? And he goes out. He literally just walks in the woods. And then he comes back inside the office so they can issue him the fine. Now, the funny thing is you'll notice that he says, they handed me a fine for 28. 8,8,872.50. And when he asked, hold on, I thought it was $25,000, they said, oh, yes, $25,000, but there's a victim fee. Because of his victims. So $28,000 some odd dollars for the victim, additional $3.5 grand for the victim fee on top of the original fine.

but absolute insanity. And that's not the only insanity here. Premier of Newfoundland announces anyone in Newfoundland who breaks the fire ban will face six months in jail. And the fines now go from like hundreds or a few thousand bucks or something to like $150,000 in some instances.

It's crazy. So like if you have a little bonfire or something like that, it's like, all right, we're going to give you this fine that the average Canadian, it's like triple the average Canadian income. And then they say failure to pay it will result in jail time. It's like unbelievable. Now, we're just walking down the the tyranny path of tyranny here. But let's continue. Private property rights are no longer safe in VC. British Columbia's Supreme Court has declared Aboriginal title over private lands in Richmond,

land which overlaps the port with port terminals and warehouses, including one operated by Amazon. And it says, of course, the decision will be appealed. But here's a little breakdown on it, very eloquently put by Ron Butler here on X. why recent First Nations land ownership court decision in BC is totally nuts after a five-year trial

longest in Canadian history 800 acres in the city of Richmond Hill BC was awarded to the Coworkin or Cowichin I'm not sure tribes ending 200 years of accepted property law in Canada

at the stroke of a pen a fuck wit judge negated one of the most important aspects of law in a free society, property rights. If a court can decide a First Nations claim supersedes existing multi-decade property titles, this country is in more trouble than I thought. Even the NDP premier of BC, David Eby, was appalled saying,

holding clear title to private property is a requirement of a successful economy. Incredibly, this judgment in favor of one band infuriated to other bands that were part of the case in opposition to the ban that won. Let's all just agree. This stuff is completely insane. A five-year multi-million in fees court case paid for by the tax payers. Yep, all the entities fighting were governments, government agencies, or aboriginal bans supported by government money.

Lawyers made bank. We all lost. So, yeah, very, very interesting. Nathan, have you ever, uh, have you ever, uh, have you ever, uh, considered a second passport. Oh, I absolutely have. I have wonderful friends that have gone down this rabbit hole, and I've been eyeing up that I need to get out of Canada at some point of time.

There's kind of no way around it. My hope is that I can leave Canada without leaving my home, that Alberta will just break off and do its own thing in a glorious and beautiful way. But these things are only going to get worse, and it's only going to continue to accelerate. What's so disappointed, particularly about the firebant, is I would have figured that more of the population would have at least somewhat of like a, you say a hostile response after everything that happened in COVID.

But no, it's, again, it's the same thing. The age verification in the UK for your safety. Google with the non-custodial wallets for your safety. And again, you can't go in the woods for your safety. They originally, because they got so much backlash, at least online, regarding like me walking to woods doesn't create a fire that I forget who it was. I think it was like a liberal MP or somebody out there as well came out and said, no, it's not that.

It's that if you get hurt, we can't come help you. If you get hurt, we can't come help you because we're busy dealing with forest fire. So that's why you can't go. It's absolutely ridiculous. Out of my way, you weren't going to come and help me anyways. You never argue the government. But more importantly, one thing that I want to illustrate for anyone who may still be kind of, again, maybe coming to these realizations that these people don't have your best interest,

the screams they don't trust you. They're treating you like a parent and you're a bad child that they don't like and they beat on the weekends, saying that only with a big stick will you comply with what I want. because I can't trust you to walk through the woods and not burn the whole place down. And if they can't trust us, why the hell should we ever trust them? 100%. And again, I echo your let's hope that the Alberta Sovereignty Movement gains even more steam. I would love to see an independent Alberta.

I do not know which way it's going to go. But they are ramping up for a referendum vote next year. I mean, that seems to be a thing that's coming to fruition. So it'll just be, do they have the support? And yeah, I see people call it the big cities. What about the big cities? Yeah, that's the trouble. Those are the ones that are going to vote against it.

