The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP #177 (Bitcoin News Stories) - Price Controls, Election Season Ramping, Jackson Hole

Episode Date: August 20, 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. D-Central Technologies - https://d-central.tech/ Your home for all things mining! Whether you need a new unit, a unit repaired, some support with software, or you want to start your own wife-friendly home mining operation, the guys at D-Central Tech are ready to help. With industry leading knowledge and expertise, let the D-Central team help you get started mining the hardest money on Earth.

Friends and enemies, welcome back to the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. This is number 177. My name is Joey. That's Len. In the basement, like usual. Len, I told you before the show, our friend Tom Carrazza gifted me this Real Bedford shirt and the Bitcoin magazine that's behind me here. It's a little blurry thanks to my camera focus.

But number one, what do you make of those things? And number two, how are you doing? What can I say? I've mentioned many times my thoughts on this, so I'm just going to rehash the same old, same old shit. But yeah, it was good, Joey. It was good. I enjoyed today.

It was a little chilly, but either way, I still had to get out and enjoy it as much as possible. So yeah, how about you? Everything okay over there? Strong day today. We neutered Moose last week, and he also had double deweys on both his back legs so people who uh don't know dogs have these like you know secondary kind of i guess even tertiary maybe claws up on

their back hind legs and uh sometimes they're just not connected that well his we're not connected well at all they're flopping around all over the place on windy days and so he had two of them on each of his back legs. And so the doctor recommended a long time ago that when we neuter him, we get those cut off as well. So he did that, which means I got to be with him all the time. So right now, actually, is really the first time he's been on his own. No supervision for an extended period of time.

My wife is at Ikea and he's probably just on the other side of this door hopefully sleeping but uh we will see when i get out if he's uh been licking his wounds there that's all right though he's been good for the most part since uh since the operation very good well all the best to him and hopefully he recovers quickly but he's young typically when you're that young you one one year old it's amazing how fast the wounds heal i'll tell you that i'm always amazed by how fast dogs heal from all kinds of stuff. Because they don't need- Wait until you see little kids.

You can almost watch the wounds heal. It's crazy. It's incredible. It's crazy. I've enjoyed it. So anyway, yeah, big show tonight. Let's do the sponsors, do some boost housekeeping, all that stuff. The first sponsor.

Are they the presenting sponsor? Yes. Easy DNS. Mark. Incredible man. Okay dns mark incredible man okay just an incredible man a true renaissance man he knows about domains domain name servers domain name services was dns stand for one of those two things domain name server domain name server he'll help you start your own website if you want anon okay you can either buy it from him port it over whatever okay but when you're ready he'll be there with the most secure the most efficient and the highest

quality product in the market when it comes to dns how do we know we use our our website our website is over on easy dns we do all our stuff through his uh through his service and for bitcoiners lots of great stuff, virtual private server, Bitcoin nodes, NOS2 relays, you name it. There's probably more. Mark will tell you, just go over CBP media as the code. No matter what you're trying to start, you need a website. You can't do anything without a website anymore. Whether you want to out companies that are using fraudulent LMIA claims or post videos that you go to jail for in the United Kingdom now,

you need a website to do it. And EasyDNS will host that website for you. CBPBD is the code. Go there. And don't forget, actually, after the show tonight, Mark is in a space with other friend of the show,

Joe Barbuto, the Economic Longwave, the E-Longwave on Twitter. They're going to be talking, as Joe does every Monday night, about the state of affairs in the economy in Canada. And I'm sure Mark, who is there, I believe is the Bitcoin capitalist tonight. We'll have some stuff to add. So I'm going to be in that space afterwards should be heat. And also I'm going to have Joe and Mark

at the studio sometime in September. Hopefully I have to set that up, but that should be another good show. Those guys are, I mean, knows mark and joe are some of the brightest guys in bitcoin adjacent to bitcoin in joe's case having them all in the same room um you really can't beat it in terms of content so who's the second sponsor bull bitcoin joey bull bitcoin it's a great place to buy and sell your bitcoin i have no idea what the heck the price of bitcoin is right now so it may be a good time to buy maybe you could tend to say i don't know either way they're there to give you the option to do either or and you could do it on chain or lightning now i did check the fees yesterday the fees were dirt cheap so if you're going to be

using on chain now's the time to make your buys execute those buys also consolidate your transactions but that's another time. But Bull Bitcoin gives you other options because you have your Bitcoin. What are you going to do with it? You're just going to sit on it and just talk about it, think about it. No, no, no. You have options. You could spend it.

You could buy some gift cards through Bull Bitcoin and start spending your Satoshis in the real world. So Home Depot gift card or whatever. You could do that and bull bitcoin will help facilitate the purchase you just give them your bitcoin and they'll give you a gift card that you can start spending in the real world but also if you have some bills you got to pay well you could use your bitcoin to pay those skip don't pay them see what happens and if you do really have to pay them bull bitcoin can help yeah if you don't um i don't recommend that i would always recommend someone told me len that

they don't pay their parking tickets and nothing has happened to them a listener of the show i won't say who but yeah well teach their own i mean not financial advice i would suggest we should be exploring no definitely not i mean we are trying to save for the cbp jet but that's one we were not going to be doing that. So, but yeah, definitely check out BoldBitcoin. And it's a great way, like I mentioned, to buy and sell your Bitcoin on ChainLightning and so forth. But open an account if you haven't done so with using our promo code.

