The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP #164 (Bitcoin News Stories) - Conference Wrap, Surprise ETF Debate, Protecting BTC Mining

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. This week: - A Spirited ETF Debate -Chinese miner kicks out of the US -Coinbase needs viagra as it cannot stay up -Wisconsin buys a Bitcoin ETF -Millennium Management is doing the same -IBEX leaving the US -UK Bitcoiners are in for a world of hurt? and so much more From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com ⁠Discord: https://discord.com/invite/YgPJVbGCZX A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠https://easydns.com/⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

The Canadian Bitcoiners podcast is just two guys and maybe a guest or two discussing Bitcoin, Bitcoin equities, and the related macroeconomic space. It's not meant to be financial advice, so please, if you're doing any investing, after listening to our program, do your own research, do your own due diligence, and understand that any money you invest can be lost. The show is meant for entertainment purposes only, and we hope you enjoy the program. Friends and enemies, welcome back to the CBP, the Mighty CBP, episode 164, $69,000 Bitcoin price. My name is Joey. You're, as as always my co-host and friend len uh what's going on buddy how that gore yeah yeah very good joey and we'll be seeing a lot more of each other in the not too distant future joey it's been fantastic right like it's we've you know you had a

nice time in montreal you yeah partied it up with some uh like-minded individuals i guess uh it's a good time yeah all around and uh yeah man the summer of len has commenced excellent excellent yeah it was a great great summer great conference maybe we'll talk about the conference and housekeeping but um yeah busy day today a lot of gardening beautiful len like summer len you're telling me what a day today outstanding 30 plus degrees probably it looks like it's gonna be all week. I bought a bike last week on Tuesday. I was riding it last week. I put, I don't know, about 40 kilometers on maybe last week going to and from work and some other places just jutting around all over. I love it. I haven't had a bike that I could rely on for a long time.

So I'm hyped on this. I'm going to be riding it to work tomorrow and probably some other places too. I'm looking for recommendations for a quality bike lock. If anyone knows a good one, it's got to hold up. A 20 or 30-year-old crappy bike is ideal. It's like a car. You got my 22-year-old car.

I'll leave the keys in it. Nobody's going to take it. That's a trick, man. Is it raining there, by the way? It will be soon i think eight o'clock we're expecting some rain so uh because i know kenzie was just telling me that uh she's looking forward to um to uh having some water come down these marigolds we bought at the garden center last week so anyway yeah who's tomatoes p-man uh look for you at saint paul sessions told me you were there next time damn p-man that's too bad dog i was there at uh

saint paul was the first night or second night. I forget. I left pretty early the second night. They're still pretty busy when I took off, but I had a long drive the next day. And so I was like really taking it easy that night. But yeah, we'll talk about the conference in a bit. Let's talk about the sponsors first.

EZDNS had the great pleasure. Always, man. I've seen Mark, hung out with him a bit on Friday at the conference before my panel. And then him and I went for dinner with the Bull guys, the other sponsor, among other people, including Jesse Berger and Dee and a lot of other great Bitcoiners, Dave Bradley, all those guys, Madex. I mean, you can't beat a guy like Mark. Mark did a panel. One of the reasons we are happy to be partnering with EasyDNS is because he's been in the Bitcoin business for a long time through his company. They've been accepting Bitcoin for their services for a decade plus at this point.

And Mark did a panel on Bitcoin as an asset for businesses. I haven't watched it yet, but I'm going to watch some of the replays tomorrow, I think, while I'm at work. Of course, they'll be on the background. I won't be having that on my main screen. But anyway, story for another time. So yeah, EaseDNS is everything you need, man. If you want to buy a domain, move a domain, whatever. Mark's the registrar you should be talking to. If you want to do anything with virtual private servers,

you want to do Bitcoin Relays, Bitcoin Nodes, Nostra Relays, NodeList, BTC Pay Server. There's probably other stuff that we don't mention outside of the big four that we talk about every week. But I guarantee Mark will be able to help you with that. And I am very, very, very hyped to say that he's continuing to partner with us even after he watched me mangle a steak on Friday night. It could not have been pretty watching me down that thing, but I enjoyed our time together as I always do.

So head over to the website. Not eat it the way you should. I did. It felt like near the end of that steak, I was really trying to force it down. It was a big steak. I'll tell you all about this in a sec. So yeah, if you guys haven't looked at starting something with EasyDNS,

now's the time, I would say. I had a few people tell us that they're using EasyDNS at the conference, which I'd love to hear, obviously. And Mark is always replying to stuff that len sends them whenever bitcoin is linked by adjustment just the other day said he's having trouble with his uh his registrar so uh hopefully he gets some help from mark and easy dns and uh pays in corn which you can also do go there cbp media is the code or just tell him we sent you and he'll hook you up 50 off your first round of buys who's the other sponsor let's do bull bitcoin is our other sponsor? Let's do Bull Bitcoin. It's our other sponsor.

And you can buy your Bitcoin, you can sell your Bitcoin on-chain, Lightning, a lot of different options. And looking at the price of Bitcoin, it's showing Moscow time for me. That number is going down and down like by gold against average. So that's, you know, I'm looking at that.

Man, you're not going to get very much with your buck these days. But you know what? You got to buy Bitcoin whenever you have the scratch. But Bull Bitcoin has you covered whenever it is you decide to do it. And if you do decide to do it and you want to do some other things with it, such as maybe pay a bill, you could use your Bitcoin that you have accumulated over the many years. And you could use that to pay your bills, like a car bill, for instance, or electricity bill or whatever.

And other options you have, you could also exchange that Bitcoin that you have been sitting on and you could use that to buy gift cards. And what could you do with those gift cards? Well, you could spend them in the real world. So indirectly, you were spending your Bitcoin when you go grocery shopping or you go to Home Depot or wherever it is you spend your money on. In this way, you could spend your Bitcoin. Also, Bull Bitcoin released a new wallet.

I'm not up to speed with it, but it was just released. The announcement came this past week at the Canadian Bitcoin Conference. I have to sink my teeth into this and figure out what it is it's all about, what it has to offer. But if you have an opportunity to check it out, definitely do so and report back to me. I'd like to hear your thoughts on it and how it works. And if you open up an account with Bold Bitcoin, use our promo code below and you find your account, you get 21 bucks added to your account. No questions asked. So how bad could it be?