But nonetheless, you know, even in the realm of second passports, this is kind of what Bitcoin enables is flag theory, right? If you can manage to get to a point where you're at least, you know, economically independent. then you can then begin to look at going places where you're treated best. And that's an important part of sovereignty is that flag theory. My wife, she just got her second passport through our friend Katie over at CitizenX. And, you know, you see a lot of these things popping up for Bitcoiners, you know, groups like CitizenX that can like handhold people through obtaining a second passport, either through blood, so like lineage, or just like investment programs or things like that.

So I think that's key to the sovereignty movement. And I think it also incentivizes governments with enough time and enough people doing it, to instead of treating their constituents like subjects, treating them like customers, come to us because this is what we're offering in exchange for perhaps some small taxes. You know, like they get to make the case of why you should be in their jurisdiction, not the case of, I mean, they don't even bother making a case. They just steal from you, right? And make things difficult. So I look forward to watching that dynamic in a digital world with censorship-resistant money playing out in the coming decades.

I think it'll be a hell of a trip. But I do want to change gears a little bit because I want to talk a little bit about. about, have you heard about the 51% attack on Manero, my friend? I have. I have been. For people that might be new here, can you quickly describe what is a 51% attack? So, the original promise of, you know, quote unquote blockchain, when people just use the term blockchain blanket, they interpret it as a silver bullet of like, it's immutable. You can't reverse transactions. Now, in Bitcoin, it's very true. It's incredibly difficult to reverse a transaction. Not that, you know, you can't have times where you're uncertain which transaction is going to go through and where the money's going to end up.

And you might have a 10 minute period where it's like, what's going to be the real transaction? That is possible. But Bitcoin is the system where you are the most certain you possibly can be. that that transaction is immutable and reversible. The reason for that is because of miners. Miners use energy to build blocks of transactions and link them together block by block. And in order to reverse those transactions,

somebody has to exude, execute, and use the same amount of energy to redo all the previous work that has done. And so the long and the short of it is, It makes it exorbitantly expensive to go back and undo and change transactions because you have to expel energy to do that. And the amount of energy required in Bitcoin is just so damn expensive that is not economically viable. However, in Manero right now, we are seeing a 51% attack because the cost of executing it is not that much where it's economically unviably. So cubic just reached 51% share of Manaro hash rate. This is a huge feat. They will be the first to manipulate a cryptocurrency with a 51% attack. I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true. I think there's been other instances, especially 2017 around them. They intend to orphan all blocks from every other minor, meaning they won't build on top of those blocks. They'll just use their own chain. The only way to be able to.

mine Minero will be through them, and they are three times more profitable than mining Minero directly. They are giving half the profit to miners and selling the other half of the profit to buy cubic and send it to the burn wallet. If they mine 100% of the Minero blocks, that gives them 432 Minero mined per day. This is $118,000 roughly at the current price. They keep 50% of that and give the rest to miners making their profits 59 grand a day of cubic being burned every day, 414,000 burned a week, and 1.65 million burned every month. This is insane. This history being made here. Cubic is less than a $300 million market cap and will be the sole miner of a $6 billion market cap coin. This is a picture here.

of the reorg that happened. So basically you have like the original chain and then you have the replacement transactions that came in. So you can see the split. This is where when you have a fork like this, it means that two miners have mined competing blocks of transactions. And this happens in Bitcoin from time to time. It's possible.

And it usually is just timing. It happens at the same time. And so it takes 10 minutes for whoever mined, to the next block to decide, okay, we're going to build on this chain or this chain, and whatever's the longest is the most valid. The problem here is that you had a valid chain that had what, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven blocks. And then cubic comes in and they're like, yeah, fuck you guys, here's the real chain. It just started mining over here and continuing on. So basically reversing these transactions. Now, I'm sure a bunch of those transactions were

included in the other blocks, but now that's the valid chain. So like they kind of undid the previous work. They had the hash power to do this. And so this is summed up really nicely with Francis. Francis Bouliot here, founder of Bull Bitcoin. I'll read the original tweet. This is from what, June 11th of 2023. The point Monero users don't get. If you convert Monaro to Bitcoin, your privacy is only as good as your Bitcoin obsec. To be truly private, Manero users must thus remain in a circular economy. To have a circular economy, you need holders. To have holders, you must outperform all other currencies. And there's the chart of Minero versus Bitcoin just gradually trending to zero. Now, again, his latest update, brutal update, without a circular

economy, Manero privacy is meaningless, and anyway, supertestnet research shows it's not that great anyways. He has shown some examples of, he's shown some examples of de-anonymizing Monero transactions. A minero circular economy participants get absolutely wrecked compared to BTC, circular economies, let it go, use lightning and liquid instead. So again, unfortunately, You know, privacy is a noble thing, but at the expense of a functioning currency that can maintain its purchasing power, even grow in purchasing power. Unfortunately, that's not enough. And again, without enough hash rate to secure the network and protect it from attacks like this, also not enough. So that's unfortunate.

