TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - Rabbit Hole Recap: Week of 2018.11.05

Episode Date: November 5, 2018

This week we discuss: - Bitcoin Cash - Tether + Deltec - https://www.coindesk.com/deltec-chairman-says-tether-letter-on-bank-relationship-is-authentic/ - Wasabi check-in -Gwyneth Paltrow - https://twitter.com/katherineykwu/status/1059525781163048961 Ron Paul - http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2018/october/29/trump-is-right-the-fed-is-crazy/ - Petro - https://petro.gob.ve/index_eng.html - InitiativeQ Scam - https://twitter.com/matt_odell/status/1057338090392498176 - Unocoin founder arrested - https://qz.com/india/1441787/how-unocoin-founders-were-arrested-for-their-cryptocurrency-atm/ - Coinbase 1.3B in revenue - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-30/coinbase-to-bring-in-1-3-billion-in-2018-sales-documents-show - WEX - https://www.coindesk.com/data-shows-millions-leaving-crypto-wallets-tied-to-long-troubled-exchange/ - Janet Yellen doesn't own any bitcoin Block height: 548,923 Use the code "CRYPT" for 10% off your Go-Bag at www.baboontothemoon.com!

what's up freaks welcome back to rabbit hole recap with matt and marty it is monday november 5th remember remember the 5th of november it's guy fox day freaks uh 2018 year of our lord the bitcoin price is at six three oh 6400 on the dot a bit stamp right now uh been a long week a lot more news uh this week to talk about uh than compared to last week but before we get to the news we have a new sponsor here at tales from the crypt um i got a trip coming up next month matt headed to paris really pumped for this sponsor because i'm gonna need uh their bag when when i'm traveling from from jfk to party uh and this is baboon baboon makes technical duffel bags for all of life's adventures their bags are waterproof materials are tear proof and will last forever

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witnessing this i i fuck with lacroix all right um have some have some coffee in my hand mccallan has not answered our dms cheers freaks i'll be drinking with you another week uh of marty being sober i don't know how much longer this didn't persist but we'll see as long as we as long as we stay at 6400 we're still stable coin region we are a stable coin region speaking of stable coins thank you for the perfect segue tether in the news yet again deltech uh the famous deltech bank in the bahamas uh when did the uh the letter come out a couple days ago days ago there was a letter uh making the rounds that basically was a letter official letter from the bank uh signed by one of the the heads of the there was no name though yeah uh basically claiming that tether

at 1.8 billion is that 1.8 billion 1.8 billion in their account uh a lot of people on crypto twitter thought this was a fake uh today earlier today but they didn't think it was a fake they thought it was directly like there was no name name title there and the signature was like a squiggle so they were like it was a very uh very they were like the bank is trying to give as little assurance as possible right and then i forget which reporter one of the reporters reached out to them and they wouldn't comment on current clients which i think is like normal procedure but everyone said like oh that means it's a fake and now today the bank the like the chair the chairman of the bank told coindesk like the letter is authentic like yeah we sent the

letter out they're our customer they have 1.8 billion dollars in the bank so it looks like tether is fully capitalized here yeah i mean i still don't think that's like that was in my mind that was never the never was or is the biggest risk of tether yeah um the the the claims that they weren't running a full reserve were never based on any kind of uh evidence or anything was always speculation but the bigger the bigger risk is it continues to be like government intervention yeah yeah that'll be a risk of one of the big agencies goes down to the bahamas tries to interject we'll see what happens from there um but again tether news dragging on the people covering this uh it's a i'm sick of the story well when you were working so you're working

on that montage you recorded that you haven't posted yet uh yes i have not posted it yet we were looking back on the year together right and i was going back to my tweets last year like guys i've been talking about this fucking tether bullshit for too long like there's so many the same shit over and over again it's just the constant the say like literally the tweets are exactly the same as the tweets i was sending out then yeah there are no claims of of not backing but government intervention at any time it's a trusted third party it's not inflating the bitcoin price it's like it's just really repetitive it's the never-ending story the never no one will ever be happy people still you know you think the critics are going to be like oh well now it's

all said and done no there's like a million other things they'll say yeah there's always more fodder um so that happened uh i still think it's big news probably you know it's like a lot there's probably a lot of people that were sitting out and watching the tether thing that maybe maybe are feel more comfortable now yeah the price did jump a little bit last two days it's just been no prices have been jumping or going down or anything really for like if you have like any kind of longer term preference it's all just been pretty stable exactly like 6400 for just too long eight weeks now or something like that nine weeks calm before the storm calm before the storm which way will it break we shall find out um speaking of breaking

bitcoin cash is about to break up into multiple chains i honestly have not been following this too much you like how i put it in the agenda yeah bitcoin cash lol so they've got a split coming what's good i honestly have not been following it because i could not give less of a shit like tether uh i could not give less of a shit about bitcoin cash I think it is an abject failure, and hash rate and market cap are proving that. But it seems as though people still care about Bitcoin Cash. So what's going on? Well, it's only interesting because it's interesting from a case study point of view.

