The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP - Nathan & Pablo - Helping Out Bitcoiners

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Today we have Nathan from Bitcoin Mentor and Pablo from Bull Bitcoin joining for a chat about onboarding folks into Bitcoin. Nathan can be found on X at https://x.com/theBTCmentor and Pablo at https://x.com/saxtron3000 From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com ⁠Discord:   / discord   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠www.easydns.com⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer. D-Central Technologies - https://d-central.tech/ Your home for all things mining! Whether you need a new unit, a unit repaired, some support with software, or you want to start your own wife-friendly home mining operation, the guys at D-Central Tech are ready to help. With industry leading knowledge and expertise, let the D-Central team help you get started mining the hardest money on Earth.

Friends and enemies, welcome to yet another edition of the mighty Canadian Bitcoiners podcast, the CBP, all part of the CBP media network. And I'm Lenda Legend, of course. Joey has the evening off, still dealing with fatherhood. So good for him. He's learning and going through the process of becoming a first time parent. So good for him. But we are going to be chatting or I'm going be chatting, with a couple of very based Canadians. We have Nathan and Pablo coming on, and there's a lot we want to talk about.

But before we do, I have to check off these things off my checklist thing. So number one, we have sponsors. Well, actually, it's the only thing I do. Three different sponsors. Number one, we have EasyDNS. And EasyDNS, what can we say about them? Mark and the team over there have been absolutely wonderful to us and if you sign up and be a customer there you will be very

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you through the process they know this game they in fact we've just talked to i just talked to somebody just a moment ago they got a uh a tour of their building and we'll be actually hopefully talking about that in a bit but either way check them out these central technologies so with that it's time to bring on a gentleman to their show we got nathan and pablo gentlemen how are you very well thank you len good to see you again pablo good to see you too pal what's up fellas nice to be here love it gents you know before we go any further i just wanted to like maybe introduce you both to our audience. You give a little bit of background of who you are, what you do.

So I'm going to throw the baton over to you, Nathan. You go first and let you go because the floor is all yours, buddy. Absolutely. Thank you, Len. So yeah, I'm Nathan. I'm one of the mentors at Bitcoin Mentor, and we're just focusing on, you know, onboarding the next wave of Bitcoiners. We're doing the education, consulting, a little bit of technical support.

And I've been with them since first launch at The Havoc. And it's been a fantastic journey so far. Additionally, I'm starting to do a little work behind the scenes with Ben and BTC Sessions and hopefully have some more things coming out there in the near future. Pablo, over to you, buddy. Nice, nice. Yeah, so I'm Pablo. I work for the Mighty Bull Bitcoin. I'm their Bitcoin evangelist, working in you, buddy. Nice, nice. Yeah. So I'm Pablo. I work for the Mighty Bull

Bitcoin. I'm the Bitcoin evangelist working in everything to do with education, onboarding, orange pilling, spreading the good gospel of Bitcoin. And yeah, very happy to be here. First time on the podcast, but a longtime listener of CBP. So yeah, it's nice to be with you folks. It's good to have you both on the Bitcoin Bitcoin Mentor Program, I just want to touch on that really quick because that's something that has been started up not too long ago. BTC Sessions was the guy behind it. I want to hear a little bit more about that because there's people out there that want to get on board into Bitcoin. They just don't know the process. They need a helping hand.

I know you guys are able to do that. So I want you just to give us a rundown what it's all about. Yeah, absolutely. So essentially, the company was founded by Mike Cook and then Ben, Mr. BTC Sessions Perrin there. We launched at the halving of this year, which was fantastic. And there was some building going on behind the scenes beforehand. But essentially what the company is, is Mike himself was looking for a particular type

of service and he couldn't find what he wanted kind of on the market for that Bitcoin education, technical support, kind of consulting. And then Ben on his own was already doing it, but Ben was getting slammed. Like his calendar was constantly booked, people needing to sit down and get a little extra help, have them walking through the steps. And so ultimately what Bitcoin Mentor is, is trying to scale out Ben. It's taking the best we can find in Bitcoin education and then making them available to people who might need that resource. And so I know it started off with something like 350 plus applicants and they whittled down the team to about 15 of us. And everybody is a Bitcoin only maxi that really is

just here for adoption. And so, you know, as you know, price is running up and we're getting a little more attention to these things to trapped in the fiat matrix. There's a lot of people that know where they want to go. Surprisingly, like there's such a huge amount of Bitcoin resources, podcast education out there that they already know where they want to go on their journey, but they have no idea where to start or how to get going. And the biggest thing, too, is just the the time constraints, right? The idea is that like, yeah, a lot of these are professionals or business owners, and it's not that they can't go through the material. And we're happy to point anybody to the resources. There is a plethora of free

stuff out there that can help you get set up properly, but they just need someone to speed run them through so they can start taking custody of their own coins as soon as possible. And that's essentially where we come in. Pablo, for Bull Bitcoin, what's the process for somebody that if they come to you and they want to get onboarded somehow, say they're new to the game, but they heard about Bitcoin, and they just want to somehow buy Bitcoin and do it on a seamless way? What would you suggest? What does Bull Bitcoin offer in terms of services? Well, that was kind of like, that was one of our kind of struggles, actually, because being a self custodial Bitcoin exchange, like the the

initial thing when you buy Bitcoin through bull Bitcoin is, you know, you fund your account, and you're ready to pull the trigger. And the first thing we ask you for is a Bitcoin address, right? So for any noobs who are just kind of joining the platform um they need to work out okay so what wallet do i use that's like primordial before you own any bitcoin we're not going to hold it for you so we're going to send it somewhere um so previously what we do is we do everything we can to kind of reach out we had a lot of uh different support sites we had bitcoinsupport.com which gave like different hot and cold solutions and we'd reach out as well we've got like a hardcore dedicated customer service team we're a small business but super agile so we'd reach out we'd phone call we'd do

zooms we'd do whatever it was to kind of get people off zero and that was like a super kind of personal kind of one-on-one based interaction and I loved it I was doing a lot of calls helping people through the process troubleshooting uh and just talking through the different options of how people can hold bitcoin and hold it safely and securely but the kind of pain point was that you know like we're an exchange principally so we focus on the buy and sell and paying bills so to onboard newbies every single time an account was created was something that you know we simply didn't have the bandwidth to do so i was super happy in fact i stalked these guys at first when i saw this project called bitcoin mentor and btc sessions ben's face stuck on it i was like hey what's that so i'm not sure if you know this nate but uh i kind of stalked you via the newsletter

at first right yeah yeah you heard this one so no no i didn't yeah i'm here no oh yeah, I was like, Hey, what's this? Because I was doing I was doing basically Bitcoin support for bull Bitcoin. And it was kind of like my, my main, main hustle at bull Bitcoin was just onboarding people. So it's like, what's this new show in town? Let's check these guys out. And I saw they had a newsletter, they were like business coming soon, sign up to the newsletter, get the updates. So I signed up to the updates, basically using like a burner email address. I was like, I'm not going to use like my Apple Bitcoin address. Right. And I didn't know what the operation was. But then as soon as I got my first newsletter on this burner address, I was like, Hey, I want to know more. So I hit reply and I was like, yo, Mike, what's up? Like, I just want to find out what exactly is the business. What are you planning to do? Like, how can you help Bitcoiners in Canada, blah, blah, blah. But when I hit reply, it actually replied from my Apple Bitcoin address. So I dogged myself from

like day one. And then I had to follow up the email immediately back being like, yo, Mike, as you can tell, it's Pablo from Bull. I'm super interested. We want to work together. What's up? And then we just we just caught on to a call straight there. And then on that same day, and ever since I met Mike and I met the team, I was like, yeah, let's make something happen. So it was at the Bitcoin rodeo when we were out in Calgary that we were, you know, I had the privilege of sharing the stage with Ben to announce that we were going to partner with Bitcoin Mentors. So it's like a dynamic duo, you know, we just pass the puck back and forth.

If someone needs Bitcoin, buy or sell, they pass the puck to us. If somebody needs a wallet set up or any type of custody solution or nodes or whatever, we send the puck back. And it's like a real key partnership. So I was super happy to have doxxed myself because it just got the project off the ground super quick. Well, to doxx yourself, that's a pretty big thing. I would imagine you hold that information near and dear to your heart would imagine, you know, you hold that information near and dear to your heart. Yeah, as soon as you see that email coming in, you're like, oh, okay, a competition

coming in. But no, it was like a really good partnership. You know, we work very closely with Bitcoin Mentor. We have weekly calls. We refer clients back and forth. We make sure everybody's being taken care of and it's winning because that's what it's about. You it's about holding your bitcoin not just buying it but holding it so uh we complete that picture pretty well the website's bitcoinmentor.io is

that correct that's correct len yes yeah i just want to make sure anybody out there that wants to know a little bit more about this you could just simply go to that website and and there's a wealth of information there now i'm going to throw it out there. Whoever wants to answer this first, go right ahead. Newbie just has no knowledge of Bitcoin and wants to get exposure to it and own it. What wallet do you guys suggest they get? Well, I'll start off, and then I'm curious, Pablo. So I've got a few that I like and recommend. But really, I am trying to get people to hardware as quick as I can, get it into cold storage.

