The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP #172 (Bitcoin News Stories) - Trump and Bitcoin Continue On (Feat. Special Guest Dean Linden!)

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. 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. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

Friends and enemies, welcome to yet another edition of the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. I'm Len, and today I'm going to be joined by not Joey, but somebody else. I'm joined by Dean Linden. Dean, how are you, buddy? You know, despite the big shoes I have to fill, I'm pretty good. Thanks, Len. You'll do just fine. And so, you know what?

It's been a long time since you've been in the show. There's been a long, actually a lot long time since you've been in the show there's been a long actually a lot has happened since you've been in the show especially in the past few days 48 hours maybe a little 72 hours either way lots happened we'll be talking about that in just a second dean for people who don't remember who you are because it's you know a while since you've been here maybe are there people out there that don't remember who I am? Just in case, we'll have to, there could also be some new people that jumped on the CBP bandwagon. And because of that, they got to get informed, educated,

told exactly what's going on. Dean Taco, who are you, buddy? And maybe talk a little about Cypress Hills Partners. Yeah, so Cypress Hills Partners, I'm the co-founder and managing partner of Cypress Partners. We're a sort of a wholesale lender focusing on primarily the unbanked in Canada. And so far since we just celebrated our ninth year anniversary, we've deployed over $300 million, the majority of that to Canadian consumer borrowers.

And we do that through some fantastic fintech partners that we've got across the country and entrepreneurs. And we're very, very proud of the work that we do in the Canadian consumer lending space. And, you know, it started off as sort of an opportunity to find, you know, an oversized yield, a safe, non-volatile yield for investors. And it's turned out to be, you know, we've been successful at that, but I think even more importantly, we've, we're doing some good in the, in the, in the, in the Canadian economy with the people that aren't fortunate enough to have relationships with regular big banks. So, so yeah, we feel we're very proud of, I'm very proud of what we've, what we've been able to accomplish in Cypress Hills. Are you able to talk about who it is that you're partnering up with lending money with? Or is that something that's got to be held close to the best?

No, I won't use names. But you know, it's, it's amazing that the types of things that I mean, I'm old enough to remember when I could walk into a bank on a Saturday afternoon with $5,000 worth of credit card debt. Not that I ever had $5,000 of credit card debt, but some credit card debt and consolidate, sit down with somebody across the table. And I, you know, I was a kid and I could consolidate that. I could consolidate that credit card debt and walk out of there with, with, you know, a loan that was at a regular bank interest. And that, those relationships now have completely ceased at the at the traditional banking level. So there's a whole host of really bright entrepreneurs that are sort of

filling that gap with people that maybe don't own houses, don't have any other don't have traditional collateral. And they're doing it in a variety of different ways. You know, there's some people are lending, you know, a minimum of 40 bucks at a time. And these, this money's out for two weeks and there's, there's a, there's you know, there's all different ways that they're monetizing these things. But at the end of the day, there is, there's, it's providing people access to to credit where they're otherwise in a traditional banking system, there isn't any. So I remember when we first started, we had one group and I was scratching my head going, boy, this is a great business we have, but I mean, where's the next deal coming from? And the fintech

landscape and the lending landscape in Canada is very robust and we're sort of at the forefront of that. And we're able to, to, to work with a lot of these entrepreneurs and help them get, get their businesses rolling and getting them some money to lend. Awesome. I'm going to just, we'll double back because I want to hit the sponsors really quick. I still want to ask you another question about Cypress Hills Partners. But we do have a couple of sponsors that I should be doing an ad read

and I will be doing an ad read. But the first one, I'm not going to do it myself. You're not going to do it either, Dean. We're going to have somebody else do it, and here it is. Talk about the sponsors. Easy DNS. What a segue. If you want to get a website and host a domain, Mark is your guy. Go to easydns.com and check out the suite of services. They got

everything there. Virtual private server stuff. They got email. You can actually buy a domain with Mark if you want to, which we have done a couple of times now. And all that stuff is sort of best in class at this point, I would say. Every week, it seems like there's another Bitcoin or another Bitcoin company complaining about their registrar, complaining about their website, complaining about their shop or whatever. I've never heard anybody complaining to Mark. So if you're not using Mark yet, it's time to start. EasyDNS.com, promo code is CBP Media, and you can get 50% off your first round of buys. Not that you need it, because even if you had to pay full price,

you'd still be saving time and money dealing with him instead of dealing with these other clowns that are, it seems to be, they seem to be populating the internet you know, and just filling it with this other kind of shitty registrar options and services. So yeah, you should be going to easy DNS.com. That's where I would be going if I was starting something up. And we did. So, you know, we're putting our money where our mouth is. Who's the other sponsor?