Any takes on this, Nathan? No, it just goes to highlight in like a smaller example because the incentives lined up that basically they could mine Minero and then spend it in order to pump their shit coin, right? And so they had a game theory incentive that actually was strategically advantageous for them to attack the Monaro network more or less. Additionally, I don't know what they'll be able to do. I saw Crowder talking about this as well too. I don't know if they'll be able to do that for any sort of sustained period of time or was more of a publicity stunt, but it does show you the giant glaring weakness that at the end of the day, like as Jeff Booth always, says, right? If you need to remain decentralized and secure. And Monaro, the hash power behind, and it's a different algorithm as well, I forget which one it is, the hash power behind Monero

is not sufficiently decentralized and it's not enough to secure the network. And for anyone thinking about getting into like hobbyist and home mining, it's just another reminder that like every little bit does help, right? It's not necessarily a bad idea. There was tons of concern around like the Chinese mining concentration. And we got to have that at least disemble, disassembled with the China mining ban back in was at 2021. And things look pretty good, but there's still some centralization out there. So if you want to participate, if you want to help, if you want a lottery, mine, it's still a good idea because we do need to make sure that we have this defense

structure in place. Yeah, 100%. And again, to the point early on, we've been sharing the learn page, there's plenty of examples of how to mine at home. So, yeah, go to BTCSessions.com slash learn. And there's one example video of home mining on the main page there. And scroll to the bottom, there's a whole playlist on different ways to mine at home. So, yeah, partake in the network.

But I do want to continue on. I was very excited about this. If you're running a Start 9, which is your own home node solution, running a full Bitcoin node, you can now also install Fedomint onto it. Fediment being an eCash privacy system. built atop Bitcoin. Very interesting. Pretty cool. You can play around with it if you want to side load it. I will be doing a video on how to use it as well. But really, really cool. Basically, you can pool funds in a multi-sig and they sit there and then you can send instantly

between members of the Mint, instant, free, and perfectly private. And then if you're interacting with people outside of the mint, you can string those transactions together via lightning, which gives you the privacy of the crowd. So there's no indication which person in the mint sent. And when the transaction comes into the mint via lightning, there's no indication which person is actually receiving that transaction. So really cool, very interesting. Good to see this rolled out on Start 9. I did also want to mention in the realm of mining, because we were talking about it before, Jack's new open source mining project.

It's called the Proto Rig and Proto Mining. So they had an announcement. And so I'm just going to kind of Rob Warren broke this down, which is great, bikes and Bitcoin on X. He says, what seems like a simple hardware announcement is actually a massive evolution of how mining farms work. Let's dig in.

He said everyone's been wrestling over how to squeeze. another jewel per terahash out of the newest generation miner. Proto rebuilt the farm from the machine level up. To understand why this matters, you must understand how Bitcoin mines make money and what their largest cost centers are. The three largest expenses for miners are facility builds and retrofits, electrical costs, and machine purchases and maintenance.

So operators pay immense amounts of money, setting up very specific facilities. But they run into serious problems years down the road, machine size, power draw footprint can change. This can mean massive retrofit costs. It's not sustainable to spend tens of millions of dollars on facilities filled with hundreds of millions of dollars of machines, only to redesign your tens of millions of dollar facility

the next time you spend hundreds of millions on newer machines. Instead, Proto has done something incredible. They treat the chassis of the machine as farm infrastructure and allow you to hot swap the boards, fans, and power support. as technology advances. So they basically got kind of like a default box and then you swap in the parts. So it's very compartmentalized and you've just got like individual facets that you can reinstall.

You probably pay more to initially set up the full facility after all the chassis and infrastructure costs. However, a proto rig should be much more profitable over time. Why the machine, one of machine fails due to the fan going down or the board failing, You don't lose the productive hash power of just that part. You lose the full machine. This is like how it is right now for the duration of the failure. And for the time you take the pole, disassemble, and repair the machine.

