The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - They're Clawing Back 12,000 Bitcoin — Yours Could Be Next | The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast 266 Pt 1

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

$970M. ~12,000 Bitcoin. The Prime Trust estate is trying to CLAW BACK coins that already LEFT Swan Bitcoin — and Strike, Galaxy & Fold are next. 2026's lesson: NOT YOUR KEYS, NOT YOUR COINS. Why Canadians must self-custody NOW.On this week's Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast, Joey and Len break down the biggest custody story in years: a bankruptcy court reaching back through the exit door to reclaim roughly 11,994 BTC ($938M), $24.66M in cash from Swan Bitcoin — the clearest "not your keys, not your coins" lesson yet. Then the rest of a brutal self-custody week, plus the privacy tools fighting back.In this episode:- Prime Trust's $970M clawback vs Swan Bitcoin — and why Strike, Galaxy, Fold Compass are next- A Ledger holder loses $1M to a fake paper "support" letter- $6.7M drained from a Kraken & Coinbase user, $5.3M laundered through Tornado Cash- Bitcoin Depot bankruptcy: 9,000+ Bitcoin ATMs go dark- Tether tightens its grip on Twenty One Capital — Jack Mallers says Strike is still his- Australia switches on zero-threshold transfer surveillance (Canada is next)- Italy proves Ordinals are fully traceable using Chainalysis- Sparrow Wallet ships Silent Payments — the privacy off-rampNotable North: the Pearson airport security-clearance scandal, Burlington home invasions, Oakville's "rain tax," , Toronto police charged in Spain, and more.The lesson of 2026 is simple: every custodian, exchange and ATM is a point of failure. The only Bitcoin that's truly yours is the Bitcoin only you can move. Self-custody isn't paranoia — it's the plan.Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast- Website: https://canadianbitcoiners.com- X: @CanadianBTCPod- Subscribe & turn on notificationsThis week's self-custody wake-up call is brought to you by the people who think your keys — and your money — should actually be yours:————————————————————————————————SPONSORS■ easyDNS — Canadian-owned, ICANN-accredited registrar that has accepted Bitcoin since 2013. Domains, DNS, email,hosting, all without selling you out. Use promo code **CBP Media** for 50% off your first purchase, no limits.→ https://easydns.com■ Bull Bitcoin — Canada's non-custodial, Bitcoin-only exchange. Founded 2013 in Montreal. They never hold your keys;you self-custody from day one. CBP listeners get 25% off fees for life.→ https://app.bullbitcoin.com/registration/cbp■ 256 Heat — Hashrate heaters: Bitcoin miners purpose-built to heat a space. Every watt of electricity becomes heat AND hashrate, so you're warming your space and stacking sats at the same time. Custom solutions available. Tell them CBPsent you for a discount.→ https://256heat.com■ Bitcoin Mentor — One-on-one coaching to take you from "I bought some Bitcoin" to true self-sovereign ownership. Wallets, keys, collaborative custody, inheritance planning, node setup, the whole stack. 30-day money-back guarantee on every package.→ https://btcmentor.io/aff/joey————————————————————————————————FOLLOW THE SHOW■■ CBP — https://x.com/CanadianBTCPod■ Joey — https://x.com/joeytweeets■ Len — https://x.com/thebtcpricebot————————————————————————————————#Bitcoin #SelfCustody #CanadianBitcoiners #PrimeTrust #SwanBitcoin #NotYourKeys #BitcoinNews #Tether #Privacy#Canada #BTC #Clawback

Friends and enemies, Prime Trust, giving up, or trying to get back, I guess, instead of giving up. They already gave it up, 12,000 Bitcoin and trying to take swan to the cleaners to get it. Among other tokens and cash as well, that plus a bunch more stories here on Memorial Day. Cheers to my American friends. I thought that was what to pull up a drink there he is, yeah. They kind of rug pulled me. I didn't realize all I have was water. I see water.

That is. No, it's not even. It's, it's lukewarm at this particular time because it's been, I fill it up this morning, took it with me to work. And it's like, yeah, three quarters drunk. Not the best. No, I just had come down, fuck it. I needed some waters. I grabbed this and let's rock and roll.

Oh, yeah. Let's get into it. So don't make me talk too much than I got to refill this midstream. Yeah, sure, sure. How you doing? Good to see it. Things are good. Yeah, yeah.

I'm dried off from this. cold and miserable weekend. I'm back into the sun. It's now nice. I got a little lawn. Not today. Maybe tomorrow. Yeah.

It's a great day, man. Great day. Great weekend. I have some fun stuff going on this week. We'll talk about a lot of this stuff during the show. We should start with the sponsors. Easy DNS. It's the best place, guys.

If you're looking to grab a website, port a website, a domain, I should say, over to a new service, I'll treat you better than your old domain registrar. Mark and he's DNS. Those are your people, man. VPS, virtual private server options for the Bitcoin enthusiast. You want to run a node, Nasser Relay, BTCPA server. Got you. No problem. They have a clawed, claw bot now. You can grab and run on a VPS as well, which is sick. I have one, actually. I have to fire it up and see all the capabilities. So you can do your DNS management or DNS. Your, you know, registrar. related management there.

Probably other things too. Don't forget to, Len, paying Bitcoin if you want. Mark's been the Treasury Company of Note for longer than Sailor has been committing financial fraud. So if you haven't already go over, use the promo code CBP Media.

You get 50% off your first round of buys. No limit. Max it out and take advantage of a great offer from a great sponsor. I don't think there's anything else anything else needs to be said. Bodez DNS and Mark Jeff DeVick. Who's the sponsor. Speaking of no limits, that is bull Bitcoin because they're limitless in terms of providing your service with respect to buying or selling your Bitcoin. They are the premier exchange that

is non-custodial. And we'll talk about why non-custodians what you want. And both Bitcoin is that. They do not hold on to your Bitcoin once you make a purchase. You've got to provide a Bitcoin address when you do the buys. A lot of different things you could do over there. You could do reoccurring buys. You could do auto buys. You could do limit orders. You could pay your bills with your Bitcoin. You can send money to your buddy. Send it through Bitcoin. It ends up yet in their account. Lots of different options over there. Well, Bitcoin continues to expand globally. They are available in Canada, Mexico, some parts of Latin America, Western Europe. So if you are looking to buy or sell your Bitcoin, both Bitcoin should be the ones you want to talk to. And if

you haven't yet open an account, use our link below by doing that and opening account with that. All your buys and sales are going to be cheaper forever. So check them out. You love to see it. You love to see it. Do a little boosting, little housekeeping. Got any boost there today? No, I checked yesterday morning. I should have checked after that.