Thanks, Joey. You did a good job over there. Even though you're away in a cottage, you still have an influence over here. So it's awesome to hear you talk about EZDNS. Second sponsor of the show, it's Bull Bitcoin. Great place to buy your Bitcoin. Great place to sell your Bitcoin if you wanted to. The price of Bitcoin did shoot up a little bit today or the last few few days so maybe it's an opportunity for people to sell if they want but

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Those are the ad reads, Dean. I hope you enjoyed that. You did a good job. You did a good job. And Joey, you really set me at ease there where he actually cursed. He actually said shit or shitty. So I guess we can use that. You could swear. Big exhale there because I was worried I might slip.

No, you can go do whatever you want. Unfortunately, I'm going to swear a few times on the phone. My apologies. I'll join you. Thank you very much. With that, I just have to ask you one last thing with Cypress Hills Partners. Because credit is more challenging to get in the past, say, two years,

did this impact your business line? Positively. Oh. Positively, yeah. Yeah, no, I think that, you know, in our business, it's either feast or famine on one side or the other. So with interest rates low, you know, Cypress Hills provides a really unique opportunity for investors to get some spread, and they can pull that money off credit lines and whatnot. But it's interesting, it's an inversely

correlated to our deal flow. So there's always a lot of either there's a lot of money out there for me, and not a lot of deals, or there's a lot of deals and not a lot of either, there's a lot of money out there for me and not a lot of deals, or there's a lot of deals and not a lot of money. And right now that it's, um, it is, there's a lot of very, very active on the deal side. There's a lot of companies looking for, you know, looking to expand, looking to do their, you know, their thing, um, in order to get more money into the hands of consumers and and so yeah we're it we've had we're growing and enjoying this environment for now and and I think that we're built to sort of have this well into the future this situation so we'll see very cool that so god well you know before we go any further there's something i have to do one last thing on my things to do we get comments every week we get them in the form of

boosts which are lightning transactions that come over to us top five i read them off and we go from there so wartime sends in the sats 333 sats and writes in with this comment i don't know exactly how to to take this but either way he says they hate us because they ain't us but anus they're using a and us so i like the way he's saying that but either way wartime 444 sats with a fire and a heart emoji thank you very much mode btc dick 500 sats it's kind of funny how a 27 drawdown makes some of us more bullish laugh out loud i want to just comment on that yes it's so true when the price of bitcoin goes down it doesn't change my my perception of bitcoin the fundamentals haven't changed whatsoever and you know i get more bullish by the day regardless of the price goes up or down so yeah but i'm with you on that cute baby 4500 sats could you talk about blocks three nanometer

chips any industry rumors of how the five nanometer prototype is performing we'll be talking about that today and hodl these knots my g 10 000 sats pretty good chunk of joint chunk of change there. Thanks so much. He writes in, and I don't know how to deal with this one, but he says, I fucks with Canadian Bitcoiner. Y'all chill. Hoddle these nuts.

You know, he put 10,000 satoshis because he just wanted to hear you say, hoddle these nuts. I'll take it. So what we do with these sats, at the end of the day, we've been accumulating them, and we donate them periodically to worthy causes. I'm sitting on, I think 170 000 sats give or take right uh since your last donation and so

once we figure it out we'll donate the whole kick a poodle up to somebody else um we'll find out who it is going to take it but either way thanks for the sats it's going to be donated to worthy causes and hopefully it jives with your causes as well. Typically, you know, it's Bitcoin-related. But, yeah, man. Anything you want to talk about before we dive into the Bitcoin? I don't know if I said this when we're live or not, but I've come off social media.

I'm three weeks clean off social media. So I was shocked and dis I was, um, shocked and dismayed to hear that. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't, we got to talk about Donald Trump getting shot. Don't we, don't we have to talk about that? Because he's actually, he's actually a huge proponent of Bitcoin. It's not just that, you know, and I think that he's somebody that we need to, we need to discuss a little bit because he's the Trumpster. Yeah. Okay. We'll lead off with that story. That was on my list of things right away because that is the most pressing story of the last year, I think.

The fact that somebody would go out of their way and try to assassinate a president or a presidential candidate, it blows my mind. Considering that the area in which they were there, like it was in Pennsylvania, Butler, Pennsylvania, I believe it is. Didn't they have enough time to just look around and to make sure that the grounds were secure? You had within visual distance a rooftop of Donald Trump. Somebody screwed up. The thing is, is it an inside job? Is it negligence? Is it stage? Is it foreign actors? I don't know. It's probably one of those four,

maybe something else that I'm not considering. I know you might have some ideas that you want. I've got, you know, I've got a million stories about a million things, but I was in Vancouver in, I think it was early nineties. And, uh, they were hosting a summit between the, I don't know if it was a G7 summit or, or, or what it was, but they were out at university, British Columbia, they were hosting a G7 summit. And I don't know where they were, where the hotel was, but I, I was sitting at a coffee shop on Cornwall street in Vancouver when the, when the motorcade for, you know, the motorcade were taking these guys out to, out, out to UBC. And there was snipers on every roof. There was, there were,

