The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP - Gabe from The Bitcoin Advisors

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES  Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST.  This week we are joined by Gabe from the Bitcoin Advisors (Bitcoin Advisors (@BTCAdvisors) / X (twitter.com). Gabe is a Canuck that has started a business to provide newcomers to Bitcoin with education, guidance and support. With a helping hand, even newbies to Bitcoin should be able to find their way as the process to buy, store and transact with Bitcoin isn't that hard. From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com ⁠Discord:  ⁠ ⁠https://discord.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/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer. Check out the other podcasts on the network: The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast (https://www.youtube.com/c/CanadianBitcoiners) The NHL 94 Podcast (https://www.youtube.com/@NHL94Podcast) Two Whites and a Blue (https://www.youtube.com/@twowhitesandabluepodcast2788) Bitcoin and Barbells (https://www.youtube.com/@JoeyBBandBTC)

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 Mighty CBP on the CBP Media Networks. Thank you very much for joining in today. Well, first off, I'm Len, your host for today, and I'm going to be interviewing a gentleman by the name of Gabe. And Gabe, I met not too long ago in a meetup that took place in Waterloo, but we'll talk about that in a bit.

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gabe how are you buddy good good len thank you so much for uh having me on thanks for the time i know i appreciate for you taking the time to come out here now just wanted to lay the groundwork here gabe and i we met once only i don't think we met more than once but it was a place in waterloo in a scent days brewer, and we met at the back. It wasn't the parking lot. I don't know what the fuck that area was. But anyway, that's where we met. That sounds very weird. It was just funny because I remember just sitting there in the park

bench they had. We were chatting away with a bunch of other cornords, and all of a sudden you came up. Some dude came up wearing a suit. We're all just a bunch of jabronis just dressed like we normally dress. And here you are dressed to the nines. Why were you dressed like that? You're coming straight from work?

I was. I was coming straight from work. It's funny. I'm at my Fiat office. But yeah, I was still a working advisor, financial advisor. So I was coming straight from work. I had to get in touch with some Bitcoiners and meet them in Waterloo. So yeah, I don't dress like that anymore oh too bad because that's how i always

remember you and if you're never wearing your suit i'm gonna be always disappointed but for people who don't know who the heck is gabe give us a background who you are yeah so um who's Gabe? I'm a 23 year old financial advisor. No longer. I was for three years. I stepped down from the advising role in December and then kind of just went on this endeavor of bringing Bitcoin education, guidance and support again, like what bitcoin advisors is all about to canada um and that really kind of sparked in november when i went to el salvador um and saw what people are building down there i thought canada needed some of that and hopefully we can start from the ground up here and uh get people involved but uh yeah my story is really basic. Financial advisor turned Bitcoin advisor. So how'd you come across Bitcoin? Because there is, I can see, an indirect connection between the two, but I'd like to hear your story, how you ultimately became a Bitcoiner.

Yeah, it's actually pretty funny because being in the traditional financial fiat system and recommending people traditional products helped me understand Bitcoin. So in the summer of 2020, a friend had brought up, you know, everyone's locked in their houses and you're finding things to do. My friend thought crypto was the best thing to do. Right. And a lot of people did day trading and stuff like that. So I got wrapped up and January 2021 was when I bought my first little bit of Bitcoin. And that's the same time that I stepped into the industry as an advisor. So actually throughout my whole time of being an advisor, I had the opportunity to compare traditional products like mutual funds, bonds, whatever, with Bitcoin, right? As I was going on

my journey, allocating more to my portfolio in 2021 was crazy. Because, you know, as soon as, and I think every Bitcoiner has been through this, if you haven't, you're lying, where you kind of dabble in some shit coining, right? So you buy here and there, and especially, again, from my background, I'm like diversify. I got to have a few stocks, a few cryptos in my portfolio and see how they perform over time. 2022 rolls around, everything crashes. I lose money in Luna, Celsius, all of this stuff. Actually, I miss Celsius super by a narrow margin. So yeah, that helped me understand. Oh, number one, not your keys, not your coins.

Number two, anyone that has a marketing team, any crypto that has a marketing team is all bullshit. So that's 99.9999% of the cryptos out there. So yeah, all roads lead back to Bitcoin. And I'm glad I learned my lesson relatively quick. So from January 2021 to today, I'm Bitcoin only. I actually live on a Bitcoin standard using the bills function with Bitcoin. So yeah, highly recommend if anyone hasn't done it. Wow, good for you. You're doing that. A lot of people, unfortunately, they're still tied to the

fiat world. So you're not able to do that now buying it in january 2021 that's a wild time because you had that year 2021 we had three notable events two all-time highs i think march and november and also that was the the patty inside that was the bread the patty of the set of that sandwich was china banning bitcoin mining it was such an interesting time. So if you went through that and you came out still a Bitcoiner or a more hardened Bitcoiner, I think that's, you know, you've earned your stripes. So good for you