I guess there's two main factions of Bitcoin Cash. They disagree with each other. it's roger versus craig right uh but it's roger and jehan versus craig okay uh jehan is bitmain ceo and so i guess i guess craig's faction wants to raise the block size to 128 megabytes nice and and the roger jehan faction wants to keep it at 32 and add a bunch of those old op codes that were all turned off by satoshi i'm pretty sure satoshi turned them off i thought they already added those opcodes back in that point doesn't really it doesn't even really matter what their tech is what they're arguing about from like specs wise right yeah the point is is that

about 50 of bitcoin cash's hash power supports one side and 50 supports the other and and it looks like that they're heading towards a contentious fork situation once they come to the 15th i think i think it's the 15th yeah there's a plan date and um the interesting thing is so they're like arguing with each other about who has more hash supporting what and the whole time you know they're arguing over who controls what bitcoin cash only has six percent of shot 256 hash yeah so so they're and like i i looked it up i think it's like the top seven mining pools right now it could easily 51 attack the bitcoin cash chain and it'll be like nine the top nine mining pools because when the fork happens they're going to split their hash on

each chain so each chain becomes even more vulnerable than it already is now so i i think it'd be kind of like the i mean the ideal situation would be there's like 100 200 block reorg at the time of the contentious fork and like coinbase gets fucked and like a bunch of like fucking exchanges all get screwed and then we could tell everyone like this is what happens when you trust a chain with minority hash rate you know so like i think that would be a really nice learning experience why do you think no pool or significant miner has decided to attack a chain like bcash in particular it's other than verge and it's because of gian it's because of bitmain it's like so so bitmain you know right now they're you know people speculate they have

about 50 of bitcoin cash's hash rate but like gian and and like his supporters like his his group and his affiliates and whatnot henchmen we could go with henchmen they can easily move a lot more than that hash over from bitcoin they're just mining bitcoin right now yes because it's more profitable for them because they already have huge bitcoin cash bags that they don't want to do so even in that element like this whole idea that anyone could ever think that like craig and calvin r like could could get more hash than jihan is like the most ridiculous thing ever because he could just move it move it over so i think the main reason is miners were scared of retaliation from bitmain from jihan like for a while there the only way you could get the best

chips was if you had a cozy relationship with bitmain and like that's not the situation anymore which is interesting right so like so so there there's some little game theory going on in the in the background that is that has protected bitcoin cash because bitmain has protected it yeah um we'll see if that production continues into the future uh so be on the lookout for november 15th uh it's interesting i audibly chuckled uh away from the mic when you brought up calvin ire like the the the characters that have that have accrued uh to the bitcoin the worst of the worst the worst of the worst like calvin i or whatever let's say however the fuck i don't know how to say his last name i kind of mumbled it yeah i just mumbled it there too but

he looks like like your creepy divorced uncle that's like hitting on your friends that are like 30 years younger than him and he really doesn't have anything productive to say just bought a just bought a motorcycle right yeah just bought like showed up thanksgiving with the motorcycle yeah he's definitely one of those cheesy bitcoiners that probably bought a lambo just to buy lambo and then you have uh that who's that gigolo who made like a 15 minute uh oh uh there's a hashing vin armani or there's a hash war coming apparently who is that i have no idea apparently he's on the b-cat b-queen i don't know it's just such a clusterfuck i think like once i mean bitcoin cash was born out of a contentious

minority fork um so once that happens you self-select to people that are just going to keep splitting over and over again for like bullshit reasons yeah um so like there was it was kind of inevitable and i mean i've said in the past that i think any minority forks um if they don't get any kind of dominance in the beginning like they're just destined for zero eventually like you can pump them and try and corner the market but eventually they'll trend towards zero yeah and it becomes more of a personal dick measuring contest than actual uh mission to make the soundest money in the world and that's why i tend not to pay attention to it and uh i think it's funny to see how uh only a year and a month out of the the hard fork uh the initial

hard fork that created bitcoin cash we we see so much strife within the community well i mean like what's really interesting is that you have to think of it from like a whole ecosystem perspective like imagine you're coinbase right now right like i don't know how much bitcoin cash they have over in coinbase but presumably they have some customers that are buying bitcoin cash they're you know especially since they put it front and center with everything else now they have to deal with all of this paperwork and customer service and and you know security considerations because this messy fork is happening and it's happening on an insecure chain that could be reorged at the same time by multiple different entities right you know so like

they're getting what's the expression you get what you sew or whatever you reap what you you reap what you sow that's what's happening to them like they're literally and and people are going to start seeing the liability these exchanges bring on when they when they list you know certain chains shout out to our sponsor cash app for only offering one uh one asset and and avoiding that headache they also don't allow you to deposit any bitcoin so they're really it's true as well i think they might be working on it though yeah they are they are they are working on um yeah so bitcoin cash look out for november 15th not for that shit uh wasabi your beautiful beautiful project that you love so much well it's not it's not my project well

yeah the project i'm in love with it yeah yes you are very happy about it uh you've been tracking the total bitcoin volume within wasab the wasabi ecosystem and it has crossed 300 bitcoin it's pretty material yeah well they posted on their home page but i've been writing it down every day okay um yeah but but it hit i think it's at like 300 bitcoin right now last i checked it was like 297 nice and it was at like 150 like a week ago when they five days ago when they when they launched um 1.0 doubling in a week yeah nice to see what's the experience been like the more people that use it the faster and more private it is so like that's why it's so important that we see those numbers go up that we see more people install it more people run it you know put