Let me take a quick peek now if there's anything. But there was nothing, you know. It was a bear market confirmed. Yeah. Truly it is. Oh, no, we got one. Actually, you got two from Cous. Bonn, 21, 21, Sats.

Am I going to be the only zap this week? No, you're not because we have a second one coming in. Hammertown OG 5,000 sats Doing my best To make up for the lack of booze Keep smashing out the hit So there we go So just two and four hours ago

For a couple of booze Thank you very much to Bonn and Hambretown OG It's funny The channel on YouTube has like A thousand more subscribers Than it did six months ago And in terms of the audio side We just had our best month

For the flagship episodes I think ever in April So you guys are like Just cheap now So I'm taking away from this. I don't know what else to say. I'm disappointed here by the... We've started showing more skin.

Is that the trick? A lot of people are doing that now, right? So maybe that's the... I don't know. I mean, I saw on Twitter, I think, this girl, now she is attractive anyways, but she basically said that the posts she made, she does fitness content.

Fitness and I think lifestyle content, kind of like, you know, housewife stuff. Nothing crazy, nothing I would call like, you know, super promiscuous. She says that the posts of hers that do the best have nothing to do with the content of the post and everything to do with whether or not her armpits are visible in the thumbnail. Now, if she was European from 60 years ago. Yeah, tough. She went shit European now in some places, bro.

What are you talking about? I think that they modernized with respect to hair removal. I don't know. 50, 60 years ago is a different time. Mix, I see you're asking if we donate the stats. We donate them if there's a cause, but generally we just keep them now. Because there's no cause out there. Unless we're not keeping them.

I don't know. I've donated almost all of mine. And the last one, there was a gentleman in our bull Bitcoin check was saying that there was somebody. I don't want to give too much information. The guy was sick. The guy was sick.

Yeah. And I gave my half to that. So he passed away, by the way. So it's not like that was a scam. You know, he's not, he's not drunk potting us, you know? I know, I feel bad. I think he had a child too on top of that.

Young child. No wife as well. Tough. You know what? For me, I'm living. I'm breathing. I have a roof over my head and people that are, you know, like I tell everybody, like people look at me, I'm always smiling because, well, sometimes, most of the time I'm always funny.

The reason why is because the reality is I have used of my limbs. I can do shit for myself. There are people out there that are bedridden, can't get out for your full reason, or they don't know if they're going to be around tomorrow. I'm probably going to be around tomorrow. If not, at least I live a good life. Right attitude, dude. attitude. And I'll just note, like, you know, we have, we often, we don't have to talk about the

economics of the show, but the economics of the show are pretty sound for the sponsors. And so when, when Len and I, you know, collect our monthly invoices from Mark and from Bull and, you know, from Twan, whatever, like, that's, that's where we're earning our keep for the time we spend researching and producing the show and doing all these things. The boosts are really just for like, you know, to say some stuff that you guys want us to say on air or like if you have a gripe with something that we say or I think Lens probably said a few 30 words over the years because they were snuck into the boost. I think actually a few weeks ago business cat had you saying something that maybe you wouldn't say on TV. I don't remember what it was. But the point,

the point of the boost has always just been community. And same as the discord. You know, we don't charge for entrance to the discord. We don't charge for like really anything, to be honest with you. All we ask is that you support the show, listen, tell your friends. If you find yourself in need of like stuff that our sponsors sell, then use them. That's all. We don't ask for much, man. You know, we come every week and do two hours of content for you guys. It's well researched.

We try and be as nice and as engaging as possible. And I think the proof is in the pudding. You know, we've been doing the show for about five years now. And it's been a good five years. Can you believe it's been five years? By the way, we didn't even mention that when we crossed the five-year threshold. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

This is like episode 200 or not 200. I'll tell you what episode this is. This is episode, 266. We've been doing this, 266 weeks. That's including interviews or just like ships, just like ships. Just like ships. Yeah. If I went and included interviews too, like it would be my guess is mid-400s, probably.

We didn't do show every week. There are weeks in. Christmas time. I think we've done a flagship every week. No, no, no. We've missed the last Christmas. We list. Oh, true.

First time. Yeah, that was first time we did that. So has it? I thought we've done it again in the past. We don't usually miss weeks. We might condense the weekend to something a little more palatable for our schedules. But yeah,

you know, whatever. We're doing what we can. And I see a lot of you guys coming over from, you know, Bigcast as well. I would assume that's where the bulk of our new subscribers have come from. Yeah, the economics of podcasting have changed a lot over the years. You know, when we first started, we had a different billing structure with lead in and with shake pay than we do with either bull or Mark.

And I think, you know, not that shake pay or leaden were bad sponsors, but one of the things I've enjoyed the most about finding economics of the podcast that really work for everybody long term is that we built relationships with these guys. Like, you know, I consider Mark, honestly, Mark, don't, I'm tooting your horn a little bit here. But Mark is a bit of a mentor for me at this point, you know, like I talked to him about a lot of different things. The bull guys have become like family. You know, I walked into Ghibie's Steakhouse in Montreal a little bit late for the steak dinner. And the bull guys are like, Joey sits over here.

He's part of the family. Like that's what it's about, you know. Could we charge more? I mean, for sure. But it's not about that for Len and I. It's never been about that for Len and I. We're here for the mission, man. And I think that comes through in the.

content too. So anyway, that's a little bit of behind the scene stuff for you there. Are we leaving money on the table? Yeah, but we're not leaving good times on the table. I'll tell you that. You're talking about grapes in the chat. Don Cherry shout out. Nice. Did you have that on your bingo card for today? No, there are some really good ones and I wish I could play them. We'd be totally kicked off. Like the one that, and I'm going to try to be as big as possible because they were playing

in L.A. Edmonton and L.A. were playing in L.A. playoff game and they were just at the entrance waiting for the players to come in and Graves was wearing an earring on one side and showing that he's available. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kelly Rudy wearing that the blue thing. Kelly Rudy. Shit talk. And it was funny stuff, man.