It's very good if you ask me. Check it out. Love that. Incredible sponsor, obviously. So, yeah, look, we had what a whirlwind weekend man i got there thursday night um thursday afternoon i should say uh hung out in the room for a bit wife and i met up with some friends for um a quick bite to eat and then uh yeah things really got started on friday um friday morning met up with uh mark at the conference after walking there is kind of far

it was like three or four kilometers from um from my hotel which was you know a little longer than last year last year i was about a kilometer halfway as close to close to an hour yeah it was pretty far um only because i said this is a couple people at the conference every the city is too busy to really jaywalk at 10 a.m and 11 a.m on a friday so if you hit a crosswalk you basically stuck at the mercy of the signal the signals are everywhere and they're long in that city a lot longer than they are here in toronto even i think if you know if memory serves but anyway oh joy we got a story about how it signals are in california but that's yeah we'll talk about that a little bit i already know i already know this story yeah i like i like we're talking about that yeah so right it's funny stuff i know i know we've already

cloud world sequences a lot of ubi recipients over there so uh yeah so we're um we're we're you know walking for close to 40 minutes and i realized i'm like i'm gonna be fucking soaked if i keep this walk up so i ended up calling an uber for like the last you know leg of the trip and uh got there met up with a bunch of i haven't seen these people in a long time pastor coin allen and I realized I'm going to be fucking soaked if I keep this walk up. So I ended up calling an Uber for the last leg of the trip. And I got there, met up with a bunch of... I haven't seen these people in a long time. Pastor Coyne Allen was there. Tom Carrazza flew in just for the day. Julian, Boomer, all the bull guys.

BTC Sessions, Ben, BJ Dichter, Man Land. A lot of people telling us how much they like the show. Coyne Laughs, whose first name I won't reveal, but it was doing photography for the conference again. Corey from Hodlers. Oh, Corey from last year. Really nice guy. He's the best. He said he's got to meet up with you to get a phone, I think, in the next couple of weeks, right?

He's really nice. I'm going to go to a concert he's doing here in Hamilton. If he's listening to the show, I'll be happy to share the details, but you got to maybe get them from him first. Anyway, so all those guys, man. Brandon Keys, obviously Green Candle. D, I met Ben, Ben something. I forget his last name.

He's a full stack dev on Bitcoin, open source dev. That's his job, full-time job, which is great. A couple of the guys from me, Premier Bitcoin, finally, Jaime Garcia. Jaime Garcia, by the way, I get a lot of couple of the guys from me, PremierBitcoin, finally Jaime Garcia. Jaime Garcia,

by the way, I get a lot of flack for pulling the guns out from time to time. He's fucking pretty big. He might have bigger arms than I do, honestly. He's definitely taking good care of himself. That's a guy who's got the proof of work. I'm surprised given how much soccer he plays, you tend not to be carrying bulk. He's pretty big. He probably

benches more than i do he's like he's got that's thick upper body yeah that's insane yeah because no diddy no diddy thick upper body fielder so you tend to be a little bit more on on the lean side of things yeah that's interesting good for him yeah it was great um who else did i see there uh man i'm leaving too many people obviously the accelerationists all there like Like, you know, it's, I love seeing those guys and Glenn. So my Friday I did the conference, um, did the panel. I think the panel went really well. I got some good feedback on that.

Francis and Madex are incredible guys, right? Uh, they, they're obviously like very passionate about Bitcoin and the stuff that they're working on. So I recommend you go back and watch that panel. I think it was like the second or third panel of the day, which was awesome. After the panel, went for lunch with a few good Bitcoiners, came back, picked up Madex and a few beers, went back to the hotel, recorded an hour and 10 minute pod with him that I think I'm going to release sometime in the summer. Maybe when you and me want to take a week off or something like that because it's pretty evergreen. He's an incredible guy. For a guy who's doing all the great things he does, I watched that guy sign autographs for people for the entire morning and afternoon, basically, while he was selling his stuff. Bull Bitcoin was giving away seed word cards and he was signing them. That's the kind of support that you're not

always sure why people are getting it. But when you watch him in a crowd, you know, why he's getting easy, you know, he's a good man, good guy. And when my wife came home, uh, or came back to the hotel, she was out with some of her friends. We have some friends in Montreal, uh, unbelievably humble introducing himself and talking a bit about what he does and you know, what, what his plans are and stuff. Awesome. Um, so after that, we, uh, after that, we finished up with that podcast and then i went out for what i thought was going to be one beer with rich diaz of the loony hour and he was on the show a couple weeks ago we decided to meet up he took us to this great place for or for origins probably uh is the name of the place down uh near um was it his recommendation it was his

recommendation uh so it's a fiat central location right it's no it's very good it's very name of the place down near. Was it his recommendation? It was his recommendation. So it's a Fiat Central location, right? No, it's very good. It's very out of the way. Really, really cool spot. I think it was really, I would compare it for people in the Hamilton area. I would compare it to like Grain and Grit

or Fairweather, maybe same kind of vibe. A lot of young people, a lot of young professionals, which was good. Went to that place. We had way too many beers, talked about way too many things. He's a great guy. I like that guy a lot. Also another guy who's sneaky cut. He said he's benching 215 now. His PT wants to get him up to 225, but he's definitely capable of doing that. Super nice. My wife and I had such a good time with him. We were saying, come to this after

party, the plate after party later. He's like, I'm, I'm there. I'll be there. Uh, so we, uh, went for dinner after we saw Rich, uh, to Gibby's Steakhouse. And I think it's, I think that's old Montreal, but I'm not sure someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that. And, uh, dude, that, um, that steak at that place was unbelievable. My wife sat next to me, so she came to the steakhouse. She had lots to say about that experience the next day. Sat with Mark, Jesse, the Bull guys. They were all there.

Alex, Matt, Kev, Pablo, Francis, everyone. Etienne was there. Whole crew. I'm definitely leaving names out there, so I'm sorry about that. But whole crew was there. Then there was a whole other table of guys from the conference. Larry Lepard, Dee, I think Luke Broyles was there. God, more guys. The professor from U of T, Stefano something, who will be on this show at some point in the distant future with Carlo Campisi. Awesome, awesome time talking about Bitcoin life. A lot of people asking where you were, Len.

A lot of people offering their support to the show and to Kenzie and the baby and everything. Unbelievable crowd. Then we went to, I can't remember the name of the pub that we went to for Plate Lakers thing. It might actually be Pub St. Paul, I forget. But everyone was there. Ben was there, like Ben Perrin was there.

You name the person from the conference, were there awesome i gotta ask you did you see the the uh the talk on the etf and gold stuff because i that's something with daniella and larry and uh just in general that it was i think two of them but either way i saw i saw larry the clip of larry that's going around where he's absolutely tearing into the debt-based system. I saw that live and the room was electric for that part of the show. But anyway. Did that have any place in your eyes in a Bitcoin conference talking about ETF? Yeah, of course.

Is an ETF a shitcoin? No, I don't think so. You may disagree on that. We do. Yeah, I don't think it is. I think it's got a place there. So the after party, Rich Diaz came to the after party and was bombarded and very gracious about his interactions with the acceleration crowd.

So you know how the acceleration crowd is like sober 9 a.m. on a Monday. You can imagine what the acceleration crowd is like 11.30 p.m. on a Friday after 30 beers. I don't think he's ever been called a macro normie before, but a couple of guys were calling him a macro normie, which made me laugh. Incredible, incredible time at that bar. And yeah, the next day, I had two podcasts scheduled,

but we couldn't make it happen because the conference was running a little behind schedule. Not a big deal. Dee and I did get something recorded, a little bit of a conference recap with some other stuff, lessons learned and whatnot that I'll probably put out. I don't know. What do you think this week or next week?