21 bucks is going to be added to your account. And I just want to say one last thing about BoldBitcoin is that you get some great service from them. Not only that that this is not custodial so many times we talk about when you buy your bitcoin and you leave it on exchange and then things could happen they don't allow that with bold bitcoin in order to facilitate a buy you have to provide an address in which to send your bitcoin if you do not well you can't finalize the buy so as soon as you buy it it goes right to your wallet like that well take a

few minutes depending on how how long it's going to be batched but either way it's not for them to hold on to it's going to be sent to your to your wallet right away so check them out we love them we use them and that's where i buy my bitcoin has uh francis gone on tv and talked about how they're going to start a media company ever do you know anything about that no that's because that's because he's never done it. Has Francis ever gone on TV and talked about how they're going to get into mining? No.

That's because he's never done it. This is a company that is focused on the mission, unlike another company in the space. Third sponsor, Decentral Tech. Len, they announced today that they are... I can't remember the model of this bid axe that's coming out. I'm going to look it up right now. This thing looks so mean. And there's been some momentum on the ground, Len. There's been a grassroots movement, a CBP branded bid axe. Do people actually want that? or like do we actually know enough people who watch and listen to this show that want a miner that we can produce 50 or 60 cbp branded bidax machines it sounds like there may be a lot of interest for this and that's insane to me yeah we could do that to me yeah no that's cbp styled

branded bidax that'd be so mint we could be it'd be unbelievable so these guys are the sort of all in one solution to your home mining needs whether like i said last week i'm still working on this ad read but i think i got it down here whether you want to mine in a way that your wife will not appreciate whether you want to mine in a way that your wife will appreciate whether you want to start something as a hobbyist or actually uh contribute to something at the level of a rack in your garage, these guys will help you. Whether you want to buy, get something repaired. They did hosting. They do hosting, although it's not their main shtick these days. No matter what it is when it comes to mining, these guys have you covered. And of course, as we just mentioned,

the Bidax really is the star of the the show this incredible little unit that is near silent looks sick as do all the things in bitcoin that we talk about on this show made x art the bidax these things are one in the same you put them next to each other it's like a little mr robot chic in your home and it's just mining bitcoin put whatever firmware you want on it point it to whatever pool you want. Help secure the network and do it from your own home. See, there's a new Bitcoin, sorry, the Bidax Gamma came out just today. That's the one. That's the one, yep. And it's 200 Canadian.

And it gives you 1.2 terahash per second, 15 joules per terahash. Crazy. From a single chip. From a single chip. And they're taking pre-orders for that right now. Check that out. And so that's the mostorders for that right now. Check that out. And so that's the most efficient offering they have of the Bidax. Hell yeah.

And it's using the S21 chips. That is the one that's going to be CBP branded, I understand, if there is interest. Ah, so we are the most efficient. We are the most efficient and effective podcast in the nation. Housekeeping. And then we effective podcast in the nation. Housekeeping. And then we'll go with the boost. Last week, I did the Karadza's show, Your Life, Your Terms. Tom and I spoke for a little under two hours.

I got to be honest, there was about a half hour stretch during that show where I thought my heart was going to come out of my mouth. It was beating so fast because I downed a monster energy drink on the way there and a coffee when I got to the place. And then we just started talking and I suspect you will hear it in the content. So look forward to that when it comes out. We were just talking before the show. Mr. Arnome is going to join us tomorrow. I'm either going to do, we're either going to do the show a little later than usual, or I'm going gonna do it solo at seven depending on what happens with football turns out in these beer leagues if you don't feel the team

you have to pay a fine and i don't really want to pay a fine so we'll figure something out mr arnone just don't pay the fine we talked about at the beginning of tickets and football fines yeah pay nothing pay nothing absolutely so yeah we have um we have that on deck for this week what else do we have coming up do you want to talk about the calendar we haven't really talked about the calendar in a while what else we got on the uh agenda here in the next little while to be honest i'm not sure i'll tell you right now i know we have jonathan from decentral technologies coming in beginning of september yeah he's coming on the fourth fill in some others some other slots beginning september the 27th the 27th of august looks maybe empty i don't know and then uh september 10th the week

after jonathan mike campbell coming back for his yes once or twice yearly cbp appearance which i'm sure will be followed up by an appearance by me on money talks at some point in the fall so looking forward to that i think that's it do you want to do boosts and then hit the ground running here? Yeah. So Zordon. 3-1-3 Sacks. Zordon. Nice.

Great callback. Do you know what that's from? No. It sounds like it's from a 70s science fiction movie. 90s. You're close though. I'm pretty sure someone in the chat can tell me if I'm wrong.

That is the guy from Power Rangers, is it not? I didn't watch it. so my sister watched it but she was you know she's much younger than i am okay so one more thing here before we do this boost from zordon sorry uh boom dust the cbp fantasy draft is what we will be doing the week of the 27th uh-huh that's what we'll be doing i will be streaming that that's going to be sponsored content the sponsors don't know that but they know it now sponsored content the cbp fantasy draft there you go yeah so zordon and he boosts 313 stats for the cbc jet fund i think he meant cbp because cbc i'm not sure if they need a jet if they have a jet but man this guy went for the cbp because cbc i'm not sure if they need a jet if they have a jet but man let's get one for the cbp not the cbc they're buying jets every year are they not i don't know they're cutting staff

over there so i'm not sure what the heck's going on what is this for executives but yeah unfortunately staff's getting the hacks did you see that uh the cbc is still deciding whether or not to pay the bonus to the ceo but that the decision is actually not publicly available once it's made? That's because it's an arm's length agency. Still. So they don't have it. So from what I gather, it's not a decision that's going to be made by parliament or any specific members. If they meet a metric and then it automatically triggers

so this is just a reality if you don't like it then that has to be changed but yeah it is what it is mo btc's dick 500 sats he says cheers to 60k again and looking at my block clock unfortunately we're back to 59 so 50 is 59 yeah geez 59 130 so 59, one 30. So yeah. Rander 501 sats. He says, I boosted more than 500 sats just for you, Joey. So you boosted 501.