These guys, they look really good, you know. It's really just poking fun. That was the best. LA lifestyle. So. But anyway, man, show to all you guys in the chat and listeners and viewers. I know not everyone watches live, but yeah, it's been fun. We got lots left in the tank.

Anyway, where do you want to start on this prime trust thing? This is a couple days old at this point, but there's some banger, some banger tidbits, some banger news. Well, this is a litigation case that's been ongoing. And I wasn't aware that there was a litigation case, but this one, at least for me, came out of left field, but for other people that may have been following, this might have been old half of them in old news. But for those who just don't remember prime top,

Prime Trust. They went tits up not too long ago. They were a qualified custodian for multiple exchanges, including Swan at one point. And a lot of the issue is Prime Trust provided essentially the least path of resistance. I mentioned this many times of Access of Easy, probably a few times here is, that's a shameless plug for Access of Easy.

You should watch that show. And doing stuff in-house, it is costly. It's the more difficult, more. challenging way of doing things, but you have control of the outcome and rather than simply pointing it off to somebody else. So a lot of exchanges were using Prime Trust under APR rails for handling on-ramps, payment processing, and custody of Bitcoin. And yeah, this model works great until, well, in middle of 2023, it just didn't work because Prime Trust, they were in ruins. They were hiding some losses in the multi-million dollars. They were doing fraction reserve.

for their custodial assets. That's a big no-no if you're not advertising it. If you are advertising it at the bank, it's still a no-no, but at least we are aware that they're doing it. But to stay in the prime trust collapse, this all stem back many, many years ago, of 2021 when they moved over to a new custodial platform, and they kept giving clients deposits to an old address

that was linked to a multi-signature wallet. So they effectively lost Bitcoin that customers, or their exchange customers handed over to them. So to make up for the loss, they decided to use customer funds to try to trade their way out of the whole and the rest is history. We heard that before?

Yeah, we heard that before, I think. It's the easiest way to get to zero. And they did that. It should have did the $1,000 X long on finance. Let's get to this thing. Back to present day, the court appointed prime trust litigation. they are going after multiple Bitcoin companies

and the exchanges and they're trying to claw back millions of dollars in Bitcoin that these platforms successfully withdrew this was in the 90 days leading up to the bankruptcy. How fucking dumb is this? You know, the lawsuit is trying to build a case that the exchanges saw the red flags and they pulled their user funds early

and they received quote unquote preferential treatment at the expensive underpreditors. The way I love, look at it, they were first in line. They put in a request to get their fucking funds. They got it. Life goes on. Right?

Like, it's the first in first. That's the way I look at it. I don't think it's that clean. I don't think the law says it's that clean. That's the way I'm looking at it. And this is Lens law. This is very convoluted the way these guys try to make things. But the lawsuit is going after companies like Swan for nearly one billion in recovered

assets. Strike 30 million in recovered assets. And if I recall correctly, Swan was primarily used. using prime trust before they move over to Fortress Trust. And that move was done just before the prime collapse. We talked about this at length not too long ago. Yeah. 2023 in fact.

And they must have had a crystal ball because they timed this perfect, sorry, perfectly in the fortress trust. Remember those guys there linked to Ripple because Ripple was involved in providing early seed investing for them. So the story, I look at it. It's fucked up. But more than anything, it highlights something that I mentioned many times. nothing beats holding on to your own Bitcoin.

You hold on to it. You have total access to it. Custodial exchanges try to stay away for them as much as possible. I'm pointing up, well, Bitcoin is an alternative if you're in Canada and all these other places that they provide the services to. Check them out. Don't rely on these guys because if you do, this is what happens. There could be stuff that's happened mind of scenes. The custodial company might be playing some should, may be doing some shenanigans with your funds.

And in the end, you'll get just pennies in the dollar. if anything, if something happens, don't fuck around. Hold on to your Bitcoin. Don't let somebody else hold on to it for you. That's the way to do it. I just want to just take the other side of the argument for a second here. The case is a little more complex than I think what people understand it to sort of be. There are laws in the States around what it means to know something is going down, before it goes down and what responsibilities you have to authorities, to your shareholders, to a number of different parties. The question around the swan withdrawals isn't one of, did they see the red flags or not?

It's a question of that someone tell Corey there was a problem on the inside. That's really what's being called in the question in the case, in the legal documents. Did Corey Eclipson receive a tip that the general public did not have? and instead of doing the right things, just pulled the funds. If that's the case, that's illegal. You can't do that. That's a well-known law. It's not just a law in the U.S.

You may remember the Quadriga clawbacks from years ago, people who listened to this show sharing with us via email, via DM, letters they got from the bankruptcy trust saying, you pulled your Bitcoin out X number of days before the, before the exchange went under, and we think that you did so illegally. Here's the rationale. Here's the jurisprudence, whatever. Send us the Bitcoin back.

Here's the address. It was withdrawn to. We want to see it. We want it back. I don't know how those cases turned out, to be honest with you. I haven't followed up on that. Quadriga's been sort of a distant memory for me from a, you know, a bygone era in Bitcoin, specifically Bitcoin and Canada.

What does this mean? I still think you're correct about the non-custodial exchanges. The non-custodial exchange is the only way you should. should be buying Bitcoin. That ATMs, and there's a few other sort of like, you know, I would call them off the beaten path options, Biss, Cottle, things of this nature, that allow you to operate in a way that's private, semi-private, or some combination of the two. And of course, again, non-custodial, no one's holding your Bitcoin. There's escrow systems maybe in place, but that's a totally different system that will still let you grab your stats when all the stipulations and requirements of like a buy-sell contractor met. Here's my question, okay? How does this keep happening to Swan? How is it always Swan in these stories? Whether it's, you know, the mining thing, the Cantor Fitzgerald thing, which Corey seems to have a big, you know, issue with Pacific Bitcoin folding, firing a bunch of people, having their miners stolen maybe or attempted theft of that mining operation years ago. There's got to be better due diligence done by the Swan guys.

Because you can't keep finding yourself at the center of every significant Bitcoin custody, legal, lawsuit, whatever story for the better part of a decade. Right. We're going on six years now with these guys. I think we had Corey on our show in 2021 talking about speaking, by the way, less than favorably in one of the first clips of the show that went viral about Pulpiano and the responsibility that he and other sort of. if big names and Bitcoin had to both the asset and to the investors, like the users. Is he meeting that standard, do you think? Would he say he's meeting that standard? I don't know. I'm not sure. It seems to happen over and over and over again.