I guess we'll talk about it after, but it's only like 30 minutes. So all in all, Len, I would say that conference was, you know, if last year's, and this is not a knock on the conference, obviously, if last year's conference was like a five or a six first year, a lot of hiccups, venue wasn't great. MC probably too hungover on the second day. I would say this year's bumped to a seven or an eight. The venue was incredible. Rialto Theater, hats off to them. Their AV team, amazing. The stage, amazing. The differences between this year and last year, when you think about how people like to go to lobby cons instead of the actual conferences, the places where people were socializing were far enough away from the stages

to actually like be a separate kind of environment. Yeah. Dan's in the crowd. It's my fault. Okay. Not yours. So like the, the, the, the lobby was in a sort of a different place. Then you had the vendors, you had a second stage. There was two floors of seating and seating and there was tables and stuff. So people were kind of sitting together while they were watching the talks as opposed to just in rows, like auditorium style. It was really nice, man.

I think the only complaint I heard from people is that, and this is not the conference's fault, it's their fault because I didn't do this and I know a lot of other people didn't do this either. You shouldn't have booked a place near the theater. There's nothing there. You got to book a place downtown, make the trek near the theater. There's nothing there. You got to book a place downtown, make the trek to the theater in the morning, come back at the end of the day, and then everything else is near you for the rest of the evening. And even in the morning,

if you don't speak until 12 or 1230 or whatever, everything's downtown for you to eat at, drink at, all that stuff. So yeah, I would say that that conference has bumped up to a seven or eight this year from a five or six last year. I didn't hear anyone on Twitter or anyone in the audience or any of the people who I spoke to privately say that they had any beef with any of the ways that things were set up this year. Amazing set of volunteers as always. I didn't see a lot of the sort of like in between talks thing, but I heard and I saw online that Joe was doing like games, keep people engaged. I did.

I definitely didn't do that last year. So like hats off to him. He did a bang up job. I really, I have nothing negative to say. I think that you go to these conferences and I was saying to, you know, my wife, I've said this to you too, like, you know know privately and maybe also on the air I don't love going to stuff all the time because i'd rather like just hang out relax I'm busy as all hell as it is. I don't have a lot of free time And you know every time I think about the bitcoin

Meetups or conferences i'm like fuck do I really want to go spend two days doing this like non-stop? You're never going to get any breaks I'm, i'm always happy. I did it at the end, even though I'm a little tired, even though the drive home's a little long, even though you got to unpack all the audio stuff, pack up all the audio stuff, it's worth it. And it's the organizers, the volunteers, the attendees, the speakers together. That's a tough thing to top. And I think that one of the other things I would look at, look at what the Americans say about it. A lot of Americans saying that Montreal is a great city to visit and Canadian Bitcoiners are rising. And the ecosystem here is slowly being built up and becoming one of the more prevalent subcultures of Bitcoin in the world. Can't beat that. Can't beat that.

So overall, yeah, amazing, man. And Dan, if you're still in the audience, dude, you and Manuel killed it. You killed it last year. You killed it this and uh you take a well-deserved break buddy get some rest you know you probably need it you probably need it and that's the end of our show ladies and gentlemen that's a little quick we have just about five minutes so sure oh yeah i want to show two more people two more people i have conversations with on tuesday or on the second day i should say a few more people actually gabe from on Tuesday or on the second day, I should say. A few more people, actually. Gabe from Bitcoin Advisors.

Love seeing him. Scott Wolf from the Canadian Coalition. We've had some disagreements. He knows we've had some disagreements. I still want to have him on the show. I think he's going to come to the house. It sounds like him and Brad do want to talk with us about some of the things I've been saying. I would say the things we've been saying, but some of the things I've been saying.

And you know who I really got to know well at the bar on Saturday night was Cedric Youngleman. What a nice guy he is. Outstanding fellow to talk to. Talked to him about old Knicks teams. Talked to them about some fun conspiracy stuff. Talked to them about whether LeBron could have played tight end. Like all these great guy. It's so nice.

I love all the Bitcoiners, but dude, it is so nice to go to a bar and instead of having to talk about like sound money and the collapse of fiat, just bullshit about whether or not John Starks was overrated on those 90s Knicks teams. He wasn't in my opinion, but it was awesome. So show it to those guys.

So I'm sure, I told myself I wouldn't do this because I'm sure I'm missing people that I really enjoyed talking to, but you guys know who you are. If you, if you talked to me on the weekend, spent any time with me, then, you know, I love you. I loved having, you know, the weekend with you guys and, uh, I can't wait to do it again. That's going to be awesome. Well, thank you for coming out. Ladies and gentlemen, good show. We'll call it a day. Let's do some housekeeping here before I forget. Tomorrow, even though we have stuff in the tank, I'm going to save it. Two stewards, Brent.

We have nothing on Wednesday, though. Nothing on Wednesday. Tomorrow, Brent and Mark are going to be in studio here. They do the Two Stewards podcast. Two guys who are very serious about their faith, very serious about economics. They've had some great guests on. I recommend you listen to their show. I always appreciate, Len, when someone tells me they have a podcast and I take time to listen to it and there's proper production quality. These guys got that. It's fantastic. And I'm looking forward to speaking with them. I think we're going to have a lot in common, even though we'll have

some disagreement as well. So looking forward to that one. I'm not super religious. I'm going to ask them a little bit about like, you know, what drives their faith when all these things are clearly like, you know, sort of difficult to get your head around. I used to be one of these guys who watched like Sam Harris videos and was like, oh, clearly it's not what you think it is. I'm not like that now, but you know, I could probably still pull out the dagger here and there, but I really like those guys. I don't want to make it a difficult show and i'm uh grateful that uh we were able to set it up because we've been trying we've been you and i have been talking them on and off about their show and our show and i i'm looking forward to being on

uh with them uh tomorrow it's it's gonna be a good program so we'll stream that tomorrow nothing on wednesday tomorrow is the uh second stream so let's do a couple of well we got three boosts we'll do that quickly mo btc dick 500 sats he says he works in vancouver and he'll try to get a video on the atm for us this is the atm that does lightning thank you brother actions that may be kyc free rand or 555 sats congrats on the pregnancy joey my wifey is preggers now as well you and he are in sync in that regard and second breakfast writes in five sets right with 700 sats but nothing said just 700 sats god bless you leaves a blank like you could write something next time can't you i don't know your choice i mean we're giving you that maybe i'll write something and we joey let's talk i mean

i i i want to just dive into the etf thing really like i would like why is i want to hear your explanation why it is not a shit coin why is an etf uh is not a shit coin like yeah i mean i think i think you need to find shit coin differently which is part of the problem we have but like i said before you know i'll sum it up in a couple of words here um there's edge cases that we would never otherwise touch and would never get any touch points with that are exposed to Bitcoin now through the ETFs who may look into buying Bitcoin, self-custodying Bitcoin. No one's saying it's as good as self-custody.