And realistically, we are a paid service. I'm happy to refer the bitcoinsupport.com has all the DIY guides for getting blue wallet, getting going on something mobile. And those are fantastic. But if you're coming to us to get some one-on-one training and education, you're probably buying enough that we already want to move it into a cold storage device. And so for me, the software side of things, I really like Nunchuck on mobile, and I really like Sparrow on desktop. Those are kind of the golden go-tos because they give you full control over the coins. They're really not obfuscating what's going on in the background. And even from an educational standpoint, if you don't understand everything that Sparrow is

showing you right off the start, that doesn't mean you can't use it, but it gives you something to explore and a way to kind of better your understanding as you become more familiar with everything. And then from there, looking specifically at the hardware, I'm always, my kind of requirements for recommendation is it's got to be open source, secure element, reputable company, air-gapped in Bitcoin only. And as long as it fits that criteria, I'm fine recommending it to friends, family,

clients, customers, the work. So right now, most of it, a lot of people were going right to cold card. The cold card queue is fantastic. It's been my daily driver, the one that I like the most. Additionally, the passport from foundation devices, Jade from Blockstream is great too. If they're a little bit cost sensitive, I might direct them to a tap signer, but that's usually about where we're ending up. I like the treasure Bitcoin only devices, but it just doesn't meet that air gap requirement and stuff as well, too. So no, not terrible. It might make a good one for a multi vendor, multi Sega three of five kind of

set up. But generally, that's where I'm heading. Pablo, I'm curious your thoughts. Yeah, usually when I have conversations, I try and gauge without asking directly, like how much they want to first experiment with, you know, have they got like a couple of thousand, they just want to invest and see it sit there for a while. Or is it like, you know, we're at a bar, we're at a restaurant, it's friends, we take a coffee and we're at the house. And it's a small amount. So if it's like a large amount, then I'd probably go for something like yeah, like a Sparrow on desktop is great. Like I show up to people's houses, I'll like meet people at meetups. And even if it's Sparrow just as a hot wallet i find it's like sparrows like um it'll never it enables people to grow super well into

bitcoin and self-custody so even if they're just using it for the hot features um there's you know it's packed with everything they'll need like gap limits like utxo management so they'll never have to change platform later on if they get familiar witharrow from day one, then they can plug hardware wallets into it later and they'll be familiar with how to move stuff. So like an initial large purchase, you know, if it's not hugely large, I'd go like Sparrow Hot. And then, you know, it's going to take a little bit of time

to ship out a cold card or something. We were just talking about that with the Canada post strikes and everything. So by the time they get that hardware device, they can just move from the hot to the cold within Spar and it's like oh yeah i got this okay so you kind of build up the you know it's like scaffolding really you're like building up the structure and supporting them along the way and eventually it stands on its own so that's like for medium to large amounts but like small amounts if it's just on the fly outside of the house i recommend the the bull bitcoin app

uh the bull bitcoin wallet it's because basically, it's got on chain and liquid. So if you want that wow factor, you can just zap somebody across some liquid and they can receive it real quick. And then they ask, Hey, what's the difference? And you can delve into like different layer solutions. And you can get them to write down their 24 words as well straight off the app. So they get familiar with with how to backup and recover seed phrases. So that's a really good one if you're out of the

house, like on a quick 20-minute orange pill session with somebody you just met. Agreed. And even quickly, too, to that point, Pablo, the nice thing about using Sparrow is that if you can get them comfortable there, they can really pick up any other wallet from that point, right? If you're going from Sparrow to the Bull app, it's going to seem very easy and intuitive.

Yeah. And we're also hoping later on down the line there's going to be integrations between hardware wallets and the bull app as well. So eventually that's going to be like a really super cool feature that we'll have built in, but it's being worked on at the moment. It's a, it's a great project.

And this is a, with scaling and like instant payments and everything, there's, there were a lot of like initial design and flaws of other wallets. And we think the bull, the bull wallet is going to be able to handle everything as a as a daily driver yep um on chain and liquid awesome what are your thoughts on electrum uh throw to you pablo first electrum i think i used electrum like back in the day first of all when i was like goofing around with different types of wallets

um i haven't used it a huge amount it's kind of a little bit clunky but i like that aesthetic you know what i mean um but yeah i don't use it too much nowadays i i pretty much just go to sparrow just because i know there's so many options out there as well but you do eventually just become comfortable with one um so electrum like 2016 i think i was using electrum back in the day and as soon as i found sparrow i was this is great. Yeah, very much kind of the same boat. Yeah, I'll still poke around with Electrum and Blue Wallet, particularly if I'm trying to find Bitcoin, if somebody maybe is kind of misplaced things, or we're trying to do a recovery, I find them a little bit nicer if I'm just searching for maybe a different derivation path to try and test some things out. But

generally speaking, same as Pablo, I just stick with Sparrow for the most part. Now, in terms of people that want to start learning how to run a node, for me, I'll be honest, maybe the one I use is not the easiest, not the quickest to set up, but I have a dedicated Linux laptop that's running core on it. Of course you do. Of course you do, yeah. I compiled the core and everything from scratch. It's the way I recommend people to do it if they have the chops to do it. But in terms of somebody that doesn't have the time or maybe the know-how, but they do want to run a node

because they want to be their own bank. What do you guys suggest in terms of hardware solutions and software solutions? I like Start9. I've just been very comfortable with that. It's been a nice experience. I like the marketplace setup. The only thing that I'm not a fan of is that with Umbral,

I can get into core and like the command terminal much easier. With Start9, you got to go through an SSH. It's not bad, but for hooking up to Sparrow and some of the other applications that you can get on there like a password manager and stuff too, I think it's a great user-friendly setup. Probably you're thinking the same. Yeah. I use Start9 as the old reliable reliable i don't do a lot with my start

nine i have two nodes i have like uh and both of them are built out of like the you know like the lenovo mini computers yeah i live in quebec city so here in quebec there's like uh it being the provincial capital there's a lot of like uh government offices and banks and headquarters and stuff so these guys as soon as they renew an it contracts they just liquidate all of their micro computers so there are hundreds of cheap computers in this city um so i picked up like two of them for like 100 bucks each uh switched out the hard drives and i use one which is umbral just for goofing around with umbral like i use it for like more nostril based things lightning based things and the start nine i just use it for more Nostra-based things, lightning-based things. And the Start9,

I just use it as Bitcoin. That's pretty much it. I plug my Blue Willet into it. I plug my Sparrow Wallet into it, and I just get my transactions done. So I kind of like having two because when I was first using nodes, there's a lot of experimentation. And at the same time, you want a node just to be reliable. You want to be able to access it from in the house, from out of the house. You just want it to be online as long as possible. But when you're learning about nodes, you want to experiment as well. So I kind of just forked and I was like, I'll have one which is for experimenting on and one which is reliable. So if somebody wants to respond to your question, something that's not too heavy, not too experimental, I just go start nine.

You load it up and it works it's super easy you just install like bitcoin core and then like electrum server yeah and you just let those two run and then you plug into your your wallets into them sometimes we do do a little favor and we help some clients out by you know they they can instead of running onto some public servers they can run onto a bull bitcoin server as well so for our vip our friends and family and stuff we we kind of provide that little service there so they can uh they can rely upon us rather than like a full public but um start nine's really good i really like the the core ethos of start nine but um like umbrella

with all the docker apps and stuff like that there's there's loads of like extensions you can get on umbral they've got so many different things um i'm even like experimenting with i'm a mac user sorry not sorry um but they've got like uh they've got like a time machine function as well so instead of like backing up onto a usb whatever i do as soon as i connect to my wi-fi at home all of my mac devices will back up onto my bitcoin node um so you know if i lose a laptop out of the house i just get a new one come back home and sync it up. Stuff like the vault, Bitcoin Warden vaults, all of that stuff I mess around with in Numbrel. And if it goes down, it goes down. But I don't have to re-sync my original one.

So my only advice would be, like, this is probably my biggest learning is, like, everybody was scaling on the Raspberry Pis. Like, grab a Raspberry Pi. It's the best way. And then COVID happened. And the supply chain got messed up. And there was a long wait. And honestly, for the same price, you can get one of these microcomputers, these mini computers, and they're a lot more stable.