Would the people who were fired from Swan say he's meeting that standard? These are questions that he doesn't have to answer, of course, because the market will eventually answer those questions for him. But I would say that this is something that should start giving people at Swan pause. You know, are you really the place that your market? marketing paints you to be. I'm not sure. I'm not sure anymore. They were, I mean, there's a lot of good people working there. And actually, I don't really even have a personal beef with Corey. Obviously, it seems like a nice guy. Three point stroke needs a bit of work. But,

you know, who couldn't use a little bit of help jump shooting? I would just say that they, they got to start looking in the mirror a little bit and maybe refocusing on the mission, um, a touch more. Remember that also remember, also remember that this was happening, this was happening around the same time that they, tweeted about becoming a billion-dollar media company that Odell was saying, you know, we can't find a single dollar you've invested in any Bitcoin companies as a VC, even though you say you've invested like, you know, was it $100 billion, $50 billion, something like that, some crazy number.

There's a lot of things that have happened around Swan over the last of the while. And you can be the judge, you know, what's going on there. I've speculated enough. I don't want to continue speculating. But the saying is, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire for a reason. I think we've seen actually a little bit of fire over the last decade or so. Maybe not quite decade, but you get the idea. You know, it's not just smoke anymore.

One thing after another, after another, after another, after another. I don't know. It's interesting to think about, you know, what's going on behind the scenes there. They'll eventually get burned. If they're playing with fire in the land of Bitcoin where you can't make shit up if you lose funds, like obviously Prime Trust try to do that. Eventually you get burned and the whole thing comes crumbling now. Will the happen this one?

I don't know. I don't know. I haven't looked at their business in depth. So I can't speak with confidence. What the fuck's going to happen next of a while. But with respect to this lawsuit, you know, you can say what you want about the law.

But let's be honest. The law also says that women, so men could give birth and shit like that. So like, there's, there is law, but there's law. You know what I mean?

So, you mean, with respect to the land versus law of the land, right? That's respect to the, They did the right thing, right? Like, you know, if an intruder comes in your house, you shoot them. It's against the law, but you did the right thing.

So there are two different things, right? And I think that they did the right thing. They all say that, you know, the law is blind and have that scale of justice and shit like that. But in the end, it's multi-tiered. And depending on where you stand in society, your donation, shit like that, you get different levels of treatment when it comes to the law. And you just look at people like crews and police. Losey and their record in terms of betting, I'll say, on the markets. Very good over the years.

How does this happen? Well, you know, I don't want to say exactly how, but you could kind of connect the dots. But if somebody like me were to do the exact same thing, I think I'd be nailed up against a cross or put it against a wall and shot. So that's too bad. So sad. But like, was in respect to this stuff, he did and Swan did the right thing. They pulled out, they might have had an insider information.

But in the end, they secured funds for their customers, at least for the time being, because Swan is still in business and people are still able to withdraw their Bitcoin over there. But it will happen forever. I don't know. If you have any money that's on Swan and any Bitcoin and Swan, I'd say fucking pull it out. You'd be pulling. Exactly. You'd be pulling.

Yeah, you'd be pulling. But I say it forever, like, don't trust anybody but the 12 or 24 words and maybe a passphrase that you have, shit like that. That's the stuff that you want to trust. Don't let anybody else hold on to your hard-earned fucking money. It doesn't make sense to me. I'm with you there. I'm with you there.

I think that's sound advice. Sound money, sound advice on CBP. What's next? Noster VPN. With all this talk in Canada about the C-22 and privacy, we got wind this past week that this new VPN service is around. It's an open source and designed to create decentralization, a peer-to-peer mesh network.

And this is, done by Marty Malmy. He's on Twitter. You can follow him. And he's been around Bitcoin for a very long time. So this is like a mesh VPN like a tail scale or netbird. And it adds one more later of security though. There's no emails or cloud logins required for this.

You just need your NPR Pub. That's the Noster public key. And then you could use Noster relays for decentralized peer discovery to help to find devices, to help find each other directly. and once a connection is established, it opens up a secure tunnel that's high speed. And indeed, if there's a failure with a peer-to-peer connection because of shit like firewalls, it works around this by using multi-hopping routing and it gets data through other nodes in the neighborhood until it reaches its destination.

Keep in mind that all the data is encrypted just like any VPN would do. And furthermore, this allows people to set up their own virtual private servers. You talk about this all the time at the beginning because you could rent your own VPS somewhere. I'm looking at easy DNS. And you could then have your dedicated private exit node done through there. So not certain network is not just simply an X clone. That's probably a little shittier. But it could do a lot more because it is a decentralized platform.

And this is one example of what you could do with it. I have yet to try this out, unfortunately. I do want to see what it's all about, but I have been really busy. So if anybody has, I'd like to hear you. experience with it. I think Ben, parent has tried it. I don't know if he's going to be a recommender of it, but at the core of the argument is not necessarily the tech or the privacy or whatever. It's the anonymity,

right? The anonymity is really what is going to drive this thing forward because more and more jurisdictions, excuse me, are making the case that you should have no anonymity. That privacy is a tool only used by those committing illegal, you know, atrocities against their common man. And I think in Bitcoin, we understand that's obviously not true and are looking for tools. The problem is those tools will put a target on your back. And here in Canada, you know, save for EZNS and a few others who are, you know, politely declining to comply with the new rules because they're unable to. A lot of companies, companies like Winscribe, Signal, NordVPN, and others

saying, we're going to leave the jurisdiction. We're not going to participate. You know, we can't we can't stay true to our mission and protect our clients in a way that makes sense for us and it's true to our brand under these rules and regulations. So what do you need? You need something that's anonymous and functions in a way that protects your identity will also giving you the privacy you've come to expect from a quality VPN service. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is it.

The question remains, you know, what happens when they start tagging you at the ISP level? That I don't know. But in the meantime... If that was encrypted. In the meantime, we keep dancing, right? We keep dancing. That's all we can do. Keep pushing this as far as you can. I did see Google today, not necessarily related to this story, but Google today proposing several changes to Bill C-22 here in Canada that would basically turf the bill. And using some really strong levers, like we will support the bill if it adheres to international law on privacy. Great idea. It doesn't obviously, you know, imagine international law to total farce and an overreach. an embarrassment. But, you know, we'll see. There's a lot of pushback on these things.