But one of the things I've really changed my view on over the last year is, you know, whether or not this idea that maximum, this idea of maximalism, like, you know, it shouldn't be, maximalism should not be a wedge issue in Bitcoin. It should just be, we got to get as many touch points with people about Bitcoin as we can. And then after that, it's our responsibility, much like, you know, if you're running a business and you get someone in the door and you don't sell them anything, whose fault is that? If we get people in the door with the ETF or get edge case exposure to the ETF for these people and we don't convert, that's on us. And I got to be honest with you. If I look at, I've said this many times, the way Bitcoin Twitter handles newcomers and pre-coiners and people who have Bitcoin and an ordinal or bitcoin and a rune

or bitcoin and ethereum or bitcoin and whatever it's like you know broadly speaking disregard derision and uh insults it doesn't work it doesn't work what's this what's the old saying right you get more more flies with no you don't get more flies with honey than you do shit that's for sure what do you get more bees with honey bees probably get more flies with with honey than you do vinegar or something like that i forget now something like that anyway that's where i come down like i said i get we the disagreement is not so severe that we don't see at least part of that eye to eye but i do i think the etfs is going no i don't i don't think so the nominated in it's the nominated fiat sure yeah and what is the fiat could you could you tell me that any fiat is is not a shit coin i in it's denominated fiat sure yeah and what is the fiat could you could you tell me

that any fiat is is not a shit coin i mean it's all it's all worse than bitcoin for sure but you know you're you're you're split you're split you're making uh no i mean look is is it denominated in fiat is any fiat a shit coin uh or is there any not a shit coin yeah yeah i think yeah i think fiat's generally a shit coin yeah generally is there any of them, not a shit coin? Yeah, I think fiat's generally a shit coin, yeah. Generally, is there any of them that is not? Would you say any fiat out there, any of them that has, by definition, fiat is backed by nothing? I mean, we're splitting hairs here, but like. No, this is the argument I have. No, we're splitting hairs.

Is the work you do absolute dog shit? Because you get paid in fiat. And so if you take fiat for your dog shit work and you'd get dog shit money is your work dog shit if it is then why are you still doing it everyone feels this way you pay your mortgage it has value your house has value you pay that in fiat is your house dog shit i don't know i have an investment maybe but if i did i would but because the only opportunity i have to get paid is in fiat and then i take that and i confer what i can is that that's an indictment of your work not of the currency right if we're going to go down this road then everyone who's getting

paid in fiat has a dog shit job and the shit the shit's not worth anything because you don't get paid in anything but shit that's the way that's the way the system is set up in which you get paid now the system in which you invest in or you park your money, totally different argument. And if you choose to invest in money in a walled system that is controlled by a select few and also going to be denominated in a currency which is controlled by a select few, it's shitcoin wrapped in a shitcoin dealt with shitcoin, totally not shitcoin. We're Bitcoiners. We verify. We don't trust.

We talk. These are not just slogans. These are things we believe in but and if we believe in it we run our own node we verify the transactions and we secure our we self self custody our stuff that's outside the realm of vta this is why i said that the reason it's not a shit coin is because there's like there's benefits to it right i'm not saying it's like a good thing that's why I mean. The definition of shitcoin is important here, I think.

We may have different definitions of that. But I would just say that if some Tom, Dick, or Harry gets exposure to Bitcoin ETF and sees the weighting going up in whatever their rebalances every quarter, every six months, and they go, Oh, man, this Bitcoin ETF was a point and a half. Now it's like three and a half points. up in their you know whatever their rebalances every quarter every six months and they go oh man like this beat this bitcoin etf was you know a point and a half now it's like three and a half points that's like you know it's a 2x in a year why did it go up so much in the waiting oh the price is way up oh why is and then like that's important and we in bitcoin we don't have a vehicle for that you know we don't need this vehicle for this. In the United States, you have the opportunity to hold spot in a Roth account. I forget, it's Roth IRA.

Is that what it's called? So you have an opportunity in the United States, as per law, to hold spot Bitcoin in that. All right, so you have that opportunity. You could take tax advantages by doing it. It may require a little bit more work, but using Bitcoin is a little bit more work. The easiest way to transact in any currency is US dollars. People are changing this, exchanging this for Bitcoin for something that is harder to use.

We know it's harder to use. We know there's going to be a runway to actually to make it easier. But for now, it's difficult to use in comparison. But yet we do it because we see the properties that are embedded in Bitcoin. And when you trade those properties for something that is easier to use, or even a carrot to say that you're going to get some advantages, you're just making it worse. You're putting, like I say, fiat wrapped in fiat, not a good thing in my opinion. And it's all shit coinery. It's all shit coinery. If you don't have control over it, if somebody else is going to manage it and you get rugged in a process there's definitely a possibility

of getting rugged hey man you may as well park your money in ethereum it's my opinion i i listen you know i love when you're like this um i will be like this and i i get fucking worse as i go into this you know it's one thing like when you first get in it's like okay you know leaving lock lock is actually behind we're at like 71 and a half thousand right now like we're coming up on the all-time high here during the show which means per my earlier tweet i will not be uh disrobing during the podcast which is good for our monetization so uh not else. Sorry, everybody. Anyway, yeah. I'm going to get it rugged on my feet. I don't understand.

Do you think that doesn't have a place at the conference? You know what I noticed this year, too? I didn't say it during the wrap-up, but I'll say it now. Boomer and a few other guys who were there, I was really surprised at the sort of expertise level that seemed to be present in the questions. The other thing we did at the conference this year, Len seemed to be present in the questions uh the

other thing we did at the conference this year then was have q a i think after every panel like i wasn't expecting q and a after ours but we took questions for five or ten minutes and um there seemed to me to be a lot of people there who were still new still learning and talked about stuff like you know in jesse's acceleration presentation, which again, like everybody needs to fucking watch that. It was great. Like there's a lot of people who are still learning and trying to get their head around this. And I don't know, like if you had to choose, if you had to choose between like people not having any exposure to Bitcoin's ethos or price action, or them having just ETF exposure, like surely you would choose the former, right? Because that's how you get people who are unsure about the latter to come to the latter

at some point. That's my view anyway. I think there has been enough evidence to support why one would buy into Bitcoin. And in terms of maybe one can make an argument, it's difficult to use. And I could understand that. But certainly given the how much people have been exposed to technology, it's not much more difficult than what much than people really think it is simply just recording words, maybe even putting a passphrase and you're

secure. So you know, you could, you could selfody this thing. And I'm a big proponent of this. I don't want to have anybody else hold on to my wealth. I don't want to expose it for somebody else to do whatever it is that they wish to do it. I'd rather it my wealth for myself and then I could get access to it anytime I want. And I can verify that I have it. And if I spend it, I could verify that I spend it. If somebody sends it to me, I could easily verify that I've gotten that money. In any other situation, any other scenario,

I don't have that. But these people won't do that. These people won't do that. That's their choice. And they will eventually get it. It's only going to, like I said, there's enough evidence to support why you'd want to do that.