and this was a different time and it was in Canada, right? I mean, it's not like, and it was a different time and it was in Canada. And there was RCMP officers at every corner, every intersection. And I remember sitting there having a coffee and with, with somebody, and this guy was going to ride his bike on the, on the road. He's just, and they said, you can't ride down here. And the guy sort of just sort of took it a little bit lighter than he should. And they tackled him and pinned him down. Now, you know, Clinton, I think it was, I believe it was Yeltsin at the time. I mean, it was obviously an international thing and, and, and obviously it was on foreign soil. So maybe the

Canadians were a little bit overzealous, but having lived for 15 years in the United States and understanding the intensity that of the times that we live in, it's very difficult for me to believe that they would leave a rooftop 100 meters away from the former president unattended. It's almost unimaginable. It doesn't even seem like I'm not obviously a security expert, but that just doesn't really add up. Yeah, it's hard to address that. Yeah, it is hard to address that. Because rooftops are kind of where you want to be there it's not like um you know that's sort of where you want to have that high ground listen to me you were saying in vancouver they had those snipers in the corners for the motorcade think logistically how much more

difficult it is for a moving motorcade that has to go from point a to point b it's a long distance and it's a lot of ground to cover versus a stationary location where Trump had his rally. I'm not an expert in this field. I could be way off base. But I think it would be far easier to secure the grounds that Donald Trump was on given the fact that you're not dealing with many dynamics aside from just the people that are there and the grounds in which you're trying to secure. Nothing else. there and the grounds in which you're trying to secure nothing else as long as you're able to make sure that there's no visual locations any sort of drones coming in you're knocking them out of the sky shit like that do you want to hear a little conspiracy theory i have go ahead and i'm not big in i was up until probably a year ago i was like not in on anybody's conspiracy

theories about anything like we landed on the moon elvis actually died like i'm not in on anybody's conspiracy theories about anything. Like we landed on the moon, Elvis actually died. Like I'm not in on any of these things. However, I have to think that, you know, with Trump's resume that he's had since he was 45, since he was 45, he's now a convicted felon 34 times. He's been shot. He's, he's been, you know, know he's he's had sex with porn stars this guy this guy's rap album is going to be is going to be platinum because he is he is a he is like gold teeth and

some knuckle tattoos away from cutting the biggest rap album of all time he's got to be he's got to have like dre or some of these guys on the phone with him suge knight has got to be reaching out because he's got it all locked up. Getting involved, I think. But anyways, go on. But just to take the conspiracy theory legit, his injury is so incredibly – I mean, the guy is 78 years old. He got shot in the ear, hit the deck, popped up and blood coming out of his ear and has the presence of mind to put his fist in the air and get that picture taken. the only reason that I think that that it makes is it's also perfect because if he gets shot any

place else there's a entry wound exit wound the picture's not as good because you wouldn't be able to tell um it was a but it clipped his ear which doesn't actually leave a bullet hole like like anything could have clipped his ear and but the but the blood on the face makes the picture 10 times bigger because we're Canadians we love those hockey players the but the blood on the face makes the picture 10 times bigger because we're canadians we love those hockey players that got the blood on the face and stuff like that that's always iconic he's had some experience in the wwe so he would know how to do that and and and he any duck behind the podium and then came up bleeding and i was just like could it be like i i don't know i'm off social media so i don't know. I'm off social media, so I don't know.

Maybe this is a meme that's been done a million times, and I'm just sort of spouting off some, like, overdone conspiracy theory. But he fell down behind a podium. He might not have even known. Maybe it was some Secret Service agent that just, you know, nicked his ear, and he would stand up and go, I guess I'm shot. You know, I don't know. It would be one of the very few people who would have had to have known about it. you know, nicked his ear and, and he would stand up and go, I guess I'm shot. You know, I don't know. It's,

it would be one of the very few people would have had to have known about it. Unlike this moon landing where a lot of people would be involved. I think that there's so many moving parts here with Donald Trump thing. It's hard to, to really say that that may be a theory that holds water given that initially, I'm just going to say right off the bat, I was questioning as to how did he avoid getting hit in the skull when it was directly to the side of him but then

after looking at the video he turned almost 90 degrees to the side so his his eyes were looking almost right at the shooter yeah does that make sense why he got clipped on the ear rather than getting it in the skull so it was just simply good luck that he turned it. But there was also somebody did an analysis of the photo of him raising his fist with the American flag behind him. There is a hole in his suit jacket pocket or suit jacket. There's a hole there. And some people are assuming maybe he also got shot there

and a bulletproof vest prevented him from getting injured. I don't know if it's true or not but people are looking at this why is there a hole there and especially right after he got shot there's a lot of and another thing is somebody got killed uh into the through the fire it wasn't a crossfire it was just one of the missed shot unfortunately got hit in the head so there's a lot of things over here that's just it's it's uh suspect i i think the amazing thing is is that you know he has just got this knack for because i never really believed that he was the tough guy that he pretended to be right he he talked tough and all that sort of stuff he's 78 years old and i don't care if he got shot like like if he got nicked by an ar-15 rifle bullet like