because so many shit coins as a result, shortly thereafter, they took their pounding and then it never recovered. So fuck them. You're right. Not your keys, not your coin. Now, I just want to talk

about your trip to El Salvador. It was November of last year, 2023, you went? Well, I would say all throughout 2022, I got involved into Bitcoin Twitter and then 2023 rolls around and I'm like getting the itch to like understand how people are living on Bitcoin in El Salvador. So I'm like, hey, man, I just got to go down there and experience it. So I hopped into this Telegram channel called Bitcoiners in El Salvador and everyone there speaks English. And I just, you I just look for accommodations. Is it safe? Because my parents are worried about me, whatever. I get down there for about three

days and experience what the future could look like, right? Life on a Bitcoin standard where you have digital money on your phone and it's secured by 12 or 24 words. It's beautiful. So that then sparked my journey to in November, because through the people there, they said, Hey, if you like what you see here, and you've only been here for three days, you got to come back in November, there's a conference. So the Adopting Bitcoin conference was, yeah, one of the highlights of 2023 uh for sure incredible and that was actually the beginning of a run-up somewhere around november the price of bitcoin if you look at started around in the 30 ish and then now it's you know two three months later it's now four months later it's now in the 50s so it's you know it's been an absolute crazy ride in just a few short months so i want you to bridge the gap between buying your first bitcoin in january 2021 to

going to el salvador twice in the calendar year 2023 to starting the bitcoin advisors i bridge that gap how did you get to that point because i want to talk a little more about Bitcoin advisors. Yeah. So 2022 was that learning period, right? Where everything kind of goes down the toilet and I'm like spiraling like, shit, what did I do? Obviously, I still had my traditional investments, which unfortunately kind of saved me. But it's now the other way around. Bitcoin is going to save me moving forward. But 2022, learning a lot. I kind of didn't want people to experience exactly what I experienced, which was losing money.

So I thought, you know, there's got to be a way that I can reach out for guidance. And, you know, Googling BTC sessions, first of all, shout out to him. Congrats on hitting 100k, but huge value add to my journey. So I wanted to take that value, that knowledge, and give it to other people that are just coming into the space so that they don't go on onto a coinbase and get distracted by 20 different crypto or 20 000 different cryptos uh out there and just stay focused on bitcoin 2023 rolls around and i said okay i'll just start a website it's super cheap to do um we'll use the easy dns to start the website if not shame on you if If not, I will after this call. But yeah, so the website initially was really just a way for me to connect educational material and Bitcoin projects around the world. Because again, seeing the stuff in May, so I started the website in August. But seeing the stuff in May in El Salvador made me want to be like, OK, there's so many good projects and so many people building around the Bitcoin ethos and what it has to offer that I want to put up basically free marketing. Right. That's what the website was supposed to be.

And then I had a lot of people reach out to me saying, hey, how do I buy Bitcoin? How do I store it? How do I do all of this? And if there's a demand, then yeah, I'll build a product or a service to kind of fill that demand. So after November, being surrounded by so many builders, it really just gave me that motivation to do a full launch in January with my services being super affordable. And hopefully I'm an approachable person that you can trust. So I can guide you in the right direction, right? I really want to be that guidance that I wish I had on my journey and although I learned quick hopefully I can just point people to the answer and then

they don't take such heart like they don't have a hard time learning that lesson right so when somebody comes to you're looking for help it's actually what type of goals are you trying to achieve with this individual? Yeah. So first of all, the first onboarding session is free, right? And normally this is either a explanation. I mean, when you go to the website, the first question on there, it's a big button that says why Bitcoin?

So hopefully that answers the question for people to then reach out to me and say, hey, how do I buy it? Now, the problem is that when people go online and say, how do I buy Bitcoin? Well, they think they bought it and they have it. But the first onboarding session that I do for everything is buy on an exchange like normal, withdraw it and back up your 12 or 24 words. That's it. Right. And then we go into a few different questions. And then again, I made the services super affordable because I feel like people are going to have so many questions. And I love talking about Bitcoin and helping people either run a node, set up a hardware wallet. If you already have one, then moving to another one that maybe has a better

reputation. Or is Bitcoin only? Yeah, I really offer kind of a broad range of services. And the whole point is, I have people in my circle, like yourselves and the Bitcoiners that we know around us here in Canada, we can connect people to so many resources and like individuals that are willing to help. That if I don't have the answer, then I'm going to connect you to someone that does, or I'll point you in the right direction. But yeah, basically anyone can ask me any question and I'll get the answer. So for people that are wondering, the website is www.bitcoinadvisors.org. So that's the website if anybody's interested.

So let's just say, for example, I'm a new person to Bitcoin. I'm very familiar with using banking services and all that garbage that we've been born to deal with since we were born. But I want to start using Bitcoin. I want to start buying it and just start potentially even transacting with it in the future. What do you do? Initially, do you even bring them to testnet? Is that even an option you do? Because let's be honest, if you make a mistake with your keys somewhere along the way, wait, it's gone.