If you are stuck in this fiat mindset, that is fine. But eventually you'll fucking learn. You'll get fucking rugged one way or another. And then you'll say, oh shit, there's something else that's better that I can control my wealth. I have my fucking self-sovereignty and I'm taking back the money from the people that are owning it and dealing with it. And I'm keeping it for myself. And it's also decentralized. Like that is a huge thing. These are the messages we have to be talking about,

not trying to show people, oh, look, there's a tool that's available for you that you could buy and you could get tax advantages for and somebody else is going to manage it. Well, that's great and all, but that is so fiat and that's not Bitcoin, right? If you look at Bitcoin, what it is, the properties of it, you're taking away one of the biggest advantages of it and you're trading it for what? ease of use tax breaks fuck that i don't want to care for that i'd rather i'd rather get uh a harder tax situation that i'm gonna if i spend it i get taxed on my capital gains but at least i have control over my bit not everyone not everyone

wants that so what should we do like should we just i mean i mean even the most like ardent bitcoin maxi is like selling the price going up to all-time highs the price goes up regardless because you know why i'm saying like the denominator is exactly i know and so like this is why i don't get like who who cares if people want if they want to do the etf like let them i don't give a shit what i care more about is and this is the conversation, if they want to do the ETF, like let them, I don't give a shit. What I care more about is, and this is a conversation that I want to, I want to start putting this out there. This is going to be unpopular, but I'm going to say it anyway. I think like Bitcoiner needs to start meaning something more than just someone who holds Bitcoin. It doesn't mean you hold other stuff. What it really means is you believe in all

the stuff we believe in and just haven't figured out the final piece yet. You're there. You just have to figure out the asset itself. Guys like, I don't think Schiff is in that camp because I think he's intentionally dishonest, honestly, at this point. But there are a lot of people, I think, who are basically there who just are still hesitant about the asset. Why would you want to lose those people just because of a Puritan stance on self-custody? It just doesn't make sense. Get them in halfway or however much you think that way is, one eighth of the way, one tenth of the way. Because you know that if they got everything else enough to buy the ETF, that last jump is not that bad. But it takes a second step sometimes.

The ETF can be that second step. We were missing that second step before. We were. We didn't really have a good way to get over that hurdle. And I understand what you're saying. A lot of people say that, that you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve. Fine. But again, I have a problem, especially after talking to people this weekend about, I just got in last year. I just started figuring this out six months ago. I bought the ETF in Canada. You hear these stories. It's not like to get to any news at this rate, but the other thing I can't figure out from the other side of the coin is the better idea that the Bitcoin maxi crowd has can't be just take your lumps and do it the harder way instead of starting with the ETF. That's not a feasible idea. Not everyone has that capability. Certainly not the people who are a little older who want to get into Bitcoin and start with the ETF. They don't do spot buys. They don't have a Coinbase or ShakePay or BullBitcoin. These things are intimidating. And we've done a great job appealing to the kids. I say the kids,

let's say people under 50 who have a little more technology experience and whatnot. But for the rest of the crowd, how can we really say that the better outcome is no exposure at all when they have the ethos that drove them to the ETF already? I just, I don't, that's what I don't get. I cannot, there is no good answer for that, in my opinion. The good answer is you're giving up a lot of trust to an entity or entities that have shown

themselves not to be good actors. I mean, that alone is the final argument. Now I could go back now, granted, you know, like it may be difficult, as you say,

because the older you are, maybe challenging. Of course I was there in the nineties, early two thousands, 20. I was there to see people transition to the internet to transition to smartphones when i first was using the internet it was command line cli and you go on you type telnet you type ftp like i was there for that into using unix and i've i've seen that transition over

a period of time no way in hell people were going to use the internet the way it was when i first started old people middle-aged people fuck even young people weren't going to use it. But they made it easier to do that within TCP IP, within the internet. So the user experience improved tremendously. Took some time, but they were able to capture almost 100% of the audience. Now, just about any person, fuck, my mom uses a cell phone. My father person fuck my mom uses a cell phone my father-in-law uses a cell phone yeah and if they could use it maybe not to the fullest capabilities but they're able to function within the walls of that i i have great faith in the same thing happening with

yeah we're not there yet we're not there yet certainly we're not but let's watch these people do just wait or should they start thinking about getting exposure somehow before that if you're giving them exposure within fiat then it's going to be potentially set up for failure it's here you're basically saying you got exposure now you have somebody else provide the custody for you and the trust and you know maybe there might be a time like i'm putting tinfoil hat on here but maybe there may be a time where this thing gets forked off and they choose the fork which is the wrong one or maybe there comes a time where you try to recoup the funds that you have in there they say no you have to keep it within the market and there's a lot of different

options here that you lost once you gave them your money so let's not have them do that let's have them show them a way to do it. Like, I'll give you an example. In a few weeks, I forget which day, Saturday or Sunday, but it's going to be one of the weekends in June. I'm meeting up with a bunch of people I met from the Tom and Nick event, the Rockstar Real Estate event. And these are all people that are in the twilight of their life.

And they all are going to use cold card. I'm going to show them the process to they're all interested in this they're going to set it up from beginning to end to buy bitcoin and to self-cost to their bitcoin these are people that just at a glance you would say there's no way these people are going to do this with bitcoin i'm going to show them how to do this this is all it takes it just takes education taking the time to step away from whatever you're doing to show them how it is to do it and once they understand how it's done it's fucking simple and then they are now informed they are now able to do it and let's rinse and repeat and do this all over again let's not deal with the etfs let's deal with this fucking thing the other anything

that is denominated with fucking fiat is a shit coin. Anything that's denominated in ETH, don't fucking shit coin. If it's Bitcoin, we know decentralized can't be duplicated, can't be created, can't be multiplied. You could self-custody. You can verify. Man, oh, man, there's so many good properties that I've just mentioned. Let's not give any of them up. Let's utilize every one of them, all these tools that are available to us easy to do simple to learn let's do it do we are we gonna do any news it's

like uh 20 to 8 here um as much as i enjoy this barring i don't know if that's what people come for hey man we'll see in the play data later people want to hear it that's fine well let's let's just do a brief uh abbreviated version of i guess bitcoin news sure and uh yeah okay we'll start with what's going on with the u.s and there's a bitcoin mining operation that uh we had some interesting news there's a chinese backed miner called mine one and they were planning to set up shop in a place near warren air force base in wyoming never heard of this before but it's a military base apparently it And they were planning to set up shop in a place near Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. Never heard of this before, but it's a military base. Apparently, it has nuclear weapons that are stored on site.

So the Biden administration obviously saw this. This Mine One operation, they're Chinese owned or at least Chinese backed, didn't like this whole situation and decided to put an immediate end to it. And he decided to stop them in their tracks. And following the decree from the Biden administration, mine one, sorry, they got to remove all the improvements that they'd done on site, as well as all the mining equipment that they put over there. So the rationale they're using is national security. There's a threat to it.