I like to think that I'm in pretty good shape I would have gone down stayed down I would have been sobbing I would have been I'd be I don't like he gets up turns around and puts his fists in the air and like and so like fight it's he's he's different man like he's a he is a he's he's an old man you know and during the debate during the debate i watched i said oh these two old guys oh i can't stand i can't bear to watch it it's so terrible but i i don't know that when a guy gets shot and reacts like that i don't know you can call him an old guy anymore i don't know like i i i've got to sort of um rethink that because that was that was pretty uh quite something the funny thing he played golf the day after i'm not sure if you saw any video footage

but he was at one of his uh trump's bedminster course and he was early tea off time he was just playing golf again like a regular old day so it's pretty funny that he kept his tea time and made it once again but that was you know just a side note more than anything else. Something also of note is that the Bitcoin price reacted to all this and reacted positively, which is very interesting. The question is, why was it a positive feedback with this price of Bitcoin? Well, maybe because stability. The fact that he didn't die shows that there's going to be

some stability moving forward. Because if he did, obviously it would throw up a lot of questions in the air what would happen moving forward. So now we know that he's still going to be there moving forward. So there's some stability.

Secondly, I'm sorry? Go ahead. I was going to say, he's more involved in Bitcoin. He's going to the Bitcoin conference this week, I think, or the next, whatever it is. Yeah.

One of my frustrations with Donald Trump has always been sort of a real lack of focus and clarity, I thought, on policy. At least the things that matter to me, living in the Pacific Northwest. I understand there's some border things and stuff like that, but that's more sort of the Southeast or Southwest. But this Bitcoin thing, I mean, I have to believe and I've kind of maintained that whoever wins this election, just where we are in the long-term debt cycle where the polarization is going to go down

as the worst president in history. And through no fault of their own, it might be some fault of their own, but just where we are, I just think that there's a certain inevitability to where we're at with our compromised fiat money. And I think that maybe I'm a bit early on this. The next four years are probably going to be more than a little bit rough, because it's going to be very difficult to unite a country, very difficult to fix what is wrong with our economy, because what's wrong with our economy is different than what it's not about unemployment. And it's

not about it's not about stock market returns and stuff like that. It is a different kettle of fish than we've ever had before. So all of the talking points that we always want to talk about don't really matter anymore because we have low unemployment and we've got, you know, soaring stock markets and people feel poorer. And a lot of that has to do with inflation. But there's a lot of, but it has more to do that we've got these, you know, our fiat currencies around the world are becoming increasingly compromised after COVID. So I don't know that, you know, traditional things that Republicans want to do, like tax cuts, that is even more inflationary, right? Those are types of things. And the Democrats, more regulation is going to sort of stymie growth. But either way, I mean, I think that there's an inevitability to this is going to be a rough four years for whoever wins the White House. But what gives me great hope is that and what makes me, you know, happy that Trump not only survived, obviously,

but that he's a Bitcoin guy. And I feel like he likes to jump on the hot topics all the time. But I really, really hope that he's got people around him that will give him the conviction that he needs to stick with this. Because this is super exciting that he's going to go speak at a Bitcoin conference. I've been to those conferences a few years ago. They're tiny, kind of niche little organizations that put these things on. And the idea that an American president, former or present, or somebody that's the Republican nominee is going to speak at a Bitcoin conference

is amazing if you think about where this thing has come in the last 15, 20 years. Yeah, it's from essentially nothing in 2009 to where it is today. And now you have a presidential candidate that will likely win the next election next general election um and he's going to be attending the conference and talking about bitcoin he's even said that bitcoin is potentially a strategic asset a strategic reserve asset that the u.s should be investing in and he's talking negatively about the federal reserve as well. So if you do all this, if you kind of read the tea leaves,

there's something here, there's more to the message than we actually know probably. And also today he picked his running mate, J.D. Vance, I think is his name. I don't know much about him, but somebody did note that he has a bill that somebody just pulled the article he's floating around a crypto plan that's being called this is from uh political.com and it looks like because he has exposure to bitcoin he has either between 100 000 to 250 000 worth of bitcoin as per

his disclosure forms so he he knows about it and he looks like he wants to get involved with creating some sort of law or regulation around it. So this is very interesting now with being Trump's running mate and him having exposure and ideas about Bitcoin. This is an interesting time. I'm not sure exactly how to react from all this, but I'm going to sit back and watch how the cards fall. I'm just going to keep buying, to be honest.

Yeah, well, my interest in Bitcoin arose from, you know, when you run a private credit fund, each and every, I don't know, every quarterly meeting, we have these quarterly meetings, and we always talk about, you know, our deepest, darkest fear. And mine has been currency debasement. It's always been that. And, you know, it's becoming to me more and more real all the time, slowly, but that's how it happens, slowly at first, and then all of a sudden, but that's how it happens slowly at first. And then all of a sudden, and, uh, and that's how I got, you know, that's how I got interested in, in, in Bitcoin in the first place is that, you know, it is a, it is the, it is the, you know, that and gold. And I was

very interested and involved in gold for a long time as well. So I think that, um, those types of assets are, are going to be very, very important if you're, very, very important if you're going to come out the other side of some sort of shock. And I can't think of anything. I mean, it impacts currency debasement, impacts everything. It's like a natural disaster, but it is, you know, you don't have to be on a coast. You know, it's a tsunami and an earthquake and a hurricane and a cyclone and a twister all wrapped up in one. There's no escaping it. And the idea that there's some people in the White House that are, you know, actively thinking about that, because I'm amazed at how nobody ever talks about no but neither side actually ever comes right out and says you know that a lot of the problems that we've got is that you know and the radicalization and the polarization has to do with late stage debt cycles um that are impacting the way we

think about everything you know gender uh um you know the likelihood of fascism or communism and all it's we're just we're just hyper it's, uh, and I believe it's, it's late stage that cycle. Yeah. Late stage Fiat is a term that somebody, a friend of the show talks a lot about now in terms of what they're using US dollar for, it's the weaponization of it. And I can understand that it's a powerful tool. It's a powerful asset at your disposal that you could use almost at any time just hurt somebody and hurt countries companies you name it but the problem is

if they recognize this and if they sort of go away from this it's taking away one of the huge advantages they have like could you imagine being in a position of strength and saying you know what i don't want to be in this position of strength i want to go to something else it's it's a hard bridge to cross it's very difficult to do because you're going to make a lot of people very unhappy and a lot of people suffer for a period of time like if if we're going to play this out if somehow there's going to be a transition to bitcoin in a way either uh bitcoin back used US dollar or Bitcoin used as a currency in the United States or some sort of fashion like that, it's not going to be an easy transition. It's going to be a point where there's going to be, you're going to have devaluation of your currency. You're not going to be able to spend as much because you don't have the ability to spend as much. Then your influence

on foreign actors, foreign nations, it's hard to do because you can't fund military operations the same way you can right now, or you can't buy covert operations the same way you can. So you're just giving up a lot of power. So it's hard for me to see this play out very soon. This is more of a long term plan, but man,

I don't know. I don't know if it's possible we're going to see anything change in the next little while. I think it's going to be status quo, unfortunately. But is it not, Len, like from a government perspective, I'm with you, like that U.S. dollar is the greatest weapon. It's like it is it can be used. So it's like a velvet hammer or something. It's like it's so covert, the swift system, the stroke that the U.S. government has in the hammer that it's been able to wield and the terror that it's caused for people around the world is significant. And they may lose some of that power, which I have to think, I don't know, is that not kind of good for the world a little bit? But as a consumer, as an individual that you have, you know, all of a sudden you have the opportunity to have hard money that because, you know, gold, we always talk about the problem with gold is, you know, gold comes, you need a power generator, you need a safe, you need a rifle, you need a safe you need a rifle you need a place in the mountains and and bitcoin you know um is that is that digital gold that's so clean and so slick

so i mean i'm talking to a bunch of people here right now that you're going yeah tell us you're talking to truth it's well it's the truth but but as is you know you have this sovereign individual if governments have this sort of you know if they have the growing pains, because like everything, they've got this big, massive behemoth that they have got to move and they've got to change how they do things. And they've got this, you know, this and their currency is have their, their passcode or their passphrase, and they're able to sort of sit there with hard money, not even under a mattress, just actual hard money that they can move around with and all those types of things. I mean, my hope is, is that the, the revolution that we're, that you would see at the end of these late stage debt cycles is Bitcoin. That's it, full stop. It is just the legends and the Dean Lindens of the world and the Joeys of the world pick up this sort of thing and insulate them from whatever

might be ahead. And it keeps them off the streets and we don't have to run around with torches and pitchforks. I hope we don't get to run around with torches and pitchforks i hope we don't get to that point but i'm maybe just the pessimist of the two over here i'm just i fear that there's going to be a vacuum if there's ever going to be a reduction uh oh sorry reduction of the u.s dollar in terms of using it as a weapon some somehow there's going to be uh filling into that void china may come into into play, maybe Russia, whoever. And that's, that's, you know, the Russia,

China, that's, I've always, I, when you look at the history of, of the world reserve currencies, it was the, you know,

the Dutch did a whole bunch of stuff with their Gilder. And then they passed it. Then it, the torch was passed to the, to the Brits. And then, and then, and then to the U S all of those things were, you know, democracies, fair elections.

What Trump hasn't done a good job of is selling the idea that the U.S. is still a fair and free elections and the peaceful transfer of power. Whether the election was stolen or not, I mean, I think that people would have all kinds of arguments. But, you know, that strictly for the U.S. dollar, the case for the U.S. dollar, being able to say that we've got fair and free election, the peaceful transfer of power and a very high functioning democracy, which was the at least the illusion up until 2020. That's not, I mean, those, that rhetoric, that conversation is already very detrimental to the, you know, to the U.S. dollar because otherwise you could say, before then, you could say, well, Russia doesn't have fair and free elections,

so it can't be the ruble. And the, you know, the Chinese, what's it called, Yuan, you know, they're a dictatorship or they're communist or whatever, so you can't use that one guy can change his mind. So we've kind of joined that group. We're kind of now sort of degraded ourselves a little bit. Uh, the U S dollars. And I'm not sure if it's, if that wouldn't have happened anyhow, but it's,

it is interesting that it comes on the heels of us for the first first time in my lifetime, questioning whether or not we have fair and free elections. Well, that's a question because of what happened last time. And it seems like even this time around, what's going to happen in the next few months, it's still not decided exactly who it is that's going to be allowed to vote. It's still trying to figure out, is it people that have to have some sort of identity to prove that they are a citizen and i can understand the argument on both sides one argument is you have to show it and it makes sense because only citizens are allowed to vote on the flip side though people are saying that there's cost involved with getting that document and if you're poor then you what option do you have between paying for the next meal for you and your family

or buying that document that enables you to vote? Obviously, you're going to pick the food option, so you may be priced out from actually voting the next election. So I can understand the argument on both sides, but you're still trying to figure out how people are going to be able to vote. There's no continuity. There's no blank slate. It's done all different states every state does it differently too so it just raises so many questions concerns like what's being done how's it being done questions el salvador i mean i'm really going to go into weeds here but fuck el salvador had an election not too long ago

granted smaller country but they finished they wrapped up everything the same day here you have days and days of figuring out does it recount recount and then go through the judge and have it uh notarized by the judge and say that yeah this is like it's bullshit that you have to go through you're in the united states of america you should have all the resources at your disposal to make this go as smooth and as quick as possible, not to last for fucking weeks at a time. Is that not an issue of the Electoral College, though? Is it not? Like if they just went, hey, man, everybody go vote, count them up, and we'll just we'll sort of see where we come out at.

Is it not the Electoral college that kind of is, complicates that with the delegates and all that stuff? I mean, I don't know. I mean, the founders were a bunch of badasses, and I think they thought of absolutely everything. And the electoral college, as far as I know, has not failed us up until now, but maybe it's time to rethink that.

I don't know. I'm certainly not an expert. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it it's time to maybe it's time to rethink that i don't know i'm certainly not an expert but yeah yeah maybe it could be time to modernize it but i don't know if that's the problem or not i mean more than anything i'm just venting my frustration at the whole system and the fact that united states everybody looks at them oh this is the the shining beacon that everybody should look to aspire to become they can't even run their elections properly that you're going to have a clear-cut decision within the next day or so it takes weeks other countries that people would say they're backwater countries and i'm sorry to say this about el salvador but comparatively their their gdp no no el salvador is a backwater country that

is a lot better i would rather walk the streets of san salvador than san francisco if that says anything because it seems to be much safer over there but think of like how much the amount of money they could pour into the united states in terms of making the elections nice and quick and easy and if they can't do it yeah like this is the most basic thing this is democracy this is impacting who's going to be governing the next four years and potentially beyond and you can't even figure that shit out and you want to control the dollar you want to figure out how you're going to figure out how the dollar is going to be playing out the next 50 to 100 years get the fuck out of here yeah so that but that i think has been there has been those kind of crap those little cracks in the system for a long time but it was

for the good of the whole, the whole gig, right? As long as maybe long as nobody says anything, Hey, they got fair and free elections, you know, cause we could go around the world then and put our finger on the scale on other people's elections, right? Okay. We're going to make it, we're going to see how we're going to run this. We're going to run this election. Oh, our guy won. Can you believe it? It's amazing. But you know, I think that it's just, and nobody really, at least domestically, asked any questions. And now I think that it's kind of, either it's completely made up or the cat's out of the bag, depending on where you sit. And I don't know which one is it because I'm just now getting into the conspiracy theory thing.

Just getting into it. And the question is, for how long has this been going on for? Is this just a recent phenomenon or is this something that's been going on for years, decades? And if so, like what's been influenced and what's changed, what shouldn't have changed? Well, remember when Gore and Bush – Yes, I was going to say that, Bush-Gore, 2000. Bush-Gore. I was going to say that Bush Gore 2000. Bush Gore. And somebody went to Al Gore. And because, I mean, that is was legitimately like there was it all came down to Florida and there was a hang the hanging chads and all that sort of stuff.

And someone went to Al Gore and went, you know, for the good of something wasn't for the good of the Democratic Party, wasn't good for but for the good of some you know and it probably wasn't you know i i just can't imagine the stakes of the opportunity to be the american president the leader of the free world is so huge i wonder what the argument was to al gore or if he's just the kind of guy that went i didn't really want to do that anyhow for the next four years i i don't know what it was but what was the argument for him to go call ge George and congratulate him and just end this thing? Like, I don't you know, I mean, I know there was courts in there, but that didn't seem to be. Yeah, it was it was legitimate. It was everybody could kind of see that it was a problem here. There wasn't obviously a problem, depending on who you talk to.

But other than it took forever. And that was the other thing, right? It was because the COVID and the mail-in ballots and all that bullshit. Not that mail-in ballots are bullshit, but there was a lot of COVID stuff that was sort of poisoning the water, so to speak. You know what? There's one or two other topics I want to talk about Bitcoin. We've been at this for like 20-something minutes.

It's a good topic. I want to bring up something interesting, Block. I'm not sure if you've been following this. Formerly Square, Jack Dorsey's company. So they've introduced some new Bitcoin mining chips this past week. At least they've been doing this for a little while. But finally, we've got this unveiled because a Bitcoin miner called Core Scientific. It's a very large publicly traded Bitcoin miner.

They came out this past week saying that they have come to an agreement with Block. They've been working together. And Block is going to be providing Core Scientific with around 15 exahash per second of their new three nanometer chip technology, the new ASICs that are using three nanometer chips. Now, Core Scientific currently has around 25 exahash per second. three nanometer chip technology the new asics that are using three nanometer chips now core scientific currently has around 25 exahash per second so this is 15 exahash is a significant amount of hash rates they're going to be getting strictly from these chips from block there's no time frame given as to when this equipment could be delivered so it could be delivered in the next

20 years and so it really doesn't mean very much. I don't think that's the case. Either way, this is good news on two fronts, and I'll explain why. Number one, Block. They seem to have gotten their shit in order, and they have potentially become a major player in the Bitcoin mining game. This is great because,

aside from being publicly traded, Block is publicly traded, and there's some greater transparency that comes with those types of companies. And I believe they're based on the Silicon Valley. That's great because now you have a US based company, a company that has very strong ties to the United States that's getting involved in the Bitcoin mining side of things. I'm talking the chip manufacturing. Up until now, it's been Bitmain as the big player and as a Chinese company. So a lot of questions questions with that but the second thing that's big about

this is the three nanometer technology the current king of the hill is the bitmain s21s and those use five nanometer chips so you're going from five nanometer to three nanometer it's a big jump and but the question is this may be all good but i have a couple of questions how much is this manufacturing process going to be done if any in china because if then we're kind of losing whatever advantage that potentially could be gained the delivery of chips when are these chips going to be delivered is it soon is it long i have no idea the chips themselves what's the durability and longevity of them because bitcoin mining typically is very harsh on the equipment, given the environments they operate in. And three nanometer is not a very old technology.

This is something that's rather new. Because if you look at, in fact, in October, sorry, September of last year, MediaTek and TSMC, they announced that they've developed their first three nanometer chip. That was just less than a year ago. Now we're going ahead and picking up with Bitcoin mining. So could they do the volume are they durable enough i don't know what's the profit margins of these units again i don't know we'll block me taking a haircut on each unit because there must have been a heck of a lot of money they put in rnd either way and last question i have is do they also allow for aftermarket firmware we'll find out in the next little while. But either way, a lot of good, but as I rhyme this off, a lot of questions. I don't know the answers to them. Time will tell, but maybe you have any insight, any input you want to put for this one, Dean?

I think that some of your viewers are well aware that Bitcoin mining is a brutal, brutal game. It is a very difficult thing to be good at. I think that you need to keep the, obviously you got to find cheap power someplace. And the other thing is you have to have, you have to keep state-of-the-art technology. These big leaps in advancements in technology, it does two things. It obviously makes the haves have more, and the have-nots just fall further behind. So I think it's interesting to see when these big sort of

tectonic shifts happen in technology, what happens with the difficulty rate and whatnot. I think that it's interesting. It's a bit above, frankly, a bit above my pay grade. I don't feel like I'm in a position to really sort of say one way or the other, this is going to be great for some, great for the ones that can finance and get these new chips and not so good for the rest of them because it's going to concentrate the power centers. Well, anything to get the market share away from Bitmain is good in my opinion.