liquidity into the system have you seen a material difference since uh more bitcoin have come up yeah it's so much quicker now really privacy loves company that's true what's the difference in timing just like like mine like magnitudes quicker nice magnitudes quicker and he's in he keeps increasing he increases the anonymity set like how many how many people participate in each round he he increases as more liquidity gets added so like when at first when the beta was running it was like i think 20 participants and now it's 50 or 49 so like 49 people take part in the in one coin joint transaction so basically i've had a lot of questions about wasabi since i've been kind of shilling it um the basic premise is is that you like when you buy coins on an exchange

you send them to your wasabi wallet first and then you mix them in wasabi to to try and make it harder for them to track track you through blockchain uh analytics and then and then you transfer to like a hardware wallet or cold storage like so it's like the intermediate you shouldn't be like storing large amounts even though it's custodial non-custodial and you you control your own keys it's still on like a internet connected computer so what you what you want to do is is keep small amounts in there at a time and use it as like a staging ground yeah so if you're like a business accepting bitcoin payments maybe uh you get a bunch of yeah you accept them into your wasabi wallet then you mix them and then you bring them to cold storage or whatever you pay

out your employees without people being able to track them in between or if you have like a compromised wallet you can like for instance if you have a trezor you can add another wallet in trezor you can press add account um so if you do that you can then get a a wallet that has no tainted transactions and it's just a completely clean wallet and then you can slowly take your take your bitcoin from the from the wallet that you've been using transfer it to wasabi and then transfer and then after you mix you transfer it back into the new wallet and then you'll have a wallet filled with non-linked transactions yeah big less linked less linked transactions big improvements to the privacy games at the wallet ux level again these are uh revelations that we've

been following for months now uh in the bent and here at the rabbit hole recap and it's just interesting to see how quickly and uh how legitimate these these products are getting i just literally have been having wasabi open 24 7 giving liquidity to the system thank you for your service sir thank thank you everyone else run wasabi it's wasabi wallet.io WasabiWallet.io. I spelled it wrong in the tweet a couple weeks ago. I corrected you real quick, though. It's one S, not two.

Wasabi. The other Wasabi, I don't even want to say a competitor, but another privacy-focused wallet. This wasn't on the list, but obviously this conversation stoked this thought in my head. Samurai was under the ire of some people over the weekend and on the defense. uh really weird to see greg maxwell apparently called them out uh because uh claiming that they have poor privacy because the way they they store uh what is it no it's it's the it's two elements it's their trusted node feature yes and uh the fact that

they that that the transactions go through their server yes and the the first one was the main And the main reason it was launched was because of the whole Node 2X and user-activated software. So the idea was that you would connect to your own node. So it was never, I don't think it was really ever supposed to be a privacy-focused feature as much as a sovereignty-focused feature. Yes. And then the other, they're going to open source their whole back end. That's why it's still in beta or alpha or whatever they call it. yeah that's why i was pretty pissed about the people like coming at them over the weekends like

they've been pretty open about the limitations of this stuff and i think both sides i think both sides of this debate i guess mean they they just want the best for bitcoin yeah and it's all just kind of bullshit semantics i mean at the end of the day uh i think i think maxwell what he what he said and what he said was people should be running their own electrum server through tor and connecting to it from their phone um with the electrum mobile wallet which is like the most insane expectation of the end user right it's like so out of that's never gonna happen so short of that there is no better wallet than samurai like they're just it doesn't exist like if you want a mobile wallet as far as the mobile wallet scene goes there's no better wallet than

samurai yeah so at this at the end of the day like yeah it could be better and it will be better and they're improving it i'm like really looking forward to whirlpool which is their own implementation of uh the zero link framework which is what uh wasabi is is doing and the interesting thing about whirlpool is it has an incentive like join market is it is the plan so if you provide liquidity to the system you get a portion of the fees yeah it's kind of cool i uh i listened to the stefan lavera podcast with the samurai wallet that was such a good pod it was a really good pod definitely recommend checking that out freaks if you haven't already uh and he had a good one with uh with adam too of wasabi wallet yeah i haven't gotten to that one yet those

are those are two very good pods yeah um two very good episodes on one pod shout out stefan thanks for that that was a really good interview um so that happened yeah it was like you said it's like a bit of bullshit semantics it's like come on but you shouldn't use a trusted node but that's why the feature is there and um but i don't use the trusted node feature yeah and that's the whole thing i don't think uh samurais ever like falsely advertise that that feature yeah i mean i've never seen a samurai advertisement so yeah i mean yeah it's kind of a grassroots it's the things in beta it says beta and it scares a lot of people that they're like oh can i really download this it's in beta i'm like it's more stable than any of the other wallets like

