The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP #195 (Bitcoin Stories) - An Egg Nog Sippin Bitcoin Dippin' Christmas Episode (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: December 24, 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:   / discord   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠www.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. CBP, number 195, Christmas Eve, Eve. Merry Christmas to you and your family and your friends no coiners you know what the heck did you say to them of the world uh the shift he says that you know he says he's a no-coiner but i probably don't think he's uh i think he stacks you think he's got some i think he's probably got some too it's like almost irresponsible for him not to have any with all this exposure he gets through social media i'm sure he's got something he knows about it and shift gold if you go to his website they accept bitcoin for gold so what does he do with the bitcoin sure he probably converts some of it to cash for his operating costs but you know maybe he's keeping a little bit of it and given he knows about the technicals and all the fundamentals surrounding it why would he not hold just even a small bit?

He doesn't have to have a lot. You know, just a few hundred stats. Pride? A few million. Pride? Well, I think that guy's... Pride on the surface, but if you scratch and you dig down deep, I think there's more than meets the eye.

He'll never say it. Are you stacking? Why would he? I don't know. Shifts? Stick shifts his Peter stick whatever we got a lot to talk about tonight I think anyway I don't know how long we're going to go but first

we'll talk about the sponsors easy DNS yeah yeah best place for you to host your content bring your website over buy a domain off of Mark he is the friendly neighborhood domain registrar. You can't beat EasyDNS. Why?

The pricing, the guarantee, money back. Not that anyone ever uses it, but you could if you wanted to. Not to mention that your domain is always going to be secure over there thanks to DomainShare and a number of other precautions being taken on the EasyDNS platform that you just don't see other places. Me and Len do the Access of Easy podcast every week. And there are tons of big companies that are not doing anything as far as security,

anything as far as protecting their customers from getting spoofed by people who snipe similar domains and take other nefarious tactical measures to grab data and cash from people, which obviously you want to have at your disposal. And that's what Mark will do for you. Not only that, but like we say all the time, unassailable, like the name of his book,

your stuff will not be taken down short of some incredibly egregious offenses. You'll be fine. And obviously Mark has been a friend of the show for a long time. So we hope you support him the same way he has supported us. And I know a lot of you guys have.

If you haven't yet, go buy a domain, port a domain, whatever. you want to start a btc pay server shtick shindig you want to do a node nasa relay you name it uh mark has got you covered there on the vps side as well easy dns use the promo code cbp media or just tell them we say yeah and you get 50 off your first round of buy so load the cart man, man. Load the cart. Did you hear him on Simply Bitcoin? Bitcoin Mentors? He's not a mentor today. No, I didn't.

I had a busy day, not related to my job, but related to my young daughter. She has entered her fussy phase, I think. Well, it's her first Christmas too. So it's a little bit of everything is going on. So yeah, Mark did a great job. Ben was on there as well, aside from nathan and a few people jumped on stage mark did a great job talking about bitcoin why it's so good and his transition from being a gold bug to a bitcoiner it was a good listen it's huge it's i don't know if it's

been if it's been recorded if it was i suggest anybody out there give it a listen but for sure for sure good yeah let's talk about bull bitcoin look it's the time for giving the time for taking depending if you're in one mood or the other bull bitcoin to help you out either forgiving or taking if you want to buy from them or if you want to sell to them they'll be able to but not just that like let's be honest this is a time where it's a good time to start introducing bitcoin to people your friends and families so you can start buying bitcoin through bull bitcoin and gifting that to your friends and families and your pre-coiners in your life. You're no coiners.

They can just F off. And options you could do with Bull Bitcoin aside from buying and selling on-chain or Lightning, you could start paying your bills, right? It's a bills service. And if you have, say, like a cell phone bill or a car payment, you could use your Bitcoin. So it's sitting at $47,000 right now. So it's a decent price considering the run-up we've had. have say like a cell phone bill or a car payment you could use your bitcoin so sitting on 47 000 right now so it's a decent price considering the run-up we've had so i guess a lot of us purchased it a lot less than what it's priced right now so it gives you an opportunity to start using it and pay your bills another thing you could do is you could buy these gift cards through them and you

know like you got to go buy from amazon everybody's buying from amazon these days right so why not use your bitcoin to buy those gift cards and so you could make those amazon purchase purchases with your bitcoin but not just that there's other other things you could buy from them for gift cards so you can almost live on a bitcoin standard so to speak that'd be pretty damn cool for everybody that has done that i'll be honest i have not but i'm just stacking with i like stacking but check our promo code if you haven't yet done so if you have an open account 21 will be added to your account no questions asked bull bitcoin check them out totally decentral tech our last sponsor what a company these guys have gone

from a hobby shop to one of the most popular places to buy and uh interact with the home mining industry. It's been incredible, man. The stuff these guys have pumped out. I see a couple of you guys in the chat talking about how you received your bid access. I saw a number of tweets over the last little while, some posts in Discord over the last little while. There was a hang up with the shipping, but man, once you get these things, you're not disappointed. And I'm glad that they're here before christmas um hashing solo easy you want to join a pool easy you got a problem with your board easy give them a call you got a problem with your bid axe call them you want to repair you want something new you want to heat your house you want to piss your neighbors off no problem he's got you over there if you want to make your

neighbors happy no problem he's got you there too and uh whether you want to make a lot of noise generate a lot of heat or the opposite decentral tech can take care of you no promo code go over buy a hash board buy a miner buy a home heating setup and uh don't forget man good canadian company these guys are doing the best they can and they're growing like crazy um we've enjoyed working with them so far i hope you guys enjoy your bid access too i'm i'm hyped on that so i know i have one here len's got one a few you guys have one as well um there might be still a few available i'm not sure but uh if there is definitely go check them out because if not we're gonna buy them up and uh did you upgrade your firmware on your bidax mine came

with a couple of days ago there was an update right i don't know when but i just did it i went on the bidax os yeah age and from there you could check it download it and you very simple you can actually do it right in the browser on your computer uh and it'll go right to the bidax if you have it connected via usb it's so easy to use guys honest to god um so yeah definitely check them out len where uh where do you want to go next? Boosts, I guess, yeah? Yeah, let's do Boosts. Like, Wartime has been sending us a ton of Boosts. But let's do this first one. JPEG81.

Great name, JPEG81. And he says, currently number one track on Fountain and points to one of our episodes. I had no idea we got to that point. Nice. CBP has a faithful listener base, man. I will say that uh you know seeing the the amount of money that goes for the bull promo code you guys do not

fuck around when it comes to you know your bitcoin obsession and it shows in the listening numbers it shows in the growth the community and it shows in uh the fountain charts too i guess which is nice we've been number one or close on fountain a few times, I think, over the years. But I never look. I'm guilty of not checking the fountain thing often. Whatever the fucking goes, it goes. It doesn't change my opinion of anything. I'll keep doing this recording every Monday and Wednesday.

Wartime, three different times he sent in 333 sats. So I'll just go through the three messages messages and it's just all pictures or emojis beer mug and heart is one beer mug is another one and a heart and a beer mug is the third one he's missing the heart by itself is he bracketing them are we getting some bracket action here no

no it's just one at a time interesting wartime you could reduce your sats to 333 sats, and you could send us the heart by itself next time so you could get all four of them done. So check, yeah, that's an idea. I love it. Appreciate the sats.

And MoeBTCDick, 500 sats. I've successfully got my brother and dad investing in Bitcoin. Love it. Problem is they're using ETFs. They're not investing in Bitcoin. They're investing in something that's related to Bitcoin in it's all in fiat dollars right i can't seem to make them see enough risk in self-custody for cold hard corn any tips i mean the only thing i suggest is look what's happened in our nation's capital a couple you know you could no you know you could show them i'll tell you we could show

uh from the economic statement, there's a thing about taxes and how the government is still reviewing whether or not crypto investments, including the ETFs, I would imagine should be eligible for tax exemptions in your TFSA. The government hates crypto. I'm going to use crypto here as an umbrella term. The government hates crypto because it is a threat to their hegemony and the strength of the dollar in terms of the enforcement of laws and the payment of taxes and all these things. And so the government can say whatever they want about this thing not competing. It's for black market only. It's for this, for that. But they're really treating it like a threat. And one of the things that can't be

attacked is your self-custody Bitcoin. And one of the things that can't be attacked is your self-custody Bitcoin. And one of the things that can be attacked is the ETF. And so whether it's an attack in terms of we're going to take the coin under custody by the ETF holders, or it's something as simple as this little incentive shift that's being planned or at least discussed, we're not going to allow people to buy this stuff in their TFSA and RRSPs. You can't be exposed to that. That's my view. It's not a good idea. And by the way, that'll hit MSTR too. It'll probably hit other stuff as well. There's

a budding sort of group of enemies coming now that this thing has sort of hit the mainstream. I don't expect it to slow down. I actually expect it to speed up, even in the States with the Trump admin. Ah, that's interesting. I was just going to bring that up and so you're still thinking even with that yeah coming in yeah interesting um to be honest with respect to that i have no opinion i just say you know look what's

happening in canada and it's hard for me to imagine that these guys sorry catch up it's like just to finish the thought it's hard for me to imagine that this thing continues to explode especially in terms of price and the guys at the top of the food chain don't start to realize how dangerous it is like maybe they they're they're positive on it for now but it's not going to be that way it almost inevitably and invariably has to go the other way at some point oh fuck them you know what to know what to do. You know how to do it. And if you don't write, like there's enough information out there, there's enough resources you could tap into.

They get this thing done. And if you don't choose to do it, it's on you. I could imagine. I would imagine 95% of everybody. I don't know. I don't know. I mean,

I'm of that opinion. I hope that's the case. If not, man, oh, man. I'll be happy to advise you. You're going to have heartburn if that. No, it doesn't change my life. I'll be honest. My life changes not one iota given what happens to other people's wealth, right?

If they invest in Bitcoin or something that could potentially get rugged, it changes nothing for me. I can only control my destiny. They can control theirs. I feel bad for them them but i could lead the horse to the water it's up to them to drink yeah and i'll do it time and time again i'll just try to make them drink yeah a lot of merry christmas is going on so yeah we love you guys man i appreciate all the comments in the chat makes uh makes this whole thing worth it that and the incredible wealth that we're accumulating here buying bitcoin at the highs over and over again. What's funny is think of all the effort, the energy people put into studying charts and

reading information on companies. Just buy. You've seen that Pierre Rochard tweet, right? Like average banker, works 80 hours a week, doesn't get to see his family, gets 10%. Average Bitcoiner, shitposts all day eat steaks way richer it's just all you have to do is one fucking thing and this is not financial advice this is what i'm doing myself everybody got to do their own thing but just buy bitcoin and just put it into cold storage that's it you don't have to read charts you don't have to study up on companies you don't have to do

shit after hours mine fiat and when you're done mining fiat, allocate a little bit of that towards Bitcoin and rinse and repeat. Yeah, that's it. The rest of your time is up to you. Whatever the fuck you want to do with it. You don't got to do all that. I love it.

Yeah. Can't beat it. Those are the boosts. Some housekeeping here. No guest episode this week. No guest episode next week. Unless for some reason i am motivated on christmas day in the evening to do a bitcoin and barbells live from my weight room but otherwise

you're not gonna see anything yeah that's it uh it'll be the same thing next week if i feel like lifting weights and talking to you for an hour i might do it and if i don't then that's it uh no problem there we have i got some listen Listen, I know you got some great guest book for January. I booked two absolute bangers in the last two days. And I don't want to make it sound like I'm shitting on the other people that I'm looking to book, but I got two guys who I really think people are going to like talking to coming in January. And I'm not going to say their names, but they are very, very popular. One in the investing space on Twitter and one in the, I want to say, strength training space, we'll say. I won't name any names again. And then we also have BTC Babs, Zach. We're going to talk

to him in January about all the stuff they're doing at the Denver space. You may have seen tweets from him in the last little while. I want to talk to him because I really like Zach. He was one of the guys who used to come on the show. Not the show, but the Friday spaces we used to do. And the show was a little smaller with Brandon from Green Candle. And he always had a lot to say about Bitcoin and his journey. And now he's doing this great stuff in Denver.

I want to find out what we can do here in Canada to make something similar. You got the Bitcoin Park in Nashville. Now this out in Denver, there's probably some other ones I'm missing. But we got a lot to talk about with him. And then also John Rubino, who is part of the Dollar Collapse, I think, is his Substack name. Or Rubino's, I can't remember what it is. But he's another guy who's been big on the collapse of fiat, the explosion in currencies and whatnot, and all this other stuff.

And you know what? Since I'm in a good mood and it's Christmas Eve, I'll tell you the other two names. One of them is Phil Back on Twitter, who you may know. Big finance guy, big time skeptic on a lot of shit that we've been on this program for a long time. And I've been a fan of shit that we've been on, uh, on this program for a long time. And I, you know, I've been a fan of his since I heard him on the QTR podcast last year or the year before. And, uh, we follow each other. And so I finally reached out to him and then Len,

I got Mark Ripito coming on the show. Uh, the God of the three by five strength training method. I thought when you first said it would be Mark Rippin. That's honestly- Mark Rippin. Holy shit. No, no, no. Mark Rippin is going to come on the show. Can I get Mark Rippin though? If you can get Rippin, you can get him if you want.

But I'm going to be talking to Mark Rippin in January. That's going to be on a Thursday afternoon. I can't remember what day, but he's the guy I've listened to for a long time. And if you don't listen to Starting Strength Radio, I don't know why you're not listening to it. It is the most unheralded based podcast on the planet. I don't think anything comes particularly close. These guys do it from Wichita falls, uh, out in Texas there. So, you

know, what kind of, uh, freedom loving gun toting folks they are. And I'm fucking pumped to talk with him too, but a lot of different different things so we got a bunch of absolute honkers coming up in january so even after this little break we take uh fucking strap in because i am back from my newborn fog and i am ready to uh hop back in the saddle and really start you know delivering damage to the regime at every turn oh okay well let's let's let's let's let's continue this fire joy let's go right into it because unless you have any other things you want to knock that's it let's fucking go this is gonna be a six hour episode i think actually to be honest i got a lot to talk about the well the

first thing that we should knock off here is the imf right this news from the imf in el salvador yeah it is very interesting uh still developing i think think. I think most of the pieces that had to have moved on the chessboard have been moved. But still, in terms of what's going to happen at the mid and end game, a lot has to be decided. The gist of it is the IMF, they've agreed to loan out a few billion dollars. I think initially it's like one point something billion.

If you don't have the numbers here, you can go back to last week's episode, listener, viewer, and just catch it. Because we did talk about the data in terms of the numbers last week. But there's been some other developments since then. Well, $3.5 billion is the number that's the maximum these are credits they're going to be getting from the IMF. And nothing comes free, right? Like if you have to accept something, you have to give up something.

What did El Salvador give up to the IMF? Well, there's a few things that has to do with Bitcoin. It seems like the IMF is really pissed off with Bitcoin. And if this is the thing they want to have given or taken away from El Salvador, that goes to show you how much the Bitcoin... It's not a threat, Len. Black market only, drugs only, not a threat.

So I'll just rhyme them off. So we have taxes now are only applicable or payable in USD. No more Bitcoin can be paid in, we can't use Bitcoin to pay taxes in El Salvador. The Chivo wallet, this is going to be mothballed. That was one of the requests or demands by the IMF. And third big one was Bitcoin payments are now going to be voluntary for private sector businesses. Public sector, nil. You can only use U.S. dollar moving forward.

There's no option to use Bitcoin. But let's – I mean I just want to do a quick break on all of these three things. We have the payment of taxes in USD. This is only for income taxes, I think, like property taxes, income taxes and shit like that. If this also applies to VAT, because there is a VAT or VAT, value-added tax, that's available or applicable to El Salvador purchases, I think it's 13% on certain goods and services, that's going to create a real problem

because then you'd have to then make payment in USD and Bitcoin if you... So that's a killer for Bitcoin if that's the case. I don't know if it is. I'm just throwing this out there because I just don't know if this also applies to that if it does it just essentially makes bitcoin paying in that okay this is this is good you're always on top of the stories here but you never give your opinion and i want this is the thing that everyone's thinking about oh there's more to come the dca are they are they buying bitcoin with the money

we will get into that we certainly will certainly get into that, Joey. It's a slow buildup here. Massaging to the climax. Okay. I'm waiting for that. Again, as I mentioned, if you do have to pay your taxes in USD, then if you buy something in Bitcoin, it just creates it just problematic. Anyways, there is no stopping folks in El Salvador from converting their Bitcoin to U.S. dollars and then using that to pay their federal taxes, income taxes, property taxes, all that shit. To the best of my knowledge, El Salvador still has zero dollars, zero capital gains tax on Bitcoin. So converting it, there's no tax hit from that.

So the option still exists. Yeah, this relies on banks. I understand that, there's no tax hit from that. So the option still exists. Yeah. This relies on banks. I understand that. Yeah. It's an extra step. And, but the door hasn't closed on this in total. I'm just trying to say it is there. I know we Bitcoiners, we want to try to separate ourselves from banks, but this is one of the now, you know, options moving forward. If you want to use your Bitcoin to pay taxes there, the Chivo wallet, getting the X, right? Whatever, right? This hasn't been a raging success. Everything I've read so far, the Chivo wallet hasn't been all that well adopted.

I'll get some statistics here. By mid 2022, for instance, more than 60% of Chivo wallet users, they have yet to have made a transaction. Although they were given that money, that $30, but they were yet to have made a transaction although they were given that money that 30 dollars but they were yet to have made a transaction by mid 2022 and by 2023 it was found that 88 percent of surveyed salvadorians never used bitcoin that's by 2023 88 percent of salvadorians never used bitcoin right so the imf if they want to to strong arm them into getting rid of the Chivo wallet, good move, IMF. I mean, fantastic move.

You picked the right one. Apparently, Chivo potentially could be sold off too, right? So if this is done, I mean, whoever wants to buy it, I don't know who would want to buy this thing, but if they do, maybe the proceeds could be used to buy some more Bitcoin moving forward, right? Potentially, they're going to get some money coming in. What are they going to do with it?

So let's talk about Bitcoin payments here, right? It's voluntary for businesses. For public sector, it's not. For private, it is voluntary. So if a business values Bitcoin, they're going to accept it. That's it. They're going to accept it. Or if they don't value it, they're not going to accept it. That's it. They're going to accept it. Or if they don't value it, they're not going to accept it.

Have fun staying poor. But this may end up being like, you know, the end of buying a Big Mac in El Salvador using Lightning. I think this might be the end of it. We'll see moving forward. We'll see which businesses are pro-Bitcoin

and which ones are not because it's voluntary. It's up to them to pick. You can choose if they want to use it or not. But even after this move, all this, be willing and dealing with the IMF, it's voluntary it's up to them to pick you can choose if they want to use it or not but even after this move all this be willing and dealing with the imf el salvador is reportedly buying more bitcoin they scooped up 11 bitcoin in one day this past week that's more than they typically buy and if you can look at this whole news i think it's within a couple of different hats you know we have the bitcoiner hat and the salvadorian hat right we can't discount the salvadorian side of things so the

bitcoiner that has a direct investment in el salvador or plans to they're likely pissed right there are folks out there that probably invested a great deal of money so far there was like four bitcoin or something to get a citizenship there and now you're getting like now you're living in an estate you know the 51st imf state basically right like yeah not great those people are pissed and rightfully so right because they had they were sold a false bill of goods. And let's be honest, there are people that are even wanting to establish roots in El Salvador, try to. There was the El Salvador Freedom Visa Program.

There was also expedited citizenship through donations to the government for social or economic development programs, such as you mentioned right there, or other programs. So people have put their fucking money where their mouth is. They wanted to get... You had to buy land you had to give bitcoin you had there was a number of different things you could have done to become basically an economic migrant

to el salvador yeah and it wasn't a free thing how many times have i been to meetups the the optometrist i know you're listening or watching all like all these, all the guys like the autom, optometrist and his wife, brave souls for taking the plunge. But there was warning signs here all along the way. We talked about them on the show. Well, warnings. Look,

let's be honest. I don't think we ever said it was going to go this way, but I do think I, well, actually I don't think I know that I said that there's no way this has a higher chance of being successful coming from the government down as it does if it comes from the ground up. And you're seeing that now. There's more to it because we're dealing with a political person here, right? And that goes with the El Salvador hat, right?

I just want to tie a bow on this Bitcoin side of things, the Bitcoiner, because there's people out there that had high hopes of a bitcoin future in el salvador now this has been dashed it's they were given the short end of the stick but there are bitcoiners out there who have never or will never go to el salvador and they're pissed off from this they have no connection to el salvador they have no direct skin in the game, so to speak. They're pissed. Yeah, it sucks we lost a country that is the only Bitcoin country out there that's using a legal tender. But you got to take a step back here. And then you have to put on the Salvadorian hat, right?

And there are people out there. We had an election last year, I think it was, beginning of last year or earlier this year. Bukele ran again to be president. And he had to jump through hoops in order to get it. And we talked about this at great length with Jaime Garcia. was beginning last year or earlier this year bukele ran again again to be president and he had to jump through hoops in order to get it and we talked about this a great length with jaime garcia thank you jaime and actually i talked to him offline about this too not just him getting elected but what happened this past week with imf but either way uh there are people that voted for bukele and bukele's job i could be wrong i believe it's to be the political leader of el salvador

and he has to represent each citizen to the best of his ability maybe it's residents too but they're citizens mostly so this money from the imf right it could be used could be used i'm saying for sure it could be used to make the country better i don't know maybe we'll see but he is doing his job as a political figure the track record of the imf is spotty at best and anybody they get involved with it's fucking brutal but so this remains to be seen if this is going to turn into a raging success is borrowing up the 3.5 billion dollars but this could potentially unlock government capital that was previously earmarked for projects but now

they could potentially buy more Bitcoin, they bought 11 Bitcoin in one day this past week. So maybe this is a possibility. So ultimate goal if they do that, that would be giving the middle finger to the IMF, which would be great. But even if I'll doubt I'll solve what are didn't need the money, which it seems like they do. They had a tool available to them at their disposal, Bitcoin, right. And it allowed them to keep this through this. They were able to parlay some things.

They never sold their Bitcoin through all this. They still have it. And still with that, they're taking on debt in a depreciating currency, USD. This is, the way I look at it, the sailor move, but in a different light. I'm not saying it is a sailor move,

but in essence, they're taking on debt in USD and hanging on to their Bitcoin, maybe buying more with all this but again let's see how this shit plays out there's a this is a long-term thing we probably won't even see the end result for a decade or longer before we see what happens bukele he is and will always be a politician he may be a bitcoin politician but remember he's still a politician right and we've seen this shit before eric adams yeah francis suarez yeah the road joey is littered with folks like this the corpses of bitcoin politicians yep so that's it i that's my opinion you know as a bitcoiner, it sucks.

Do you really think... I don't have to get into the game here. Do you really think that this guy is buying Bitcoin with IMF money? Not with IMF money, but maybe the money that they have earmarked for shit like that. I'll give you an example. Like they're going to... They plan to build this Bitcoin city or this volcano shit. Yeah.

Maybe they were going to do that. But now, you know what? Rather than using their own money right now to do that or future money from taxes use imf money to do that kind of stuff and then the money that they had originally earmarked by bitcoin so they're not using the bitcoin money sorry the imf money to buy bitcoin they're still using their own so they could probably still be living up to the terms and conditions of it i don't know again I have to see how this plays out over the next little while. I don't want to nail this guy to the cross right now. I don't

want to say this is a good move or a bad move because I just don't know. I don't live there. I don't see what the fuck's going on over there. I am not a Salvadorian. I don't have family over there. I could say that anecdotally, it seems like a lot has improved there the past few years, a lot due to his policies.

Now, it isn't strictly with Bitcoin policies. It's how he dealt with the drugs and the crime and so forth. Great for him. Great for the citizens. Is this move that's going to be closing up to the IMF? Is it going to make El Salvador a worse place in the future? It remains to be seen. But I have hopes that it's going to be better.

I think it's done and uh the reason i think it's done is because the imf you know there's two kinds of deal you cut with an international organization like the imf one is the public deal that has minor concessions like we're going to unwind chivo which was a bad idea from the start and lacked functionality as far as I remember. Concessions like, we're not going to make private vendors take Bitcoin, so no more videos of buying a Big Mac with Bitcoin, like you said, fine. Those are public concessions that are easy to stomach for Bitcoin supporters. And to your point, the reason that a politician like Bukele makes those concessions public is because there's a whole other set of concessions that he made privately that he can't share or that he won't share. The IMF is a criminal

organization, almost a terrorist organization. They never actually support the goals that they claim to support with these financial aid packages and loan packages. And it's debt slavery. It's been debt slavery since the beginning of the IMF. They're not changing now. They didn't suddenly find God in the last two weeks. I mentioned last week that this also opens the door to other loans that El Salvador either needs or is being told they must take. The thing to me, Len, that's going to be the biggest indicator of whether or not this guy actually has the reins there is if crime takes back up. If you start seeing crime and dangerous spots

to live take back to the upside, then that's going to tell me that this guy is no longer at the helm. He's playing ball because somebody threatened him with something and made him a deal he couldn't refuse, to quote a great movie. To me, it's like it's a sad state of affairs, but this is why if you're going to take a swing

at the king, you can't miss. And so, you know, he didn't get the kind of adoption and just powerhouse story that he needed on the international stage to make this a difficult thing for the IMF to do. Instead, he got, you know, decent bond pricing, had a little bit of an economic resurgence, a big time social cohesion boost in terms of getting rid of criminals. But it wasn't enough is the view that I have. And I think it's over there now as far as this whole Bitcoin country thing. I don't see how you could see it any other way. The IMF is, is, you know, winless in terms of getting countries out of financially dire straits, but they are undefeated in terms of keeping people under their thumb. And this is another example of that, in my opinion, I think that's the way it's going to look, you know, a year from now, two years from now, going on and on.

I'm wondering how much influence the United States had in this decision. Tons. So that, and to me that i find that to be rather interesting because when we have an outgoing administration and an incoming one which appears to be bitcoin friendly or at least closer to being bitcoin friendly than the outgoing administration so with that being said bukele it makes me wonder did he blink or flinch too soon would it have been wiser for him to have waited at least a few months for trump it's hard it's hard to wait right like the imf all these places will like they're not calling you and then leaving a voicemail they're fucking killing you if you don't do what they ask like

they're not they're not nice they're not it's not a negotiation and that's the thing that people don't get about these organizations. Like whether it's the IMF or other NGOs, this whole, this whole term NGO is fucking bullshit. There's no such thing as an NGO. It's NGOs. I can't remember if it was Mike Benz who said this or somebody, but it's like, it's been this way for a long time. I had a professor in university, Charles Burton, who used to say this about NGOs in not so

specific terms, but he was right. That NGOs are a way for governments to do things that are illegal through basically arms of their power, thanks to funding, right? Oh, we're giving donations to this country or this group, that group, this organization, that organization. NGOs only exist because of the money coming from the Gs, okay? So they are GOs, not NGOs. And these guys don't fuck around like it's not about it could

have waited four more months no it's like if you wait four more months you're gonna find yourself with some poison in your eggs or a member your family's gonna die or like the and people who are like oh come on that's you know two black pills you got to be more realistic than that they're not killing everybody they don't like. Companies a lot smaller like Boeing fucking kill people all the time. You don't think the IMF is going around killing people? There's a lot more at stake for the IMF and for the dollar hegemony than there is for the guys at Boeing who want to blow the whistle on DEI hires fucking up door installations or whatever. These guys will kill you. They will kill your family members. They have done it. They're going to continue to do it. And the idea that you can negotiate with them,

there's no such thing. There is no such thing as compromise in the real world, right? Whether it's at work or in politics, it's the guy who has more power deciding what he can tolerate from you in the meantime, on his way to a goal that may steamroll you at some point. That's what this is. And so there's no negotiation. There's no waiting four months on that stuff. This is real life hardball. And Bukele, who is a politician now, but was, I think, a marketing guy before, has found himself outmatched, outwitted, and in a very literal sense, probably outgunned by the IMF. And he better do this and be careful and i i think people like the bitcoin crowd i see people talking there's tweeting out oh he's buying bitcoin with the imf money zero fucking chance zero chance he's buying bitcoin with that money they're done

with that you're not going to see these guys as a bitcoin country two years from now no chance zero chance so that's the beauty i i this remains to be seen you're saying that's a guarantee i'm going to fit the opinion i don't know what's going to be outcome he's not even going to be the president in two years so like are you telling me that next he he can't run again two years he from what i gather it's still a four-year term if i recall correctly it's still three years left i think so okay so three years from now he's not going to be the president like is this guy really on the way out gonna try and usurp the imf and and the dollar military complex like i just don't see it where's the incentive i mean we're bitcoiners we like incentives what's the incentive the good question i don't know there's a lot here like i say the chess pieces have moved

and the mid and end game still has yet to be played i don't think we're is that we're far into it as i think of it or as you think it is i think you think it's much closer to the end put it in the book i don't know so sorry to be revisited that we'll never we'll never revisit it until it's a story again but we have many things we disagreed on that we were supposed to be revisiting all this all the fucking time we do not directly

but indirectly even at the beginning of this show we talked about something which we had you know back and forth and there seems to be an agreeing agreeance on how things should be done so we may not do it directly joey but indirectly we come to it all road let's talk about this metric that is showing that bitcoin is being is very popular these days

amongst everybody normies pre-coiners bitcoiners alike actually the price i'm showing 64 000 sorry 94 000 still 64 be fucking great i'd like to buy at that price but 94 um the sales of the bitcoin standard the book yeah on amazon it's going i'll say it's parabolic if you look at the chart um it's look at it it seems like it's like the xrp chart straight up anyway that thing you want to call the cockroach of the uh i know i got guys i got guys i play football with asking me they should buy xrp and they're like it's up 100 i just say it's the same price it was basically like eight years ago like it pumps and dumps every cycle just fucking ignore it bitcoin's like five times the price every five years i don't understand the case use of it and there's so much and not that i

it's hard for me to comprehend it's as a bitcoiner i it's definitely doesn't jive with the future that i want to see play out no but with respect to the bitcoin standard the book if you look at the sales on amazon it's very interesting because as of earlier this month, December 13th, for example, this is according to a site called Helium 12, where you can get this kind of information. The seven day moving average for the Bitcoin standard was 232. And if you compare this to the rest of 2024, the moving average was around 50 or less. So this as per visual i don't have exact numbers but just looking at that and that shows like it's there's a lot of people that are buying this which is absolutely great it's the book is a little bit older compared to others but it's still one

one of the very first ones i recommend to people that want to get into this space and learn about it most pre-coiners should read it or even bitcoiners who haven't read it it has the wrong title it should be how we the title of the book should be how we got here it's a great history of monetary yes failure rises and falls yeah it's a really good book and the bitcoin in the title i think scares people away but it's a really solid read yeah and so anywhere out there i highly recommend read it listen to it you can actually listen to the audio if you really want to on a very popular streaming video platform that we are potentially streaming on right now.

And so it channels just the audio, but you can still listen to it if you wanted to on your runs or whatever the fuck you're doing. Maybe even gift it to a friend or family. It's a good time to think about it. But I just want to say, this is a metric that Bitcoin is very popular,

which is very bullish. You love to see it, man. People are paying attention. I'm looking forward to seeing what my friends and family say this year at Christmas, though I won't be seeing that many of them thanks to my little one still being pretty young. But soon enough, a lot of people will be,

I think, asking questions. I mean, like I said to you before, the other thing I think is funny, as far as like normie interest, is I got so many messages when we dropped 20% from 50K down to 40K to 35K. But I got almost no messages from anybody when we dropped from 108 to 93 because everyone's just like, fuck, I'd still like to have it at 93. So I think the interest is going to peak even exactly i think the interest is going to continue to go up because people are looking at this and going maybe they're onto something here there might be something here for the first time right they're

they're thinking that for the first time and it's not about oh man this it's crashing it's going to zero it's it's crashing and it's going to a million can i get some buy-in uh make some friends with bitcoin or i've gifted some bitcoin for christmas this year are you giving out any open dimes no i do the sats card uh that's the i prefer the sats card i think it's easier to use than an open dime it doesn't look as cool though the open dime is like a good hook like the the aesthetic of the open dime is undefeated oh should i had one around here i don't know where it is now anyways this is this i ran aesthetic of the open dime is undefeated well should i had one around here i don't know where it is now anyways this is this i ran out of the other room i'm pretty sure i

rented a sats card which is very sad i gave away my last one so i gotta make an order for more anyways there's a company up there joey that's called kango c-a-n-g-o kango okay traded on new york stock exchange c-n-c-a-n-g sorry c-a-n-g is the, Cango. Okay. Traded on New York Stock Exchange, C-A-N-G. Sorry, C-A-N-G is the ticker. Have you heard of this company before, Joy? Because I have never heard of one. I can't say that I have. I can't say that I have.

All right, so this is a Chinese company. Who would have guessed what that name is, Chinese, that operates an online platform facilitating automotive transactions, right? So they connect car buyers, dealers, financial institutions, and other industry participants within the Chinese marketplace. So essentially, it's a central hub for buying or including financing

service. It's kind of like Bitcoin and exchanges except they can offer a little bit more financial services. But either way, it's been reported this company, they are gearing up to be one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners imagine naturally as what the fuck exactly december 6th information came out was uh released by them remember they're publicly traded

the company flew under the radar because they reportedly uh mined as of december 6th for the month of november 363 bitcoin and according to yesterday's price that's 34 million dollars pretty good yeah they have an aggregate hash rate right now 32 exahash per second and they plan to acquire another 144 million dollars of asics and that's going to give them another 18 exahash per second so they're going to be if this all works out as planned around 50 exahash per second when the news came out of all this the stock price doubled from around four dollars to eight dollars and the market cap as of i saw sunday so yeah yesterday the market cap was still around $350 million. So not too, too big. But either way, the question is why?

Why are they doing this? Why is a Chinese company buying ASICs, mining Bitcoin, considering the connection and all the hoopla we had about China and Bitcoin? Why mine when they could simply buy? There's a lot of questions I don't know. Are they getting electricity for free or nearly free are they do they have a connection because of the proximity they have with bitmain are they getting some i i don't know what they're doing it because it's the best money in the world that's why they're doing it it's the best money in the world but if you

can simply just buy it buy it why fucking mine good question what i want you know if you're going to just buy the electricity the question where are they fucking getting it how much wired so there's questions i just don't have the answer to but a chinese company publicly traded is going to be one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners out there if this plays out for better or for worse i'll pass uh on that equity purchase. Interesting that you mentioned the power thing, right? It's always a fun topic to discuss where these guys are able to procure power at rates that make mining profitable. I don't know. The other thing to consider is that sometimes, like we've talked about before, boards are unfriendly to certain treasury assets because there's hurdles you have to get over. But mining as an operation

change may be a little easier to get through something like that, especially on a publicly traded equity. Now, I don't know if that's the case here, but that's one thing I would think is at least one possible reason they're doing it this way. But to your point, it's hard for me to imagine the board approve something that's cashflow negative if the price of power and the cost of hardware and all this stuff was higher than just buying Bitcoin would have been. So we'll see. I mean, there's always more on this. I remember when the Semler story dropped and there's been others along the way too, like

these companies that are mining slash buying slash whatever. And the other thing to consider, Len, is even the miners now are buying Bitcoin. So these guys are going the opposite direction, right? They're really taking the road that's now less traveled. So these guys are going the opposite direction, right? They're really taking the, uh, the road that's now less traveled. So we'll see why. I mean,

they're not, I'm sure they're not giving money away. There must be some reason or some, um, something that's enabling them to take the strategy. So let's, let's hang in and, uh,

wait for another update. You hear about the safe Harbor bullshit? Uh, no. So it's a new rule, safe Harbor under the IMF irs not im irs revenue procedure so this could potentially impact bitcoiners who well hold or spend their bitcoin moving forward the new rule should make it easier or harder i'm not sure how to figure this out for

bitcoiners out there to manage their bitcoin moving forward and this comes into play january 1st 2025 so we're just mere days away for this to go live so people in the u.s will have to start tracking their corn on a per wallet basis you can't so you don't have to track it now or don't have to track it as you are holding one large wallet it's per wallet basis so what the fuck does this mean i'm still trying to wrap my head around this but this in my humble opinion is going to make an added layer of complexity to this all for managing and reporting your bitcoin transactions for taxation purposes and yeah

so it's just looking at this and And granted, I'm not an accountant. I would suggest for people out there that are living in that jurisdiction to talk to an accountant. But some of the tax jargon that's included now are specific unit allocation, global allocation, shit like that. So it's very, very. And I wonder, too, on top of all this, and I just don't know the answer, this is going to impact Lightning Nodes. Because Lightning Nodes out there, there's a lot of rebalancing. Money comes in, money comes out through routing a transaction. I just don't know.

So I look at this and I'm thinking, man, oh man, it's going to be a challenge out there for a lot of people that are Bitcoiners. Personally, I think the best thing one should do is just try to keep as few wallets as possible and try not to spend your Bitcoin. Just huddle. I think that's the best course of action until we can wrap our heads around everything. Until then, who the fuck knows what to do. This is from the crypto-friendly US administration? This is the current administration.

Yeah, but I mean, you got to ask yourself, do you think Trump and Sachs are going to unwind this? The thing that's going to tell you whether or not these guys are friendly to Bitcoin, they can put whatever policies they want around, and they will, by the way, around ICOs and self-custody and all this stuff. But the thing that's going to tell you whether or not they're actually friendly to it

is what they treat it as when it comes to tax time. Are you allowed to have de minimis transactions? Are you allowed to do all these things? If you're not, they're not friendly to it. Yeah, that's an excellent point, Joey. That's the metric one should use to determine how friendly they are to Bitcoin or not. If they're making it so onerous for you to actually buy and use it or even buy and hold, that's a good indication.

It's the only indication. Everything else is already basically impossible to make illegal. It's very hard to make self-custody illegal. It's very hard to make node running, home mining. It's very hard. But it's not hard to charge people tax. And that's a thing that they could track fairly easily, especially if they put together a competent group of people to do so.

The Biden administration, I don't know if you saw the Christmas picture of the White House. No, never seen so many incompetent people in one photo. It is a DEI slop show nightmare. It's like if you asked AI to put together the most diverse group of people without consideration for their actual skills, this is the photo you'd get. It looks like AI brain rot. And the incoming administration is not going to take this approach. It's Elon, Sachs, Ramaswamy, every guy you see, every man and woman you see is extremely competent in their silo. And there isn't going to be any concern for the color of your skin or your sexual orientation or any of this stuff with the coming administration.

And so while the Biden administration, a naptime president, as I've called him, is ready for almost nothing when it comes to Bitcoin, crypto, and instead tried to hit it with a hammer through Liz Warren and her goons. The incoming administration understands, I think, the complexities and will take steps to either make it very easy or make it very hard. But again, like I said before, on the surface, they may say things like, your right self-custody is protected. Trump went to Bitcoin 24. We've talked about the speech in the past. You're going to be

able to use your Bitcoin. You're going to be able to hold your Bitcoin. There's never going to be a CBDC. That's easy stuff. It's the tax treatment that matters. Because if you can't spend it and you can't hold it, then what are you going to do with it? You got to leave with it. And even that may become difficult if the regime is unfriendly to it. And you're going to find out very quickly whether these guys are serious or not. I think what you're actually going to see, like I said, is an environment that's very easy and very friendly for VCs and VC activity. So less regulation around Coinbase and less regulation around the ETFs

and maybe some other loosening of legislation, loosening of rules from the SEC and stuff like that, and maybe some clear guidance on Bitcoin and other crypto assets. But that's low hanging fruit. It's stuff that could have been done years ago. And actually the Bitcoin Policy Institute, among other think tanks, even for crypto assets, not just for Bitcoin, have put forward policy proposals that make a lot of sense. And they just haven't been adopted because it's easier to enforce through litigation than it is to clarify through legislation. And that's what the SEC has been doing. The new SEC, I don't think is going to do that. They're going to be very

clear and we're going to find out how much friction they want you to have. My guess, Len, is it's more than people are thinking they're going to have. And also, the other thing that's going to be a telling sign is what they do with this strategic reserve. Are they going to do a strategic reserve? If they don't do one, then there's little things like that. That's not a little thing. That is a binary thing. You talk about it and all of a sudden you don't do it.

Exactly. It's pretty major, right? That and the free Ross Ulbricht. If you don't free Ulbricht on day one, you're kind of showing your hand right so yeah let's see what they do let's see what they do and i don't want to pump canada's bags here but i don't see much change yet for buying or using bitcoin in you have to report you have to report buys here starting next year okay that is fine right now in turn well in terms of what's going on over there that's easier to deal with than it is over there when i'm trying to get a tracking per tracking per

wallet like it's a pain in the ass it sounds like you're just tracking cells per wallet are you not tracking per wallet everything so by comparison i could easily have a spreadsheet of what I purchased. I just want to say Canada tends to comparatively to the United States have been more has been easier to deal with with respect to Bitcoin. Look at the laws, look at the regulations, ETS were approved here. Francis has even talked about how much better comparatively it is here. That's more friendly here. Yeah. Yeah. So like, you know, a lot of people say this or that but canada has some advantages to do with bitcoiners so take advantage while it's still there could be taken away and craig i just want to talk about him he's been proven wrong once again following a contempt hearing in the u.s uk sorry okay yeah he was

proven wrong this guy i don't know who the heck he is, but he no-showed the event like a disgruntled wrestler. So he did this by Zoom like it's 2020. And that's why he's somewhere in Asia, he said. Specifically where? Parts unknown. And he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, but it was suspended for two years.

So it looks like slap on the wrist, maybe? I don't think things are going well over over there it this is maybe a time you know coming to a conclusion with all this which is wonderful considering how litigious he has been over the years and putting people through a lot of hell so yeah milk carton calvin air where's he been since this whole thing unraveled no idea but uh another guy who just completely has disappeared. So make of that what you will.

So for our American listeners and viewers out there, Swan, they released or they will be releasing a new awards card. It's called the Swan card. And this is a Bitcoin rewards card. No details as of yet, but I guess it would be something similar to what we have here in canada the shake pay card if i were to hazard a guess how it would look like and probably this is going to be another opportunity for people to stack bitcoin having options is good i like this it's going to be released they're planning q2 2025 so we're about six months ish, or less away from this,

there is a website you can go to if you're a swan user and want to get access to this right away, as soon as it's ready. It's called swan bitcoin.com slash card. And from there, you can sign up to get priority access. And I assume it's going to be a rolled out approach, just wait, say paid it as well. Because that way, if there are any bugs in the system, that way, they could just deal with it and a small number of users are impacted. And also they could test systems and so forth. So with respect to the details, I don't know. But again, like I said, options are good.

Fold is available in the United States, and a lot of people talk fondly of this. So maybe if there's competition, there could be more opportunities for people to stack for spending. Competition is good man you know that i i don't i don't much care for swan these days but um anything that increases the amount of uh competitiveness in the industry you know especially when it comes to stuff like onboarding uh for it big time how's folds ipo did it go sideways it was supposed to come out and then it just didn't i haven't been tracking it but i we haven't really talked we never talked about fold on the show i think we might talk about them when

they announce the ipo but i haven't heard anything since then are you a fold spinner i still spin my fold i i uninstalled the app uh when they changed the because they they wanted you to they wanted me to kyc on the update and so i was like well like i'm not doing that what do you get like five stats a day or something like whatever up to 100 but you don't have to give proper i didn't i didn't vpn everything and uh let's let's uh let's keep rolling i might have to leave you for a couple minutes because i really have to fire off a turd uh which is rare during the show i think it's only happened one other time um well before you go i just want you to maybe you want to just add something here because a turd of a story porter and the buddies

over there do you want to talk about it because there seems to be a lot i don't know i don't know enough i like david bailey i like dennis porter i don't know enough about the story there's claims of ai claims of not ai whatever i don't care um whatever happens story. There's claims of AI claims of not AI, whatever. I don't care. Um, whatever happens happens. Uh, but you know, as far as I'm concerned,

I would just say, you know, let, let sleeping dogs lie. It doesn't matter. These guys are pushing toward the same thing at the end of the day. As long as they're not really rubbing people the wrong way, then there's more competition.

You know what I'm saying? Like that's all there is to it. I can't say for sure that someone is using AI or not using AI. So I have no fucking clue. i don't give a shit but let's end this because that sounds like something just turtling over there is there a way to like is there a way to like pause the stream like can we like go on a break like what do you what do we do just go on the loop video upload i don't have a loop video okay you do it do it. I got to go. Be quick. Let's end this fucking Bitcoin segment. Go to the rest of the video. God bless you.

Stay here. I'll be back in like 10 minutes or less, promise. And until next time, take care of yourself. Take care. Don't be a cock.