I hope more tools show up. And I'll be looking forward to trying them and hearing what other people think about them too. Shake pay, former sponsor of this show. Our guys. Second Best Exchange. I have to admit, before Bill Bitcoin came on, they were sponsoring our shows. Shake Pay and I was using them for all my buys. And that's one thing I do.

If you're a sponsor to show, the service is being used here. And I like shake pay, but I like Bull Bitcoin better. And I use them now, not just simply because they sponsor a show. But again, better merch, too. Better merch, if you haven't seen the Bull wallet summer shirts, freedom maxing shirts. It's all about the evolution of your Bitcoin journey. And Shake Pay is great for beginners. But I guess as you learn a little bit more about Bitcoin and whatnot, you want to get something where they don't hold on to your Bitcoin.

And I like how Bull Bitcoin mixes. But it's not about bowl. Let's talk about shake pay. Because shake pay, they're going to be releasing the physical card for those who wanted it. That's for people that want to buy with the shake pay card. And what they're doing is a three-week competitive waitlist game that's running from May 21 to June 11th. So to move up the ranks, you have to use your shake pay card in in-person transactions. And that gives you moving up the list.

And right now it's 1.5% cashback paid directly in Bitcoin, I believe, what it is. And so you just earn every time you tap your card and more transactions you use, you move up. And there's also something called a mayor feature. And you could be the mayor of an establishment. If there is a highly competitive place, like a specific merchant that is available up there that's noticed. This is an old four square feature by the way. Yeah, social check-in app. You could be the mayor of somewhere if you were there all the time. So you can do that with this. So yeah, there you go. And also, Also, ShakePay is allowing local Canadian small businesses to sign up for a business profile,

allowing them to claim the Bitcoin awards based on the waitlist activity happening in their physical storefront. So if you like using the ShakePay virtual card, the physical card will be coming out in a not too distant future. There is a wait list, but even if you don't make the first cut, just like everything else ShakePay does, you'll eventually get there. So, yeah, interesting. I admit I like the Satsback thing and I've missed that about not using the Shake Pay card. But, but I see Jason in the chat making the comment that ShakePay gives them the sharing with authorities vibe. I don't think they're sharing anything with the authorities, but I do think that they have a lot of data. Have you ever seen what data is requested when you...

No, no. It's been a very long time since I've done it. but if I recall correctly with something along the lines is access to your contact lists, shit like that. For the card?

Yeah. I use the card in the app. I've used the card in the app before and it never, I mean, this is a while ago, but it didn't ask me for all that. I see the in graphene, it's a little bit more touchy

when it comes to allowing access. And so it's like, what the fuck is this? I never did allow it at all. So just be careful when you, You're using stuff like that. You never know exactly what information is being shared. Not with the vendor, but with the app itself.

It could get, you know, it could be nothing in the end. Yeah. But you can't guarantee it. And that's, if you really want to control your data, what's going out there, you just, you know, be careful. The reason not to use the, like the reason to use a physical card is because you don't have access to a digital one most of the time. But I think there's another layer of obsec. it's important. If you use a digital shake pay card, it's hard to tell. The guy behind

you doesn't know what card you're using. You tap on your phone. It's not him that I care about. I know, but if you pull out a physical card, it's a shake pay card. Everyone knows you got a shake pay account and you're enough of an enthusiast, a.k.a. have enough of a stack that this is what you're using in public. I just think there's a lot of reasons to not be so brazen about your Bitcoin usage and Hodel and all this stuff. You could put it in one of these sleeves here and just like people

Fair Day. Fair day card. Not right. Not quite that because then it defeats the purpose. Obviously. But like just to hide what it looks like. Yeah. It could be any card. It's a lot. It's a lot. I mean, you know, whatever. Just use the digital one then. Just use a digital one then. Like that's the. Yeah.

Yeah. At the end of the day, this is a vanity project more than anything. So like, you know, whether you're. Yeah. They want it. They only released. It's tough that people ask for. I know, but they want it as a vanity thing because it doesn't add any functionality. So it's just another thing to keep on you in an era where people less and less even carry a wallet, you know? So I just think that this is, I think it's a, it's a late idea is what I would say about this, if nothing else. You know, to not mention anything about the obsec and just kind of the nature of letting people know that you hold Bitcoin.

And there's just no need for physical cards really of any kind nowadays. This is no different. I still use physical cards. Actually, it's all like a matter catch. Not surprised by that. I'm not surprised one iota about that. Matter cash is the only the way I don't have anything loaded on my phone for like. A lot of people use their phones for.

I tap for everything. Yeah. There's no NFC on my phone. There's no Bluetooth on my phone. It's all disabled. Bitcoin Depot. RIP. RIP.

This is a discussion we were having. offline and this is one of the largest Bitcoin ATM networks or used to be in North America traded on Nasdick under the ticker BTM. So it was there and still there I guess. They filed for Chapter 11 on May 18. And so at that time, May 18th, after filing Chapter 11, they decided to take down their entire network of 9,000 kiosks. Insane. And they did it because the business is winding down, at least the way it is. They're going to start selling off some assets. And word for management is that the business model, the way it was, unsustainable.

That's the word they quote unquote unsustainable. They say that regulatory crackdowns is causing them issues, fraud litigation, the collapse of revenues is killing them and making it tough for Bitcoin ATM businesses out there. And there's been also aggressive moves by several states to either heavily regulate or completely ban ATMs because of consumer protectionism. We have Tennessee and Indiana and the United States. Heck, Canada was talking about this not too long ago. We don't know exactly what's going to be the outcome from that. So the perception is that the Bitcoin ATMs are the primary off ramp for elder fraud and fishing scams.

And on top of all this, Cash Cloud, They won a court case against the Bitcoin Depot to the tune of $18.5 million. That's insane. And the background of this court case is quite convoluted, but it had something to do with hardware and software failures for which Bitcoin Depot is at fault. So nonetheless, $18.5 million was the settlement, and that was another nail or maybe the final nail in the coffin for this company. For reference, the market cap, the last time they were traded, $5.5 million. So the $18.5 million that's the proverbial trying to bleed fucking blood from a stone. That's what they're doing here.