Booting off the SD card all the time, I didn't realize this. I'm not a big computer guy. I worked in finance and education. But booting off the SD card on a Raspberry Pi will eventually corrupt and then it's not stable. So the most popular option isn't actually the best option. I'd avoid a Raspberry Pi will eventually corrupt and then it's not stable. So the most popular option isn't actually the best option. I'd avoid a Raspberry Pi for that type of purpose.

They're great for other things, but not for a node. Agreed. 100%. Sorry, Nathan, do you have anything else you want to add to that? No, I'm just agreeing with everything that Pablo said. Yeah, you're right. The minicomputers are so cheap these days. It's not... If you just want to pick it up as a fun hobby project, just go for it. Play around, tinker, get some hardware, and see what you can make these days. It's not, if you just wanted to pick it up as like a fun hobby project, like just go for it, play around, tinker,

get some hardware and see what you can make of it. And apparently in Quebec, we have tons of cheap stuff because the government's inefficient and wasting it. There's a market there. There's a market there. Side hustle. Side hustle. The secondhand market, I'm a big fan. You could go look on like Craigslist or Kijiji or whatever local listings are out there and you could just look for even laptops.

The one thing about laptops I will say, they give you an added layer of security. For example, if you're running a computer and the power goes out, unless you're running a UPS, it's just going to shut down. With a laptop, it has its own built-in UPS of the battery. Unless, as long as the battery has some charge in it. An old one probably won't have that much.

But it will give you enough that you go there and shut it down so you're not going to lose everything. I'm a big fan of the old laptop. They're easy to find. They're easy to get. Like a Lenovo or something. Those things are tried, tested and true. As long as the battery still has some juice in it, you're okay when there's a power outage. That's just by

two cents. Your mileage may vary and everybody might have different opinions on how to approach this. That's a great point. Plus, you got the screen right there easy right yeah and you shut it off you close it it's still running it's just very tiny and quiet as well i mean i'm not you know trying to show these things but that's just an option for people out there if they want to look for something oh i have a big suggestion as well i totally forgot about this but once i built out node one and then node two and then i was like i'm sure there's an easy way to do this. I just installed Bitcoin

core on this Macintosh right here. And I just pruned it. Like that's the easiest way to do it. You don't need any extra hardware, just run a pro node on your regular computer, like work out how much disk space you've got, how much you can run to. They're not going to be able to do everything you need. Um, but it at least give you an interface and like, you'll be able to They're not going to be able to do everything you need, but it'll at least give you an interface and you'll be able to sync it and you'll be able to verify some transactions. So that's an underestimated node solution, I think, is just striking it up on your regular computer from the get-go. Yeah. And an option, if you do have one node and you want to set up another one, especially the first one's a full node, you can simply just copy over the chain

state and the blocks folder i think those are two if you're running core i think that's it yeah you're trusting yourself so to speak you're not relying on somebody else to provide providing it for you which it may have been corrupted or who knows if you're the one that synced it from scratch with your own computer you could trust yourself so you can actually move that and save yourself a ton of time for doing the ibd because all the IBD has been done. So yeah, lots of different options out there in terms of,

I want to talk about like the recent price action in the last say year, even in terms of like people coming in and people wanting to onboard and Bitcoin, just new users. It's, it's gotta be incrementally. Like it's gotta be absolutely nuts compared to the the price is going high but people coming in it's going to be much much higher so like do you find that like more and more people are just looking at bitcoin because it's being talked about and number go up

technology like i'll go through to you nathan first i mean do you find that yeah a lot of people are just jumping in now more than ever oh absolutely that price drives kind of attention for people that aren't already in the space so i can tell that like since the summer and with uh with the recent price action we're getting uh more emails and calls and inquiries and all this fun stuff as well too it's interesting because i almost have like a weird segment of the population because i almost feel like price is driving urgency but a lot of the people at least that i'm already talking to and again it's going to be kind of selection bias there they already knew that they wanted to be in bitcoin they're already very much

so like kind of freedom and self-sovereign oriented and the price was just making them just pushing them to actually take that first step so definitely seeing more attention but still less than i would have anticipated particularly now that we've broken through 100k us i almost expected when we got past 100k cad that we were going to see more coming through and it wasn't still relatively quiet and even now like i'm just looking at time chain calendar here and priority is nine sats per v byte like it still feels like activity is not full on bull market despite the price action and maybe that's because tons already moved off chain into like liquid and lightning and other things as well or people just leaving it on the exchange but while it has increased it still feels relatively quiet to me pablo your

thoughts yeah it seems like a i think there was like a period in like around about october time where i was like okay here come the dms from the aunties and uncles uh and that didn't happen and then like when we hit like 100k usd i put up like bull bitcoin launch that like i was right emails and and that kind of campaign so i posted that up just to flex i hardly ever post something on like facebook which is like very much a normie platform but i was like let's do it you know let's uh let's lap over everybody that i was right so i i did that for a little bit i got like four or five tms and um it's curious man there's still it's it's almost like easier to orange pill people outside of of the run-ups because there's the urgency there that kind of like makes people

jump a few extra cognitive steps into being like they just want to be in the game and i suppose that's kind of good for adoption i mean that's why a lot of people did get into bitcoin even if now down the road like the three of us will say, well, you know, it's not just price action, it's freedom tech, it's, you know, it's it sounds money. And those are things we learn after the fact, we liked the number go up. So I do think it's a good thing that it's bringing more eyeballs to it. I just think it's different every time around, you know, like, the best is yet to come out of this bull run. And I think it's going be around january time um there's a lot of eyeballs like the the mainstream news is definitely moving around bitcoin it's you know there's there's that blood in the water and the sharks are kind of circling and who's going to be the first one to jump in you know we had microsoft not good and no bueno but amazon

coming up soon and like vancouver city yeah and like everyone's asking, everyone's talking about strategic reserve. So there's like all of this kind of cyclone of activity around Bitcoin, but actually on chain and actually like the frenzy isn't yet ongoing. So it's an odd time. It's definitely an odd time, but it's always nice to get those few aunties and uncles reaching out, especially on Christmas time. If anybody's watching this, like Christmas is always a great time for little pumps in price because at the end of the day we don't really give a fuck what amazon or microsoft are gonna do it's a people's network it's us so i can't wait to people to go home back to see their friends and families and have these

conversations personally i'm looking forward to sitting down at the table and grabbing a beer and going through like hey so what's bitcoin to you And I'll explain and how it changed my life. And like, that's where it's really going to be at. And I think we need to sit down and have time with people because it's, it all moves too fast. Otherwise, the news cycle is way too fast, right? You know, you'll hear one big news about Bitcoin today, and then tomorrow, we're on to something else. And then it's just like the attention span of people isn't really there to be able to capture what's going on. What people need is the sit down. What people need is the long stretch. What people need is the handholding and the news cycle isn't going to do any of that. And the price isn't going to do any of that. Like adoption actually

looks like people reaching out, connecting and helping each other. And that's, that's kind of where I put my hat on as an evangelist, right? That's why I still keep that word very core to what I do. I think that's actually going to drive adoption and price will follow rather than price first, adoption will follow after. I'd like to see adoption being put first. But like I said, that's not what got me into Bitcoin. Obviously, the price did. You know, I'm actually kind of curious, Pablo. I've been toying around with an idea today that I've been thinking about, like, OK, who's coming in next? And I almost wonder if at least the initial leg of newcomers are going to be people that didn't have somebody that had Bitcoin in their life. So they're very far removed at this point in time.

And they might not even be aware of all the things that are necessarily happening, but they might be the kind of libertarian or even just sound money camp that would be open to these ideas. Because I wonder, and it's just unfortunate human nature of all the people that have a direct line to Bitcoin. If it was suggested like, hey, maybe you should get into this. If ego and identity might actually push them back for a little bit. So thinking, would somebody be a little bit kind of bothered or resentful if they had Pablo telling them back at 40K to buy some, and now it's run up? I wonder if it might even be harder for them to make that first step, that kind of admission, that humility, versus somebody that didn't have somebody telling them to buy it a couple of years ago. Yeah, maybe, because it's easy for us to say, to come back to the post I made, I was right.

Yeah, that's easy for me to say. But for someone else to say, you were right. You were right. Yeah, that's hard. Maybe going to take a little bit. Like, for example, I nearly did this, but a mix of like having too much other important stuff to do and laziness was like, you know, you talk to a lot of Bitcoiners. And in fact, like immediate friends and family aren't orange-pilled yet. It's like a Bitcoin confession.

It's true for myself as well. I talk Bitcoin all day. I work in Bitcoin. I help people adopt Bitcoin. But back home, when I go back home for Christmas, I'm still going to be like, you really should consider buying some Bitcoin. Please read a book. My pop was looking at it like, when was it?