Did we, did we give him a hard time? I don't think we did. I don't know. I'm fine with 500. Five. Yeah. So boss strategies,

1000 sats. Is it just me or has this been the worst year? Ever since COVID, anecdotally, all I see is struggle and prosperity. I don't feel like expanding on that. Can these sats go to some sort of addiction slash treatment facility? We all struggle. Sure. Yeah, we can do that.

We're trying to figure out a way to give to Wayside more. I want to add that it's actually not been since covid i think it was basically since harambe died right that's what everybody says ever since the gorilla incident the cincinnati zoo things have just not been the same i don't know you'll get pinned on so many other things i guess is when oj finally kicked the bucket that was for me you know he was trying to look for the killer and then unfortunately now it's gonna go cold this case the cold the cold case yeah exactly yeah so north star weld service 1111 sats this boost is for your jet fund not to donate to an ngo scammer that claims to do surgery

on children in bangladesh so yeah cp jet fund is growing this is i can't believe that people want us to get the jet there's a place here there's a place here in town called the uh hamilton air force association the half a club as the locals call it i guess i'm a local so i'll call it that too uh they have an old like tin can uh sort of war era gotta be like a small engine aircraft out front i bet you that thing i don't know you could probably get one on like facebook marketplace or something similar i bet you for less than 10 grand if that was in a year next year year end would be gone ballers up that thing wouldn't last for sure so it would just be on some flatbed the police next year. If that was in a next year year end, maybe. would be gone. For sure. For sure. For sure. I think it wouldn't last for sure.

So it would just be on some flatbed. The police would tell you they can't find it even though it's the only aircraft in the car lot at the train yard.

We're still investigating it. We're just having a hard time pinning it down, you know? Give us time. Let's talk about some Bitcoin related. Actually actually before we go

there is any last things you want to give you the option here no i don't i don't have anything all right 15 minutes in i guess it's a good time to start talking so i guess first one is going to be very local it's actually a really good great story i would say in fact because there's a gas station that is local to somebody local to us it's eso located at 297 main street west in port colborne ontario so not close too far i guess from us an hour away i'm gonna drive an hour yeah well they're now accepting bitcoin for payment so you can go there and you can fill up your car and you could use bitcoin as your method of payment which is really cool coin os from what i gather i could

be wrong on this but they may have helped facilitate this whole thing and so in order for them to collect bitcoin and start you know accepting it coin os was the people or were the people that made it happen so that's really cool in that respect in terms of what you're doing with the bitcoin from what i gather they're hodling everything so everything they're getting they're keeping from themselves they're not selling it which is a good thing because i just want to remind people out there the implications for when it comes time to start selling so if you're going to go there and start filling your gas uh sorry your car with gas and use bitcoin in canada at least you have to report that to cra to our tax agency over here and you know the buy price of your Bitcoin

to sell price difference, there's going to be capital gains tax that's going to be applied to that. So that's why I'm satisfied on their side of things that they say they're huddling their Bitcoin, the SL station, because if they were to sell it,

then they have to report to the CRA. But everybody that's going there, that's going to be paying up. Remember, unless you want to really get shafted in the end, take this information down report it because who knows maybe these guys they could be reporting it for you yeah you never know you have to you know don't trust verify and i'm happy that they're accepting bitcoin but just be careful when you do start spending your bitcoin because you never know if they're doing it in good faith or

bad faith it could be sending information off the cra And if you don't do the same thing, be ready. Because if they start doing an audit on you, it could happen for the previous years as well. And also future years as well. It could be a very bad time for you. Totally agree. Although I love this story. How about CoinOS?

Cole, and I think Aaron is the guy's name, who's the developer, the sort of technical lead. These guys, man, I see videos of Cole on Twitter, I think more than I might see anybody else these days. He's either at an event, at a meetup, trying to onboard somebody or talking about CoinOS's new features all the time. I am ashamed that it took me almost a year to schedule a podcast with those guys because they are crushing it, Len. And I maintain that as far as ease of onboarding and ease of use, that wallet is really still top

of the line. There's nothing easier than that. You and me talked about it offline. I talked about it during that interview. Those guys are doing stuff that no one else in the space is doing. And for Cole to be able to just waltz into a gas station, onboard the guy, presumably, who already knew about Bitcoin, maybe not about CoinOS, and have the guy accepting Bitcoin very easily, very quickly. That's invaluable. One of the hurdles we have in this space is the technical gap between understanding Bitcoin, wanting it, but being able to accept it for a service. And these guys are really eliminating that last gap or one of the last gaps. You'd love to see it, man. right and these guys are really eliminating that last gap or one of the last gaps you'd love to see it man i'm i'm hyped on this i think you sent out a tweet too

that if the guy was willing he we'd have him on the show so i did that and somebody was able to indirectly get in touch with them because of uh they want to remain i guess kind of anonymous sure they're not going to want to come on and discuss it and i totally respect that so i'm fine with that so it looks like that's not going to happen unfortunately that's okay all right kudos to the guy anyways good stuff yeah agreed core scientific let's do just a brief discussion on them you know this is the very large publicly traded bitcoin miner they filed for chapter 11 back in 2022 because of a lot of debt they took on in 2021 when debt was cheap and they were trying to expand aggressively during a time when the bitcoin price was you know very high and they thought you know this is a good time to

expand well you know we know what happened with them now they claim that their balance sheet is much better they say quote unquote strengthened balance sheet is what they have right now this is after the chapter 11 and it's turning up again but from what i i look here if you don't look at history and learn from it you're doomed to repeat it and this might be one situation that could be applicable because this week core scientific has went out and raised 400 million dollars of debt this is from convertible notes that matures in 2029 three percent interest rates those are very favorable terms i have to admit that but still it's a lot of debt that taking on and it might be used for dealing with older debts as a way like you know just um repurposing old

debt and just getting this newer debt at cheaper price but either way like that just looking at the fact that a company not too long ago went into bankruptcy because of the the amount of debt that they had they're doing it again yeah and when this announcement came out their stock price dipped 10 so investors didn't like this news right off the bat it has since recovered recovered in a subsequent few days after that. So I guess the investors didn't take it too bad in the grand scheme of things. But initially, they didn't. So there were some immediate concerns.