They're putting a mining site that is backed by Chinese mining that's just very, very close, miles if not less, to a nuclear site, nuclear weapons that's held by the military. But anyways, I get the move. I understand it. But it also raises some questions for me, at least. I know you don't want to have somebody circumvent the system, right? So the rules are in place that they were a foreign entity they had to submit a filing to something called the committee on foreign investment in the united states never heard of them but apparently this is needed and so they had to comply with the laws they didn't and they're getting the wrist slapped as a result but the problem i'm having here is

that if they could consider this to be a national security threat how much longer can it be before they can consider any new bitcoin miner won't be that's being set up or any existing bitcoin mining operation that could be under the same umbrellas yeah they already view this remember the um the decree last year or two years ago and they talked about this like this is obviously a problem for security of the nation blah blah blah we want to shut these things down we're going to use energy to do it yeah i mean we know we know yeah so that's my problem here right like it's like banning tiktok for instance like i i get it i understand it but it's a slippery slope then what happens when you ban the next thing exactly and that is going to piss people off so with this i understand the rationale national security threat all that jazz but you look at that what's

going on and what you've mentioned remember what happened with samurai the recent news oh my god yeah you know uh we had the measures for it's always something right it's always something yeah yeah wells notice is going out left and right the they're preventing banks from or at least trying to prevent banks from custodying bitcoin a tornado cash saga Cash Saga, the App Store. Remember the App Store against Noster and the Zaps? I know that's not the US government, but it's just another thing. The list goes on and on.

So it's like we're entering in a stage where they will fight back. That's what it seems like to me that that's what they're starting to do. So really the only suggestion I have for anybody out there is make sure you play by the rules. Don't make yourself a target. If you do, it's going to be a nasty time moving forward. But as long as you play by the rules, it could still be very nasty moving forward. But at least you've tried your level best to ensure that they're not going to

look at you and, and point their radars on you. But man, oh man, this is getting to be troubling to me. And, um, you,

you touched on it. This is just getting worse and worse by the day. And that's all I got to say. I said this at the conference too. Someone a question about like you know how do you prepare for being on the bitcoin standard blah blah and it's one thing to like talk to your rancher talk to your farmer whatever but what you really have to prepare for is for the bank to think that you're a target and you know people say well it's kind of out of it's out of the realm of possibility you know the overton window is not extended to that point yet. I don't think the bank is ever going to just decide that because I have transfers to a Bitcoin exchange that I can't have an account. I disagree with that.

I think it's very possible. wants you to get rich while undermining the currency hegemon that's existed for 80 years now, 70 years, something like that. When it comes to mining, how many times have we talked about this? And actually, you talked about it with John from Decentral as well. And you and I and him spoke about it sort of off the air. This is why decentralizing mining is so key. Why everyone needs to have something in their house that's hashing. Even if you don't hit the block, even if you don't do whatever, man, I think that the industrial miners are not long for this world. Certainly not going to be, their freedom is not long for this world. As far as capital markets and the freedom to operate the way they see fit

for their shareholders. A lot of people talk about, Len, for example, this idea that you could nationalize gold miners as the currency starts to really waver. It's a lot easier probably to nationalize Bitcoin mining than gold mining because it's clearly more focused in one or two areas. There's not a bunch of equipment to run. It's something that the government can run at scale without very much difficulty, honestly, because the things sort of run themselves, right? You have all the algos there.

You have all the equipment there. It is dicey. This is all very dicey. And we've shared these concerns before, by the way, maybe not on mining, but on things like even having a podcast, you know, like how long are we going to be able to sit here and tell people that the CAD is not the thing they should be in? They should be in Bitcoin.

How much longer? I don't know. Let's see. Maybe it's a year, maybe it's two years, maybe it's 10 years. I don't know. But I think the idea that this stuff is off the table is wrong. When clearly you see what's going on with, you you know i don't want to say this is free industry this is kind of an you know edge case but still you know like you said the slope is a slippery one and once you start heading down it's very difficult to stop agreed and let's just keep moving on because that story on its own is troubling but so we have another company that has announced they're making an exodus from the united states so we have ibex pay and they tout themselves as the easiest and fastest payment rail for retail and e-commerce businesses to accept instant bitcoin payments over

the lightning network so based off that it seems pretty benign but they're leaving united states and i think they were a sponsor at the canadian bitcoin conference were they not they were so you must have met and chat with the people from the team over there i'm i'd love to know if you did and your thoughts but either way they made this announcement that after careful consideration it has been decided that effective the 31st of May, 2024, all IBEX pay services in the United States will be suspended. Thank you for your support you have given us, and we hope to serve you in the future.

That's nice. I understand why they're making this move, but last story, now this one, isn't this shit concerning? So the US by far is the biggest market in the world right and you're removing services like this from the market and i'm not blaming ibex they're doing what's best for uh self-preservation in terms of what the consumer like it's it's going in a wrong direction for the consumer but i guess people could get around these restrictions using a vpn but it sucks that this is needed but look at all that shit that's going on man

you know like i don't want to go back to our early discussion but here you go like fuck these guys are leaving the u.s did you talk to them at all at the conference i did not i did not i wish i would i would have loved to got if they were there and they were able to speak on this i would love to got that yeah were they a sponsor i don't got if they were there and they were able to speak on this. I would have loved to got that. Were they a sponsor? I don't remember if they were a sponsor or not. I thought they were, but again, if I'm wrong, my apologies, but I thought I saw them as a sponsor of the

Canadian Bitcoin. This is chilling effect stuff. I talked about this with Matt O'Dell last year when we were talking about the Tornado Cash thing, I think, or something else to do with crackdowns coming on different companies that are basically just like payment services or, or giving you a source code and Samurai's case. Maybe we'll see how that goes. But, um, when I look at this stuff, the, there's no doubt that the chilling effect is working, right?

You're getting voluntary censorship, voluntary shutdowns, voluntary jurisdictional changes from these companies who are domiciled in the US or offer services in the US or Canada or some European country you want to name. It's sort of the same across the board. This is why, and again, shout out to Scott Wolfe for, um, you know, trying to convince me otherwise. I, again, I look forward to talking to him in sort of a longer format here when there's not a rebel in vodka in front of me and, you know, music blasting. But I just think that there's just not really a great chance that any of these governments engage in good faith, even if you're in the room, even if they promise you they will.

It's all sort of wolf in sheep's clothing type stuff. Um, the, the risks for the governments are too high. And so naturally the outcome that they desire is not the same one that you desire. When that's the case, like I said, much of the chagrin of some of my superiors over the length of my professional career at these different training sessions, there is no such thing as compromise. There's no such thing, you know, not between husband and wife, not between government and business, not between employer and employee. There is no such thing. There's only what the more powerful person in the dichotomy allows the other to get away with, you know, in terms of not harming their secondary or primary goals too much.

Everything else is just made up. This idea that we're going to move people off the platform, we're going to move people toward embracing Bitcoin, we're going to move people away from censoring these businesses and forcing them off the property or whatever. I don't think so, honestly. And it's one of the reasons why, as much as I don't agree with you on ETF, we both agree that the self-custody option is like, it's not like a sort of on a tier list, self-custody is S and ETF is A. It's like self-custody is S and then the other four

tiers have nothing in it. There's nothing that's a close second to self-custody because if you start playing by these guys' rules, then you're not going to have a good time. And thinking that you can change your mind is, I think, a sort of difficult sell, honestly, Len. And I know this is not about self-custody, but I think it's in the same vein. There's just no way that these – like Ibex is not a small company, by the way. Ibex is a fair-sized outfit. And if they're moving stuff, it tells you something. They know something or they're afraid of something or they don't think they can fight something.