Yeah, and I think that Bitcoin ATM business is probably going to be on the way out moving forward. Unfortunately, a lot of people use it for KYC free Bitcoin. A lot of people used it even just to get Bitcoin, even if it was KYC'd. you know it's just another on ramp that is potentially going to be gone in the united states in canada and probably a bunch of other western nations this is chokepoint 3.0 kind of i mean it's not directly but indirectly or 2.0 or some choke point i don't know what fucking version is that right now yeah it's certainly just one of the sequels that's all i know is is uh bitcoin well you think sweating of it no i i think that the bitcoin ATM business for bitcoin well is a very small

Like, you know, if you look at the chart, it's measurable, but it's not really. This is, okay, so this is an argument I hear all the time, but isn't, you know, small it may be, you know, the CEO talks about it as a differentiator. So if that's not what's keeping people engaged with the platform vis-a-vis these cash vouchers that they run, right? This program where you can still get a KYC-free Bitcoin, you know, at least in theory. what is the business model for bull Bitcoin? Sorry for Bitcoin well it's like diet bull Bitcoin with a less cool staff like the Bitcoin well guys will get me wrong but no it's it's it's going to be because the spread is very cheap in fact it's like one of the lowest at least here in Canada yeah it is cheap there's no privacy

there's no onboard privacy features uh there's like like there's there's reasons as well that and I actually think I mean one of the reasons we liked bitcoin uh bull bitcoin obviously the canada posting was big but the canada posting didn't last forever okay it was a good solid year it was it was a good it was a good year but the point is that we didn't pick i'll speak for myself i don't know if len necessarily thinks about this too but i i like bull bitcoin because i think francis is fucking metal you know like that's a big part of who we align the CBP brand with. And I think that that's an important factor, even more so today in a world where governments are coming down on businesses, especially here

in Canada, over privacy and scams, you know, under the guise of we have to stop boomers from giving money away to African princes. So we have to shut down your business. Like, that's the answer. There can't be any personal responsibility. Of course, it's got to be lawsuits and business closures. I'm not saying it's fair. It's not, in my opinion. Obviously, Adam and Bickland-Wil should be able to operate and people don't want to use those services should be able to. But let's face it, they're squarely in the crosshairs now. Between this story, the legislation or the proposed legislation in the economic update and it seems to me general clamps coming down on anyone who thinks freely. I can't imagine these guys are long for

this world. They're a pretty easy target. I don't think, are they domiciled in Alberta? They might be, which might be a little bit of a roadblock for the feds if they do come that direction. But, you know, the other frustrating thing for me, just not even talking about Bitcoin well or Bitcoin Depot. The frustrating thing for me is that people, I think, don't appreciate what they have until it's gone in Bitcoin. And whether it's the Canada Post thing, like we saw so much volume go through the CBP promo code during that era. whether it's the Canada Post thing or the Bitcoin ATMs or stuff like Hoddle, Hoddle Bisque, local stuff like the sat market that the Bitcoin mentor guys run in Calgary,

like meetups where you could show up and not be afraid that someone's going to like follow you home, stuff like that. Those are sort of golden era pillars of Bitcoin, both use and culture. And it seems to me, Lenn, they're kind of fading away everywhere I look. you know, the once great things about Bitcoin meetups at Innocente, whatever, you know, or Bitcoin meetups. You know what I mean? Like these were like sort of the things that drove a lot of community during what were difficult times, right? It was difficult during COVID.

People were getting together at Innocente. Difficult to find K.YC free Bitcoin when everyone started doing shotgun KYC and Bull came out with the Canada Post thing. All these things, you know, they really do mean something after they're gone. and people don't appreciate them while they have them. And so while they're here, they're underutilized, underused. And I think, you know, broadly speaking, there's not been a replacement for a lot of these things as they've been eroded, right? Through no fault of our own necessarily, laws and whatnot sort of force you into a position

where you're, you know, you're putting yourself in harm's way if you try and resurrect some of these services or events or whatever. But it just kind of sucks, you know, is all I want to say. It kind of sucks. It's those are like a, it's like a bygone area. a little bit. And actually talking to a few guys over the last little while, you know, in DMs and even at, I was at Dee's wedding, like I said, a few weeks ago. You know, people remember sort of the fun things about Bitcoin. Even the people who don't have any, by the way, they remember things like, oh, man, like the truckers, right? The truckers was like a cool thing for you guys. You're like all these different stories. They want to talk about Iran now. And it's like, yeah, you know, we're a macro asset.

But I still some part of me deep down yearns for the more like niche community days where, you know, we're teasing 70K and nobody knew our name, you know. And now to Boomer's point here in the chat, he says meetup culture has changed. I totally agree. It's become like a bit of a, a bit of an institutional game, right? Everything's got a sponsor. I know of at least a few people who message meetup organizers and ask if the drinks are going to be provided. Like that's tough man There's no passion

It's like a place to just kind of hang out now And hopefully get a few drinks or You know make a business contact Nothing wrong with that But it's different than what the culture was And I think what the culture It's an evolution of Bitcoin Now five years ago

If you talk about Bitcoin to a human Anyone who would have no idea What the fuck of Bitcoin is Now at least they've heard of it They may not understand what it is I love this shift you've made Where you call every person a humanoid now It's a humanoid yeah

Yeah great So it's, you know, they understand they see it on CNBC. They see what is. I don't know what the fuck it is, but I heard of it, right? Well, you know, a few years ago, they probably had no clue what the fuck it is. But quite often you hear even like your normally stations, you listen, they talk, price of Bitcoin.

Like, what the fuck? Like, it's just, it's there, right? It's incredible to see. Remember, and going back to Nisente Brewery, do you remember the first time we went there? I think it was the first time. went there. I think Jared. Yeah, he was tuned.

He was absolutely torched, retarded. He was like, I'd never seen a guy that drunk in my entire life. By the way, it was like four in the afternoon on a weekday. No, no, it was a weekend. No, man. We went and then went for dinner at Wild something, wild. No, it was a week, weekend event. And it was, yeah, almost positive it was a weekend event.

Oh, we did go on a Saturday once, actually. Yeah, it was a sunny day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or something like that. You're right. You're right. Yeah. And so,

fuck, Jared, buddy, I'll never forget that. I couldn't believe you were able to fucking stand on your own two feet. This is all inside baseball and CBP.