Around about January time. You know, they're just like starting a new year. They were looking ahead and, you know, they're retired. But they were just looking at how they could properly save money. And they were like, hey, how does this Bitcoin thing work? So, you know, we went around the block and I explained a little bit about it. But then they got scared with like the tax thing and like the fees and like the so they backed out but it was like they just wanted to put like a thousand dollars on bitcoin

and ever since that moment like psychologically i bookmarked that time on the on the time chain calendar and i was like okay what was the price back then and i just wanted to set up a bot that would remind my pop every single day like here's what you could have had like because it was a wild time so i think you have to be humble with that as well i'm not expecting i'm not wanting people to say you were right uh that's i don't need any type of like redemption or like you know we've been through a lot of shit but that's okay i am where i am now and i'm not expecting like any like praise or any like uh like apologies. Like, it's all good, man. Like, we're still at the same block height altogether. You know what I mean? That that doesn't change. And there are two great times to get into Bitcoin.

It's the first time you heard about it or today. So I'm just trying to make myself available. And there, I suppose that I was right was maybe like one lap that i'll have to kind of take back over the dinner table um but uh but yeah i i i'm not sure there is kind of like a backing down of like okay so maybe these other crazy weird people on the internet on podcasts in their basements uh maybe they're all right you know and that might take a little step down off the ego train but uh bitcoin's a humbling experience in general so is it necessary probably yeah probably completely great quick story and then i promise i'll stop hogging the mic land no it's all you guys if you want to keep going i had one buddy like and this is you know that friend that is just the most amazing most reliable friend uh he's been helping me with some stuff around the

house he helped me out in a family emergency he's been like the longest buddy he was my guitar player for years love him to pieces and we were talking about bitcoin a little while back they made the comment to me he's like man i bet a lot of people are so happy that they listen to you because he did he did years ago right and i had to look at him and go you're the only one it was you and mom that was it dad doesn't even know that mom has some right so? So if he ever watches this, he'll surprise you've got Bitcoin, but that, that was it.

Right. It was like, I tried buddy. You were the only one that took me seriously and listen to me and things are going pretty well for you today. It's quite a leap of faith to actually do it, to invest money in some, imagine you just don't like take a step back to when you didn't understand

what Bitcoin is. And if you're going to put any money in a technology it's really just software right and if it's and it's hard to comprehend the fact it's scarce it can't be copied it's it's your keys so if you don't understand that putting money in that it's it's a hard leap of faith to do like you could you could trust somebody up to a point but then it's like what am i really buying here but i i'm not sure in terms of like technological like adoption we've just seen so much like i i think like it it wasn't that long ago that i first ever took an uber right was it a leap of faith yeah somewhat

was it something that now is just like you blink an eye and it's done yeah bitcoins are kind of the same right we take so many like little steps towards mastering new technology without realizing it. But the problem is we're always like users of a platform. We're behind some corporate.com that's kind of encouraging us and egging us on and marketing to us and giving us loyalty bonuses and nagging us through notifications and stuff. Bitcoin won't do that for you. Bitcoin won't keep knocking at the door. Bitcoin won't have a mailing letter. There'll be bitcoiners that are trying to help you out but bitcoin doesn't really need you so it's not going to come after you like um everything else has become like

this new web-based existence that we have but uh like yeah for example the first time i booked an uber i was like what it's already prepaid i don't have to pay the i don't like hand cash it's not a taxi what's going on here but you do it once and you're like ah that was pretty easy and then you move on and you're like you know you just integrate that into how you work and uh amazon like you know like the first time i bought ebay i was like what the hell is this like this guy has a good rating i suppose i should i'm gonna send him some stuff i'm involved in a transaction it's coming from hong kong and nowadays you don't bat an eyelid about it. There are so many examples of how we've done this in the past. I don't understand how Bitcoin is any different. There's obviously some insecurities

that people still have with money and how they see money and being publicly open about money. It is a bit taboo. And also there's the FUD that's around there. There was no huge eBay FUD. There was no huge Uber FUD, There was no huge Uber FUD. But there's a huge amount of Bitcoin FUD. So unfortunately, that does kind of cloud the waters a bit. But every single person that I know is capable and able to transact on Bitcoin. Like, it's not as big as we think, in my opinion, at least. It just reminds me of the days.

Like, I remember as a kid, teen, I have to gotrack here but being uh being told never put credit card information online like how how is that just like completely done away with now yeah yeah you just hand it over willy-nilly and you're like oh yeah like i've been frauded so like you know i know what to do and like i'll call up the i'll call up the 1-800 number and i'll cry down the phone to them and they'll probably reimburse me because they're insured. The risk tolerance goes down as we experiment more and more with it. You just need to lose a wallet once and use a recovery phrase once and get back into it to be like, okay, I got that. That's the ultimate, I think. That's the ultimate fail to recovery to building confidence is to go through like a

wrecked situation it's like uh you know like if you're out training at sea you have like an all all hands in the water kind of situation like i remember like learning to canoe and stuff my dad used to work on the oil rigs and they'd always do like these emergency situations of like okay you're in a life raft and there's six of you but you all fall in you've got to go through that process with bitcoin as well be like, so everything shit hit the fan. Can you pull yourself back out? The fire drill, you know, like we always do these types of practices in normal life. You just got to do the same practice with Bitcoin. And once it's been done, you build the confidence that you need to be able to say like, I got myself, I can get myself

out of whatever happens. I throw coffee over my laptop.'s all good my house i have a major fire well i i put a seed somewhere else and it's on metal or whatever you know like you need to just be able to give yourself that peace of mind because they want there's no 1-800 number bitcoin's not going to give you a hug and hand you the kleenex you got to get yourself out of the mess but once you've done it once you do it again and again like and and and i suppose that's part of the mentor program over over've done it once you do it again and again like and and and i suppose that's part of the mentor program over over with nate and i suppose that's part of the bull bitcoin thing is is just slowly bringing people into that habit of of testing the fire escape before you need it that's just quadriga cx was a bang up fire dream einstein was another one uh in canada and uh mount gox uh yeah there's a bunch of these

now i mean just to i mean to piggyback off that then do you think in canada we've had the etfs the bitcoin etfs for a number of years in the united states just this earlier this year was approved do you think these things are i'm gonna throw to you first pablo you think these are actually a good thing for having bitcoiners come in and learn about the technology and ultimately become bitcoiners or is this a hindrance because people just buy in and they don't have to think about anything they could just use that and pass off the trust of somebody else i'm of the camp that you probably be able to convert a very small number because people that are buying these bitcoin etfs are just looking for fiat gains more than anything

else but i don't know i'm not sure if you have any other thoughts on that. Yeah. Well, your question was like, will it help people learn about the technology? But the fact is the ETF is stripped of all of the technology. So how are they going to learn about it? The ETF has like, if it's just a portfolio on your dot com investment platform, there's no aspect of Bitcoin's technology in there. Like it removes one of the core principles of Bitcoin, which is that you can custody it and you can hold it. So as an asset class, do you want to invest on the price action of an asset class

whilst also not benefiting from its main feature? That's up to you. But personally, like the experimentation is taken away from you. The node running is taken away. The recovery process of seed experimentation is taken away from you. The node running is taken away. The recovery process of seed phrases is taken away. Like you're essentially like a good analogy is like when kids learn to ride a bike. I grew up in like the 90s learning to ride a bike and it was like super fashionable to put these stupid stabilizer wheels on bikes. Right. stabilizer wheels on bikes right and uh you know you'd like toddle on down the lane like bouncing

from left to right with no idea that you have zero balance and you're totally unaware of the fact that you can't ride a bike and then they take them off and then you just like face plant and you're like oh wake that's that's your wake-up call and i was like uh you know i like scraped my elbows and knees for like a couple years shout out to my pop for like uh helping me to learn to ride a bike there but like eventually technology changed a little bit and like now i see like my friends and family who have like kids and stuff and they got these you seen these balance bikes yeah like no pedals yeah yeah they don't have pedals have you seen a kit like you can actually like you can look at a park nowadays and you can see like five or six year old kids and you can see

the kids that had the balance bikes and you can see the kids that had the stabilizer wheels yeah there's like a whole different air of confidence around the kids that learned from day one how to balance on the bike rather than the kids that just got kind of protected and bubble wrapped and then all of a sudden rip off that band-aid welcome to the real world you know and like that is the difference between like holding bitcoin and investing on an etf like there's holding and investing even the verbiage is different right so start from day one like you know you don't have to like sell your house and yolo into holding bitcoin um you don't have to transfer your entire you can if you like but you know you can take those small steps but in the long run you'll be one of those kids on the park that's like running rings around the others so do you want to give yourself that advantage or not i suppose that's the deeper question that's a good

analogy nathan any thoughts on etf if it's good or bad for bitcoin in the long run i'll take the other side just a little bit and i would say that there is the positivity to it just come from the again the brand recognition and kind of making it legitimate in some kind of traditional fiat minds. But I would almost, I'd be curious to see the numbers on this. I imagine that there is some amount of people that are coming into the ETFs to start with that are then, again, where your money goes, your kind of mind follows, that then have their attention on Bitcoin. And it may be helping us select for some people that would be interested in it, but maybe wouldn't have looked at it otherwise, who then make the leap of like, no, no, I want to take this into my own custody. The analogy that comes to mind is I'm sure there's some amount of people that start by just buying like GLD that eventually realize they

want gold as well too. That they figure out just to Pablo's point is like, you may have price exposure. You've got that number go up, you got none of the freedom go up and there is at least uh a subset of the population who realizes no no i want the ability to if need be i can just port my wealth anywhere in the world that no one can take it from me no one can censor me i can just show up throw my c words into a new you know hard wallet and go from there in terms of gld the one aspect they give that other, like say the Bitcoin ETFs don't, I think, and I could be wrong, you guys could correct me.