they should all have beta tags on them that's a good sign um all right some more cheekier stories here gwyneth paltrow confirmed into bitcoin the gwyneth paltrow pump 2018 it has started november usually comes with some weird movements i didn't think it was gonna be gwyneth paltrow leading the charge hashtag bullish with gwyneth hashtag bullish with gwyneth we have knocked betty out of the hashtag and betty deserves it more i'm i'm hashtag bullish with betty still okay we're hash okay we're hashtag bullish with gwyneth and hashtag bullish yeah we can't we can't you can't replace betty we're all inclusive doesn't get it uh so her her lifestyle brand goop well so i guess she's an advisor and investor of abra first of all

nice so then she put a q a with abra ceo bill bayhart or uh bill air look it up but does she put a q a of uh with the ceo of abra like on the front page of her lifestyle brand goop which i never heard of before but i guess is pretty major brand and then she tweeted it out to her like three million followers or something yeah bill bar hide height i'm sorry bill i'm butchering your name very his name is bill and he's the ceo of abra yeah and abra's actually been done really cool things in the past like yeah they've done some interesting things are we doing like smart contracts yeah they have like crypto collateralized staple coins i think yeah uh but the interesting thing here is it just continues along this narrative that once

you own bitcoin or own a company that custodies and sells bitcoin to people then you're incentivized to shill it so gwyneth has proceeded to shill it because she has a stake right yeah that's what i thought was the valuable takeaway we have uh and we had ron paul shill it too this week oh yeah yeah in his weekly column he showed that he said that there should be no taxes on cryptocurrencies and we should audit the Fed. Yeah, it was a very short mention at the end of the letter decrying... It was in the closing paragraph.

That makes the whole thing about it. Yeah, that's true. And it actually reminded me what I wrote about today in the bent. Shout out Jeet Sadu. I like Jeet. Who wrote a great thread, posted it last night,

on deflation and liberty, a book by Jorg Guido Holtzman. who also wrote The Ethics of Money Production from the Mises Institute. So I highly recommend you guys go check them out. But, yeah, so I wrote about Jeet's Thread today. And Jeet's Thread, Ron Paul's newsletter, reminded me a lot of what Jeet's Thread was talking about. And basically what Jeet and Jorg-Wietel Holtzman are talking about

is we're sort of de-alienating between deflationary monetary policy and inflationary monetary policy and basically explaining that they're both zero-sum games and the costs are just hidden

in different ways. And in inflationary systems, it's hidden via inflation, obviously. And then deflationary systems, the costs are more abrupt where businesses are failing and people are going bankrupt

and stuff like that. Right, right. So I thought that's an interesting concept. I don't think it's talked about. And that inflationary systems are more unfair. Yes, they're more unfair, obviously, because of the way the money's created. Those closest to the source of the money creation

benefit overwhelmingly and asymmetrically as opposed to those furthest away from the source of money creation, which is central banking system. Right, right, right. Poor people get fucked and rich people benefit. Yeah, and the interesting thing about the inflationary monetary policy and what I really like about what Jörg does in particular,

he comes at it from an ethics standpoint. And basically, inflationary systems that tend to bail out failing companies, they really make it hard for people to climb the social ladder and for markets to sort of play things out. Um, so there's a barrier to entry for, for people not close to the source of money creation. So inflationary policy makes it harder to save, uh, and make money. You got to make more money to stay with inflation. Um, and I'm sort of rambling here.

I'm not making a lot of sense. No, I mean, I think, I think most of the listeners agree with you, but, um, including, including me. Yeah. So check that out. Read that book. I actually listened to the audio book. It's only an hour and 10 minutes.

It was an essay actually. Very good. Really good. Yeah. subscribe to the bent yeah subscribe to the bent um what do we have there oh that reminds me uh your your recent pod this week with uh jack mallers yes fantastic everyone if you haven't listened to it you should go that got me really pumped he's a genius man he's he's so uh the breadth of knowledge that he has in different domains is is stunning uh from a design to an

engineering to a finance understanding uh he's got a better grasp than a lot of people i've met and at a really really young age yeah i was i was i was quite blown away yeah it was a very good interview everyone should listen to it it's actually uh one thing i noticed uh was reflecting I think on yesterday, the last two guests on Tales from the Crypt, the interview series, Justin Moon and Jack Mallers, both had dropped out of high school or college at one point. So Justin actually wound up finishing college and getting a degree, but they didn't have a traditional path, which I think is a very promising and good sign. You know, you can make it. You don't need to go to school. some people should but no i like it you see that you see that a lot there are other ways um

petro dash fork the petro the petro finally like legit launched and they for i say like legit in question in quotations they forked off dash yeah so firstly what kind so first they started their initial announcement was ethereum and i got really excited it was gonna be an erc20 token and i got really excited because like that's like the best test of whether or not it's centralized was was if they could stop this sanctioned country from having an ethereum token um so then so that i expected them to switch because i didn't think it was censorship resistant enough and instead they switched to nem which is ridiculous because it's even more it's like way way way more centralized than ethereum ever is and it's fucking ridiculous