People, no one has heard of before. Jared is been on that show. He's the accelerationist. Yeah. He's been here. He's been talking about the thing. And it's too bad.

The acceleration theory. I mean, it may still be out there, but nobody's talking about it. This thing is still happening. Right? All caps. All caps.

Jared is now a legend. Yeah, true, true. He's still with us, by the way. Not deceased or anything. Just, uh, no, he's traveling. He's enjoying life. He is. I don't know how old he is.

It must be already 20s. Yeah, probably 22, 23 maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Anyways, I could talk about, we briefly talked about ordinals. Actually, we just talked a little bit more than briefly last week. We could talk about that and tax fraud. Like, who would have guessed tax fraud in ordinals, right?

Like, this was done by a bust in Italy. my authorities over there. And it was involving ordinals. You know, this is the arbitrary data in Bitcoin, you know, like fucking images and whatever. Anyways, what they were saying, the authorities in Italy are saying that newly minted assets were sold to buyers for multiples of the original cost. And the profits were sent back to a primary wallet, which were then immediately recycled back into the next round of inscriptions to repeat the process. and running these cycles for a few times, people generated more than one million euro

in undeclared capital gains. To make matters worse. Why are the digital archies taking a cue from the physical archives on this? This is not an original thought there, is it? I don't think so. Who could I guess the money laundering with... Hunter Biden, JPEGs,

just like Hunter Biden paintings. You know what makes it even worse? These guys were making seven figures in undeclared capital gains. Yeah. They were also, these fuckers, we're also collecting welfare subsidies, pretending to have low or not exist an income. Somalians. I don't know who was. Learing, Learing Center, JPEGs. I love this story.

There's a guy, there's a guy near me who was like a big JPEG guy in the NFT era. Burntoast or something? Does he live near you? I think he lives in Dundas. Yeah, pretty sure lives in Dundas. He's like friends with Will. You can be near him from two whites in a blue podcast. I'll be happy. Like, if you just give me his address, I'll just out of the blue I don't know where he lives. I don't know where he lives. But apparently he made a bunch of money selling JPEGs in 2020. He's like to get the case use for like, why would I want to buy this rare sat? No, nobody else. It's tied to a fucking picture. Like, give me the fucking business. Remember the spaces used to run all day, every day, people going

back and forth? D was like among the most frequent participants slash hosts in those spaces too just like constantly that was what i you know what i did message d before we were like buddies buddies uh i messaged them one day after hearing him post of space and i was just like kudos to you man like you're taking a absolute shit kicking on the stage you just you hang in for more and more uh you know now there there's a story out there and he probably will deny it now but the trading of pictures and early or i don't know i don't know say the number but he put his face on one right Didn't he? He did

But there's one earlier than that That the goal was to sell that for decent amount And I'll never forget I don't want to see the amount I said you know what my old car I'm going to try selling it for the same amount Just because I'm asking for it doesn't mean Somebody's gonna give it for me

We never do shows like this anymore Or we stray so far into the weeds On like old stories Legends of Bitcoin But it's just it's rehashing old memories Of like shit that happened It's like wow okay yeah that was funny But like anybody out there that is dealt or have delved into Bitcoin ordinals or NFTs in general,

if you got wrecked in the process, I don't fucking care. It's not like the writing, it was there. It's not the fucking wall. You just got to fucking read it. They didn't take much to figure this shit out. But if you wanted to scam somebody, if you wanted to try to, if it's in order to know, partly your fucking rare sat for multiples of that, you know that's that scammer territory and those who built fucking marketplaces on that

and not going to fucking mention who hold on a sec keep going I'm just going to let's make this more appropriate for everyone listening and watching here I am alone in this space so those are fucking building marketplaces for this bullshit those are the people that are doing nothing to advance Bitcoin they're just to simply take

your money pad their fucking pocketbooks and in the end they're going to run away and they'll be laughing. You know what the best thing to do is, let them build, let them spend their money doing it, don't fucking interact with them. They're going to lose money doing that,

and then we could all collectively laugh at them for doing this fucking bullshit. Fuck them all. I'm happy to see that fucking, that company that's being led that had to do a reverse split, just to fucking still stay, publicly traded,

fuck them all. Naka. Bitcoin and name only conferences. Fuck them all. I have no further comment. I never dabbled in NFTs or ordinals. I don't even really know how. That was the era where it seemed like every week there was a meta mask hack.

Remember? There was like plug-ins for Chrome getting punked. How fucking stupid are you if you're relying on a web-based wall? That was a different era. By the way, don't forget. That was the sort of peak of bankless too. And you may have seen that much like I said, said on this show, like a year and a half ago, I said that one guy, Hoffman, like, I'm telling

you, he's going to figure it out. He's close to figuring it out. You saw that he sold all his eth the other day. Like, that's, you know, even the most ardent supporters of that whole ecosystem are bailing man. And I think if you, if you look back, you know, there were signs that this thing was unsustainable. You kind of fell backwards into stuff like, you know, defy and yield tokens. Like, did anyone need Ethereum? in those situations. These these tokens were built on Ethereum sort of by chance almost.

You know, like Ethereum had no role in this. Did Vitalik like, you know, court that business? I doubt it. And those things fell through. They're going to other platforms,

other services, other networks now. Yeah. They're shitting on our network. Yeah. Fuck damn. And the stupid thing is now, I'm not sure what the price of eth is,

but there's a lot of people now pumping. Remember a Casper not too long ago. Now it's Z-Cash. And tomorrow's going to be the next shit coin, just rinse and repeated and whatever. Like, don't get sucked into this stuff. Don't try chasing these profits because somebody's going to just make money off your stupidity. And, you know, with Bitcoin, let's be honest.

Like, one side is one side. And I go back to for myself, the one thing I really want to have. Like, my daily goal is today I want to have more stats than I had yesterday. And if I achieve that, I'm in a much better position. And I understand the circular. economy and blah blah blah but i'm not a position to sell i'm still in position to to to hoddle as much as possible that's what i'm doing so whatever you do with your bitcoin's up to you but that's what i'm doing and i sleep better at night doing that totally bitcoin pizza day may 22nd and uh it was

maybe the first transaction that was done at least a documented transaction that was done in bitcoin uh and so 2010 laslo this dude mined a ton of bitcoin and what to do with it how about buy dinner and so 10K Bitcoin for two large Papa John pizzas. And yeah, right? Let's be honest. At the time this was done, Bitcoin was a little over a year old. The network was, what, 14, 15, 16 months old.

