The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - Toronto's Budget Mess, Costco Sells BTC, Bitcoin Reserve Updates | The CBP 202 (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

FRIENDS AND ENEMIESTHIS WEEK - Czechs remove taxes on BTC after a three year HODL, Toronto's budget is a disaster, Costco plans to sell Bitcoin (via ATMs), USAID Is Giving Everyone Cash, and MUCH more.Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com⁠Discord:  / discord   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetworkThis 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.

friends and enemies welcome back cbp 202 i'm joey that's len i just told len before i sat down here i spilled an entire pint of milk on the chair it's a little bit on my shirt it's not in the upper part if it's if it's on a lower you can't see it you can't see it yeah i'll just i just got to get more i gotta get wider for the show and uh see we're basically we're nude from the waist down but nobody could tell because it's not shown right i am I got to get wider for the show. We're nude from the waist down, but nobody can tell because it's not shown, right? I am wearing nothing there. There's something for the perverts out there.

What's going on, man? Happy Monday on that car. Yeah, good to see you. Oh, yeah. Another day, another dollar show. It's a beautiful day, and it's a day where Trump has been very active too. He's a busy guy. He's a very busy guy.

More tariffs have been impacted as of today and Canada has been impacted from that, but we'll talk about that in a minute. We will, for sure. Yeah, we got a lot to talk about today. We got Czech, we got Toronto's budget disaster. Mayor Olivia just keeps delivering for us among other things. First, as always, the sponsors, EasyDNS, Mark and the team, your friendly neighborhood registrar. If you haven't started a website

yet, why? It's like less than $20 to grab a domain, go to EasyDNS, buy one, buy joysbigtoe.xyz and start selling that picture of my foot i just gave you a couple bucks a month membership obviously that's what everyone's doing now if you haven't done yet you

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Actually, we talk about domain share a lot on Access of Easy, the other podcast we do for Easy DNS. On top of that, if you're a bitcoin enthusiast probably if you're listening to this show i mean you can do anything you want over there with the virtual private server suite btc pay server and also relay bitcoin node node disimplementation probably other stuff too i don't know but uh all available to you at easy dns if you use our promo code cbp media you get half off your first round of buys which is incredible there's nowhere in the world that's just giving you 50 off for for showing up except Mark. And of course, if you're unhappy

with the service, probably your fault, honestly. But Mark will still give you your money back, which is unbelievable. You can't even get your money back from Fortino's if you buy a bag of milk that has a puncture in it. How do I know? I've been there. You went to the wrong Fortino's then. I guess, but they didn't uh i don't know i gotta maybe i should try some other ones but you could bring back milk that you drank and yeah back right yeah i can i can there's something wrong with this milk yeah just air inside it easy dns go there use the promo code um tell mark we sent you or talk to him in the chat he could be in the chat could be uh here tonight the chat. He could be here tonight.

We don't know. I wouldn't be surprised. Somebody's asking, what's 14O's? It's just an Anglophone grocer, okay? Southern Ontario special. You don't see it too many other places. There's probably like 40 14O's, would you say? Is that the right number?

Give or take. Some Italian family started it up and grew it out a little bit but yeah all right let's talk about bull bitcoin because you know what like we're gonna talk about a rugging story today and one place you're not gonna get rugged is through bull bitcoin and why it's because when you buy from them they do not hold your bitcoin think about it they want to send you the bitcoin right away in fact you can't initiate the purchase until you provide an address which is sent it to you so make sure you use a new address every time don't use the same address that is a security issue but bull bitcoin wants you to have the

bitcoin as soon as you buy it so the other thing you could do with your bitcoin because fees go high fees don't go high but if they're high you go high. But if they're high, you could use Lightning. If they're not high, you could use OnChain. Right now, they're still very, very low fees, so I would suggest use OnChain buys, but this is your choice, whatever you want to do. You could also do a few other things with your Bitcoin, like pay some bills, right?

There may be some outstanding Christmas card bills you still have to pay off. Don't hold off forever. It's going to go to collections. Use that Bitcoin that you have bought in the past and use that to pay off some of the bills that you have accumulated also you know what else could you do with your bitcoin spend it how could you spend it well a lot of merchants here in canada and the rest of the world don't accept bitcoin directly but you buy gift cards and bull bitcoin will be able to sell you gift cards with you and you could with

that you can start spending your gift your Bitcoin indirectly in the real world. Really cool stuff. Check them out. They're available now in Europe and a lot of European nations. So if you're not just in Canada, if you're in Europe, you can also get Bull Bitcoin there. Use our promo code, and if you do that, $21 will be added to your account so that you're provided necessary information.