There's no bank that could replenish your supplies. You're done. It's gone. So is testnet something you even consider or not? Oh, probably. Yeah, I consider it just now. Very good. Yeah, that's kick around with Tesla, right? You know, you can play around,

you go around and if you screw it up, it's not the end of the world. You just left a little bit of time, which sucks. But yeah, yeah. And it's, it's funny, because like, you know, the argument against that would be like, hey, if you don't do this, right, then you just lost your money. Right. But hopefully, yeah, test night can provide that, um, simulation of pain, um, to losing a thousand bucks on a transaction or something like that. But, uh, no, I think the steps I take are reasonably safe. Um, and you know, number one, backup your hardware wallet, or a hot wallet probably is what people are going to start with on nunchuck or blue wallet. Take down your 12 or 24 words and

then recover it. Right? Very easy thing to do. And then do a test transaction. Yeah, and all of that. And then you get into like multi-sig passphrase almost like too deep down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. And that's where I would rather pass off my services to someone who's been in the game for a long, long time. So although I am comfortable in explaining what these things are, I might not want to take the risk or liability at screwing something up, right? And there are other organizations that have massive teams, cybersecurity experts behind them that I would feel much more

comfortable handing them off rather than me taking that responsibility on. And again, that's where the connections come into play, right? I don't want to be the know-all be-all, but I want to be a trusted contact so that my reputation lies on, okay, I know if I go to Gabe and ask him a question or who he can connect me to, that the person that I get connected to will be a reputable person.

So generally, who are the people that come to you? Is it typically individuals or is it typically businesses or is it a good mix of both? So number one, I am targeting businesses actively. Individuals will come to me because so actually this is something that I wanted to touch on. And the reason I'm focusing on businesses is for example, I have a sticker on my car and it just says study Bitcoin from, uh, bitcoin.rocks. Good, uh, good website if you haven't visited it, but I don't know how many people have walked by, scanned the QR code, gone on Bitcoin.rocks, and then read up on Bitcoin. But what I'm hoping is that someone has.

My target on businesses isn't necessarily to make Bitcoiners spend their Bitcoin. We know how valuable of an asset it is. And there's two arguments, spend and hold the circular economy or hold and just, it's a store of value. Leave it there. It's not ready to be a medium of exchange yet. I don't care about that argument. What I care about is awareness and education on Bitcoin. So what happens when a business puts up a Bitcoin accepted here sticker? How many people are going to walk by that don't know anything about Bitcoin and say, huh, why would you accept Bitcoin? I guess it must be legit or that business must see a value in it. And then you get into the education of it.

So if they ask at the front counter oh i saw that i can pay with bitcoin is that true and the person behind the counter doesn't know anything about bitcoin well it would be pretty cool to have i don't know a pamphlet to an educational event that's coming up right and i think these um these things kind of fall into place it's just about attracting the right people and attracting attracting the the most amount of people that you can and yeah bitcoin accepted here stickers are really just free marketing for bitcoin and that's what that's what we want bitcoin.rocks do they have those type of stickers i ordered or not ordered like i said uh uh you know i got a bunch here and i put up a bunch my neighborhood. One no-coiner took down one of the stickers I put. It was in a prominent spot.

It was just fantastic. It was gone one day. I was like, what the fuck? I got to replace that once the weather gets warmer. That's the thing. Even the cities. I put them up on park benches. I don't know if this is a crime. Anyway, I put them up.

Hey, man. Allegedly, I've put them up. Allegedly see these stickers go up. Yes, exactly. I've seen them everywhere. And then I want to buy the next week and they're not there. So, yeah, with a business, if you get them to just understand Bitcoin, they're not going to have a high transaction wallet. So these questions about taxes, how am I going to pay my bills, all of these things that a business normally cares about or have an objection to aren't really objections right now. There's really not that many Bitcoiners that are going to pay in Bitcoin and that's fine. But as long as the business is okay with possibly accepting it, then that sticker will do a lot. Yeah.

It will raise awareness. And I can tell you personally for me, if there's an opportunity to spend Bitcoin in Canada, and I'm sorry to say this, I would like it at a merchant. I would probably not because of KY, not because of tax. You know, I have to claim it as a tax. It becomes a headache. If I could do it at home and I have my spreadsheets and everything, it's much easier.

But if I'm doing it on the road, it becomes a real problem. So I'm less like, so maybe I'm not the target audience, but you're right. Having that sticker there does raise awareness. And that alone should do a heck of a lot. And I'm wondering then,

typically when a business accepts Bitcoin, the ones that you have been dealing with, do they just simply hold on to it? Or do they convert it later on to Canadian dollars or whatever else they're using? Because, again, the taxes then come into play there. So I'm curious, what do businesses tend to do when they start hoarding Bitcoin? Well, number one, if you're a business that is not generating positive cash flow, I'm not even approaching you. Right. Because you have to have a positive cash flow to be able to save that Bitcoin or be comfortable with having a little bit of balance holding Bitcoin. um holding bitcoin all of the businesses that i have talked to and uh am aware of they normally just save in bitcoin again because of the low transaction amounts currently as like let's be honest there's not gonna be a time in which a business is forced to sell bitcoin to pay for their bills i i just don't see that happening because the transaction volume is just

not there. So that's not a, yeah, that's not a concern. And I think businesses would be more than happy to just hold Bitcoin. Now there's services around, I don't really want to plug anything right now because I'm still talking to them, but there's a certain service that allows a business to accept bitcoin on the lightning network and immediately have it converted to dollars and then if they want to withdraw like they never hold bitcoin it's immediately converted and frozen in the canadian dollar balance is that using node list in any way, shape or form? Do you know? Sorry. I think that would be the front end to convert Bitcoin straight to fiat. I'm wondering if they run that.

Yeah, again, I'm still talking to them. And that's why I don't really want to mention them yet. Because I don't know how reliable that service is going to be. But kind of like a strike, right? Yeah. A strike in the U.S. or globally. It uses lightning rails, but the end user, if they choose not to, they don't have to hold Bitcoin, right?

And that's a beautiful thing. It removes all taxable implications that could arise from holding and selling Bitcoin later on. I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody that is new to Bitcoin, a business that is new to Bitcoin, and going to be talking to you to figure out, you know, where do I start and how do I get on this journey? What are typically the questions they propose to you from the get-go? I'm just curious what the first things they tend to ask.

Why? No, what they ask what what questions do these do they ask like yeah yeah what's your frame of mind yeah like number one is like why right and then i i give them six reasons really um so number one it's low or zero transaction fees so So right now, businesses are spending money to rent their own equipment from these Visa or MasterCard payment POS systems. Now, again, accepting Bitcoin is not going to be a switch. You're not flipping the switch from transaction fees to no transaction fees. You have to operate on both. But the good news is that you have options now when you accept Bitcoin. One of them is free marketing. You're going to be exposed to a brand new market of Bitcoiners around Canada or in your community that didn't have a place to spend Bitcoin at, right? Like you, Len, right? If you went to

Muggs, which is 30 minutes away from London, maybe you would be tempted to buy a cup of coffee. I don't know. Maybe you pull out your spreadsheet and you say, you know what? It's worth it. But it's really just about using Bitcoin. It's like graduating to that medium of exchange instant settlement is a great one honestly lightning-quick payments is something that I don't want to introduce a business to something that creates friction so Visa and MasterCard payments are quick Bitcoin lightning payments are just as quick. No fraud. And settlement is instant too. Exactly. That's another one. Instant settlement,

you're not waiting two or three days for things to settle. And no fraud or chargebacks. Those are kind of like the six main points that I bring out. I normally don't get there because I really just send them a lightning payment. And then they're like, oh, that's cool. And we go from there. It's awesome to see it right in front of you, especially when you have two phones that are side by side and you could essentially just scan the QR code

and you can watch the transaction take place. It's essentially just a packet that's going out there and it's instant. It's like, wow, look, I sent you a Bitcoin. And so one phone had their, uh, debit. The other one had accredited and just instant and that's it. And it was final and settlement is final. Right. There's no way for me to request that payment back.

If we have a disagreement, then we have a disagreement and we resolve it. Right. But there's no middleman that's going to come in here and agree to reverse that payment. In terms of the signing device that they use, the wallet they use, not the hot wallet, I'm not talking about Blue Wallet or Nunchuck. What's typical amongst the new users? I think I know the answer and I hate to hear it, but I'm what typically people use i'm interested to know what you're thinking um i'm thinking it's a ledger and then i oh um yeah so it's funny because i worked at um i worked at best buy for a few years and they started selling ledgers yeah um actually that's where i bought my first one. And yeah, and now people that have onboarded, they're like getting a little bit more Bitcoin.

So I'm like, hey, you should look into a hardware wallet. Like, oh, some of them are friends that I have a Best Buy and they're like, oh, I'll just buy a Ledger. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I send them to a Jade or because it's low cost or like like the ultimate one cold card i love cold cards um and uh yeah that that's honestly those are my two recommendations jade or cold card uh yeah and how much they're willing to spend and how much of a bitcoin balance they have yeah the cold card i adore now nvk i'm to say this. I'm probably not going to get the queue.

Not sure if you saw the queue game, but the reason why I'm not going to get it is I really like my cold card, and I would hate to get a replacement for it that would essentially mothball it and would be collecting dust. I simply adore my cold card, and I'm not getting paid to say this or anything.

It's just something I like. I use it. It's simple to to use i am missing the keyboard i i kind of wish i had the keyboard that the q has for you know if there's a passphrase or not but other than that uh it does everything that the q does and does it really well so i i'm happy that you're able to ultimately get people on the cold card because it can be a little bit of a daunting task. Yeah. You know,

when you look at it and the instructions, but the reality is you're just following instructions. If you could bake a cake, you could do the same thing with this. Yeah. Granted, you know, if you fuck up with baking a cake,

it's one thing you fuck up sending your Bitcoin to your, you know, with Sparrow that's attached to your card is something else. But yeah, I'm happy to hear that you're pushing self-custody because self-custody is something a lot of Bitcoiners, especially newcomers, they don't tend to gravitate towards.

And I talk about this quite often. It's one of the fundamentals that make Bitcoin so great. It's the fact that you can control your keys. Nothing can be done to take that away from you and i just love that but i just want to ask you to move on to a different question is i'm wondering who's approaching you in terms of even businesses or individuals is it typically people that are local nationwide or even people abroad um okay so because i speak spanish uh and going to el salvador it has been amazing to get myself involved in the spanish

um community uh and a lot of people need help uh down. And obviously they have sometimes more of a savings need and a Bitcoin need than we do here in a privileged financial system in Canada. So, yeah, there's a lot of outreach coming from Latin America. But normally it's really just referrals and referrals come from my local community. So whether it's from the community in Guelph, London, yeah. And there's consultants all over. Like there's actually a really good consulting network in Canada. And a shout out to Sean who organizes the Niagara meetup. He loves helping people too. And yeah, he kind of poked me to get a meetup going in London.

So that's why the Twitter is set up. Plug that right now. Since you're talking about plug that. And so people that are in the London area can reach out to you if you have any questions and maybe attend one of these functions. Yeah. So I think it's LondonON underscore Btc oh hopefully i don't know i had to come up with like a it is it is london on underscore btc that is the twitter handle and i got that on the

first try um yes please follow us if you're in and around the london area uh we're going to be doing a meetup on the second Saturday of every month. We have a coffee shop here near London about 30 minutes away that accepts Bitcoin through Lightning Payments. And yeah, it's always a good crowd that comes out.

So yeah, come get connected. Fielding a question from the audience. Benoit asks, what's used for demonstrating Lightning? Because you were mentioning earlier you're showing off the capabilities of lightning. Typically, what program or app do you use to show it off? Yeah. So I'm really glad that we have a Canadian project and you guys had them on recently.

But CoinOS from Vancouver is awesome. Less than 30 seconds to get set up and an amazing way to just transact and actually onboard not only individuals but businesses that's how i have my barber set up right now i just have a little cute um like a page with a qr code uh to his profile page on coinos and i just scan that qr code and pay him right away and he trusts me all the time but like he knows how to check it um yeah i probably doubled the like my haircuts have gotten twice as expensive uh over the past few years but yeah coin us definitely is my go-to they now do um on-chain Lightning and Liquid.

So they're getting better by the day, and the team is awesome. And I think they offer both custodial and non-custodial, where they can provide you keys and they can manage it as well. I think that's what they offer. So there's a lot of different options from CoinOS. And if you haven't watched the interview, check it out. It was done very recently by Joey. Now, a question to do with people

that you're onboarding because one of the things about bitcoin one of the characteristics about it that's notorious is the volatility the volatility of price yeah today it could be 51 000 and you know i wouldn't bat an eye if it was 45 tomorrow could happen and you know if that happened in the traditional world if you saw some company dropping to that degree, it'd be the world is on fire. It would trip all these breakers on the Nasdaq and everything. But in Bitcoin world, it's just another day in Bitcoin. But a new person looks at that and they'd be like wondering what the fuck is going on. So how do you prep them for this volatility?

I show them charts. Actually, it's really good when Bitcoin has a bad week, because you really do get to see a big drop. But then you just click a few tabs and you're like, okay, here's five days out. Here's a month out. Here's six, a year, and since inception, or like five years and then since inception, right? You zoom out of what you're feeling. And I think a lot of people get comfortable by that. And you talk about the history that Bitcoin has had, 15 years, all of this flood coming from out of nowhere. Bitcoin is still a very nascent asset. So volatility is expected. And if you're not ready to hold for four more years, then I'm not going to help you. Right. I don't think you should come into this with a short term investment strategy. It's not

even an investment strategy. It's a savings tool. right? So if you're not coming to me with four more years that you're expected to hold this Bitcoin, then yeah, just move on to Coinbase where you can day trade if you want. But no, I'm here to promote savings in Bitcoin and the proper storage of that bitcoin do people ask about the genesis of bitcoin and who's the person that created because often even today i often think about that it's for who or what or they whatever that was responsible for the creation of it because you know if you think about it i mean i'm going to go into the weeds here a little bit um we're as bitcoiners we tend to be skeptical and then when there's a piece of information that comes through the newswire we look at it but we you know we try to verify we don't trust and even if we do verify we're still looking like what the fuck is this really true so one thing we just tend to gloss over is