By maintaining the chassis and infrastructure and making the components modular, Proto allows you to keep failures highly localized and repairable via hot swaps, hot swaps reduce repair time. Again, he continues on here when it comes to upgrade your, fleet, you only have to upgrade components instead of entire machines. This allows lower marginal costs, increases marginal profitability and revenues. Again, he says this is the magic of what they've done. Instead of chasing the white rabbit to lower jewels per tera hash, we found a meaningful

profitability gain by eliminating downtime retrofit and upgrade costs. Yeah. So anyways, very interesting. I'm curious to play around with what they've got. I haven't seen pricing or anything like that, but pretty cool. I don't know. Thoughts. I love it. And what it reminds me of is like the immense productivity and efficiency gains that you can actually get with standardization, right? That's a really, really, really powerful thing. Think about how much easier it is for developers and, you know, components builders to have like a standard USBC or a money, standard Bitcoin or the internet, standard HTTP IP, right? When we can almost like coalesce on a framework, then it makes it very easy to make changes adapt. build and continue and have it also be backwards compatible as well. So I'm not saying this will end up being it,

but the idea of having almost like a standard mining housing setup means that, again, like changing up parts on your computer. If you've got a desktop at home, it makes it really easy to upgrade, evolve, improve, and keep it up. And I think that's wonderful, right? I think you get a lot more out of it by starting to standardize, right? Yep, yeah, 100%. And yeah, I look forward to seeing the competition in their,

response because yeah could get spicy now one last thing i wanted to highlight today and uh this is uh this from opportunity cost but this is uh tfTC tfc put together this video here and it's a great video on the federal reserve they did it all with AI and everything um but it's it's awesome so i kind of just want to watch it do you want to watch it with me let's just watch it and send it to your friends afterwards guys yes let's give it a go you can find on them at Op Cost App on X. Jekyll Island, November 1910, seven bankers meeting in secret to create America's central bank.

We just can't call it that. The 1907 panic nearly destroyed us. Banks failed. Fortunes vanished. We want to control America's money supply. Create booms, trigger busts, and profit from both. And how will we do that? We'll create money from nothing, loan it to the government,

and charge interest. Legal counterfeiting, my friends. But there's a cost. Every dollar we print steals value from existing dollars. It's a hidden tax that flows directly to us. And it gets worse. If we ever get off the gold standard, governments can print money for wars. Endless wars become possible and profitable.

Since Americans hate central banks, we'll call it the Federal Reserve. Sounds governmental, doesn't it? It's not. The president will appoint board members, but we'll pick who he appoints. We'll have 12 regional banks. Looks decentralized, democratic even, but New York banks control them all. That's us. You're probably wondering how we're going to get this through Congress.

December 23rd, 1913, most of Congress home for Christmas. Perfect timing for passing unpopular legislation. I'll publicly oppose our own bill in Congress. They'll pass it thinking they beat Wall Street. We'll fund university chairs, write the textbooks. They'll teach our system as economic science. Beautiful. Every American born after this will inherit debt on money we created from nothing.

Generational servitude. The Federal Reserve. Not federal, no reserves. But everyone will think it's their government protecting them. Good afternoon. That's beautiful. Well done. So there's a wonderful, concise, like, two-minute concentration of everything that you need to pass on and just convince you're no quinda friends who are still not quite seeing the problem yet. Just watch this. And if you have any doubts about it, research it.

Yeah, 100%. Well, I think as good a time as any to round out. I really enjoyed this one. And I hope everybody else did. Again, if you're brand new here, welcome to the channel. Make sure you give that like button a smash if you enjoyed it. And if you're returning, Ditto for that. Be sure, please, please, please do take the initiative to make sure you're learning self-custody and you're learning all the Bitcoin tools to keep yourself sovereign. At the end of every show, I play a little clip once again encouraging you guys to use those tools. Nathan, thanks for being here. Everybody else, thanks for being here. I'm Ben.

That's Nathan. And this has been your weekly session. See you guys again soon. Hey, you. Yes, you watching the Bitcoin price movements and the latest exciting news. It's awesome to stay informed, but the real power of Bitcoin comes from taking control. Don't just watch, take action. Head over to btcsessions.ca slash learn for free step-by-step tutorials that guide you through every major skill you need to know,

plus full video playlist for deeper dives on any topic you like. And if you're ready for the ultimate fast track, scroll to the bottom and check out Bitcoin Mentor.com for premium one-on-one experience with my team of Bitcoin experts to ensure you get it right the first time. Don't wait, secure your Bitcoin future today. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen.