The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP - Dan & Mike From The High Hash Rate Podcast

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Dan & Mike from the High Hash Rate Podcast joins the CBP this week. Was work a bit too stressful this week? Did the family give you grief for not cleaning the gutters? This might be the show for you, as it is time to sit back, spark one up, and enjoy the good vibes along with the Bitcoin pump. Dan (https://twitter.com/hrtlndbitcoin)Mike (https://twitter.com/rundancebitcoin)High Hash Rate podcast (https://twitter.com/HighHashRate /https://www.highhashrate.com/) 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.com⁠Discord: ⁠https://discord.gg/ESRCZWpb 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/cbp⁠⁠The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

The Canadian Bitcoiners podcast is just two guys and maybe a guest or two discussing Bitcoin, Bitcoin equities, and the related macroeconomic space. It's not meant to be financial advice, so please, if you're doing any investing, after listening to our program, do your own research, do your own due diligence, and understand that any money you invest can be lost. The show is meant for entertainment purposes only, and we hope you enjoy the program. Friends and enemies, welcome to yet another edition of the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast, all part of the CBP Media Network. And today we'll be finishing off a home and home series. No, it's not going to be NHL 94. No, this is the High Hash Rate Podcast. I have been on their show not too long ago.

Check that out if you haven't already done so. And this time we're going to be inviting those two gents, Dan and Mike, over to talk about, well, Bitcoin and other related things. But for this show, you may notice we may start off a little bit tense, but we'll mellow out through the show. I'm not going to say why that's the case. I encourage you, if you do have one, spark one up. This is the show we rely on you doing so because, you know what,

it's the high hash rate boys coming on the show. But anyways, let's talk about the sponsors. I got a couple of sponsors I want to talk about. Number one, we have EasyDNS. And, well, if you want to buy a domain name, you could do so. Purchases, renewals, they got you covered. DNS hosting, got that too. Web hosting and email hosting host i'm going to

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you want to migrate your website over to them they'll do that they'll hold your hands through the process make it make this a reality they helped us at the canadian bitcoiners podcast canadianbitcoiners.com have our own website thank you very much easy dns for doing that these guys are reliable there's no downtime check them out and if you use our promo code cbp media you get 50 off your initial purchase and sponsor number two we have bull bitcoin and look the price of bitcoin behind me 62500 people are considering selling your choice if you want to a lot of people considering buying yes good time to buy not financial advice of course bull bitcoin has you covered so with not only if you're going to buy your bitcoin you can buy on

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rest of the world anyways check them out if you haven't already opened up an account i suggest do so use our promo code and you're going to be having 21 bucks added to your account once you fund your account okay boys let's bring them in let's do do it. We got Mike and Dan from the High Hash Rate Podcast. Gentlemen, how are you? Bullish. Very bullish. Oh, yeah. Thanks for having us on.

Very good. Yeah, thank you, Len. Doing well. I wish I had a Labatt Blue to celebrate, but it's harder to get those in this part of the Midwest. But I grew up in Michigan, man. Labatt Blue everywhere. My favorite.

If I had known, I could have air mailed that over to you. I should have let you know. Yeah, we should have. You know what? This is on me, boys. I'm sorry about that. Anyways, yeah, thanks for coming on. I was on your show not too long ago, so this is a good home and home series.

Hopefully, I'm able to provide the same type of hospitality that you provided me when I was on your show. So thank you for inviting me. But gentlemen, I want to introduce you to our vast audience, the millions and millions of people listening to us. Who the heck are you guys? Tell us about your journey. Who are you? How you got into Bitcoin? And maybe how you started the High Hash Rate podcast.

Throw it over to you, Mike. I'll give you the chances to start talking. Ooh, Dan and I spoke before. He's like, who answers the question? Mike, yeah, I'll take this. Mike's already always we'll get it well we'll get into this and why we're doing that but uh my name's dan obviously co-host high hash rate podcast i'm also the uh engineering manager for swan uh for the mobile app um i grew up in Michigan. I got into Bitcoin. Well, I kind of got into it in like 2018 after the big bust in 2017. I was like, well, this was $20,000 a few weeks ago. I'll get some,

it'll eventually go back up. But I didn't really care that much about it. It was, I bought it through like my insurance web portal. They had like a Coinbase widget. So I had some Bitcoin on there. But fast forward to 2020, right after they announced the, I can't remember the name of it, but it was the stimulus package and the stimulus checks and trillions of dollars. The Fed was just going to print like crazy.

I knew exactly what I needed to do. So I went and I figured out how to get some Bitcoin and start stacking regularly. And then a few months from there, I was deep down the rabbit hole. But I started working at Swan in late 2021. And I went to El Salvador to work for a month because I was working remote. That's where I met Mike, who was down there for a totally, you know, he was down there for work, but we weren't on the same assignment or anything like that. But we ended up hanging out and we were sitting by the beach one night,

smoking some, what we call beach weed. And we just started having like these, these in-depth, like super intense, but really fun Bitcoin conversations, just kind of going into our different theories and Mike being Mike. He's like, dude, we got to do a podcast or spaces or something uh and i was super hesitant to do that but he eventually talked me into it and we came up with the name high hash rate and luckily it wasn't taken already so i thought it was a pretty great name and he kind of talked me into it so we launched it in april of 2022 we're on we recorded about 85 90 episodes it's going great it's fun but the yeah the reason i go

first is mike's by trade he's like a production guy like a he records he's never in front of the camera he's always behind it and he's he's a he's a slick talker he's a smart dude super creative but as soon as as soon as you hit action or you play and he's in front of the camera he just he gets stage fright and uh but, but he usually warms up. It's time to mellow out. You know what? We got some inside knowledge here saying that you've had a lucrative rollerblading career that you retired from.

So is this true or not? This is from Boomer. This is Boomer. Boomer brought this up, didn't he? Yeah, he sure did. Yeah, that's right. Is he throwing shit out here? Is this true? What shit out here is this true

or what's the story behind this i i may may or may or not have been uh a rollerblading derby king oh but i'm not going to admit to that no i uh i grew up uh southern california uh i'm a filmmaker and i went i was in the air Force for a period of time. And I've done all sorts of odd jobs throughout my life. And, and the rollerblading thing, all my friends, you know, in Southern California, they're all skateboarders. We all started, we all started rollerblading, and then skateboarding, you know, came to fruition, and everyone started skateboarding. And then I got stuck with the, you know, still rollerblading and then skateboarding, you know, came to fruition and everyone started skateboarding. And then I got stuck with the, you know, still rollerblading and I sort of got made fun of to a degree that I had to stop. So I, that's my rollerblading story, but I did get quite good.

I knew how to do backwards skating. So there you go. But the, yeah, I'd say that you missed a key component, Dan, of the El Salvador story, I think is when we were out there, I was there for a completely different reason. As Dan says, I was, I was actually filming an episode of the first episode of Hard Money with Natalie Brunel. And we were trying to get this whole thing off the ground for Swan. And I'm, by the way, I'm the head of production at Swan. So that's, that's where I fit in. So we were out there filming. And as Dan said, we we met up, but there was a group of us. And all of us were sort of getting high and, you know, talking about Bitcoin and talk about greater life and

everything like that. And I sort of reached out to the entire group and I was like, you know, who wants to start a podcast with me? Let's just do it. And Dan was the only one who was brave enough to just like roll with it. And until then, we just keep on riffing, we keep on talking. And even offline, we're sort of showing each other things and and sharing memes with each other and and so it's been a very very good um two years for me uh in terms of of the show and uh enjoying it quite quite a bit mike does all the work for the show mike does all the work for the show so i'm enjoying it well no that's not true dan does all the work for the show so i'm enjoying that's not true dan does all the social for the show he does all the all the memeing all the the background funniness but that too is work it's

good that you guys you fit together just like joey and i and i've said this many times it's so heavy where my strengths end and trust me they end really early his begin and where this end which don't they go on and on mine fill in the gap for him so it works out well for us it looks like for youtube that is the exact same so we're just curious when you guys were in el salvador was that after they adopted bitcoin i think it was september 2021 it could be yeah yeah so i was at the miami bitcoin conference when bucheli made like the announcement when jack uh mallers kind of like teed him up for it um and i think the i think the it actually went legal tender like you said in september 21 i think the day after labor day i believe yeah and they the price i think dumped pretty soon after that and then we had that run up again right to the the top in november in

november and then it was the the bear market kind of started from there but i went out for like a month in february so it was february 2022 so it was a few months after um the legal tender law and i went back for a few weeks uh to adopting bitcoin conference later that the end of 2022 like right after the ftx exploit or implosion everything so i haven't been there since then but even in the you know it was maybe nine or ten months between february and november of 2022 elzonte saying like all the places i visited you could see noticeable development progress growth like it is booming down there and i i haven't been since but i looked at some prices just on hotels uh you know restaurants and things like that in

the area see how they've changed and they've tripled so uh inflation is is hitting the tourist areas there in terms of you know as a product of demand and everything like that but it's uh it seems to be going great what's the vibe over there after they adopted bitcoin because i'll be honest here and it's a running joke that i don't leave the basement so clearly i've never been to el salvador but i'm curious to know how are the locals over there accepting it and yeah you have a different perspective than say somebody else so i'd like to hear your thoughts and mike can attest to what his experience was but it like in san salvador the capital um i don't think i saw any business that accepted bitcoin other than like a few like the

major chains like mcdonald's starbucks that were kind of uh strong-armed so to speak into doing it uh by the government uh in the smaller towns uh el tunco el zante which is bitcoin beach of obviously like almost everybody in bitcoin beach almost all the proprietors everything except it not all of them prefer it some of them do if they have credit card terminals will ask like can you pay can you pay with a card but some of the restaurants uh little and other places there they they'll even have like discounts for your dinner or whatever on the weekends or something special for uh people that pay with bitcoin but like i said in 2022 outside of those uh you know areas you've heard about a lot and uh like where bitcoin beach like began i wouldn't say it's it it's very, uh, highly adopted.

Maybe that's changed, but yeah, I mean, definitely isn't. Well, I had a similar experience, um, to Dan. We were, we were mainly out at El Zante and I wasn't there for nearly as much time, but we were, our whole reason for being there was to cover the fact that El Salvador had recently adopted Bitcoin. And so we were going up to merchants and asking them, do you accept Bitcoin? And everyone in Bitcoin Beach, pretty much everyone in Bitcoin Beach was accepting it. One thing I did notice about that little caveat was that I couldn't gauge with it. I mean, I don't speak Spanish, but I couldn't gauge by what we were shooting that they really understood what they had adopted or what they were accepting. So that's one thing

that I did notice, but we had a little bit of coverage in San Salvador. And in San Salvador, we spoke to many, many merchants in the market, and we could only find literally one merchant that accepted it. So that's probably changed since then. But no, I didn't see much adoption. Did you guys feel... Oh, sorry? No, I was just going to say, that's kind of the narrative or the um the story you'll hear is like the low adoption rate but um i think if i had to spin it it would be you know nobody's forced to use bitcoin down there they'll find it like everywhere else on their own if they're looking for it and uh but if they do they have the opportunity to use it

a lot of places you know relatively speaking uh compared to just out anywhere else especially if you're in bitcoin beach but in like like mike said i like i'm not quite sure that everybody totally understood what they had or what this tech or how it worked or you know how to properly use it but one aspect that is also true is when you get outside the major cities there's no access to banking there's no bank that i at least that i saw in alizante it's it's not if you want if you ever have been to alizante you would know what i mean like there's no banks there um and i don't know where they'd even put one but uh but everybody there even even the people who are uh relatively quite poor like they they don't know where they'd even put one, but, uh, but everybody there, even, even the people who are, uh, relatively quite poor, like they, they don't even have walls necessarily on,

uh, the structure that they live under. Uh, but they all have smartphones, they all have, uh, data, um, you know, service. They all have, there's lots of wifi there. I never had a problem with wifi down there. Um, so if you have that, you can use Bitcoin. So like they, you know, they can pay for pupusas at the side of the road or they can, you know, get a drink or a coconut from the guy chopping coconuts with a machete. That's his whole business. And, you know, if they have a phone, they can scan a QR code. Mama Rosa, the pupusa lady in Bitcoin Beach, she was like famously the first person to adopt it in that area. You know, I met of the we really couldn't

speak that much um but i was her son was translating for me and she was proud she showed me this big cooler this big freezer and a car that she had bought with the bitcoin that uh when it mooned in like 2020 because i think she started buying in 1718 something like that she made a lot she had huge gains and it benefited her so she she just had a big smile on her face when i brought up bitcoin because it did definitely benefit her at least in that aspect and and the fact that even if they didn't understand or they don't understand what it is that they have they are getting you know an amazing amount of traction as you said like prices have tripled and there are a lot of tourists going to that area and you can see it

it's very clear yeah oh for sure and the best way to in my opinion the best way to learn about bitcoin is to use it so they're using if somebody if they're using it they'll you know presumably keep learning yeah well the template that they have over there hopefully can be copied in other sovereign nations that you can see that it's sort of working in el salvador certainly it's not a disaster if anything you could have a neutral or a positive opinion of their adoption of bitcoin but in terms of your travels there i don't want to make it all about el salvador i want to talk about other things but i just want to touch upon one other thing i'm assuming you guys been to mostly like touristy areas maybe you didn't but i'd like to hear your thoughts about

the general safety over there because in the past it's noted that it was a relatively tough country to live in and i guess even to visit but since bukele came in power and he's uh basically cleaned up all the gang activity over there it seems that it's much easier to travel to even even through night you're not going to be mugged or worse so what was your thoughts like give me your takeaway from the safety and security that el salvador provides yeah uh i've spent uh mostly time in san salvador uh el tuco el zante and like a few other areas that i don't necessarily remember like the city names or the, or the villages.

Cause we were kind of going to do a hike or go check out a volcano. But at no point in my, I think it probably been there a total of six weeks. Did I ever feel unsafe? I, when I flew down there the first time there was some anxiety about it, but I got there. It was fine.

You know, we get to Bitcoin beach. there was a lot of tourists there we're not bitcoiners at all had nothing to do with bitcoin uh but it was it's a surfing town or surfing village so they get tourists from europe and uh in canada where a lot of them um and there was just you know a lot of girls in their early to mid-20s just walking around all day you know alone you know in bikinis that there there was like they didn't sense a danger there was no petty crime there was no violent crime and then were they locals or were they tourists no these were tourists

these were like european uh canadian australian surfers um and in the city i mean san salvador is a relatively large city the capital um so i'm sure there's parts of San Salvador, especially in 2022, that would have been a problem if I if I got lost. But in the areas I was at. Yeah, again, I never sensed any danger and I was on alert for it, too. I was pretty paranoid the first time. For me, I had no idea that El Salvador had any kind of history of gang violence or was known for this murder capital. I just kind of went there. I didn't even understand until later. And I definitely didn't feel unsafe while I was there. I felt like I had just been in another country.

I did a little bit of traveling in the Air Force, so I went to a few countries, especially something like Thailand. It felt kind of in that nature. Everyone moving all the time on the streets, just a lot of action and activity. There was a moment in the center of square we went the last day and uh one of the guides they were with said don't don't go in that area because you know there's some possible you know mugging that will happen or some unsafe things but that's the only moment

i was like oh maybe i shouldn't be because i was like shooting in an area I shouldn't have been shooting in. Filming, you mean? Yeah, exactly. I was filming in New York. But, you know, your question makes me think of a contrast. Because I did a documentary. I was filming a documentary in Kenya. And during that time, I think it was Nai the name it might have been nairobi yeah um but we were into sort of the back areas of nairobi and at pretty much every moment that's like we're driving just in a van and you have to lock your lock your doors obviously and roll up

your windows because there's little kids and and people on the just following your van at a very slow pace because you're in this one road traffic and so tourists get jacked from all the time and so they'd say roll up your windows because they they'll just like reach in and grab whatever they can um i guess in countries that have you know poverty levels like that that's a common practice. Now, one thing I guess I want to transition to a different topic because a lot of people are excited today. What's happened in the past week or so, actually,

I'll say with respect to the price of Bitcoin. And I'm going to give you just very briefly my opinion. I'll be very, very brief at that. But I'm looking at this. It seems like it's a ho-hum experience for the most part. There's a lot of celebration, but we hit 60K and we're still probably above 60K. 61,600. And in terms of like the fanfare and all the hoopla that comes along with it, it seems like it's, it's there, but it's just like another day, right? I want to hear your thoughts about this recent price jump. Like, is there any negatives you could take away from this or any, like, was it, right? I want to hear your thoughts about this recent price jump. Is there any negatives you could take away from this?

Was it all positives? I want to hear your thoughts about it. Well, I love the 58K gang and those memes. I was a little disappointed that I woke up late last night. Yeah. I woke up late last night and looked at my phone and saw we were there for – we were actually there when I opened my phone and, uh, check,

I checked Twitter and saw that people who were up were going kind of bonkers. Um, unfortunately we passed that pretty quickly. I'm sure we will spend some more time at 58 K before it's all said and done. So if you're, uh, if you're waiting for that, I would, I wouldn't get, I wouldn't worry too much. And by the way, NFA. Yeah. In case anybody is going to be

betting oh yeah yeah yeah sorry it's all just like our thoughts we have no idea what the fuck is going to happen in reality which is right right but uh no it's i mean we've what it's been a 20 rise in the past day or two um it more this week even more in the past two weeks i think right now everybody's just kind of riding the the euphoric high of uh you know watching their back their net worth go up as quickly as it's going up um it kind of heals all the uh animosity towards each other online there's a lot less uh toxicity online and so far they, I mean, you don't hear almost anything about crypto shit coins, like that, that activity has been pretty mute. I'm sure again,

I'm sure that is, you know, coming, you know, down the road and we'll have to deal with that again. But it, I don't know. It seems like everything is,

is, is rose smells like roses right now. So I'm sure we'll have a big dip. I don't know. Something's going to happen. This is unsustainable, euphoric levels. But maybe it'll keep going. I don't know.

In terms of what is bad, I guess the only thing I can think of right now is that sats are not cheap. So stacking, I'm buying. I'm getting way fewer Bitcoin for each purchase. Yeah. sats are not cheap so stacking i'm buying i'm getting way fewer bitcoin for each purchase yeah yeah i i remember being in this place was it 2021 that we were that we were here 2020 it's 61 62k yeah we did it twice in march 2021 and november 2021 so i remember just checking my phone constantly and

just texting people and getting texts and i'm like that's not gonna stop like oh my god i can't this is amazing i'm so fucking rich um and now that it's happened again and you've been through that because that really was my first bear cycle that I've ever really been through. You know, I got it, I got in at 2017, but I didn't, I didn't understand what it was. And I was shit coining until 2020. Um, and so now you, you just don't care that much. I mean, you just see that like, it's, it's really cool but i understand the ho-hum of it because a lot of us have been here already a lot of us have felt this already

yeah that's kind of where i'm at yeah no i think the i think everybody's kind of expecting this like why why isn't retail uh aping in like why is why isn't there more chatter about this well first of all we haven't passed the all-time high yet. I remember when I first started really buying, going down the rabbit hole in 2020, it was still quite a bit under $10,000. And then we blew past $13,000, which had been this resistance level for a long time. And it wasn't long before we were back at the, you know, at that point, the previous 2017 all-time high, but it wasn't, I mean, there was, there was like chatter like there is now to a lesser extent, but it didn't really get crazy until we were like almost double the previous all-time high. Like that's not, you didn't have wall street bets and like all the GameStop people and, and all the crazy D gens and all the defy shit coiners coming in until you know it was like spring of 2021 like we had had quite a bit of a euphoric little bull market there before everything got bigger so i think people are a little bit premature on expecting the rest of the world to

kind of go crazy although i would say that looking at these volumes and inflows from the etfs that it's starting um but i did think of, I did come up with maybe something, not necessarily a negative, but something to be hesitant about. Everybody talks about the God candle, right? And we're wondering when's the God candle coming? It depends on how you define it. But we had one in 2021. It was the morning I remember waking up and Elon Musk had basically said,

Tesla's going to buy Bitcoin. And it went up. If it wasn't 10%, it was just a hair under 10%. We were in the forties and everybody was like, just going crazy. But the, whoever or whatever is the catalyst for the God candle has a lot of power. Right. And it was, it wasn't two months later in May when a single tweet by Elon Musk saying, like, Tesla is not going to accept Bitcoin due to the environmental concerns. And Bitcoin just started dumping off of that. And then the Chinese, you know, minor band came right after it. But whatever happens, whether it's these ETFs, and honestly, I'm willing to predict that whatever, whether it's a God candle or just like this secular bull trend that just rages for a while, it will be because of these ETFs. Um, but it's a double-edged sword or, you know, so

what goes up if something happens in the markets and people just start putting billions and, you know, the market aggregate puts billions of sell orders and it'll drive it right down just as quick, potentially. So that's what I would say, would be the thing to watch. And something I'm looking at a negative with all this, I mean, I should have mentioned it too, but I forgot what happened with Coinbase today, and for people who aren't aware, Bitcoin was ripping. It got to around 63, 64, 64 or shorter. Fuck it.

It ended up at the daily high. But then Coinbase, it went offline. They said that. Fidelity crashed too. Fidelity as well. Okay. So the price dropped significantly quickly. It was a 4K drop in like 20 minutes.

My numbers could be off, but it was around there. So I'm looking at that. Some people are posting on Twitter, X, what I'm going to call these days, that the volume that was being experienced by Coinbase, is it any different than the volume it experienced back? I remember in April of 2021 2021 the volume was incredibly high it seemed to be lower this time around than that yeah yeah well i i don't know this for sure so i guess i should preface that this is somewhat speculation but uh when you have these kind of these events where the volume starts to spike and it's uh it happens pretty rapidly coinbase doesn't have all of these the server capacity and the load capacity like constantly running in the background like if they have like periods especially like we just coming out of a

bear market of really low volume like they're gonna they're horizontal scaling as you would call it they're gonna scale that down they're not going to have all this compute resource running it's because it gets expensive so they they can scale that up um and there's a lot of like auto you know automated processes that'll scale that up in the background as necessary as the as the the volume comes in but i think i read a tweet and i'm just kind of paraphrasing what i remember from earlier today so don't quote me on this but it's like i think brian armstrong said something about they upped their capacity potential capacity this week by like 10x and it still wasn't enough so they just weren't anticipating this surge and if it happened really quickly i don't the server resources probably aws or something uh just probably couldn't scale up to meet the demand in time. So it caused problems. I would guess.

I wouldn't think that it's, you know, or if this volume at this rate keeps increasing and it holds steady, I wouldn't expect that they would have these issues constantly going forward, but we'll find out. It just seems rather like strange. Sorry, Mike, you wanted to say something? No, I was just going to say delete Coinbase.

There you go. Delete Coinbase. Swann didn't go down, yeah. There you go. It's a plug for Swann for their ability to weather this incredible volume. And yeah, I'm looking at that and what happened with Coinbase, it just seems at the very least odd. And I'm not saying that there was any hanky-panky going on behind the scenes but you know just whatever happened happened and we're all looking at coinbase

saying what the fuck did you do what happened here but anyways is it in your guys eyes i would imagine a lot of this is etf driven you do you agree and if so any negativity do you think that's surrounding that? Oh, I mean, I think we talked about this a little bit on our show with you. I mean, it's obviously great for a number go up, but this is, you know, countless customers, billions of dollars of Bitcoin being purchased that is custodied by Coinbase via BlackRock, Fidelity, Bitwise, WisdomTree. It's not being custodied by Bitcoiners who are holding their own keys. The further away you get from the base layer, the less you understand, the less you are sovereign. So, I mean, some people do not care about that.

They don't care about the sovereignty. They care about number go up. They care about fiat gains. If they ask my opinion, I'll tell them that I think that they're misguided and they should consider the self-custody and that self-sovereignty a little bit more. But it's up to them at the end of the day so at some point they may come to realize the the error of their ways and and why they shouldn't have uh used the etf it won't be the same but um you know gbtc before it converted those people learned the hard way um and they're still feeling the effects of it now. So that's the negative. It's that it's not self-custody.

It's Wall Street custody. 100%. Yeah, I tend to agree 100% with that. I do think that the price sort of going up like a rocket is obviously a positive thing and the ETFs being a big part of that. So just to get people interested or just to get people looking at this and realizing that they need to educate themselves, I think that that in and of itself is a positive thing. I mean, I would say, I mean, I hope that this thing is,

for the next hundred years, is going to be what people are going to be using. And so we all need to get on that train. And we all know that the defaults of fiat and that all the work we do is getting harder you need to do is to be able to provide value to society. And no matter how, whenever you are born,

whenever you grow up, as long as this thing exists, you'll be able to transact in a truthful and... As long as you can afford transaction fees. That's a topic for... We can talk about that after, but yeah. You're right. You're right, Mike. Yeah, I just think it's all positive.

That's what I'd say. It's all positive. You're right, because one thing i just think it's all positive that's what i'd say it's all positive you're right because one thing we're going to have to do individually as a society and even much more broadly is if you can't provide value if you fabricate it it's not true you have to provide true value in order to be paid for something like bitcoin where it's you know it's hard money you can't create it just like you know, it's hard money, you can't create it just like you can with US dollar, Canadian dollar, whatever, name your currency. So there is an actual value, there's work associated with mining it and work associated with actually being paid in it. And you're right. So it's going to encourage people to be more,

not just productive, but to provide value to society as a whole but then you mentioned the thing that I also wanted to talk about which is this the fees you know that's one thing that's gonna happen I think it was you Mike that was mentioning in a chat with with us is that the the rewards moving forward after every having gets reduced significantly, like half, but multiply this by a few halvings, then the rewards are very, very low. And so what's going to drive the miners to get paid? Well, it has to be the transaction, the mining fees. So people paying a specific fee to have a transaction added to the next block and that's going to have to go up significantly especially as hash rate increases energy costs probably will go down over time but still hash rate will go up so these miners are going to have to compete throwing more and more

equipment on a system that's going to be even more hungry for electricity so it's just feedback where they need somehow to be paid for the work that they do and the only way they're going to get paid for is the fee so how do you think you guys how do you think it's going to be paid for the work that they do. And the only way they're going to get paid for it is the fee. So how do you think you guys, how do you think it's going to be addressed? Because I do, I think about this and I, this is just, this is just my theory.

And I, this is one of these theories that I could go down this rabbit hole forever, but at a high level, the more we get integrated with the financial system, with the, with, with the with with technology with things like ai where you're having kind of this constant demand globally for compute um and compute resources and almost like this like on a you can kind of price it on a per compute you can price it on like a kilowatt hour of energy um and it's you know as bitcoin gets more integrated you're

gonna have these you know kind of like like wall street you have these trading algorithms these like super computers they got like micro uh microwave uh antennas to like be faster than uh typical uh what is it like dsl or like even fiber but um with these ai they'll be the ones actually transacting on chain like it'll be somebody will be providing compute for this giant llm or some other data model or some sort of like deep learning and it'll be it'll take a lot of time a lot of energy and if that person is on the other side of the planet and you are creating so much compute uh it's so expensive for the for the miner like not the bitcoin miners but like these ai miners where you want to call them with the gpus they're not gonna you know let somebody just have this

huge bill and hope that they can build them like a month later and it's like if they don't pay it's like well how do i sue them it's like later. And it's like, if they don't pay, it's like, well, how do I sue them? It's like not my jurisdiction. They're going to demand some sort of payment. And the only thing that I think is a lot of market participants are going to want is going to be Bitcoin. You can set up payment channels. You can just have this flow of compute and sats

just going back and forth on on this like it'll be balanced uh and it'll just be flowing and like you'll be trying to transact on chain from your laptop you know verifying with your own node with your sparrow wallet and you'll be competing with these you know deep learning machines who are just like they're managing their utxos so superbly like so they're so efficient with, they're so efficient with it. They're so efficient with how they broadcast a transaction, which blocks they're trying to get it in, like based on the fees, based on patterns. And you're just like, I just want to transact.

I just want to send this, you know, I want to consolidate my UTXOs. And these machines are like thinking, it's almost like chess. Like they're thinking days ahead, blocks ahead, where they're going to like what kind of wallet or spend script they're going to use. And you're just it's going to be very hard to compete with that. So you're going to we're going to have to I think I don't think it's going to be a problem. Basically, to sum up, I don't think it's going to be a problem with the efficiency of machines and actually getting to spend or to transact themselves on layer one. Well, that's a great point. I mean, does that even mean, does that mean that we'll, we'll even be able to do on-chain transactions in the future or

not? What does that even mean for the lightning network you know it depends on demand it depends on demand um a lot of people have a multi-sig like a p2sh multi-sig i don't think people understand like that's like three two or three four times just a minimum transact one can one utxo you know the overhead and then whatever your outputs are, that's like three or four more times more expensive than a segwit address, a taproot address. So if you have 10 UTXOs to consolidate at 500 sats per V byte, two outputs, you're talking 500 to $1, uh at current prices in uh sats fees to to make that transaction just to consolidate your utxos for your multi-sig wallet at what point are you gonna do people gonna have to really be thoughtful about the scripts the address types like how they're spending i think we're getting very i mean it could happen this cycle where like people just

don't realize they open up their ledger their trezor and they're like oh shit like this is too like i can't spend this i can't consolidate like what am i gonna do and it's it's uh i don't think there's enough discussion about that yet there is discussion about being annoyed with fees and they're annoyed for ordinals and don't get me wrong i i have nothing like i have no praise to to put on ordinals but it's it's kind of a uh a distraction really like something is going to be to make on-chain transactions very expensive in the future whether it's ordinals or ai or just machines in general we have to be ready for it well that seems like there's going to be something in the market that has to address that in terms of offering you know you wallets yeah wallets you can't you can't spend it i mean there's got to be something that's going to

come up that that will i got ideas man give us a fee and and yeah we'll consolidate your utxos for you what we'll do is we will we will it'll you'll have to make trade-offs you'll have to like share either with a service or you know maybe they'll have to make trade-offs. You'll have to like share either with a service or maybe they'll have an open source decentralized system or something that will analyze your UTXOs based on some settings that you put in. Say like, if you don't care about privacy,

you can consolidate down to one UTXO. If you want to have a split out between X amount of UTXOs at a minimum amount of Bitcoin per UTXO, going to new addresses, going through mixers, whatever. It'll be very customizable. And then this thing will monitor the network. And when fees are at a certain point, a low point,

or some limit that you set, like if they're under 100 sats per V-byte, then it will generate this transaction for you. And you'll just get an alert on your phone, you'll go in you'll sign it boom broadcast and i think that's a start but uh i i don't know if that'll even be enough something that's happened through all this and you touched upon ordinals and i don't want to talk about them too much but the one positive we could take about the creation of this pathetic thing that they've done is that it's given us time to reflect what happens when there's going to be a high fee environment we've experienced relatively high fee environment in comparison to previous years i think this is um still high but not as high as in i think 2017 was the highest we've ever experienced. But anyways, we have to now figure out a way to scale Bitcoin a little bit more.

And I'm wondering then, the ETFs too, I think in this respect, and I'm not a fan of ETFs, but in one way, I think it's kind of helping the on-chain deal with congestion because now you're taking that off-chain and it's dealing, and it's not the best of ways to do it there's obviously some right but so what i'm trying to get it is what sort of scalable solutions do you see i mean i'm looking at lightning for instance it's good but there are limitations within it i mean channel factories may get around that but still you know then there's inherent trust that comes along with it. People look at other things like,

I dare say, I don't like talking about it much, but liquid. But like in terms of scalable solutions, what do you think is going to be coming out that's going to help just ease the stress of on-chain fees? Yeah, I've talked, I've been open about this. At the end of the day,

obviously I would recommend and prefer to use Bitcoin peer to peer. You verify with your own node. You self-custody. You don't use custodial solutions. However, at a certain point, you have to make the decision, is sovereignty and privacy worth 40 or $50, you know, in, in turn in sats terms or in dollar terms for a $5 cup of coffee, or are you willing to get rugged for a couple of dollars worth of sats by having it on a, you know, cash app or something else. So you can buy a coffee on your way to work. Or if your privacy and your sovereignty is that important to you, then you will pay the price, the market price to do it. Otherwise, you have to make you have to make the decision. There's no perfect solutions.

There's no perfect answers. There's only trade offs. So if you are, if you need to have, you know, small transactions, unfortunately, until something comes along that allows you to do this, maybe it's covenants. I don't know enough about the use case and the implementation of what's possible with covenants to know if like these virtual UTXOs will be reliable and secure enough to kind of ease a lot of this burden but i mean you've got uh ecash these chami and mints you've got custodial lightning you've got a lot liquid all these other you'll have to look at the options available to you and decide like what is more what is more important to you your s sats, your privacy, your sovereignty, or ultimately the cheapest thing will probably, at least in the near future, will be to just use fiat. If you don't want to use fiat, you can get incrementally better until you get to sovereign

on-chain peer-to-peer use. But everything, a spectrum sovereign use using your credit card using fiat you got to find something in the middle that works for you until you know or unless fees are low and then you can kind of you can do whatever you want when fees are low but that's a that's a luxury situation we don't we don't necessarily have that to look forward to forever i i can't really speak too much to you know to what is coming up. I'm not super techie in that regard, but I will say that I have used Lightning and it is super convenient and super cool.

And I guess that would be the solution that i would think about but uh other than all the things that you're bringing up like it you know there's gonna be a solution the solution is ultimately always up to you it's you this is a you're responsible for solving your own problems at the end of the day so obviously cash app Wallet of Satoshi or whatever these custodial lightning wallets are probably in liquid, right? They're like the least optimal ways to use, you know, share the load in terms of paying for these on-chain settlements. With these, you know, Fediments and, you know, we were talking about Bitcoin Beach, right? Like the Galoi, the Bitcoin beach wallet now called blink it is custodial but it is custodial in the sense that the keys it's almost like a small little federation of people in that community you can have these like fediments

or like these little uh lightning solutions with people at your church at your trade labor union at your brazilian jiu-jitsu gym what a small community of people that you don't necessarily trust 100 you shouldn't trust anybody 100 but you have a you understand them their incentives and you you have this like reliance on each other so you can limit the risk limit the rug ability by building local community solutions the circular economies. People are going to have to start, I think, thinking that way and kind of enabling and empowering their families, their communities with Bitcoin technology

to share the load, to share the UTXOs, unless or until we have a better solution than that. Dan, are you orange-pilling dudes that you're rolling with during your Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes? There's a few. There's a few people that are open to it. In the Midwest, I don't know how this is everywhere, but in the midwest the kind of people that go uh to jujitsu gyms they are in their uh their dave ramsey era if you to put it in taylor swift terms right like they these guys

love they're they're there because they're getting healthy they're getting fit they're learning a martial art and they're getting their finances or they're always talking about dave ramsey and i sometimes i i have to remember, I'm not on Twitter anymore. I'm like around regular people who I have to see face to face and some of them can kick my ass. So I don't want to like clown on them too hard, but yeah, they, they're, they're the, they love Dave Ramsey. I just want to just transition really quick because she's already at this for 50 minutes I just wanted to pick your brain quickly about what happened recently is the

Department of Energy what I forget which subsection of that department they were asking miners to voluntarily disclose information related to the amount of energy that they use voluntold yeah in one case it was voluntold yeah I want to hear your thoughts about this because you're closer than it is than I am. Again, I'm a Canadian in the basement here just outside of Toronto. So my perspective is a little bit different than maybe your perspective

because at least you guys living in it. This is your jurisdiction. The people that you voted for, or maybe you voted for, are doing this. I want to hear your thoughts about it. So I've been following it relatively closely. I didn't read like the literal uh injunction or whatever that came out but it sounds from what i understand riot sued uh that

basically this was unconstitutional like they were being harassed by the federal government uh and so it was like a i don't even think a judge stopped it i think the department of energy was like all right never mind like we'll we'll settle this later you don't have to a judge stopped it. I think the Department of Energy was like, all right, nevermind. Like we'll settle this later. You don't have to send us your energy requirements. But so hopefully Riot wins that one just by standing up to the bully and saying, screw off. And they're like, all right, we'll screw off.

But unlikely in the longterm. So I think that, I mean, obviously nobody wants this type of thing to happen where like the government is coming in, tell us exactly how much energy and electricity you're using. I think ultimately that will become like transparent, common knowledge, kind of like we've got the blockchain. I think they'll be able to start to figure out how much energy people are using. But for the time being, it's just the federal government harassing and doing what they do. However, to put it in context, it is 2024. It's an's just it's just the federal government harassing and doing what they do. However, to put it in context, it is 2024. It's an election year.

So Democrats, politicians, whoever, like they've got their incentives. They've got they're trying to get headlines or trying to impress certain voter demographics. There's going to be a lot of this. There's going to especially as Bitcoin starts to rip, there's going to be politicians that are going to come out. And we've already seen this, right? Like it's free publicity. They're going to get free marketing. They're going to be rah, rah to rip there's going to be politicians that are going to come out and we've already seen this right like they it's free publicity they're going to get free marketing they're going to be rah rah rah pro bitcoin they're that's just as big of a trap i think as as the negative is the politicians who are anti-bitcoin so it's like just blindly following these politicians who are pro-bitcoin but and then you're going to have politicians who

are we need to regulate it we need to shut it down we need to ban it we need to stop the miners this is not good for climate yada yada it's just going to be this big narrative battle but I think ultimately at least in the short term it's not a big threat it's just something to they're they're playing their hand they don't have as much Authority or follow through as they as they might like to seem and by making these big requests making these really stupid um demands you can do that in a lot of industries and and most people don't pay attention to it but you do it in bitcoin and like within five minutes all social media is lit up they're getting tons of calls they're getting tons of letters they got dennis porter knocking on their door um jonathan dennis what's the worst uh but but uh you know what dennis porter knocking on your door it's all a charade but every time they they show themselves

they get i think they i think they take one step forward two steps back and from their perspective like they think they're taking a step forward to regulate this or to get a hold of this, but they're really ultimately taking two steps back because I think, especially right now, there's a crisis of legitimacy and everything like that with government institutions. So the more they come out against something, the more it's just a backlash against it.

Because I think the Biden administration said yesterday that, you know, mining puts this extra strain on, on energy grids and raises energy prices. And I just, I just made this like really one-off stupid comment in the replies. I'm like, yeah,

well the white house also says that men can get pregnant. So what do you, what does, what does it matter what their opinion is? And that one kind of, I think I ratioed them. But either way, it's like, that's a good way to look at it. Like every time the government, I mean, it depends on what government, it depends on

your political views. But this current presidential administration, they're just, they don't seem to have it together. And every time they come out and take a position and they say very definitively that this is so, you can just look at everything else that they're saying is so. And it's so ridiculous that it's like, I don't think most people are paying any attention to them anymore.

That's really, yeah, no, that's a great point, Dan. I think that the, you know, wherever there's value, there's gonna be some sort of bully sniffing that out and trying to extract their share. So and we're seeing that, it's, I think it's so, because of what it is and how it runs, these, the government entities who are mainly people who have been conditioned their whole lives to, you know, be politicians and, you know, they say what they, they say what it is, and then they get voted in and then and then they do something completely different. But they aren't doing the work.

So if they're not doing the work, they're not understanding what what industry that they're even trying to govern. They don't even understand how they're how they're trying to, you know, lock it down. So because they are this ancient way of thinking or this like old school way of thinking, you're just, I think you're just seeing like all of this new, these new AI technologies and Bitcoin, all this stuff is just going to surpass them in a way that they won't even be able to, they just, they won't be able to keep up. And I think that it's going to just, I think it's just going to bring in a new revolution of thinkers and a new revolution of government and a new revolution of thought leaders. That's. Yeah. And you mentioned this before on our, on our high hash rate that

the dollar itself is like a is a very important symbol and it's a symbol of the value and strength of the us government and every time they print a new one they debase the strength and legitimacy of each one that came before it and they just doing it at such a rapid pace you see it now like the the politicians that are backing you know nikki haley against trump whether you like nikki or you like trump it doesn't matter the the politicians that are backing you know nikki haley against trump whether you like nikki or you like trump it doesn't matter the point is that they're spending millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars to back her campaign and she's not getting the vote so like it's the the cost of political influence uh is is is the inflation

that is high it's a good thing it's not in the CPI because that would probably drive the CPI through the roof. Right? Like, you look at the cities, American cities and the crime and the issues and like there's issues with the border. And all it's doing is demonstrating to everybody that the US government and these institutions don't have the control, the grip, you know, the authority that we all kind of thought they did, that we all kind of assumed they did. And it's like, if all these things can keep happening, all this criminal activity, all this just insane insanity, and nobody is held accountable, nobody goes to jail, nobody gets arrested, everybody just kind of skates free well everybody's gonna be like well i don't know why am i gonna follow this law that or this law in my life like nobody else is having to follow the law nobody else is being held accountable for anything the

these you know the military the the police like they don't seem to care and if they did they don't seem to be able to stop it so you know and this is also happening overseas like we're we're at war with russia through ukraine and then we're also we've got the houthis and we've got like these these dudes wearing uh chancletas or whatever or like uh you know flip-flops and they've got five thousand dollar rocket launchers and they've shut down the dam they're like one of the most important trade routes in the world and we can't do anything about it if we can't do anything about the houth And we can't do anything about it. If we can't do anything about the Houthis, we can't do anything about pit pockets in New York City.