And they're probably thinking, why bother? What's the point? Why do I want to put up a fight? Other companies have done the same thing in the United States, by the way. Some of them will never make it there because of that. Bold Bitcoin is a good example. The regulatory environment is too burdensome. You've heard Francis say on this show and probably others that there's just no point

in engaging with governments. They don't care. They don't get it. They don't want to. That's the nature of government. I don't even think it necessarily reflects like, you know, it doesn't reflect malice that government has toward Bitcoin in a lot of cases. It's just not, it's not in there.

It's not on their list of tasks that are going to help them accomplish X, Y, or Z goal. And so they just don't do it. You know, it could be as simple as that. I doubt it sometimes, but it could be as simple as that. Anyway, I don't want to go too far afield here, but just to wrap it up, chilling effects work and they work at the individual level, they work at the sovereign level, and they work for corporations as well. You've seen that here and you're going to see more of this.

For sure, you're going to see more of this. You're familiar with Bitcoin knots, Joey. Yeah, that's a core spinoff right something like that yeah okay yeah it's that's basically just like uh or disrespector with a little bit more mascara on it is that basically more or less what it is that's what it seems to be turning into it's just so it is a spinoff um and so it's using i from what i understand initially the core code i could be wrong and then it's just adding whatever it wants just to still be compliant. So if you're running it, it's a node, um, software that's still compliant with the network.

So it's not against the rules or against consensus. It just gives you an alternative compared to core. Um, they just released a new version this week. It's 26.1. Um, and it came out on May 13th, so last week, Monday, I believe. Anyways, some cool new features that came along with

this release and one of them is called a reject tokens policy filter and what this does, and if you check it off, it only will block ruins transactions. So those ruins transactions that we discussed and they were live to the world at the having just this past month. Well, by enabling this policy filter, you reject your node from putting this in your men pool or broadcasting this out.

This is not enabled by default. So you have to turn this on if you want to enable it. But there's a GUI option in order to do this. So it's not like you have to have high level of technical capability to do it, just simply click a box, and you're good to go. And another new filter policy is now included. And this is used to block parasitic transactions. And it is noted that many parasite transactions cannot be detected. And these type of transactions are used to build an ordinal attack. This is enabled by default, but this could also be disabled by the feature, the GUI interface if you want. So if you don't like it,

you can disable this. So it looks like from what these last two new additions to knots, they're really sticking it to the shitcoin or the spammer crop so it's good to see that they're doing this because luke has been very vocal against a lot of this stuff and he's backing this up by putting these features in knots and a lot of people are taking it this to heart and installing knots so it's good to see that there is a growing number of people that want to run it and put out these filters out there to project ruins these uh parasite transactions and other bullshit so good on luke i like this stuff yeah i gotta be honest like i just happened to see today watching a josh olschmidt's video that

like you know it's i know that the i think the people people who care a lot about the Node software, whether it's or Disrespector or Knots or whatever, they'll say that, yeah, look, we're doing a lot of work here. Look how low the Rune fees are compared to the other fees. But really, if you look back at the fees, maybe since block, what block is this? 842,168. You can go even further back, maybe 1,000, almost 2,000 blocks.

The fee percentage of runes hasn't been significant now for weeks. And this is good. It's a good thing if you want to do this. But like every other time that the Bitcoin crowd has gotten spun up and feisty about something, the thing just fucking died on its own.

There's no attention span for any of this stuff. Runes, ordinals, whatever. I would love to see the ordinals chart of this i don't have it up but uh like the the fees are so low now uh in terms of this in terms of the um ratio right well like if i look here runes fees down to one percent maybe in the most recent few blocks something like that like it's over already so they're dead so Ordinals are probably even worse, honestly. As much as I like the Nott's thing, I don't want to see Luke saying Nott's was the thing that drove

the decrease in runes volume. The thing that drove the decrease in runes volume is that these guys are all just Adderall riddled degenerates who ran out of money or ran out of time or some combination of the two or want to go run their pump and dump somewhere else. But all that said it is neat that uh core has these different flavors people can run and uh they're allowed to run the node whatever way they want that's important in bitcoin you have to be able to do stuff without permission and do stuff as a solo

node runner that doesn't require pooling or anything else no special tech just whatever you want to put on your node you can do it this is a good example of that and uh we should be happy it's available for sure and that's exactly the way we should be framing it is there are options available to you as a node runner that you can run various like a suite of different software in order to achieve whatever goal you're trying to achieve so it certainly this wasn't the reason why or probably didn't even make a dent into the reason why ruins and ordinals are not really a big thing these days it's more so that they just ran out of dry powder like there's it's unable they're they have to fund it and when you stop having money that you know we don't have any more

money to do it well the the whole thing just kind of collapses on its own. So the market just played itself out. That's essentially it. But it's the really thing here we have to be looking at is there's options and options are available and people are building on these options and giving people the ability to enable stuff and even disable it. So it's not like you're forced, you're constrained to running this and forcefully running whatever options are available. They're giving you're constrained to running this and forcefully running whatever options are available they're giving you many options yeah enable it disable it great and it's not and it's not censored this is not censoring by the way like i think i think that framing is wrong too but um yeah it's good the options are good and if you are a node runner

i mean in my this is my personal view like don't hold me to this or so it's not cbp view um this is my view my node has only a limited amount of resources the ram is limited the cpu cycling is limited it's limited and in every respect and i think everybody has that same type of limitation some have more than but we're all limited and you you want to make that node as efficient as possible. And if you could get rid of unwanted transactions in your mempool, you're making it then more efficient for what you want it to do. That's what I'm trying to achieve with mine. I think others may be trying to achieve the same thing. Maybe they're not, I don't want to put words in their mouth. But really, I'm happy with this, that there are options. But even with that, I'm still

running core, I'm going to probably make a change over to Knots in the not-too-distant future. But I have changed my config file. So it is still getting rid of a lot of the crap from my Bitcoin Core. So yeah, I still think I want to try Knots just to give it a shot to see what it's like. Nice. No, you should. You should. Why not?

And eventually, when I start running a node in 202626 or whenever i get around to it we gotta do it earlier come on i see that's gonna be the the for this year before i actually ran into all caps twice this weekend and neither time i didn't talk to him that much but neither time he didn't bring up the note even once which is great for me maybe. Maybe he's forgotten. It's good. Oh, I haven't. Joey, before the little guy or gal comes into this world, I think we just have that. At least the ability to verify and do your own thing. I'll put up a geyser fund and you guys can pay for an umbrella or something. I'll give you a shitty laptop.