Once you reach a certain threshold, you can actually pull out and take physical gold. I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that you are correct, that you can actually redeem it, which is one of the biggest knocks against the ETFs is that you cannot redeem in Bitcoin. Yeah.

If they offered that feature, and not to say I would even start recommending it, but at least it would be a step in the right direction, because then people who have a certain amount of corn or, I mean, I guess whatever ETF shares that they have, then they could at least get actual Bitcoin out of that. I don't know. It has to happen, right? Like somebody, one of these offerings have to provide that. It's got to be a survey. And then once one does it, the rest do it. It just follows suit, right? Like somebody, one of these offerings have to provide that. It's gotta be a survey.

And then once one does it, the rest do it. It just follows suit, right? So exactly. I completely agree. And even it's funny to that point, if you're fortunate enough to have a conversation with someone before they buy the ETF, like a lot of times I'll tell people like, look, if you're just interested in price exposure, it is an option out there. You don't have to go through the hard work of learning to do it on your own.

And again, to Pablo's point, it's not that hard. It don't have to go through the hard work of learning to do it on your own and again to public's point it's not that hard it's a lot to take in but if you're willing to sit down read or work with somebody it's totally doable but it's funny because once you if they if they're fortunate to have someone outline the trade-offs with the etf versus custodying yourself i've never seen somebody not want to take custody of themselves like if it's expressly pointed out i've never seen someone go oh yeah no totally fine with that yeah there's there's enough examples why not just like the quadrigas of the world but like just even in traditional finance there's a lot of different yeah well let's transition sorry probably at any point anything i was just gonna say like we we mentioned all of the exchanges in the past that blew up but we all know the three of us on this call it'll be another one right oh

yeah for sure it's not done yet. Wouldn't that be you? Like, you know, like there will be more implosions. And again, concentration and attention span is so short nowadays. FTX seems like it was an age ago, but it wasn't. I was working customer support for another exchange back then. And I remember having those conversations with people who got wrecked. Like, and, you know, it'll happen again.

We all know it will. So, don't know yeah and that's why if anybody's listening to this or watching us saying what about bitcoin full bitcoin as soon as you buy from them they don't hold it they you have to provide a bitcoin address in which your purchase is sent to so it's not like they'll get rugged and you lose your bitcoin they're not not holding your Bitcoin. So that I will suggest if you're gonna look for an exchange, non-custodial is a very good check mark that you should be looking for. And yeah. We are extremely fortunate to have bull Bitcoin in Canada.

It makes recommending exchange incredibly easy and not just Canada now too, right Pablo? Cause now we're in the Eurozone area as well. That's right. Yeah, bull uh based out of france is now launching um as we speak so we're uh we've managed to penetrate fortress europe and uh recolonizing from the old world to the new worlds we're gonna take our ship and head back and recolonize europe um with bitcoin um so yeah um we're slowly rolling that out across france and

it's certainly an exciting time we've got costa rica as well with bitcoin jungle um so soon world domination but uh just back to your point i mean thanks guys make me blush there but uh bitcoin like uh there's like so many things you don't think of like we you know if we got hacked it would be a bad day at the office but we wouldn't have to make anyone whole yeah right, right. You know what I mean? It's better for you and the customers, right? There's less liability. It's self-custody. There's no liability.

Yeah. And we can mismanage funds or we could get hacked. So, you know, there could be a huge fire or whatever server room, like all of those things. Why insure yourself against catastrophe when you can just use the custodial properties of Bitcoin to just not have to worry about that so yeah yeah it it gives you real peace of mind like i said before i worked for bull bitcoin i was working for another exchange which was a custodial exchange and the amount of stuff behind the scenes that had to be done that had to be you know the the fail safes and the

level of security clearances and i it it pretty much drained all the efficiency out of the machine because there was so much defense being played that you couldn't innovate and you couldn't get shit done and like you know and why like why do they do that because they're removing again like i said one of the main properties of bitcoin yep i'm surprised that entering france because europe is notorious for very strict regulations and i think one of them and i'm going to put you in a spot i'm not sure if you know this but mica m-i-c-a regulations yeah so we'll be operating yeah mica mica i'm not sure how the french pronounce it but yeah so you was it something you had to get?

Did you have to get one of these licenses before you were able to operate within the borders of France? Yeah. Yeah. We actually, we actually partnered up with a company in Bitcoin Leon that already had some of the regulation. We were trying to get through some of the regulation. And, you know, French invented the word bureaucracy. They are the champions of bureaucracy and administration and all of these beautiful fiat words. Well, guess what? They're all French words, more or less. So we were swimming

in that swamp. But then we managed to partner up with somebody in Bitcoin Leon, who already had the paperwork required. And through acquisitions, we've managed to get everything we need to operate within France. So very happy about that. Shout out to the team that worked super hard for it. And I'm just really happy for the... We're maintaining the French connection as well, right? Because a lot of Bull Bitcoin's team are based out of here in Quebec. Francis himself being a Quebecer. So it's super nice to be able to help out the patriots

and the French patrie back in France. So it's going to be launched soon. So Micah's in one year apparently of course so that's uh the inside scoop so i yeah i i can't add anything more to that uh since you're no one has license yet it does not exist yet so uh okay there we go yeah shout out to guillaume who's been working on this as well this is not my forte um but yeah guillaume's been working on it guillaume works for the bull bitcoin team as well so yeah adopting bitcoin nathan i want to hear a little bit about this because have you attended no i didn't get to go

and unfortunately i'm gonna be tied down for a little bit too because like joey i have a i have another one on the way so kid three is showing up here in march okay is this your not your first then it sounds like oh yeah okay no i'm stacking kids and stacking Bitcoin as fast as I can. Right. The two most important things. And realistically, the only thing I really spend my, my Bitcoin on is the kids and is, uh, with my local ranchers as well too. But no, Pablo was down at, um, adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador. And funny enough, I had, um, some previous clients that I'd worked with that were able to meet up when he was down there with him as well, too. So I heard tons of stories. It sounded like a fantastic event, Pablo. How was it for you? It was awesome. It was really cool. Adopting

Bitcoin was like really sweet. For what I do in Bitcoin, it was like one of the best events I could have imagined because it is focused very much on, you know, the title gives it away, adopting Bitcoin. But the way it was put on um it wasn't so much about macroeconomy it wasn't so much about like product launches it wasn't i went to nashville which was just like a crazy like vibe and especially with all the politics happening around there but then adopting was on a totally different frequency it was very much about okay what can we do and there were people from around the world who were doing you know circular economies building out low friction exchanges working with education and everything possible um it was a super cool event but also what was really interesting for myself was the me premier

bitcoin my first bitcoin they had an unconference before it as well i didn't get to make the one in nashville but i managed to attend the one in san, but I managed to attend the one in San Salvador. And I really like the format of what they do. They have like a free flowing format where basically people at the start of the meet, there's breakfast. It's not like, OK, everybody runs to the main stage. There's talk after talk after talk. It's like, no, welcome to the event. We'll sit down.

We'll have breakfast. So you just pull up a chair with some people, get to know each other. And then they open the ceremony and say, okay, who wants to talk about what? And then you can pitch whatever you want to talk about. And then they make an itinerary by, okay, who wants to, who wants to participate in this discussion, that discussion. And it, it, it just kind of bursts out into like little bubbles and little sections and discussions and stuff happens at the event.

Like partners meet each other and businesses are made and projects are launched and that was really really cool that was like a totally different style of event that i attended so the two of them together were were really powerful i had a very good time i managed to do a talk whilst i was there i was talking about like my vision of what bitcoin education looks like i call it evangelization 2.0 where i'm just basically trying to leverage my past as a language teacher here in Quebec, to be able to teach the language of Bitcoin through interactive workshops and things like that. So that was super well received as well. And just because of the way the events were organized, I managed to strike up three or four partnerships internationally,

everything's open sourced in education. So we're all going to help each other out. So it's super accelerated my projects and other people's projects. And I really adored it. Like, and obviously it's in El Salvador, which I'd never been to. So there was that whole thing as well of like checking out Bukele's vision and visiting the Chinese library and walking through safe streets and using lightning to buy pupusas and surfing and shit. It was absolutely dope. It was so good. It was so good. So there are adopting Bitcoin events around the world. I think the next one up is Cape Town in January. I think that's right, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And then... Netherlands after that. Netherlands, yeah, and Amsterdam. So they're a really, really good event. I do recommend it. Very future-focused, very positive. Great kind of vision of how we can drive adoption yeah

nathan you're gonna be going to any of these or your kids are gonna be uh keeping you know i'm stuck on the sidelines for a bit which is totally fine gotta stay home take care of the kid that's the rule gotta do it um i do feel like i'm missing out when i can't go to these things as well too like len it was so nice to see you at the and meet you for the first time at the your life your terms event yes like it's you guys know like the first time i met the bull crew was at the um the bitcoin rodeo and the energy you get when you're around other bitcoiners there's nothing like it right it's like guard down best of friends good to go just completely values the line and so i did make the promise to the wife that i would not do any traveling at least immediately next

year i'm hoping i can bump up the time frame a little bit but no i'll be i'll be just uh at base camp for the next little while here taking care of baby number three that's the way to do it and i just want to touch base on el salvador and i want to hear your thoughts nathan because there was some news that was posted this past week i'm not sure if you heard about it financial times was posting it that it looks like el salvador is going to be going to the imf for a loan 1.2 billion i think was never being thrown around and in exchange for that loan they would have to start uh well stop their bitcoin adoption in terms of having businesses accept bitcoin as a legal tender so you can't pay with stuff with bitcoin in el salvador officially i guess unofficially vendors

could still do that so what are your thoughts on? Because it seems like it's a step back in terms of Bitcoin adoption as a whole. It is and it seems very kind of like, I'm trying to figure out the angle or the think a few steps ahead to try and understand necessarily what they're doing. Realistically, the Bitcoin tender laws were kind of controversial, because the force aspect to that you must receive as well there too. And largely, I do agree, like, I don't, I don't think you have to do anything for Bitcoin, but get out of its way. So I don't know the information, but I'd be curious how it's going to be treated in terms of capital gains. Cause essentially there's, there's no sort of capital gains tax on Bitcoin and you're free to exchange it or like barter or whatever the kind of, they want to, how they want to frame it up. That's fine. Bitcoin still

wins, right? Is the, and even though they throw hurdles in the way, that's fine bitcoin still wins right is the and even though they throw hurdles in the way that's fine bitcoin still wins but it'd be i'd have to speak to someone who's much more well-versed on these subjects than myself but i'm curious because i always viewed the imf as kind of an extension of the u.s as well too and yeah absolutely and then so with the u.s positioning for uh strategic reserve potentially as well than two i'm wondering if this is maybe some sort of like selling off the existing Bitcoin holdings of the U.S. government. If this is the outgoing administration just trying to kick some hornet's nest and be a bit of a dick on the way out, or what their ultimate end goal is as well, too. So I don't yet understand the motivation unless it is to deter. If we're playing like real conspiracy theory as well, I'm not saying this is the case, but it is the thought that crossed my mind, is that if the US is going to adopt Bitcoin as a strategic reserve with the idea of letting the value of Bitcoin run up so that they can devalue the dollar against it and basically

deal with the debt situation to get debt to GDP down. Then the last thing they'd want to do is have other countries making that same play. The win for them would be to push other countries onto the dollar, adopt Bitcoin for themselves, and then devalue the crap out of the dollar, right? And leave them holding the bag. so i i am not saying this is the case but the thought did cross my mind they're like hey maybe they're trying to basically like shit coin rug the rest of the world being like hey take our stable coin it's great take our usd and then they're just gonna sell it off and roll it into bitcoin that's a 40 chest move yeah i heard like different rumors at the moment.

I suppose, like, everybody's waiting on two points, you know, in terms of the USA. There's, like, all types of ways they can transition out of the petrodollar into maybe, like, a stablecoin dollar. There's a lot of rumors around that. We'll see. I was trying to find, like, Eric Trump's talk from BTC Mena. I couldn't find it today, actually.

I think it'll be up tomorrow probably just to see what's going on from the White House point of view. But in terms of El Salvador, it's always very tricky to know like what Kelly's like long term plan is. Like from being in the country, like there's a certain sense of like, hey, we're good. We're certainly a lot better than what we were. But we'd really like to know what's coming down the road here. There's a lot of uncertainty still in El Salvador as to respects of like what comes after Bukele, how's Bukele going to finish out his term? Is it going to be his brother that steps in?

You know, and there's a lot of kind of like inner anxiety about that. You know, they've got like 60,000 like violent criminals, some innocent, some guilty guilty like all locked up what happens if they just like get released because something gets overturned what happens if the bitcoin position is is scrapped you know um i could kind of feel that whilst i was out there looking from the outside into el salvador we it's the savior country you know they're leading the way and like hallelujah but from being there there's a lot of people who've gone through a lot it's the savior country, you know, they're leading the way and like, hallelujah. But from being there, there's a lot of people who've gone through a lot. They're happy. It's better than what it was, but they don't know where they're going. And I think this type of move, like the Bitcoiners are now starting to scratch the head behind Bukele being

like, yeah, what's, what's the move here? So, you know, I, I can't even imagine what's going to come down the road there. I guess time will tell but um it's certain it's not as simple as okay the first ever nation to adopt bitcoin it was just and they lived happily ever after right it's we're still waiting on a second country and until we get one we're just all looking at el salvador being like i hope i hope they run out the race you know i hope they manage to do these things um but there's all sorts of ways that people are going to have to save this terrible debt you're going to either have to dance with the imf or you're going to have to transition from backing on gold or backing on stable coins or

remove the petrodollar i think who was it was saying was it sailor saying the other day like the u.s should short gold and sell all of its gold out and then transition onto bitcoin and like leave everybody leaving gold and devalue the hell out of gold and i think there's going to be big moves but one of the moves i am certain of is like that holding bitcoin in the medium to long run will be the future-based move because it sounds money and it's they can manipulate the stable coins and they can print extra and they can sell gold and they can go to the IMF for loans. But Bitcoin still sticks to what it's good at, which is that fixed cap supply. And we can bank on it and I can verify my transactions and I can hold my private keys.

So it doesn't change my position in terms of Bitcoin, but it certainly makes for interesting news. It is 4D chess, like you were saying. The pieces are moving on the board right before our eyes here. Yeah. And it's at that nation state level now as well too. If not even necessarily adoption, it's 100% in the conversations, right? And even if the necessarily the heads of state or the leaders in positions aren't well-versed,

you know that it's almost like Fight Club. We're everywhere. And there's Bitcoiners just moving into those advisory positions beside them, assistants, other people on the team. That adoption is continuing to grow. And it's with the idea to like the sailor's point of going straight to Bitcoin and devaluing gold. Like absolutely, because like Russia and China

have been buying up gold like mad over the past decade or so, right? And essentially what you're doing is like kind of skipping over installing landline infrastructure and going right to cell towers and just completely rugging them as well too and so very much so it's it's jason lowry may have had a couple good points there may be some of this kind of strategic even defensive planning going on in the background of looking out going this isn't because i'm pretty sure like even is it was it the fed or who was it like they even or the treasury department they even admit that their debt is not sustainable even not including a recession or any issues too they all know it's coming so they even if it's not bitcoin they're doing something to plan for it i would at least

imagine some of them are yeah yeah and it's like uh this like i don't know like following through the u.s elections you're like do they want to pull down a recession on on the new administration just the way they handled like the election run up and like they kind of shit the bed with everything that was their their election stint and it was almost eventually you could feel that um you know harris lost the backing of the party even like a couple weeks before the actual elections you could just tell the tone switched and you're like why would the backing of the party, even like a couple of weeks before the actual elections, you could just tell the tone switched. And you're like, why would they kind of sacrifice her? Right. It felt like a sacrificial kind of election. And you're like deep, like in the back of my mind, I'm thinking they just want to pull a recession on, on the new administration on Trump.