Love Bull Bitcoin. Privacy. They have you first in mind similar to ezdns good as it gets good as it gets uh housekeeping last week john rubino dollar collapse among other things came on the show tuesday night what a fun interview that was a great interview i said to john that i've been subscribed to his stuff for a while people love that interview it man he's he's great and i'll tell you what uh it's difficult to win over this chat like you know i've i've been paying attention to the chat more and more during the guest shows and people hate what the guests say sometimes

so you know having these guys uh get behind john a lot of things he said and uh thought even though um he's not quite there on Bitcoin, but he's not all the way out either. It was nice to see. So I highly recommend you check out his Substack, rubino.substack.com. Lots of good content there. Stuff that you will for sure enjoy reading and agree with, which, hey, who's looking to disagree with people on the internet these days?

Not me. Tomorrow, not tomorrow, Wednesday this week, Rich Diaz for sure, Keith Dicker tentative on the Google Calendar invite. So we'll see. Could get two-thirds of the loony hour podcast. If not, I will settle for Rich. Rich and I have become friends. We had beers last year in Montreal. He came to the conference meetup, the first night meetup, which was a lot of fun.

And I'm looking forward to talking to the two of them. Nothing slow about what's going on in Canada these days, Canadian politics, Canadian economics. We might talk a little bit about what the bank is up to tonight, among other things. And then Thursday, programming alert, got a message today from none other than Brad Mills. Brad Mills and Ali of Tahini's fame will be stopping by the studio

Thursday, 1245 for what will be a high quality. I mean, every rip is high quality, but that's going to be of the highest quality. So looking forward to having those guys come by. Big shout to Brad's EA, Jessica, I think, who's helping to set it up. She has an EA? He does. He does. How come we don't have one?

I need an EA big time. My calendar is a fucking mess. It's a mess. You're going to burn yourself up at this pace, Joey. So try to, I'm grinding. Listen,

listen, you're not going to see me. I got this week. The 21st Scott Wolf is coming here. So next week he's coming here and then you're not going to see me unless it's on a Monday night for at least a month. Yeah. Unless something incredible pops up. You can see me i'll be mia which is fine

month is fairly short yeah maybe a little longer i don't know we'll see we'll see i don't like taking that much time off it's an exciting time to be in bitcoin exciting time in economics and exciting time to have a podcast and i'm sure everybody likes to hear you but i just want to reiterate don't burn yourself out it's awesome to hear you do three shows a week but it's it's tough to maintain that pace especially since you have a little one and all these extra curricular activities you're doing so just you know be mindful so uh len len's been getting my wife must be messaging len on the side and telling him to say that. Get Joey to slow down on the podcast. I've said this for weeks.

Well before your wife has been texting me to tell you to slow down. Boosts or no? Let's do it, of course. All right, so wartime consistent. Cheers. Cheers, wartime. Cheers. Cheersime cheers cheers there you go here's a chocolate milk this is more of a fred van fleet than a pascal siakam but a little bit of chocolate

milk in there anyway cheers 333 sats he does it twice once is the cheers but the second one it's not just the cheers he gives the flex and the cheers so it's a double up on that one so wartime like you're consistent i appreciate these sats and i'd love to see that the next week i'll probably do the same thing with some cheers hopefully you're doing uh as well cheers to you buddy doug and roop joey doug and roop 521 sats he said consolidating utxos is so much easier than sending gold bars to switzerland to have them melted down and recast that did you hear that part of the interview with rubino no rubino talking about sorry to cut you off but this is like incredible i should have mentioned this in the in the the sort of housekeeping the the standard for gold bars is not the same around

the world did you know this i did not know this so if you if you get a bar in london sometimes if you're bringing it to the united states i think he said you have to actually send it to switzerland first have it melted recast and then shipped back to the united states is that the size or the purity of gold it's the size so some areas have a bigger bar so to speak i guess your bar yeah is that nuts or what that is crazy i guess there's u.s gallons and imperial gallons right a little bit of everything oh what the fuck roman foot and the foot that we know does it today all kinds of bullshit it standardizes fucking crap well anyways going back to doug and rupe he says having lost uh nearly oh sorry having also nearly lost a gold coin in starbucks when attempting to sell one i