Well, I want to add to that. Unquestionably, that's good. As long as it's a u.s company or at least a western nation i'm using the air quotes here type company that's involved i i'm all for that i want to see that i want to see a more decentralized system in place where you have less market share assigned specifically to bitmain that would be ideal will block achieve that and it did it did feel And it did feel like there was a bit of a – I read a book about John D. Rockefeller and his kerosene business

and his standard oil and how impossible it is with those types of monopolies to not be corrupt. Now, I can't – I'm not going to speak specifically to anything that I know about corruption from Bitmain. I'm not saying that at all. All I'm saying is, when you have that type of stroke over an entire industry, it's, I mean, it's impossible to, you know, to be to be fair and to be reasonable, just because you've got you've got people that are so desperate that they have and they got to deal with you. And I think that that is definitely a positive. I guess I have one last Bitcoin related story

before we go to the other side of things. This is a story that I missed and I apologize because this was from a couple of months ago, a reader, sorry, a listener passed it on to me. It's a coal miner called alliance resource partners they're a publicly traded company on a nasdaq and they as a coal miner just keep this in mind they have mentioned that they're mining for bitcoin and they've mined as as of April of this year, $30 million worth of Bitcoin, around 425 BTC in total. I think that's rather cool that you have a company that's utilizing whatever power they have, underutilized electricity.

They say, in fact, that this is at their Riverview mine. They're diverting that underused electricity to mine Bitcoin. Stranded power. Exactly. So we talked about this many many times on this show and i wish i brought this up at the time i heard about this but i find this to be fucking interesting that you have as you mentioned stranded power this electricity that just simply is going to be wasted and they're finding ways to monetize this this is where i'm seeing a lot of hash rate coming online in next little while and i know that joey just talked to

um the cfo at bit farms last week and i listened to the majority of that i haven't finished i'm around three quarters into it and i know that they want to stay strictly bitcoin mining and they're expanding especially in south america but my question and i still i think that it's really going to be this is how it's going to play out is you're going to see less of those bitcoin miners they might consolidate as as it was discussed in that show but the reality is that the majority of hash rate coming online in the next little while is going to be from these stranded power sources and it's going to be taking advantage of it and monetizing something that previously was not monetized so that's going to be very interesting and that's going to help distribute i sorry

decentralize the whole hash rate because you have energy that is wasted in middle east in russia in canada in south america south america all these places great place to just set up a few bitcoin miners scale it out. Yeah, I think the successful Bitcoin miners all do that. It's all power that is in some way, shape, or form. Because otherwise, you can't afford it. It's such a hand-in-glove type of thing. If it's not stranded, if it would otherwise be used, you can't afford it. And it's you just especially now with, you know, since the latest having and even before that.

And I think that when I hear certain politicians come out against Bitcoin and they have this sort of like very sophomoric understanding of what they're saying. And it's like, you know, some staffer handed them a note on, oh, yeah, this is our position. And, you know, we're all about the environment. And this uses power. And, you know, they have all these sort of uses more power than this country or that country or whatever the case may be. It's extremely frustrating. And, you know, just not to beat the trump drum too much, strictly from a Bitcoin perspective, it's great that now VP Vance, and he's a young guy that understands the frustration of being 39

and having virtually no economic opportunities laid out in front of you, except he'll be able to do insider trading once he becomes a full. So he'll have lots of opportunities. But the other 39-year-olds that aren't the Vice President of the United States will be able to access some of these new world economic opportunities that haven't been available to generations before. It'll be unique to the Gen Zs and millennials. I guess before we wrap up, we have one question from the audience asking about Luxfolio and if you could talk anything about that, exactly what happened over there. You know what?

Because we've got an operating, a management group on that, I would happy, I'd be happy to talk about it offline, be delighted. And, and if they want in the chat, they want to exchange numbers. I'm happy to talk about that. But Luxfolio is a, is, is, is a clean shell looking for any and all opportunities right now in the space, whether it be DeFi, Bitcoin, AI, whatever might arise there. We're actively seeking something over there.

I'm not a director or an officer, typically an investor. Got it. All right, Dean, that's it for the Bitcoin side of things. We'll wrap things up and go to the other side. Usually we call it notable stories. So with that, any last words before we sign off? Nothing you have to do, just stay on. On the audio side, of course,

it's going to be different for video side. Any last words before we sign off on the Bitcoin side? That's it for me. All right. Well, with that, don't be a cuck and we'll just move on to the notable side. So thanks and take care.