the person that or people or whatever that was behind it the bitcoin the creation of it and it seems to be very odd that a lot of us we just tend not to talk about it too much because we can't provide an answer i guess maybe that's the reason but i'd love to hear what newcomers think about that because it's even today i think it's very strange but somebody coming new to this they gotta think it's fucking odd right yeah sometimes you know uh someone actually asked me the other day like have you heard about this uh was it the nsa or like cia creating bitcoin and i'm like dude honestly if they did then great they just gave us the best tool ever and if they rug pull us all of our us bitcoiners it's almost like that saying like if bitcoin

doesn't succeed then we're all fucked right because the traditional financial system is just in a complete mess and it's just going down down the drain here so um yeah that's i kind of come at it from the fundamentals you know it's an immutable ledger. In a new digital financial system where you completely control and are a sovereign individual when you operate and save in Bitcoin. transactions are verified, which I'm still trying to find this simple explanation for, of what nodes are and how decentralized and what decentralization means, again, to a newcomer, that word is completely new. And what self-custody means, then they don't really care about the origin of Bitcoin, actually. Although Bitcoiners are naturally skeptical, most people are very trusting. So they use Gmail and ProtonMail or whatever these email services are on a regular basis without asking, how is this controlled? And who can see my emails? Right. They just don't care.

Emails notoriously. to yeah easy to find information about the but yeah proton mail is a is a really good service for people that have not yet learned how to use that definitely free accounts the whole nine yards you're going to go and then if you want to go even further use a vpn i recommend malvad do your own research to see what works for you and i'm curious for people that are you're trying to introduce to bitcoin you also go through the do you go to the point where you're teaching about kyc versus kyc free bitcoin um is i think there's value in that and i i understand the you know the nuances surrounding that but if you're talking about this being an open and transparent ledger and i'll use this as an example if it's kyc bitcoin then theoretically

anytime you spend your bitcoin it would be easy to determine where you spent it and how much was spent if you know the the receiving address who's associated to so and if you then do enough analysis you could almost figure out people's habits for when they go to the grocery store what time of day what time which time of day and so forth so there's a lot that could be found and i wouldn't want this information readily available with my fiat spending habits although that's available but it's controlled within the bank and whoever has control of it, but not everybody has access to it.

So by going to KYC free, if I were to spend, I could spend full well, knowing full well that that information is not available. It's just an anonymous transaction. So that's why I'm going to this point where KYC free, it's a great tool just to remain anonymous. So I'm wondering, Ed, is that something you even considered talking about to to get our hands on that kyc uh free bitcoin but most people just want to like get it over with and buy right away like if i have to tell you sit down for an hour with me or like sit down for 15 minutes let's set up a bull bitcoin account and then let's go to the post office like Like imagine doing this virtually too. And most of these people are buying small amounts. So as you get into larger amounts, 100,000%, I will mention no KYC Bitcoin, because then

that means that they're really interested, right? When you're playing with small dollars and you see it as an investment, you're not going to hold this for a long time but as soon as you get more money into it that's when i you know come in and suggest you know let's get your hardware wallet no kyc uh run your own node all of this stuff uh that we bitcoiners know helps us in the true sovereign individual journey or like sovereign bitcoiner journey um but yeah and no kyc is getting harder uh in canada um yeah just disappointed to see bull bitcoin uh you know client get clamped down well there's what well there's ways around it a bold bitcoin was having issues very recently with that was with e-transfers so if you were to e-transfer in so when you use your kyc account they were

having difficulties receiving the money through the e-transfers but still through canada post you could still go to your and leave cash there that was still working so luckily for users like myself i was still able to take advantage of bold bitcoin so that was still working so luckily for users like myself i was still able to take advantage of bull bitcoin so that was still working in fact in canada i think we're blessed and in this regard that we have not just a bull bitcoin there's also a competitor called bitcoin well that has atms now the spread is higher on the atms the process would be arguably want to make an argument it's easier with atms um but the spread is is a little bit higher someone says significantly higher but nonetheless it's still it's an option that we have here and other parts of the world don't so we're really really lucky with respect to that i know that's

more of an advanced thing kyc versus kyc free stuff but in in terms of then when people come to you ask for you to help them out and you give them your surveys what's a realistic goal you're trying to achieve with them cool yeah because i don't want them to like jump like my ultimate goal isn't to just jump all in with bitcoin but like if we take an example like my mom uh she doesn't get what bitcoin is yet but she's got a good amount just because I pay her rent. No, we don't want to know that. We don't want to know that. That is true.