Like it would in their long-term strategy of politics, it would maybe make a bit of sense. So I'm not sure how everything is going to play out. I think we get a little bit nervous because the ante has been upped. But this is game theory, essentially, just because a few while ago, we were talking about block size wars and lightning scaling and different exchanges going bankrupt

and Coinbase being on the stock market and all that type of stuff. It wasn't too long ago ago but now like those were the pieces of the previous puzzle but now we've got like the imf and like the chinese buying gold and like isn't it a beautiful thing like this is where we're at and uh we can just sit back and watch it's it's like a sequel of a movie that you've loved but every time like they managed to write a bigger and better movie yeah uh you know like usually the first movie is great the second movie usually isn't as good and the third movie sucks but like these movies are just getting better and better like i don't watch tv no more i just watch these this news cycle play out in front of us being like holy smokes we're here and uh you know

i know bitcoin will do its thing it's tiktok next block but when you hear these big names and you can feel that there's like tectonic plates moving, it kind of can get you a little bit in the insecurities. But it's all good. Like, I think we deserve to be to be where we're at. People have worked very hard. We're standing on the shoulders of giant sweet three. And it's just nice to be like at the crest of a wave now just looking up and to that point i think like there's so many landmarks along the way is that because of bitcoin it's like the right things have our attention i think we are at like

the precipice of something there's been like again putin talking about basically putin capitulating to bitcoin was one trump talking about um the strategic bird is there and the other one from recent time too was even uh trump on rogan. I thought that was the death nail to the corporate media. You've lost your propaganda arm and you're about to lose control of the money as well too. And for us, it seems so obvious that these shifts are happening and major things will happen over the next decade that it's actually hard to believe. I started to go, am I crazy? But then I get to sit down and talk with my fine friends like you guys and go nope we're just early and you're probably right well you live in interesting times now uh do you guys have time for a little bit longer or because i booked you

for an hour i don't want to let's go i'm good let's go so and just in case i conk out i'll come back immediately just my routers just sometimes have some issues i'm not gone i'll be back in like 10 15 seconds but i guess the next way we live an interesting times thing is canada today the bank of canada yeah cut interest rates again uh 50 basis points now i'm gonna go to you first public because of your financial background maybe you could like lead us i know i know shit about i was i say i used to work in banking right because it's a flex but honestly i was like a call center rat. You know what I mean?

I was changing addresses. But I don't know, like between the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada, like I've seen like different heads roll and different people move. And I think I just really disconnected from it like during COVID. I think we don't really know what their plans were. I used to watch like the Fed announce rates and I used to like try and trade rates. And eventually I just totally decoupled from it. I mean, like, what a fucking waste of time and energy to follow this clown show.

You know what I mean? I mean, like, what does it actually mean? It can mean, does it mean good stuff or bad stuff? Like, if you're in dollars, it probably means like if if if you're in dollars it probably means bad stuff if you're in bitcoin it means you don't care anymore like it's got to the point of like total apathy with whatever the bank of canada is going to try and do to patch this over and i think like even people who don't hold bitcoin have kind of got this um the monetary policy of what's going on with the with the what is it the gst cut so bad. Like, even people who aren't in finance

are eye-rolling at the monetary policy of the central powers. Even people who don't have Bitcoin are working out that it's all just some fake, you know, puppet show. Like, people are insulted it's got that far. You know, people are really feeling insulted by, like, the last quarter of this year within the Canadian dollar. And yeah, they've kind of managed to soothe that inflation pain and they've managed to stop us complaining.

We've got used to not complaining about grocery prices now. We just kind of suck it up and that's how it goes. But it's just ticking away and it's, I don't know's like um it it becomes irrelevant once you that's the nicest thing about when you start to tap into something else like it becomes less and less relevant you don't need to i don't follow these things to be honest it makes me sound a little bit ignorant to it but honestly i sleep way better i i didn't even know it was going on today like it's not on my calendar i don't give a fuck they can they can go up or down three or four points like i'm not exposed to anything because i switch into the hardest money that was ever created from day one as soon as i receive it so i'm untouchable for whatever they're trying to do

i just feel bad for the canadian people who haven't yet worked it out that it's it's it's a sinking ship and they're just trying to patch up holes in a broken economy and people feel it but they just don't know exactly where to go and it's because all of their machine and all of their news cycles and all of their media is telling them to stay on board it's okay so there's a huge amount of cope going on at the moment but um i don't know as soon as you opt out you opt out like not just financially but in terms of like where your negative energy and your time is being spent you can opt out of that as well so my life is a lot saner um because i was always trying to work it out but there's nothing to work out it's broken that's it you know ah see i'm like i agree with everything that pablo said but i'm just fascinated like watching a giant car wreck it go by as they're on the

highway it's like i can't help but stare at this thing and but that's the thing it is like it's like on the highway you know like i was driving to montreal for the meetup last week and it was like you know someone got pulled over by the police at the side of the highway like not even an accident like no flames or like no one no one like no like oil or spilling over the wood of the road flaming it was just simply someone got pulled over for speeding or whatever but everybody slows down down right they all everybody slows down and like the country's being slowed down by looking at the shit show like look further ahead look further down the line is kind of like how we can move forward but until then like we can feel it when i was in el salvador

i met so many canadians who were just like they just reached that threshold of like i can't do it i'm done i'm out and like i'm really bullish on canada right i really am like i became a canadian yesterday by the way i had my citizenship i didn't want to say anything but yeah congratulations yeah this is day two of being a canadian so like i'm gonna defend my nation our nation and say fucking like you know i feel really bad for canada right now and i think it's a shame that we should just either complain or leave like that shouldn't be how it how it goes you know that there is an alternative way but we've got to look a little bit further down the road and we've got to start looking for different lanes that we can take so we can kind of get this traffic jam moving again because it it's it's hard out there

and i i can feel people's pain and i can feel that it's it's it's contagious as well so surround yourself with bitcoiners and and try and help people out there in need especially over the holiday period fuck the canada post strikes and all of their fucking free money they're gonna give us on a tax rebate like just look a little bit further down the road because there is there are good things coming i'm so bullish on 2025 and i'm i'm still bullish on canada no matter what people want to say. So anyway, that's my little like, I pledged allegiance yesterday. So I'm fresh off of like a new wave of patriotism. Let's go. See, I'll take the flip side of the coin there where at least in the short term,

economically speaking, I'm not at all bullish on Canada. But however, to Pablo's point, I'm very bullish on Canadians. We're a hearty bunch. And absolutely, the more that we can get onto the Bitcoin life raft, I think we'll be just fine, particularly with our energy and resource rich nature. But to the original thing, like the 50 basis point cut today, I agree that the central bankers, you cannot centrally plan anything and especially the price of money. And so for me, looking at the 50 bips cut today is just an indication of how bad things have already gotten that the central bankers are taking notice. And it's funny because they will talk out of both sides of their mouth. They're going to be low for a long time. We're never cutting. And they're just

a reactionary organization who I do not believe actually has control at all. I think the longer dated treasuries are completely their own market and they can only push the short end and do so much. But really I think it's the psychological impacts that they try to have. But funny enough, they'll talk about how it's like, it's a long and variable lag, but we're raising interest rates, people. I know it looks like it's doing nothing right now because you don't really control anything, but it's a long and variable lag. And then when they're cut, they're like, it's going to fix things right away. So I So I look at the, the, was it a buck 75 cuts this year? It was a buck 50, either one. I look at it as the admission to the central bankers that they don't have control over the situation. And it's a lot worse than what they're

looking at. So I'm, I think that things for the Canadian dollar are going to get worse that economically speaking, particularly on a per capita basis, like we are going to get hit so hard, but to Pablo's point, you don't have to take it, right? It's just how much pain do you want to stand being in the CAD system? And hopefully it's enough that at some point in time, you want to jump like frog jumps out and get into Bitcoin. Water's warm. It's great. The people are amazing. Come over here and watch your houses get cheaper every year, right? Come over here and watch your grocery prices go down denominated in Bitcoin. So kind of taking a bit of a, not necessarily a cynical view, but I think there's a lot more Canadians that are going to have a good reason to take a long, hard look at Bitcoin

coming up in the future here. At least that's the silver lining that, you know, price going up and CAD going down is a good reason to maybe you know let's buy a little why don't you just have that mobile hot wallet set that mobile sparrow wallet head over to bull bitcoin and grab a little agree 100 now i got one last question for you guys let's do it you first nathan okay thoughts on nostrid you use it uh are you really quick i will confess i do not use it enough i have the account set up and i know i need to spend more time there i'm well aware i'm a bad bitcoiner for not playing

over there as much no no it doesn't matter my bitcoiner no no my excuse is my only excuse is is that i do the like the social media handles for uh bitcoin mentor and it's like i just don't want to add another one i just don't want to have another place that i have to go and cross post but i am really i'm really quite interested in Nostra, not for necessarily the obvious kind of uses. I'm not sure in the long term, and I'm hopeful of how things will go for Fetty. I'm curious to see what kind of uptake

and adoption of that system is. But I really like the ability to have Nostra as a plugin. So in Fetty, they're using Nostra for identification and then using Matrix for chat in the background. And I do think it has legs and utility. And I'm not sure if even just like the Twitter style posting and information exchange on that is what's going to end up being the end use of this protocol. But I do think it gives us another tool in the tool belt, something else to stack on top of our decentralized disintermediated money um fourth earnings coming guys so we can

take on the big final boss here in a couple years and really make something happen so i think it's incredibly important i'm not sure that just like the social media app aspect of it is going to be the the main use case for it um but i like that it's there just like all the other privacy tools that we have at uh just again just further protect ourselves against the the death throes of a dying fiat corrupt system pablo so the answer is no yeah maybe long and short of it is no uh yeah i'm gonna i'm bitcoin confessionals right here as well i'm a no as well um i don't use nostrara. I set up an account real quick and I could see its potential. There was like,

when I first heard about it, there was like this Nostra Rica happened really quickly. And I had some friends who went and came back and they're all programmers and stuff. So they were just like foaming at the mouth like this. And I was like, okay, it's another platform.