And people really think they're going to stop Bitcoin. Come on. What do you see that makes you think they're going to stop Bitcoin? These guys cannot stop dudes in sandals with 30-year-old or homemade rocket launchers. They're taking out the US Navy with rocket launchers from a mile away.'m only i don't know man the government's not gonna stop bitcoin they they wouldn't know where to start oh i'll

say no it's too big it's too distributed it's too there's too many thoughts inside of it if it was if it was if bitcoin was as big and as strong as it was in 2011 i don't think they could stop it it shows you something back then it was a just a fraction of what it is right now. I got some rapid-fire questions. It's probably going to take 5, 10 minutes, but I know, Mike, you're under the clock. Do you want to stick around for that, or do you want it to bail for this segment?

It's up to you. No, all good, all good. All right, so I'm going to just throw you guys some rapid-fire questions, and I want to hear your answers. You guys are both not your keys, not your calling guys, right? For sure. So what would you rather hold then a beat in Bitcoin ETF for 10 years or one of those moronic JPEGs for a year and hope to

sell it? Oh, man. I mean, how many sets is back in this JPEG? You would put it in the ETF. The same amount of value you're putting in one versus the other. What would you rather hold? The ETF? But it's a Bitcoin that I self-custody. It's just an order.

I still want the Bitcoin. I still want the Bitcoin. I know Fundamentals is going to give me flack for this. I know it. If he, if he hears this, but I'll probably go with the ETF just because that's something I, I understand.

I don't even understand ordinals to be honest. I've been explained this a million times and I still don't understand what the hell that thing is. So I'll probably go with the ETF. Unfortunately. Who's the goat bubbles, Julian or Ricky. I got to go with the ETF. Unfortunately. Who's the goat bubbles, Julian or Ricky. I got to go with Ricky,

Ricky. Nothing gets the guy. I mean, there's like two episodes where he was like a little bit down on his luck and he was kind of losing his mind. But I mean, the guy can be happy in jail. He can be,

I wish, I wish, I wish you could, I could orange pill, sunny veil trailer park, but I got to pick Ricky. This is a sunny in Philadelphia reference no this is trailer park boys Mike doesn't watch trailer park

boys I don't watch either one of those shows so I wouldn't I wouldn't know I'm gonna go with Ricky that seems like a good answer who would you rather see retire first Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren Joe Biden Joe Biden has more authority. Liz Warren

is a little bit more of a blowhard, but I think she's only gotten like one bill ever passed. So she's not that big of a deal. I take the opposite stance on this because I'm just enjoying thoroughly watching Joe Biden and all of his antics. I just want to keep on seeing how much ice cream this dude will eat. Would you prefer a quiet citadel in the woods or one on a beachfront property? I'll do the beachfront. I don't mind. I don't mind. Yeah, I don't mind civilization. I like people. Beachfront for sure. Have you guys ever been so big that you could not record a high hash rate podcast?

We've been so big that we shouldn't have recorded a high hash rate podcast. But we've always done it. The people want to hear their episodes once a week. We give it to them no matter what. Hell, yes. I think I had to duck out of a couple of them just because I was too fucked. There was one with another Canadian. It was Plate Licking Pled.

Oh, I don't know. I thought I took 10 milligrams. I took 100, and it started kicking in the show. And I'm just like, whoa. We made it through it, though. It was a great conversation. I love plate-licking. Okay, good for you to answer that.

Favorite podcast not named a CBP or high hash rate? That's a good question. I actually have to go with Matt andane and matt matt and shane's secret podcast shane gillis i like i like to listen to uh stand-up comics uh podcasts but in terms of bitcoin like a bitcoin podcast uh i love rock i love rock paper bitcoin i love those guys they're uh they're very similar kind of in uh in the vibe in the theme of we're not really talking about macro we're not really talking about economics we touch on some technical stuff but it's really more of a cultural um type of conversation yeah that's uh that's a good question i'd say my non-bitcoin

podcast is probably a it's a criminal like a criminal podcast where um i can't it's a criminal, like a criminal podcast where, um, I can't remember. It's like a touch of evil or, or the, the, the something of evil. I can't remember the name of it, but basically running around the, uh, the story of, uh, the black Dahlia, which I, it was like a series, but it was a really, really good, well done series. Except for the last episode. Touch of evil. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah the last one they're just like crying at the end you know it's like a 45 minute session of them crying so it's not a good episode but it's a the whole thing is well produced but the i definitely have to agree with dan on

this one on the rock paper bitcoin podcast because that one is just they're these dudes i mean we we talking to them and they always bring up really, really interesting, um, stuff that I haven't even thought about before. Any final words guys, before we sign off? Yeah. Stacks ads don't sell. Uh, and the next 18 months we may go, listen again, not financial advice, but, uh, I mean, we can, I don't know. Maybe we'll go to 100K. Maybe we won't make it past 70. Maybe we'll make it to 300K.

Either way, if we make it to 300K, along the way, there's probably going to be three or four massive dips. If this is your first cycle, don't freak out. Just huddle through it. You'll get a zen by the end. If this is your first cycle, you'll have a zen to you. Yeah. I have a message for all the fathers out there and that is stay strong dudes stay strong that's it oh yeah one last thing consolidate your utxos we already talked about this but it's going to be expensive consolidate your damn utxos i'm bitcoin cameron if you're listening my buddy i

know this dude has a ledger and he has never logs in and uses it. He just sends like DCA to it. Cameron, consolidate your UTXOs for your daughter, bro. Come on. Your future self is going to thank you if you do that. But gentlemen, Dan and Mike from the High Hash Rate Podcast, thanks for coming on. If you want to find out where to reach them, I have them in the show notes. They're Twitter handles or X handles, whatever you want to call it, to reach them i have them in the show notes their um their twitter

handles or x handles whatever you want to call so you can reach out to them but with that thanks for coming on and we'll be back at this on monday so with that take care thanks for having us thank you thank you