This company does have still a significant amount of the overall hash rate. Yeah. So what I'm trying to get at is if history does repeat itself in one way or another and something were to happen with Core Scientific, this could be one of the first dominoes to fall, which could lead to a bearish market. You know, if you have a company that has a large amount of stake in terms of overall hash rate, then they start selling equipment en masse and then driving down the price and other miners are then stuck in the same position. No, that would never happen, Len. There's no precedent for that. happen. Len, there's no, no, right.

So come on. I'm just looking at this. It's just like, man, they're taking on a significant amount of debt here. Don't you think it's weird that they're trying to just push it out to the next halving cycle? Like the,

I mean the 2029 date, I realized it's five years, five years, a nice round number, but everyone knows why that's the date they chose. Everybody knows that. Saylor does the same thing. He,

he sends things out one cycle at a time because he's assuming correctly so far that the price will be significantly higher and he can use that to eat up some of the problems he might've otherwise had. So these guys are doing the same thing. It's not a bad strategy thus far. Past performance does not guarantee future success, obviously, But if they want to stay in business, what choice do they have besides something like this? So if they want to stay in business, this goes to show that, I guess, being a pure Bitcoin miner

is a business that's going to be continually being in debt. Yeah. There seems to be no way of getting out of it. You're not going to make profits year over year, and then you're going to be able... It's almost looking like it's the any government. I'll use the US government for instance. The debt that they have, they're

never going to pay it back. They're just going to keep adding to it. I'm talking about the US government. The same thing is going to apply with these companies. They're taking on a significant amount of debt. Do you think it's going to be more profitable in the future to mine Bitcoin? It's going to get more challenging, if anything. It's going to hurt all the time, right?

Yeah. Unless that debt gets inflated away and it gets easier for them to pay it off and they could use the hard assets they mine to pay for that maybe but there's a lot of questions that you know you're basically hoping that they get answered along the way but i'm looking at this like i say history tends to repeat itself especially for those who don't respect it and looking at this like i see history tends to repeat itself especially for those who don't respect it and looking at this one here this is an ancient history this is just two years ago that they just went through this chapter 11 process and it's every having cycle that we see things like this really crush miners you know and again like you you and i've talked about this a lot and you you were on this corner very early

that mining is just not that easy a business and all these guys who think they can just grab deploy issue debt issue notes whatever it just doesn't work it doesn't work it hasn't it hasn't been a very um you know a significant success story basically anywhere and if you look across the landscape of miners land how many of the big guys who can execute this strategy are executing this strategy taking on debt and just is riot doing it is marathon marathon recently went through some some that were to use that to buy bitcoin yeah but they're not they're not issuing... These guys are not bankrupt. They're all making bets on the price going up every four years. Like I said, so far it's been fine, but this is not... If you're an investor, this is not a business I think you want to be buying shares in, in my opinion.

Because now... 100%. Because now, think about what's happening here. We talked about this with Jeff Lucas, the Bitfarms CFO. What's happening is they're competing against companies like NVIDIA. You can say whatever you want about NVIDIA. Are they the product of the end carry trade? I don't know, man. It doesn't matter. The price is the price. If you're deciding between buying a company like BitFarms or Riot or Marathon or whoever on the open markets, then what you're really doing is trying to get exposure to AI because

they're all in these HPC applications now. They're sort of bicameral in the way that they approach profit maxing. Okay, fine. So now you got to compete with these companies who are AI-based that might give you more pure play exposure to AI and high power compute. So that's something that you might want to buy instead of a miner. Now you're telling me that the miners are actually just issuing debt to buy Bitcoin.

Some are. Some are, I know, I know. So like some of these companies are, or issuing debt to buy miners or issuing debt to stay afloat and keep the operation. No matter what, the derivative in all those cases is the same. It's the Bitcoin price. So now you're telling me I'm going to buy your miner instead of buying AI or I'm going to buy your miner instead of just buying Bitcoin? The gamble is the same. And the exposure is more pure in both cases by buying Nvidia or by buying spot. So why buy the miners on the open market? You have all these risks in execution, all these risks in legislation, all these risks in power purchase agreements.

The risk is everywhere. But on the other side, there's no risk. Nvidia will sell chips to guys eating Doritos off their chest, no matter what the price of Bitcoin is. And the swap price of Bitcoin will go up. And if these companies are successful in their gambit, then you will be fabulously wealthy anyways, and having not had to deal with any of that execution risk over the four-year halving cycle.

It doesn't make sense to me. Why would you buy the miners? I just don't get it. I continue to have trouble metabolizing this idea that these guys are a good high beta play. Because it used to be that they rose and fall with the Bitcoin price. To some extent, that's still true, though less today than four years ago. And four years from now, assuming these guys all continue executing this strategy or trying to, it's going to be even more tightly correlated with much greater risk of ruin along the way. Don't do it. Don't do it. The last thing you want is to be involved in one of these companies. And then there's a six-page PDF that comes out on why it's important to use DEI practices and their C-suite hires. And then you're fucked. You're in the company. They're down 10%.