So back to your point, Nate, like I already have, like, I just had to close all of my platforms down so I can have this stream. Cause I was like, okay, it's another platform. So back to your point, Nate, like I already have, like I just had to close all of my platforms down so I can have this stream. Because I was like, it puts so much load. I have the WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, Telegram, Twitter, LinkedIn.

And that comes with the job. And I like just going around the block and seeing what's happening on each platform. But I understand that Nostra is something else. Nostra is not a copy of Twitter. It's not a Facebook replacer. It's something totally else. Just like Bitcoin is different as a money.

But I'm kind of really good at finding excuses not to do stuff. Right. So check this excuse out, right? This is the reason why I don't do Nostra yet. I'm ready. I went from like platform to platform when Pral came out and damas and everything and i was like yeah i'm gonna put my key from one place to the x my x my n set key i was like yeah yeah it's just like bitcoin super easy i can put stuff over from one platform to the next and i was like that's great

but then i like pumped the brakes and i was like but wait where did i just copy paste my private key to everywhere like everywhere yeah did i just trail that thing through five different platforms on the on the clipboard of my macintosh that's now stored up on the icloud or some shit i was like wait most people and this is my criticism and i'll feel free to take the hit over this one but most people most bitcoiners using nostra have absolutely atrocious key control. Yeah. Like, is that not going to be an issue later on down the line?

Like, or would you rather not have to think about it? So I was like, I'd rather not have to think about it later on down the line. So I was like, well, how do I do that properly? Fortunately, cold card got it worked out, right? I'm not sure if you've used this yet, but- I haven't played around with it yet, yeah.

I know, right? And this is where I'm at. This is me being like this really anal bitcoiner that's like no i have to do everything like linux and open self-host everything like you know just like really making it complicated so i can just kick the can further down the road but that's what i did i was like i need to have like like you hold your bitcoin on a cold wallet i was like i'd like to be able to hold my Nostra profile in somewhat of a cold setup. And I'm trying to look into how to do that with things like NSEC bunker,

which is where you can do handshakes between your private key and your public key or your NPUB, NSEC, without having to just copy paste it and be like, oh, Damus is down. I'm going to throw it into Primal. Oh, Albie wants it. I'll use this.

Oh, CoinOS, like I'll throw it in there. And eventually you're going to lose track of where everything went and you only need to lose it once if later on down the line we're building really significant things with nostra i think a lot of people are gonna have to clean the slate and start again and then with that you lose everything that you built so it's a really great way of saying no no i did the same thing too i just bounced that private key around i was like oh this is so cool with like no consideration for how i was treating it yeah yeah so uh it was one of my projects i wanted to get my first post away from like bitcoin beach whilst i was down in el salvador but i was having too much fun with the older

margaritas down there so and surfing in between um but eventually i'll get it set up i think christmas is always a good time like no need to buy me any gifts anybody like you can just like leave me alone with my uh cold card queue and i'll be able to work on that thing and and work out how it all works because i'd love to be able to host my nsec on my node yeah right and i think that's how we should be looking at it. But it's getting to be a problem that I'm not using Nostra right now. Because I when I went to adopting, guess what a lot of people that adopt Nostra as well. So everybody's like, Oh, I'll just ping this there. I'll zap you this like, have you seen this like, and it's it's essentially the ultimate plugin network, you can plug in so

much stuff to this network. And that's it's it's not a social media platform it's not how i see it it's essentially like a plug-in platform where you can have any type of web-based wallet or you can have a dj-based platform that's playing music or you can have a news-based platform and they all plug into nostra and nostra allows that kind of like commonality between all of these different platforms if you're not on it you can't really access all these platforms and that's where the Bitcoiners are right now. They're on Stack & News. They're on like NodeRunners FM.

They're doing all these cool things that are outside of Bitcoin, but it's part of the culture. So if you want to be able to participate in all these new environments, these new kind of like space, I hate that word, spaces that are existing, you've got to be on Nostra

because it is the plugin network. So 2025 is going to gonna happen you'll see me back there with a very private insect key looking forward to following you nathan i got a private question for you sure i see it in the background you have the drum set you're a budding musician i was there was the the the pre-married younger man was um let's say a little bit more adventurous but um yeah i uh originally, it's funny, I went to school because I was 16 in university, 17 in university, went to school a little bit early. And everyone's like, what do you want to do? And I was like, I have no idea. Doctor? Sure,

doctor sounds good. Why not? We'll go for that, right? But I learned within my first year at university that I didn't really like medicine that much or nearly as much as playing drums and punk bands. So I, I in my, in my misspent youth, I spent a lot of time playing in different bands and ska bands. The monkey over there was a band called lost Kung Fu monkeys out of Tijuana, Mexico, as well as out of Montreal and stomp records.

So I played with them for a while and I loved it. I loved it for years, but it was, I'll say it was loved it for years, but it was, um, I want to say it was around, Oh Jesus, like 27, 28. I remember that, uh, you just reached that point where it was like, I'm getting a little too old to keep living this lifestyle. And I had that like vision into the future of like, okay, if I change nothing, where is my life going? And I was like, Oh, I don't want that. I don't want that I want the house I want the wife I want to settle down and so all that kind of came in at the same time I pursued a a better position in my Fiat work and I met the

wife and I kind of hung up the hat but now I got on on the one side I actually have the kit but the first kid I got when I was a kid from my dad and then I had my touring kid on the other side and so now my two kids hang out down here and bang the crap out of it whenever they want to and i absolutely love it so cool okay guys i i think we got you're almost an hour and 20 minutes i appreciate you guys taking the time so before we go off i just want to pass the baton to each of you just to you know you could say where people could find you some final words whatever you guys want to talk i'll give it to you first pablo so uh yeah like where people could find you if they have any questions or like anything else you just want to just last words

before we we just sign yeah absolutely so um anybody out there who needs any support getting family or friends set up over the holiday periods make sure you direct them to bull bitcoin.com if you need to reach out to me directly it's pabloablo at bullbitcoin.com. I'll be happy to be able to shepherd in any new sheep to the flock. Make sure you're offering them that option when the conversations come up. You can also check out bitcoinsupport.com is a website that we had on our own, but now we've partnered up with Bitcoin Mentors. So if you are looking for those custody options, do head over to bitcoinsupport.com and we'll be able to get you either set up with the information you need

or what is probably best is one of the mentors, expert mentors over there at Bitcoin Mentors. So, and you can always follow me, soon to be on Nostra, but at the moment on Twitter at Sextron3000. Nathan, over to you. You let us off, you'll finish us off too. Beautiful. Yeah, you can find me on let us off. You'll finish us off too. Beautiful.

Yeah. You can find me on Twitter at the BTC mentor handle. If you want to come and hang out too, we do a Twitter spaces, live Bitcoin Q and a Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 3 PM Eastern. And most of the time we have a guest come and join us for some

conversation, just some hanging out and chatting as well too. Fortunately enough too, we've got Pablo coming on this Friday to hang out. So come pop in, hi join us we love when people actually get up on stage and get into the conversation you can find more information about us at bitcoin mentor.io across all the kind of social media platforms and soon nostra i promise i will get to it i will make it happen hey how about we hold each other accountable then like uh we get it done in january both of us

yeah let's make packs right now on live done after you're set up no later than the end of january we make this happen we use to make this happen nice accountability that's right i'm gonna edit this out by the way just to you're my accountability buddy um so and then additionally yeah bitcoin mentor.io or bitcoinsupport.com you can feel free to you can set up a quick uh free discussion if you want to find out how we can help you whatever your situation may be or even just point to some great resources. You can feel free to email us at info at bitcoinmentor.io

or you can email me personally too at nathan at bitcoinmentor.io Gentlemen, appreciate you taking the time to come on. It's been a pleasure, Len. Love it. Enjoy the holiday period. Merry Christmas. Same to you, gents. We'll be back at this on Monday so take care. Merry Christmas, everyone.