there's like a thousand people that own them the whole thing is anyway then they so they said they were going to do nem but nothing actually ever happened with it and now with the actual launch it is a dash fork which itself is a fork of litecoin which is a fork of bitcoin so it's like kind of a bitcoin fork uh but but there's no they're using a fresh utxo set it's not like they're taking dash and they're forking it and dash owners get some petro or something like that's not the case no they just they're using dashes they're doing what light is code and then they're starting starting from fresh but it's going to be completely centralized it's asset backed it's not just gold back i mean it's not just oil back they they added metals in there too there's like copper

and shit um there's like 10 this 10 that and it's all back and it's all pegged so the whole thing is a centralized mess and so not only with normal asset backed coins do you have the trusted third party risk but in this case it's all the trusted third party happens to be like a corrupt government that's like bankrupt like you should never trust them you should especially not trust uh the corrupt third world but they have their website up and shit it's live it's probably illegal for americans to to participate like i you shouldn't even if you're not american uh it's okay to go to the website though right yeah i mean hopefully i'm probably already on a list anyway but i went there a couple times yeah you sent it to me too yeah i sent it to all my tweeters um the you can

buy with bitcoin and litecoin so like me like you got to actually kind of respect him a little bit because he's trying to hoover up as much bitcoin and litecoin as he can get you know so he knows what has the real value because he's selling you the crap and he's accepting this accepting bitcoin don't fall for it he's a scammer freaks i don't think this is a good trade i don't think you'll even be able to trade this if you're thinking about it yeah they announced some like bullshit exchange support and stuff and they have a block explorer but it doesn't show any real it doesn't show any blocks I don't know I don't know

what's going on well if they're still raising money as a meme there's no proof that any money has exchanged hands there's no you know you don't see any actual activity on the chain or anything it's all mostly a PR

bullshit stunt yeah while we're on that vein Alejandro Machado friend of the pod uh devcon four was it was in prague last week yeah uh ethereum focus was it four i think so i don't know but it was a devcon a devcon yeah in prague uh i believe i saw some tweets uh eleanor machado gave a presentation on experimenting with bitcoin in venezuela so if you freaks i'm sure there's tweets about it on his page at lagw i believe um

and but yeah it's a-l-e-g-w yes um and he's trying they have a grant from the z cash foundation they're trying to do like some kind of airdrop uh education type situation in venezuela so shout out alejandro for pushing that initiative and uh go check it out and fuck the petro that's all just bullshit yeah we're only covering it because and it's it's relevant because other people are going to cover it so you have to you have to give some context it's funny because there's a bunch of stories this week that we're covering just because they're not really stories and so they need to be to be explained that they're not really stories exactly so this is a very good example of the scam spectrum uh or the petro you have a corrupt government launching a cryptocurrency that is a

It's a complete scam and has no basis in legitimacy. And then you have the PhD economist and tech giants who think they can do a better job than Satoshi and the Bitcoin project. And they try to use their credentialed, the veil of credentialed legitimacy to shill a shitcoin to regular, to normal people. Is this a transition for Initiative Q? Initiative Q. This is going to be a big one. There's a PhD behind it, right? Yeah, Larry White.

Larry White, there you go. He's big in free banking and- Fucking scammer. Yeah. A lot of people say there's a lot of really good cryptographers who have Satoshi Envy. Yeah, you either die a great cryptographer or you- Live long enough to spin up a shit coin. ICO promoter.

I guess you can say the same for The Economist now, too. so this initiative this initiative everyone's gonna show their shit coin um this this initiative q is like just straight bullshit but it's starting to make the rounds and i thought it was really important to get ahead of it well they have a really good marketing play they're emailing people it's free they're giving it out for free and you you get five invites you get five invites you send it and the sooner that you get people to the more everyone gets the more you get of the five of you yes gets um so they got it they're like it's like purely like pyramid schemes but they're not charging any money so they're like yeah tiptoeing around the pyramid

schemish right but they're straight up saying like these q tokens can get it now get it worth yeah they're saying trillions of dollars they're like they're like the amount we give you is going to be worth 150 000 when this takes over the monetary supply it is worth two trillion freaks it ain't ever that easy all right no this site just screams scam i'm not sure what the play is yet because they're not taking money but like if you do insist on doing it which me and marty are not participating in this and would never participate in something like this but if you did do it you know definitely do not use your real email address and name um don't don't ever send them money i have a feeling they're gonna like ask for money at some point i don't know

if it's like a harvesting for email addresses but they're probably gonna ask for money at some point uh they their terms and conditions says like they can freeze things at will they have like no qualms of saying it's centralized basically in the nitty-gritty they haven't given any tech specs or like coin distribution or like how many coins they're gonna keep or what what protocol they're using or what the deal is is that they're basically just using glossy videos exactly i think they had a forbes article they really did in forbes you know how you make a good scam you get a really good uh parallax animation driven uh website and yeah the website is so pretty it is so they've done a good job of that uh but no the mark again this is a pure marketing play and

they have a really good marketing angle which is hey the free money free money but then like to get people hooked up they're like the incumbent banking infrastructure was built on 19 technology from the 1960s they give the bitcoin pitch yeah exactly and we're here to completely replace it overnight but bitcoin was unfair that's what they said in the yes are we hypocrites no bitcoin was is the most fair money ever invented i believe so too um so initiative q i bet uh if you freaks out there have been cryptocurrency enthusiasts in your circle of friends and family for a while you're gonna get a couple of emails from some family members i've already got and chilled it who think they found the next bitcoin uh i think with these things a lot of times you find like