You don't have the Bitcoin. You don't have the equity. What do you have? You tail between your legs and you thumb up your ass. That's what you got. If you buy these things, you're better off going the other direction in both cases. I think we got get sb on here to tell me uh why i'm wrong because he's a big guy but i just i personally don't see it i personally don't see it well goldman stacks made news this past week i love that you said that on twitter i think we coined that on this program you did many many moons i think that was me or you one of us no it was you this you said that in like one of the first two or three episodes that we've done so i like the name because it kind of applies for the most part because as of june 30th we've learned that they have several positions in the bitcoin etf so it's not just one they're playing for whatever reason that they have in many of the

bitcoins by etfs and the amount that they have so far purchased is to tumor around $400 million, a little bit more than that. As of June 30. That's quite a bit of money that they have allocated toward it then. But let's be honest, this company, they have way more money available at their disposal at their disposal. So then they're just putting like a small portion of it towards Bitcoin. Yeah, ETFs. But still, it's a positive sign in terms of the fact that they're looking at this and they're using this as a potential way to increase their overall valuation it's not just them too but morgan stat morgan stanley also has a play in

these etfs although they have reduced their overall size of the etfs they initially had around 270 million dollars in that now it's around 190 million dollars so still they have a decent amount like 190 is more than a decent it's just i wish i even had a portion of that at my disposal either way they are reducing that their um allocation towards the bitcoin etf slightly but they still have a heck of a lot but there's others too i'm not sure if you saw this one it's london-based capula investment management you heard about this company? Capula Investment Management?

What was the name of the... Capula? I think that's how you pronounce the name. Apparently, it's a very large European investment firm. And they disclosed that they hold over $460 million in the spot Bitcoin ETFs themselves. And there's tons out there. So as of right now, all those ETFs from the last information I have in total is around $53 billion that has been flowed into these ETFs as of mid-August. So things may have changed since then.

So $53 billion. In the grand scheme of things, the market cap of Bitcoin stands at a little bit over $1.1 trillion. So if you want to figure it out, it's still a very small portion is allocated to the ETFs. But it seems to be growing by the day, for better or for worse. I've talked about my displeasure of the ETFs, but still people are using it. They could do what they want with their capital, and then I'm going to laugh at them when they don't have access to their capital. But until then, people seem to be using these ETFs.

And it's growing in terms of popularity. And I suspect it's going to continue growing even further. So Goldman Stacks, interesting news by them. Have you changed your view on ETFs at all? No, no. I'm looking at what's happening. Every day I'm looking at it. And I'm thinking we're one step closer to not

getting access to our funds now not to say that it's imminent but you know it's just a little bit closer to not getting and then every day we're a little bit closer and eventually it comes a point where it's not there you know when you have to liquidate your holdings say you have ownership of anything etf ownership of apple what the fuck it is when you sell how long does it take for you to get that cash in hand from between selling to cash physically in your hand how long is that five days probably it's a lot of fucking time yeah and that's the best case scenario there could be some holidays in between there could be some roadblocks put in place but

that's five fucking days i don't like that look how things are things are going how things are accelerating and if they continue to do this why would anybody look at this and say yeah that's a good play give them my money and i'm gonna get get access to it later on. I said to Kevin Muir on the show that we did together a couple weeks ago now that the big concern for me remains that the peer-to-peer application of Bitcoin is diluted the more people hold Bitcoin in an ETF product. Coinbase and some of these other ETF issuers, ETF brokers, whatever you want to call them, are not arms of the state pragmatically or officially in some cases, I think is wrong. So I'm with you on that concern. The rugging thing, it's hard for me to imagine that that happens only because you'd be in you'd be in like a wartime stance to have the government bail in basically using the Bitcoin ETFs. And that's at some level what they would be doing.

They could say they're confiscating or giving fair value to the people who hold the Bitcoin in cash. I mean, it's possible, but it would really be, you know, there would be other things along the way, I think, that would be more telling and potentially more harmful, let's say, to the trust landscape in the United States. I heard Pierre Rochard on said Youngman's podcast the other day. Tell me what you think about this, Len. People who are worried about the Bitcoin, if you're buying the ETF and you're a little worried about the ETF being rugged by the government or Coinbase being rugged by the government, right?

Like your coins on exchanges. Isn't it better to just have the government hold your Bitcoin? Because if you're worried about, if you have your Bitcoin on Coinbase, then you could be rugged by Coinbase or by the government. But if you just eliminate Coinbase from the equation and just let the government hold your keys, then only the be rugged by Coinbase or by the government. But if you just eliminate Coinbase from the equation and just let the government hold your keys, then only the government can rug you anyways. It's almost better to just let the government hold your coins than to actually have your coins on exchange. I had not considered that, but I laughed out loud at that. I thought

that is just so fucking funny because it's spot on. It's so spot on. The exchanges just have no role. They are only another risk for people. And it's amazing that. It's so spot on. The exchanges just have no role. They are only another risk for people. And it's amazing that everyone hasn't figured that out. It's sort of separate from the ETFs, but in the same vein. I had a great laugh at that the other day. That is interesting,

but it's still just replacing who you're trusting. It's trusting the personal model. No, for sure, it's still bad. Yeah, it's still bad. Right. But it did make me laugh you know safer for the government safer for jerome powell to just hold your keys in his pocket at the grateful dead concert than it is to uh leave your coins on coinbase given everything that they've done how much how much um faith you have in them actually doing it properly

you're getting access to it whenever you want to get access to it never there's no right no evidence you're never getting it back you have not so i think that's probably if you have to guess or sorry if you're the pick your poison is probably the worst of the two but either one and i've talked about it at length and people may disagree with my stance and that's fine i mean i I'm looking at this as a glass half full scenario, and others may not. They may see this as three quarters full, and things are not going to be as dire as what they are. But you know what? The one beautiful thing about Bitcoin is that it gives you the opportunity to hold your keys and beyond that to verify your transactions.