Anyway. Anyway, so, yeah. I, if we take someone that doesn't really know about Bitcoin or technology, then you just want to educate them a little bit more. Right. So the whole point is to help them understand what Bitcoin is and why they even hold Bitcoin or why they would even want Bitcoin as a part of their life. That's really it, right? And then the amount of capital that you allocate is totally up to them. As you grow more conviction, you know, it took me two or three years to really grow that conviction because I just got educated a lot more, right? But everyone has their own path. And at the end of the day,

it's really just education. I don't care how much Bitcoin you have in your portfolio. If you could, even if you understand Bitcoin totally, like I know David Collum, I've seen him on a few podcasts and he like, he gets Bitcoin as a store of value and all of this stuff. But he's like, honestly, I'm just like not good with tech so i'm not going to get involved i respect that right as long as you educate yourself and you do your homework and you have people around you that can uh help educate you then that's it my mission is uh is complete but again we know that one leads to the other as you understand bitcoin then you'll probably want to acquire more because the financial system is shit yeah but the user experience is fantastic in the traditional

financials yeah convenience sucks convenience sucks and you can like um even in like other parts um of society like even with uber it's really, really easy to eat bad food, right? So convenience will kill you. Just, yeah, do your own research. Well, one thing that will improve, it's not there yet. It's got a long way to go. But the user experience for Bitcoin, one would argue it's almost borderline pathetic,

but still it's not impossible to learn because you know i i'm old enough to remember people in the 90s and early 2000s older people looking at email and say i'll never use this but now everybody uses it they have a smartphone they're trying they're conversing with people through whatsapp through signal or texting whatever the fuck it is and they're doing this seamlessly it's just a part of their lives. And just two decades, two and a half decades ago, no way would this even be considered. But that goes to show you how easy it is

to make it a part of somebody's life. Once you show the convenience and the usefulness of the tools, they will adapt and they will start using it. And I just want to talk about the three levels of service. I see on your website, there's three different tiers um tier one tier two tier three maybe you could talk about those those three different tiers for anybody that's interested in them um yeah so the two first tiers are really differentiated by the amount of hours that I allocate to a client. I think people generally will, like,

all of the tiers are super affordable compared to my hourly rate. So especially on my first one, like, if you think you're going to need me for four hours out of the year, it's cheaper to just sign up and pay me for the year, right? And I think most people will understand that they're probably going to have a lot of questions and they'll take the added value that I provide on the discount. On the last tier, I provide a free hardware wallet, whether that, you know, we can purchase it together

and whether it's a jade or a cold card, then I'm happy to help you. And you have unlimited sessions. Now, this one I'm kind of juggling in my mind here. My whole mindset around these services are that I want to get you to a point where you don't need my services anymore, right? Where there's a point where I've kind of done my job or you're running your own node, you understand what a hardware wallet is. Maybe you have multi-sig set up depending on your family situation or whatever your situation is. And then you might not really have that many questions. So why would you pay me $600 a year to have unlimited sessions

if you're not going to use them? So if you sign up for that third tier and you're a person that's really going to be dedicated and motivated to ask the questions that are necessary and be a curious person, I'm going to cut the yearly rate by 20% every year. So by year five, you're free and clear and you still have my services available to you at any time. So you're kind of like a loyalty member. But yeah, that's kind of how I came to the pricing. It's super affordable. I'm happy to talk about Bitcoin for free anyway. So yeah, sure. If I'm stepping out of my fiat job

and you see a value in what I provide, right, that's all I want, right? We need more services like yours to help onboard people into Bitcoin. There's a lot of questions that need answering Right. So we need more services like yours to help onboard people into Bitcoin. There's a lot of questions that need answering and people just don't have the person that's shepherding them along. And that's ultimately we need you to do that. So it's you know, I think we've reached the end of our time here.

Now, before we sign off, Gabe, I just want to pass the baton over to you. And maybe if there's anything, any last words you want to say, but also where people could find you in case they have any questions they want to propose to you. So, yeah, the floor is yours, buddy. Yeah, thank you again for the time and the space to just kind of share my project, my journey and what I'm looking to do in the Bitcoin space. Gosh, there's so many shout outs that I want to give. I saw someone in the chat ask where in El Salvador Bitcoin adoption is most prominent. And actually, I want to give a shout out to Bitcoin Berlin, because they're building something really cool there. So Berlin, El

Salvador is a mountain town. How much time do I have Len? I just want to make sure I'm not going over an hour. Oh, okay. So'll have a an hour and a half i think you know you can you go until i i'm ready to fall asleep and it's uh you got a long ways to go buddy so yeah oh god floor is yours man when i say the floor is yours it's yours because i've got a few shout outs here that i want to make go ahead man number one el zante and bitcoin berlin are building like two communities that are really building in El Salvador.

And you should follow them to see how the circular economy is growing and developing. In El Zante, you have the Bitcoin hardware store that was built by a fellow Canadian from Toronto called Ronnie. Ronnie is a good friend and a great contact down there. And he's bringing all of these tools to the Salvadoran people because shipping fees are really expensive, right? So to get a hardware wallet, to get seed plates, all of this stuff, it's hard. So yeah, they're building something cool in El Zante. Bitcoin Berlin is the same. They've onboarded about 60 to 80 businesses in their community out of like 100. It's a really small town.