All you have to do is upgrade the RAM and the stuff. No, now it's part it's part of the bit it's part of the bit well you're getting a computer right it's you're halfway there anyways let's talk about uk bitcoin users sure and uh there is a new law in the uk and it's making it easier for law enforcement to seize what they say cryptocurrency suspected of being involved in crimes great this law came into effect april 2024 so just last month and previously authorities had to arrest a suspect before they could seize their crypto now they could seize the crypto assets first before they even make an arrest and this helps target criminals who might be hiding their identities

or operating overseas. All right. So law enforcement can now not just seize the crypto itself, but they can also get related items that could also provide information to the investigation. This includes stuff like passwords, hardware wallets, and I suspect even mining equipment. And this law, they say, is an update to existing legislation on recovering criminal assets they say it reflects the growing importance of cryptocurrency in criminal activity so that's what's going on in the uk all i gotta say for people over there make sure you you know you don't go against the law do everything properly but man oh man just this is another thing that they're throwing out there and just uh i don't know i don't know what else to say about this there's nothing there's nothing to say get

ready for more of this don't forget to report your buys on your taxes next year that's you know that's all i'll say to you yeah all right let's we have time for one more let's do it yeah whatever sure okay on the flip side from all this oklahoma right? They passed what, I don't know, it just seems like out of nowhere. This is big. Yeah, well, to a point, I think. See, they passed what they call the landmark bill protecting Bitcoin rights. It's a landmark. Okay, go ahead.

You finish, and then I'll tell you what I think. Go ahead. All right. Well, Dennis Porter and folks were behind this. This bill was signed into law just this past week, May 13th, or last week on Monday. And they say the legislation establishes key protections for Bitcoin and digital asset holders. And this comes into effect November 1st of this year, 2024. And they say this ensures fundamental rights for individuals and businesses engaged in digital asset activities.

So, okay, what does this bill do? All right. So it guarantees the right of self-custody. We already had the ability to do that. Allows individuals to security hold their digital assets. We already had the ability to do that. It permits using Bitcoin and other digital currencies for transactions without additional taxes.

That is interesting. And it says aligning digital assets with traditional legal tenders regarding tax treatment. That is pretty good. It also allows for the right to mine for Bitcoin at home. Already were able to do that before. So there's a few things that we're all able to do. It reminds me of RFK Jr.'s speech at the Bitcoin conference last year when he outlined a whole bunch of things that he wanted to do.

I forget what the number of five, 10 things, whatever the fuck it was. But either way, a lot of them, we already are able to do like, it's almost like they're trying to just, you know, appease a whole bunch of Bitcoiners for shit that, well, it's not under attack right now. Right?

Like you're able to self custody. You're able to mine for Bitcoin. You're like, whatever it is. I think those things are under attack. I don't think there's a way to stop it though. Like it may come under attack, putting a minor in your garage and running it.

Good fucking luck. Why? Because it, you know know as i had um zach bombs on just last week you can run it on 120 volts and that's 19 a single hash board and how could you measure that aside from maybe the noise but then you know there's ways to mitigate the noise either way i'm trying to say like the only good thing i see from this thing is the taxation of the using of Bitcoin. That's something I think is very interesting. The rest is all fluff, in my opinion. I don't think it's fluff, but I sympathize with your point there that you can already

do all this stuff. It's hard to stop. But Len, you just have to make an example out of somebody once and everyone else is going to stop on their own. There's a lot of people, I think, who want to do illegal things and don't do them because the penalty is just so stiff. And even if the likelihood of getting caught is one in a hundred or one in a thousand or one in 10,000, if the penalty is a hundred thousand dollar fine, you're not going to do it. You're just not going to do it. If someone in Canada gets nicked for having an S9 running or in Oklahoma, in this case, gets nicked for having an S9 running, or in Oklahoma in this case, gets

nicked for having an S9 running in their garage, and it's $100,000 per unit that's hashing because it's a security issue or whatever, you're done. $100,000 for a national security crime, by the way, would be very generous in the United States. We've seen much more heavy-handed sentencing than that over the last five or 10 years. So I think it's important to have these regulations, but I will just put a cherry on top here. None of it fucking matters because if push comes to shove, they'll just change the law. They'll interpret it a different way. They'll tell you, sorry, too bad. So sad, which they always do.

It happens all the time. It happens all the time. The trick, the trick, the trick, give a little bit of a nod to Lowry, you have to get the NRA or something to get on Bitcoin mining. You need those things to be lobbied like they're weapons of some kind. I'm protecting my wealth, protecting my whatever. This is how I protect my savings. I don't know how you would do that, but that's the way this should start to look because the NRA doesn't lose. And whether you love guns, hate guns, whatever, there is no doubt that guns have lethal force and can be dangerous if put in the wrong hands. And yet here we are

still today, everyone in the States, if you want a gun, you get a gun basically, again, for better or worse. You need that lobby or that style of lobbying to ensure the safety of these things going forward, mining especially, because it's not that hard to pin down. Everyone has these smart homes now. Don't forget that I think one of the reasons everyone is always like, oh, there's no way we're going to build 5 million homes by 2030. I think you're probably right. But the only thing that gives me pause is, man, you could subsidize a bunch of homes to be built by 2030 and then say you only get the subsidy if you don't have any high voltage connections, you have an in-home electric car charger, and you have a smart home thing that's

connected to the grid where we can see the power pull. To me, that's a little bit of an incentive for builders too. we'll give you whatever you want. You get to build these houses, but every house has to be, you know, meeting those three criteria. And I think the mining thing, AI, all that stuff, like, you know, the sort of powers that be in the media these days talking about how an AI search takes 10 times more power than a Google search, you know, clicking the button is 10 times more electricity used. I think these things are all possible. And, you know And I dare say it because I know you feel differently, but man, you can't tell me that you are not at least thinking a bit.

Because judging by how you're talking today, whether it's 6102 in the ETF or saying that your rights as a Bitcoin holder are maybe not as well protected as you think, you got to think that that CBDC is a little closer than maybe where you were a year ago. And I look at this stuff and I'm thinking to myself how it's hard to see all this stuff on the horizon here and not think that they're going to start monitoring spending in a way that's really meaningful behind some kind of, I don't know, people say it's going to be a carbon credit system.

I really have no idea. But there's an interest in having that control and a lot of ways to get it. And the ways to get it are, you know, in many different silos. Like I just mentioned home construction. I don't think a lot of people are thinking about that. They should be though. They should be, because it doesn't sound like immigration is going to slow down in any, in any country that's struggling with it. But man, there's a lot of, a lot of ways to get that control over someone's sort of day-to-day power use and that would be bad for mining it'd be bad for bitcoin in general but especially bad for mining retail cbdc is still a long way away from entering into

the equation for united states maybe for other countries i've said this all along that other countries may do it but the united states is probably the last one in order to do it given the way things are unless things change where they no longer are the reserve currency yeah and a lot less people use united states dollars globally but if things remain the way they are they're probably gonna be the last ones to roll out a cbdc on a retail side of things maybe yeah yeah it will be many years so yeah we're definitely closer than we were a year ago but we're just one year closer that's really it so yeah that's it for the bitcoin side i think we passed an hour we'll do an abbreviated notable story oh thank god i'm fucking exhausted i guess we're still going to go past we're still going to go to 845 oh hell yeah

i misinterpreted that good news maybe not we'll go we'll see we'll see but in any case if you're on video stay right here if you're on audio you know what to do wait till tomorrow when the rest of this comes out and until then take care of yourself and don't be a cock are you a fan of the old school NHL 94 game on the Genesis or SNES? Why not check out my show, the NHL 94 podcast, from tournaments and tactics to the people who make up this community. Check it out wherever you listen to podcasts or find it on YouTube.