And you could do so with very little hardware in terms of the scope of specs and so forth. So why go away from that? I mean, for tax advantages, okay. But you're still going to be living within the fiat world. Especially if your time horizon is 10 years or longer that you and I have, right? Do you really care about the taxes that much? It's not worth the risk.

I agree. longer that you and i have right like do you really care about the taxes that much like it's not worth i agree yeah i agree you know what i like about bitcoin is the fact that there's only 21 million and there's a set amount and there's so many you know it just doesn't exist with the u.s dollar or insert your fiat currency here it's just that that's just the reality of it and why would i want to operate or even recommend anybody operate within that? I mean, learn what is available to you. It doesn't take that much time and effort to figure it out. And when you do, there will be an aha moment.

It's like, wow. So like, I mean, I was talking to my mechanic just this past week and we, you know, we were just going on this tangent about this and that. Eventually we got to the point of talking about Bitcoin and I explained to him

what is Bitcoin. And he's just like, it clued in him like wow nobody explained it the way you have because when you understand the fundamentals of what it is all about then it there is then you understand why people want to buy it and then what are the characteristics of it and then taking away from that and just removing those characteristics and plugging in these fiat measures and fuck that man i get it i understand why yeah some good comments in the chat from boom dust you can order uber eats you can hold your own keys and from narwhal from narwhal tacos if you can file your own taxes self custody is cakewalk that's actually true filing your own taxes is such a pain in the ass if you can do that then uh you can definitely hold your own keys it's not that hard how many people like had it's funny i hear people all the time talking about especially

this is the thing that drives me the most nuts about the older crowd people who had no choice but to write their passwords down in a notebook 30 years ago when computers first started to proliferate because there's no password saving no nothing are telling me now that they are afraid to write down their 12 words for the Bitcoin wallet. This is it's almost unbelievable to me. Like it's it's so easy. You've actually done it before and you can just do it again now. It's like it's it's not that difficult. It's just simply not that difficult. I don't think people understand that there's the 12 or 24 words. Like when I talked to normies about this is something they just don't think people understand that there's the 12 or 24 words like when I talked to normies about

and this is something they just don't know so even the fact that you know you're saving passwords back in the day on pieces of paper and now it's simply just repeated by times 12 or 24 yeah they just don't know that it's the onus is on us to educate as many people as possible and it's up to people to walk that path if they choose to walk it or not, it's up to them. That's fine. At least we give them the option. They have the tools that enable them to hold their own Bitcoin. If they do it, like I said,

all the more power to them. If not, have fun staying poor. When you walk on the sand with Len, there's only one set of footprints. We are going right to El Salvador or wherever else there's going to have some nice golf course and tennis court anyway mstr kind of mstr story you must have heard this one mstx yeah have you heard about this double levered bull or whatever the yeah it's a for the real degenerates out there

as if the high beta from str is not enough enough. You got to get double exposure. It's not quite double. It's close to it, though. But it's a single stock leveraged ETF. And it's based 100% on MicroStrategy stock. And they offer 175% exposure. So this is obviously for the people that are long MSTR. Because if you're bearish in it, this thing, you're just going to get absolutely wrecked if you think that's your thesis that it's going to go down this was debuted mstx august 15th so it's

rather new just late last week so if you want to take advantage of buying into some derivative of mstr which is a derivative of the price of bitcoin. So you just keep going. All the more power to you, man. It's a Russian doll. Russian doll. You got to be a true DJ. This is gambling to the nth degree. Let's do it. Put the whole CBC jet fund on it. I should just sell.

I guess I would sell 10 shares now because they just tend to one. Should I sell 10 shares of MSTR and put it all in MSTX? That would be so legit. You would just just fly. Well, if you're in MSTR anyway, wouldn't wouldn't the rational thing be to take some of that off the table and put it into this and just see how this gets rebalanced? I think on the daily so if you're going to be from what i understand i could be wrong in this if you're doing this to hold for a very long period of time it's not the right thing to do if you think there's going to

be a short period run up a few days maybe a week or two then this is the thing to do but if it starts going choppy for some time i think you just lose out in the end and you're gonna lose it either way let's be perfectly honest you're fucking gambling here i gotta see i gotta see dog days of summer yeah if we just yeah it's like man it's like going to the casino and just throwing 50 bucks on red at the beginning of the night so you got an extra 50 bucks to party i used to do that going to dragonfly when i was in my 20s all the time okay go to the casino and put 40 bucks on red as soon as you walk in if you lose the 40 bucks you lose it but what's dragonfly when i was in my 20s all the time okay go to the casino and put 40 bucks on red as soon as you walk in if you lose the 40 bucks you lose it but what's dragonfly dragonfly is a casino slash club in niagara falls really dating myself i don't even know if it's still open

honestly but i had some that's legit because i thought the only one they had was uh casino niagara and it's attached it's attached to a hotel it's at falls it's attached to a hotel. It's at Fallsview. It's attached to the hotel and casino in Fallsview. And it's like this club. It's a nightclub. And yeah, I don't need to rehash those days. But I'll tell you, it was great. I enjoyed every time I went there. It was an excellent choice every single time.