There's only about 20 foreigners working there. And then the rest are locals. So you can really see the local merchant adoption and that hunger for education coming from the local community, which is really exciting to see. Other than that, Me Premier Bitcoin or My First Bitcoin, if you haven't checked out that course, that is how I am kind of building my the movement and brought a Miprimir Bitcoin node to Saskatchewan. Hopefully we can bring it over to Ontario. We have Ontario, like we got to step up our game. I mean, you've got Vancouver on merchant adoption. It's crazy. You've got Regina there with their education. So yeah yeah hopefully i can be a part of the building here other than that i'll just plug my stuff uh btc capital a advisors um

is my twitter handle uh twitter sucks at searching up stuff so make sure that in there um and then in the description so it's gonna be part of the description of both the audio Twitter sucks at searching up stuff, so make sure to put it in there. And then Bitcoin is in the description. So it's going to be part of the description of both the audio and the video in case anybody's wondering. So it's in there. Perfect. Yeah. And then check out my website. If you need to point anyone to educational resources, I've done my best to compile my favorites. And yeah, my website is supposed to be just an educational platform for people to land and if they do need those services to onboard if

you're a bitcoiner and you don't think that you have time then hopefully I can be a trusted resource we can have a chat please reach out to me if you're interested in knowing more about the business and what I'm doing if you're interested in my travel stories and what I've experienced in El Salvador, Japan, wherever, let me know. And other than that, another shout out to Bitcoin Coalition of Canada, because they're really spearheading the movement to the politicians in Canada. So like that thing, that problem that you brought up there, Len, which is that if you spend your Bitcoin, it's a taxable offense or a taxable event, then that sucks. Right. I don't want to bring up my spreadsheet every time. So hopefully we can get an under $600 limit to just bypass that capital gain requirement. And I think they're working

mainly on that and other legislation and connecting Bitcoiners around the world. So if you are trying to find someone around you, go to BitcoinCoalition of canada.ca they also kind of group together all of the communities around canada and there's more and more popping up like i said london just just popped up so hopefully we can get more of them around canada i'm wondering now if pierre poliev i don't mean to extend this too much longer, but I'm wondering because Polyev is not, the polls are showing this. I'm not saying this is going to happen, but at least the projections show that he's going to be the next prime

minister of Canada, at least the one that after this government is no longer in session. And he at one time talked fondly of Bitcoin. And since then, this was back, I think, in March of 2022. And then the price of Bitcoin kind of tanked. And then it became a political hot potato. It hasn't talked about it much since. But I'm wondering if he becomes prime minister and given his knowledge of Bitcoin and the fact that at least at one time he was talking fondly of it.

And he was even on breed loves show, if I recall correctly, I'm wondering if there would be some sort of leniency towards a spendable amount of Bitcoin without having it to be a taxable event. I'm wondering if he's the one that's going to be able to do it or not. Just flew for thought, but, um,

you know, I, I really hope so. Uh, a lot of people have brought this point up and, the reason I hate politics is because to me, it's really just a show with different seasons and every, And every season you get a new character that steps into that office or that chair. But it's all the same charade, the same script. So hopefully, you know, he can

improvise, veer away from the script and bring some real value here to Canada with Bitcoin adoption and just fix our economy. It's going to take time, but yeah, maybe it'll take eight years. Trudeau's had his fair share, so let's get someone else in there. Actually, I just want to make two more points. Go ahead. Education, Bitcoiners. If you're in London or Guelph, I have a talk next week on the 26th in London, Ontario, downtown.

You can visit my website, bitcoinadvisors.org, head to the events tab, and you'll actually see two events lined up. The other one is in Guelph, Ontario, and that is March 7th. Yeah, we're doing a little presentation to help people understand why bitcoin is important we don't really go into the technicals behind bitcoin we just really want to show kind of spark a little fire um or you know something to to think about as to why people should look at bitcoin as a part of their life and hopefully that grows over time as more sessions come online. Yeah, check it out. So February 28th, I see it's 6.30 to 9 p.m.

And then March 7th is from 7 to 9 p.m. So if you're in the area and you want to check it out, yeah, go to bitcoinadvisors.org, check out the events tab, it's in there. And I'm not sure, do you have to pre-book it or pre- Yeah, so it would be really helpful for people to RSVP on the Eventbrite links when you click those events, just to give us an idea of numbers. And we may or may not be giving out sats at the end of it.

So if you have someone that has never received sats before, then bring them to this event. They can learn about Bitcoin and then they can actually transact on the Lightning Network for the first time. That's a magical experience. Let's do it, man. Let's load up these events with people, with pre-coiners and make them Bitcoiners. Gabe, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate

you spending time with us and talking about Bitcoin advisors and a bunch of other things as well. So yeah, check them out. the information about finding him is in the show notes below and it's also in the uh description of the audio so yeah gabe thanks buddy thanks for coming on yeah hasta luego buddy thank you for your time and thanks for the space okay no problem bye