the the news publications like the actual reporters and stuff like there's no hard evidence this shit is a scam yet right yeah so they like sit on their hands and they don't make any definitive claims or any kind of coverage or anything they might even give them some positive pr coverage on inadvertently and then they they let them run ads on their website and then like five months down the line they're gonna be like oh my god we should have seen this coming we apologize you know but since we're independent like we can just say to you like there is no evidence but pretty fucking sure this thing's pretty you know like this is gonna be a bad one i think i think it's gonna blow up it's gonna be you know like a bigger than big connect this is

gonna be a big one using uh half a decade of uh groomed heuristics to to detect and call out these scams go to the website that's a scam ah fuck it's checking all the boxes yeah but hey there's a phd economist behind it and a couple and somebody from paypal we don't even know if they're actually behind it either right i guess i think the website says it i think one of them's been shilling it publicly okay there you go uh because people do sometimes you know get their names used when they no this is too big this is too big to it's at such a point where they would have had to come out and be like i'm not associated with this i think you're right at this point that's a pretty expensive domain name they got initiative q just don't fuck that shit yeah uh

beware scan we're calling it out thank us later there you go we're gonna we'll send out the told just so uh thank us later or if it if it so happens to become the world reserve current you can beat us up in a couple years use our invite speaking get beat up in a couple years unicoin they got beat up for for launching their their atms in india oh no so yeah i wanted we i thought it was important to come back to this because we talked about in the other rabbit hole we could have talked about it last week but it slipped our it slipped our list it wasn't on my radar i didn't realize until afterwards yeah so we talked about it two weeks ago uh unicoin went ahead and installed Bitcoin

ATMs in India, even though the government... They weren't true ATMs. They were just deposit and withdraw from their website. And yeah, so the founder, one of the founders got arrested. They both got arrested. They both got arrested. Sonny, right? So

I guess maybe he's the third founder. But two of the founders got arrested. Maybe Sonny's not in India. To all our Indian brothers and sisters out there, we're sorry. But they arrested one at the ATM like in person and then they went to the other guy's house and they arrested him

and they like took the laptops and all the stuff and they seized some Bitcoin. Really? Small amounts, but yeah. Yeah, it sucks. The weak point of all of this, like the crackdown spot is where the fiat meets, where you meet the traditional banking world because there's no way to do that without making yourself a huge fucking target for your government.

So short term, you know, that's going to continue to be an issue. And the governments that do it are just hurting themselves and their people because their people are getting fucked and they're losing out on future tax revenue. You know, it's just going to go to the places that are adapt or die, motherfuckers. Yeah. So hopefully they change course soon. and if not uh won't be great for them i don't think um next topic coinbase 1.3 billion 1.3 billion in revenue projected projected revenue for this year for this year yes uh total year not a quarter right yeah total year that's pretty good pretty good that's a lot of money i mean like

fuck coinbase but you know i think that's pretty bullish for the space yeah so that's why i put it in there um coinbase recently added zrx and bat uh and i've gotten too many text messages from people asking if they should buy it which just fucking infuriates me and just i i don't know neither and i wouldn't buy them he got dragged he got dragged into a twitter war this weekend too brandon and ike he gets dragged into twitter war every fucking week dude's got such a fucking ego man and and at the end of the day the reason they have the bad token was so they can make a shit ton more money and he's never gonna say that so like debating him or arguing with him is just a mindless exercise because he's never gonna say that and the other side's always gonna

say that because that's what he did and and there's that because you can this whole system can run on lightning yeah you're gonna be able to set up web web sockets and yeah there's nothing decentralized about bat either like they control the token supply publishers have to get paid to uphold which does full kyc on you like it's fucking bullshit yeah um and again it's like it's that thing what you're saying patience exactly like people spin up these tokens for use cases that will be enabled in the future it's just going to take time to get there uh slowly but surely that's being proven out but you know like i wouldn't like you know what's awesome just say you know it was to make a shit ton of money

yeah and not to uh pat myself on the shoulder here but when i was doing research for the montage going back and reading old bands i was giving out some pretty good advice this time last year and the mania i have to say pat myself i was patting myself on the back too yeah we did pretty good that's why we're where we are right now that's what's cool about this space is like they really it tends to have like a pretty decent memory and it just weeds people out yeah uh adapt or die that's uh but it is interesting to see uh like if you are patient and have a long-term view like these things will will come to fruition it's just again to think that you're gonna get all the shit out of the box is asinine

like think but that's what i'm saying like brendan didn't he didn't think like that's that's not he knows that but he just want to make bank that's true you know like if you could control the token supply you might as well try right can you really like he go fuck himself is it unethical but i don't yes i think it is unethical but like a lot of people make money unethically yeah right right so like i'm just saying like i feel like the incentives are set up so people end up you know shilling their icos right like that's how the incentives are set up and like over time they get weeded out you know and that sucks if you make signerage as easy as a couple lines of code yeah it's gonna happen it's it's inevitable that's what's gonna happen that's