And in case this isn't legit, Joey allegedly went there. We're not 100% sure. Maybe a figment of his imagination. There was no cell phone cameras back then it was like motorola razor days so did you hear about the south korea pension fund the national pension service what do they have to they bought 34 million dollars of shares of mstr so this is touted as the third largest pension fund in the world. So if you do a Google search on largest pension fund, this is either number three or number four. So this is the National Pension Service,

and it's the South Korea Pension Fund. And so, yeah, they bought this MSTR before the stock split. Not that it really means anything in the end, but that's the timeframe in which they bought it. So, yeah, $34 million. And that's not it joey this is you're gonna like this one too because they also own around 45 million dollars of coinbase nice and they have that so yeah they're hopefully pumping your bags they're high beta they're just high beta moves right for people who can't buy spot bitcoin um i don't know i don't really have like too much like too much to add to a story like

this at this point because you're seeing it more and more and more you saw some more pension funds uh in america yeah positioning position of wisconsin being one of them and uh north carolina like do you like do you think these are i mean not that i i don't want to keep talking about them on the show they're they're noteworthy and they're definitely signposts that things are going the right direction for the Bitcoin crowd. But do you expect that these stories will continue to be noteworthy for another year? At this point, you're going to get another cycle of these releases. And by that time, you'll have what, 15 states maybe with Bitcoin or Bitcoin exposure somehow either through Coinbase stock, MSTR stock, or the ETFs in the United States.

I expect you're going to see it from pension funds here pretty soon, like the teacher's pension probably, OMERS probably. It's only a matter of time, right? And like I said before, the thing that's important here is not that they're buying it. That's great. But the really important thing is that now that a pension has it, other pensions that don't have it are benchmarking against these other pensions that are holding the best asset on the planet. And so they have no choice, right? Because pensions don't care what Citadel is doing or Roaring Kitty is doing or whatever. What they care about is what other

pensions are doing, what endowments are doing, what are their gains like year over year, quarter over quarter. That's where the benchmark is. And so now that these other pensions are in there, you're going to go through a year where 10% of the pensions in the States have this thing and they're going to be crushing after four years. And I expect that everyone's going to get on board. It just seems like it's a no-brainer, right? The only downside is that you're kind of putting yourself out of a job a little bit. You're cannibalizing some of your own work because you don't have to study the C-suite of Bitcoin. You don't have to study the execution risk in Bitcoin.

It just goes, right? It just goes. You're buying hard money and it's something that you know maybe you take a couple more fridays off your pension uh investment manager if you have bitcoin easy play golf with us yeah lenny's good friday actually so yeah we need one guy i'm just putting up fielders for some of the maybe i'll ask the cbp folks if they want to join anyways uh i the fact that we have now more of these, you mentioned the pension funds and now the South Korea fund,

they're getting into exposure to Bitcoin, MSTR and these ETFs, the spot ETFs. As this increases, doesn't it then seem that as the price of Bitcoin moves, it's going to impact their bottom line? And it could be almost like a global thing. Not that they're going to be heavily tied to bitcoin but as they you know we go down this path more and more money is going to

be tied to it and it's going to impact the market as a whole because they're going to have shares in those etfs maybe it goes up substantially it might move the market as a whole do you know what the problem is though? Rebalancing. The pensions have to rebalance, right? So if it becomes too successful, they kind of kick their own legs out from underneath them a little bit, right? Because if they have to rebalance, they'll sell the sort of best performing stuff in

their portfolio. Other thing I'm concerned about in Canada and Europe, Canada and the European countries more than the States, is that the pensions are going to force they're going to be forced to buy 25 domestic stocks and that's like that's a problem right and ibit is not domestic i know i know we have some etf offerings here but they're not going to be they're not going to qualify for that capital controls i know i know they're coming they're coming i think they're coming for sure yeah right i mean we'll talk about some things in the same vein and going on in the notable stories but yeah you're clearly you're clearly heading that direction uh big time yeah and you see this

this shit is happening right before our very eyes you can't keep your blinders on forever eventually you just have to take them off and say holy fuck why why are we doing this like let's get something that prevents it prevents us from getting rugged moving forward oh what is that spot bitcoin i mean sorry actual like bitcoin itself but a cold storage away you go yeah but anyways mark cuban your buddy he's he's your buddy he's your colleague oh he's all our buddies right like he's out there painting all bitcoiners with the same brush i hate i hate that guy so god he's on kamala's crypto town hall or whatever yeah my god yeah you saw that he was calling the the bitcoin maxis elites what an idiot and you know we're all out here hoping that

i'm an elite are you an elite i'm in i'm in my basement i'm not gonna lead anything i got these chairs on sale at wayfair you know like i can tell you he may think i'm elite right like i may be a bitcoin maxi my car and you know what let's just take this my car probably has more kilometers than the total kilometers of all the cars in his fleet my car is 22 fucking year does this make me a elitist but my heart is like this has more kilometers than the total kilometers of all the cars in his fleet. My car is 22 fucking years. Does this make me a fucking elitist? My car is like this. You're a one car maxi. What about jet ownership? We talked about jets

trying to buy it with the CBP. We're struggling to get there. We want to get to that magical point of owning a jet. That's elite, right? Owning a jet? What did you say, Joey? He owns two fucking jets. Is he a climate crusader? No.

I haven't been on a plane this decade. And last decade, I've only went on one trip abroad. Since 2020? I haven't been on a plane. I'm elite. I haven't been on a fucking plane this decade. Last decade, only once in 14 years, I've been on a plane. I'm elite. According to him, I'm fucking, you know, I haven't been on a fucking plane this decade.

Last decade, only once in 14 years, I've been on a plane twice out Canada back in. Yeah. That's elite. 22 year old fucking car, basement here. Like, come on, man. Get the fuck out of here. I've been vacationing on a plane since 2020 for sure.