Infancy. Yeah, extremely young. And so he posted an offer on a Bitcoin talk forum, standing he gave 10,000 Bitcoin anyone who would do the order, pay for it. And then, yeah, somebody was accepted. Now, the value of this is 70, 750 million, right? 770 million. Yeah, there you go.

I mean, we have splitting hairs here, but, right? Like, but something had to be done. Do you hold that bill the entire show, just like hold it in your hand? I have it here. Yeah, it's like a fidget spinner for me. And yeah, thanks Wedge for giving it to me. I truly enjoy this Singapore dollar. And I, again, like guys, Joey says, I do hold it through the majority of the show,

if not all of it. And yeah, I like it. It's, we got to go back to the Singapore dollar days. I look at this with, you know, beautiful dollar. You'd rather sell, you'd rather pay, you'd rather pay, you'd rather pay, uh, 10,000 Singapore dollars and 10,000 Bitcoin, that's for sure. You know, the guy who took the Bitcoin payment is like a big shitcoin guy now. Did you see that?

Uh, yeah, he was a, he was a delivery guy. Like, how much that did he hold, you think? No, he had to, he was traveling. So he spent it all from my understanding. Oh, my God. But let's be honest, at the time, Bitcoin, we didn't know what the value would become. I know, but still then. The value will become.

Jeez, man. You must have thought something of it. You took 10,000 of them. It was the value at the time. I mean, this is hard. Yeah, 20 bucks. No, it was like $45. So the guy made a little bit more by accepting of Bitcoin, but the volatility Bitcoin was quite,

you're trying to figure how much it cost in terms of electricity to mine Bitcoin. And that's how you derive the value of it. That's how it was initially. So eventually then a free market was developed and people paid for it as people were selling it. Whatever. Australia, I think we'll do one or two more stories. Sure. Australia is slowly turning into a surveillance state.

And this is interesting because they're now forcing exchanges out there to basically turn over everything, overhaul their existing systems for both deposits and withdrawal. Starting July 1 of this year, finance Australia will officially start restricting strict enforcement of the rules to be as per the OSTRAC that's mandated by them. They're going to be forcing their users and every other exchange will be doing this, either depositing or withdrawing to manually provide detailed personal identification, personal identifying. Shotgun K-YC, man. You have to do full names, residential address, shit like that for both the sender and the receiver of the Bitcoin. Yeah. And totally worthless, by the way, Bitcoin worthless, not an asset, Ponzi scheme, unless, unless you try and do it anonymously, then suddenly they care a great deal.

Now, the thing is, if this was for a large sum of money, say, 100,000 Australian dollars or something along those lines, I mean, I could. understand it, right? They make sense, but they're doing it for everything. There's no minimum value threshold. You want to send a penny worth of Bitcoin subjected to this. So any businesses that are doing designated virtual asset services, this law applies. And if you fail to register with OSTRAC by July 29th of this year, that's the deadline. the people, the businesses are going to face criminal and civil penalties as a result

on ramps in Australia. I mean, more challenging. I would imagine ATMs are probably long gone over there. If not, they will soon be long gone. This is going to happen in Canada. This is going to happen in the United States. This is going to happen everywhere, this type of stuff. So the best thing you should do, my opinion, is stack as hard as you can right now

before this shit comes out because you don't want to provide as much information if you don't have to. Why? Why do you have to provide information for people to send your receiving? Because they hate privacy. They hate wealth accumulation. They hate anonymity. They hate people who take money outside of the state.

They don't want anyone operating outside of their controlled rails. It's just such a joke. These guys, this is soft whimper of a defeated system. Just crying out for help, right? And I think most people are, realizing this now. You know, years ago, I mean two years back now when I talked to Chris Irons,

QTR, Quilthraven, and Larry LaPard on the show. And one of the things we agreed on, although we had some disagreements between the three of us, one of the things we agreed on was that any government now that puts in place these rules around data collection, surveillance, KYC, that are above and beyond what you would normally expect to see or what you were told would be required at sign up.

That used to be seen as governments doing the responsible thing, making sure that people were protected. There was obviously like, you know, consumer fraud angles they could take. And behind that veil, you could do basically anything. People would support it. But now it's viewed as a scared animal, doing something to preserve what little bit of authority and legitimacy it thinks it has left. And I think most people realize that.

You see this, by the way, in the increased use. of these other services that don't force you to do this. You know, Bull Bitcoin doesn't shock on KYCU. Bitcoin ATMs now are being targeted by governments probably for this reason. It's clearly no something is happening.

It's clearly know that they're in a bit of a downhill slide in terms of both control and legitimacy and they can't afford either of those things to slip any further than they already have. Most common sense people understand that Australia, Canada, to some extent the United States, for sure, United Kingdom and the other European, you know, Permaport countries, they all realize that they're running out of runway.

And instead of making changes that make sense to preserve the legacy and tradition and laws that, you know, got them into these positions of power, they're doing everything they can to fuck it up. And they're going to keep doing it because they don't have any better ideas. No creativity, no finesse at the top. They have to just stop innovation. Otherwise, they will lose. but they're going to lose anyway. Just going to delay the inevitable.

I think that's it for the Bitcoin side of things. We're closing in in an hour. We got a lot of stories on the notable side of things. I don't want to leave anything. Busy week. Every week is a busy week. Is there a slow week with respect to Bitcoin? The only thing that was truly like, I don't say earth shattering, but close to it was the prime trust stuff.

But other than that, it's been a relatively quiet week. And I don't know if it's because of maturity or maybe because we have the holiday. The holiday today. Yeah, probably. I don't know. The holiday, by the way, the mayor of Minnesota, Jacob Frye, Frey tweeting out, instead of talking about Memorial Day, talking about the anniversary of the George Floyd murder. Oh, man.

Talk about a fucking L. That is tough, man. That is tough. anyway, we don't want to get demonetized. So if you're with us on video, hang in. If you're not, then come back tomorrow for the audio side, where we talk about all the most notable stories in Canada and around the world. We'll see you then.

And send me your Singapore dollars.