people's natural greedy inclination yeah um i just wish he just admitted it and just said like that's why bad exists i don't think that'll ever happen no that'll never happen what is wex and they have 90 oh x is the exchange that took so btce the russian was one of the dopest exchanges that existed in bitcoin history they were laundering all the gox coins yeah but they they were anonymous and they never had any issues until last year when the government took them down before that everything was they were like surprisingly good at customer service no one there was loyal you know they were from the gox days and they existed and they never did any kyc on you they had a very limited palette of shit coins you know like a tasteful amount so you

still had some access but you know not too many there was like a full-blown shit coin exchange like everyone knew it was a bitcoin exchange and then the government like fucking took down the guy when he was like on vacation in greece it was like run by russians they pick him up in greece or uh He was on vacation somewhere, and they, like, rammed through his gate and, like, huge, huge operation took him down. And then he, didn't he accidentally kill, I'm doing quotes, didn't he accidentally kill himself in custody? I think, yes. Something super sketchy happened, and then he died. And then Wex pops up, and supposedly it's from the same guys as BTCE.

and everyone's customer balances are going to get restored so at this point i'm like 99 sure that wex is a honeypot designed to like okay we got the guy now let's try and get the users of the exchange right like because so one of the reasons they went after him is because we had all that ransomware that was going around remember like the wanna cry and shit where they would encrypt your fun encrypt your hard drive and then demand bitcoin ransom a lot of those funds were going through btce and afterwards like a lot of people were saying like a lot of the mount gox stolen funds were going through btce as well yeah whiz sort of proved it didn't he yeah i think so but anyway they laundered a lot of money got laundered through them because they didn't do kyc or freeze

funds um so like that makes sense uh so i thought wex was a honeypot but it turns out that it probably isn't a honeypot because whoever runs wex is trying to steal all the fucking money and they sent a bunch of it to to binance and binance froze it yeah this is not your keys not your bitcoin we got that lesson yeah and it's ethereum right yeah it's ethereum but not your keys not your ethereum it's the same thing same thing i think it was 93 000 ethereum got frozen in binance 93 000 ether and it was mostly through public shaming because i don't think binance like honors this uh crime norms this is uh norms an example of why you should be careful with trusted third parties for legitimate users or criminals alike these criminals should not

have trusted binance everyone everyone's like use a mixer or something before i don't know what's going on there i haven't really looked into it that hard um because like it was a shame when bgc was taken down but uh after that i just assumed i just just like all the money was gone guys like once that happens like once there's like an international investigation and execution of that investigation and they kill the founder like you shouldn't use the site anymore i don't know like like that's big uh big stay away uh in my mind if that's uh that has happened but what was cool was cz the ceo of binance was like i froze these but in the future they're just going to use decentralized exchanges he said that about the criminals yeah he's like we can freeze

them now but i'm just warning you like in the future they're going to be using decentralized exchanges yeah good on you cc funds or like you know something like wasabi yeah um ethereum has a bunch of mixers too yeah that's why it's weird that they didn't use a mixer or anything at one point mixer was driving like 90 of ethereum transactions yeah they were just being they were being cocky about it and they just sent it straight to binance thought it wouldn't be frozen that's pretty stupid yeah it was a very stupid idea that's a lot of money too um where are we where are we now i think oh janet yellen i guess it could have been corrupt it could have been you know we had carl force and shit it could be corrupt uh corrupt honeypot

carl mark forrest or carl forrest or whatever the guy with ross oldrick uh yeah with silk road he was like stealing money from silk road at the same time and then went to jail afterwards and his testimony was like one of the main reasons that ross got the sentencing he got yeah so it could be like that it could be a honeypot and then like the marshals are trying to steal the money or something and then cz froze the marshals money that'd be exciting that would be exciting he would like prove that uh corruption is rampant well that that's proven i think yeah um janet yellen does not own bitcoin that was it's important it's important for us where was she in canada it hit all these fucking headlines that janet yellen so

she talks shit about bitcoin which you know you come to expect from janet and but she hit like all like the worst stripes that have been pretty thoroughly debunked very specifically in the last like two to three months with like mining and uh like fork inflation and stuff like that that shit for years it doesn't matter and then we're going to be debunking it for years that's why one of the reasons this pod exists um but the point is is that there's so much bullish fucking news in this space you don't need to make up bullshit like there's all these headlines running around that janet yellen owns bitcoin now what happened was janet shat on bitcoin and then someone using their own custodial service that they're the CEO and founder of

send $20 to her email address worth of Bitcoin that she has to like click and like log into their custodial service and like accept their Bitcoin, which she hasn't done and is now like Janet Yellen owns Bitcoin. So it's a de minimis amount. It's like fucking $20 and she hasn't even accepted it and she was unsolicited she didn't ask for it great growth hack there great growth hack there by that company and tons of articles coindesk covered it a bunch of different people covered it now that's how you that's how you go click baiters into a free ad there we're covering it because it's not fucking news like i was so triggered by it i thought it was important to say that this isn't news hey for all you growth marketers out there it's a great