You have. But I mean, I'm just trying to paint a picture here. Like I'm a working stiff. I got to go to wake up early in the morning to go to work to pay the bills yeah if i don't do that if i don't go to work bills don't get paid house gets repossessed i don't put food on the plates we go hungry and i can't put gas or diesel actually diesel in my 22 year car and be fucking pushing it everywhere that ain't fucking elite man all i'm trying to do is protect myself from debasement that's what bitcoin does right there's only a finite amount of that out there

not trying to pump my fucking bags if it goes up great but i know it's not going to get debased that's it all the fucking garbage he's talking about he can just fuck right off and you know what i'm with you on that he's a he's a clown I mean, the, the Kamala Kamala Sutra crypto for crypto town hall or whatever. Like what, what is this crypto reset? I keep hearing about this. Like she's going to realign with the crypto crowd. And like,

what, what is, where, where is it? Where's the reset? What is it? We're not, we're not Mark fucking Cuban.

What are we talking about here? What are we talking about? Doge? Yeah, of course. Of course. This guy's an idiot. He gets,

he gets dummied on cultural topics too. Like that I slash O account. Absolutely. Just like crushes them on DEI stuff over and over again, brings receipts. He's just like, whatever. He may be like, let's be be honest he didn't get there without

making the right decisions and he might have he he might be very smart right but just sometimes he just doesn't see the fuck's going on around him and i think just having means being privileged and that's what he is but because of having it kind of blinds him what's going on in reality from what's the commoner out there which i would imagine everybody tuning in is and i'm sorry about this is a common uh at least i am i'm gonna put you in the same category as i am so like i think he's getting blinded by this and do you think he's actually blind or you think he's just trying to pump his bags like these guys have so much influence and so much understanding he's talking about ethereum he's talking about all these other coins he just he missed bitcoin right he missed a big big bitcoin

run-up from a dollar to 70k and so yeah he's probably pissed about that he's mad that we hit it in 2017 and you know i didn't get fabulously rich, but it's been good. And, you know, he's like, I got to find the next thing. Maybe I can be the origin point of the next thing. I think that's what all these guys think. Who don't get, don't get in quotes, Bitcoin. I just don't buy it. I think they're full of shit.

And I think he is. Are you going to be banning or boycotting any dallas maverick games moving i don't watch i don't watch the maps anyway boom dust in the chat saying he's lucky to get luka donchich i think you're right i think he probably would have taken tatum but uh that's you know my opinion tatum's not even a top 10 player but let's start for another time they won the championship they did win but they are the they are the least likable team i have ever seen and so that makes me very happy i hate the celtics as a raptors fan i hate the celtics we're talking about we're talking celtics we're talking about the mavericks no the celtics beat the mavericks in

the final no i'm talking about the in general though in the past they had dirk nowinski and they won in 2011 or 10 they beat uh the first year the lebron wade bosh uh miami heat eagles as they were called they had success this century so it's not like ancient history and so i mean you got i have to give him credit with respect to that i don't think that would have happened without his without him being at the helm somehow so i'm gonna give him credit there but yeah boycott his games that's my opinion not funny boycott boycott boycott yeah then there's 225 people watching uh so thank you to everyone who's uh coming out here we appreciate you who else uh what else we're gonna talk about do you want to go one more bitcoin then head over to notable i'm with you that's this will be really quick because 53 years ago this past week august 15th in fact we had nixon temporarily suspending the

convertibility of dollars to gold waiting for that waiting for that to unwind any day now should be that temporary measure should be yeah unwinding any day yeah i'm just waiting nothing is permanent like a permanent like a government program. A temporary government program, yeah. I don't know. Maybe they could pressure them. Could France send another warship to the United States and maybe pressure them to say... Because that's what triggered them, I guess,

the last time in that and a bunch of other things. But maybe that could be done this time around. Twist our arm. Think about it. You have the president. He probably doesn't know what the hell's going on he's signs in order and just reverse this temporary decisions oh we'll just convert it back it's so it's so jokes i saw a clip today of biden getting on a plane his wife who was by his side you know 24 7 and encouraging him and patting him on the head like he's a fucking poodle

uh they're getting on the plane today and she just doesn't even look at the guy doesn't talk to him she's walking behind him like it's just so so transparent like she knows he's not there either it's just god what a sad way to go out it is sad if you want to like talk about on a human element biden he was a senator for decades long time yeah then he finally became vice president and so becoming a senator is an achievement vice president even more of an achievement right so he he was able to carve out a history like himself in history just based on what he's done and you have to imagine through all his times that all the time, the years he put in, in office, he had aspirations to become president. One day he finally became president. And just because it looks like he's mentally,

he's just not there. And it's just, it's sad. Like on a human element, like an individual that wanted to become this finally got there. And then just, unfortunately he's losing it and he's going to be losing the presidency as well it's a that's why i look at that yeah it's it's unfortunate man

you're 100 right but you know whatever it's uh the world turns as they say we're in election season now we're about to ramp up dnc started today or starts tomorrow i saw some videos earlier of uh some very cheerful people outside the convention center there yes you know we'll lead off with some chicago stories but that's the end of the bitcoin related stuff right because that's happening in chicago right yeah i know i know unbelievable like of all the fucking cities they could pick they go to how's everybody gonna go i don't know literally anywhere else literally anywhere else would have been better than that we're new york i mean you gotta go to a stronghold right but new york's having their own

difficulties too right i mean it's not chicago it's not like come on but there's no shining light it's like wow this fucking place is great god okay maybe i don't know pretty good shit okay thank you for tuning in. Bitcoin stories are done. Notable stories up next. If you're on video, if you're on spaces, stay here. We're not going anywhere. And if you're listening on the podcast,

for us to come out tomorrow, until then, take care of yourself. Don't be cock.