great case study fuck this shit man janet yellen does not own bitcoin yet and that's a feature not a bug um that's all we got on the list what else can we talk about we've got about like 10 minutes left let's riff well i guess i like i tweeted out i tweeted out to our people what the biggest news of the week was and a bunch of people wanted us to cover i guess there was like a controversy after world crypto con that happened in las vegas that i haven't been following at all and did you see this at all on twitter today oh a crypto con or is that the one yeah i guess there's like sexual harassment and stuff wait people were victim blaming what and then victim defending and so both sides of the garment like sexual harassment isn't okay uh like that's all

that needs to be said i think for this story was it like crypto trader conference or the fucking thing was called world crypto con it's based in las vegas like this is never going to be like a tasteful conference right like there's no like we would never even think about going to this thing um but i guess i guess some woman felt uncomfortable there and and when they voiced that feeling that they were uncomfortable they were then attacked for that and you know who knows you know what actually happened we didn't fucking follow it but uh you know we should just not support that in the community definitely and i don't think it's i don't think it's worth covering but people kept bringing it up so did they really yeah and my biggest news of the week little thread

i made asking people what the biggest news of the week was i figured that was a good idea going forward for the pod you know you just poke poke everyone ahead of time see what they want to talk about it's a good growth hack to get people a little uh get them ready for it i'm ready for excited i like that matt always thinking uh yeah uh sexual harassment definitely bad uh don't be a douche yeah exactly like it's pretty simple just treat others the way you'd like to be treated oh and then the other thing came up which was censorship of porn in the uk based off of that which i just don't think censorship is okay like you shouldn't there's like who decides which porn is good and bad porn like that's the issue that's where you get to the issue i think i could step

been i'm kidding um no yeah that's uh yeah it's again it's a slippery slopes just you can you have a human there that's gonna abuse his fucking position like that's what always happens no matter what censorship is never okay um yeah i think a porn's a porn's just gonna be here and if you try to censor it you're just gonna drive it to like bit torrent or something decentralized porn yeah spank chain coming no jesus christ just triggered a few people out there i can feel it pull it back pull it back strike it from the record you didn't say that um yeah what else is going on uh i mean again go back to the volatility lack of volatility it's crazy i haven't seen like looking at the chart the chart just looks so weird uh with how steady it's been

for the last month, two months. It's driving Murad crazy. Going back to September 5th. So two, three months now almost. It either breaks up or down. Yeah, obviously. You know, I'm ready for down and I'm ready for up. And let's go on this wild ride together, you know?

Yeah. Long term, we're good. So short term, it's crazy and hilarious to watch how much it drives people crazy just these it's same thing happened last cycle it's just these yeah but i feel like these long stable beers freak people out so fantastic things like uh things like goop last week during the uh the 10th anniversary or of the white paper there was a lot of media coverage like i was uh coming from hoboken uh back to brooklyn on halloween night and they're sitting there on the train platform

and the NBC newsflasher has Bitcoin 10 today. That's cool. This is very anecdotal. I just have a feeling maybe it's becoming a little bit more palatable. Maybe the exhaustion after the blow off top and subsequent fall is beginning to wane and people are again gaining interest.

I don't know. I was talking about this the other day. This time last year, we had just hit our all-time high of $7,000. Freeze-frame Matt, popping bottles of champagne, freaking out, you know? Like, a couple weeks later, like, Selkis is, like, he's, like, I'm trying to figure out, like, a unique way of shorting the market, you know? Like, we're hitting, like, 9K, and then we hit, like, 11K, and then dropped down to, like, 8,500, and everyone was fucking scared shitless. Yeah.

Like, I just— That was two months, people. No one knew that was going to happen, you know? no one was like well like the fractals tell you that it's gonna you know go to here and go to there and yeah like fractals yeah i i'm more bullish the charts are fun to look at but i'm more bullish today than i was then i am as well and it's just funny when you think about that where like that's why i don't trust my emotions because we we could break down here but i thought we were more likely to break down last year and good thing i was like well fuck that i'm not i'm

not a traitor you know exactly so so long term it should benefit the people who ignore their emotions yeah the market no one knows market can bitch slap you in the face and like you're wrong and i'm bullish with gwyneth and betty yeah and marad i'm bullish with marad as well bullish with bearish marad i was reading one of marad's old posts and i just felt so much fomo um yeah i think that's all we got for this week freak shout out to our new sponsor baboon uh again it's pretty cool baboon to the moon.com code crypt 10 off yeah we got our own promo code i think it's our first promo code that we've ever had yeah we're growing up um so shout out baboon definitely check them out if you're looking to go on a trip check them out uh if you

guys like matt said if you have any topics you want us to discuss definitely tweet them at us yeah or dm our dms are open always dms are open um people have been taking advantage of that i've noticed yeah uh which is great to see and use wasabi everyone should go use wasabi and give us all liquidities because privacy loves company and we need each other yeah and watch out for the scams out there they come in many forms so they're led by different archetypes as well um so just be aware and and help people uh discover them as well and maybe uh your family members that might be getting scanned by initiative q right now uh need a little help in the form of you saying hey this is scam damn right all right that's all we got peace and love freaks cheers guys