can't believe he tried that the points in bitcoin's favors are continuing to rack up like nobody would even consider bringing a gold coin anywhere to sell like it just makes no sense let us say you've done it doug and rupe obviously is tongue-in-cheek but man how do you go there and just flake off here's a couple of grams here you go let's weigh it out see okay i'll take that fucking cafe and take that to go just it's not feasible the bitcoin you could do it easily but granted on chain takes 10 minutes to fucking on average to settle but that's why there's lightning i guess yeah yeah which brings up the next one is lightning this guy. This guy, heck, hatch? I don't know.

1,001 sats. He says, Lightning requires on-chain transactions, so base layer block demand comes from 8 billion people opening and closing channels. Question mark. Yeah, it's true. I took this snippet from the Lightning white paper, and it says, if all transactions using bitcoin were conducted inside a network of micropayment channels this is the lightning network to enable seven billion people

to make two channels per year with unlimited transactions inside a channel it would require 133 megabyte block sizes so the current block size just does not fit to have a large number of people jump on Lightning and open up two channels per year with unlimited transactions within it. So that's why they're looking at channel factories and other options that hopefully can scale this up. Timely episode of Preston Pitch's podcast with Luke Groman where they end up talking quite a bit about lightning and the mechanisms that are behind lightning. I don't recommend listening to that one at 1.3 speed, but I do recommend listening to it and trying to get a handle on that.

It's interesting. I don't know that much about lightning. I will admit that my technical understanding of lightning is rather shallow. I'm all ears when it comes to stuff like this. I want to hear why it will or won't work. I think it's a discussion that we're probably, we probably thought we were going to have it five years from now,

but it looks like we're going to have it pretty soon. Well, fees are still very low right now. So there's really not a push for a layer two solution like Lightning yet. But when it does happen, when you do need it, you'd want that to be mature enough that people could onboard and it's not going going to be problematic so it's almost like the cart before the horse type thing like what's what do you need or hurt before like what do you need now we need people to work on solutions for scaling out micro transactions micro payments and best time to do it it's like planting a tree it 20 years ago the second best time to do it is today you don't want to wait till it's

well past like oh shit we can't do anything now everything's stalled we can't move bitcoin around no let's work on it let's let's fund this shit let's try to find a solution but but but let's not fucking just throwing shit new shit into bitcoin that could potentially fuck things up agreed yeah yeah anything else you want to chat about before we dive right in you see me hit 245 on the bench today I did not watch you Joey like butter I think my max is 255 or 260 I probably did that about a year ago

and today I was doing 245 no problem flat barbell I said to my wife you know i used to i used to tape the reps so that i could like send people who like give a shit about that like i'm in a couple of chats where we you know share progress but the thing i noticed today is that if i didn't tape the reps i probably would have stopped at 235 because it feels like you're really grinding out the rep but when you see it back on video the bar is because it feels like you're really grinding out the rep. But when you see it back on video, the bar is moving pretty good. And you're like, okay,

I can do two and a half more pounds, two and a half more pounds. As long as you have somebody there to give you a helping hand. There's no one there, but I think if I do 250 or 260, I will, I'll have to call my wife down. Yeah. See, that's the thing. Mentally, it's hard to get to that when you have nobody there to assist you i got the opposite problem i think i can do it and i'll wind up dying that's yeah i think that's where i'll yeah i gotta figure that out i mean if i die it's not good can't have that train the dog so if he ever sees you in a state of distress that he is able to alert your wife yeah sure so you gotta be tough that's a couple weeks of training at least yeah i'm sure you know the big game yesterday that i totally missed i'm very disappointed are you gonna say anything about i don't i don't have a i don't care i don't care

i barely i barely watched it i was talking to our friends yeah i watched it during the i had like i have dazin on my whatever fire stick thing, but I was talking to our friends, wayfaring and SB during the game, along with my own sort of IRL buddies. I wasn't watching the game too much. It was over in the first quarter. It's like 17, nothing in the first quarter.

So yeah, no comeback then. No, not yesterday. Whatever. Too bad. So sad. Let's talk about Bitcoin.

Sure. Or at least stuff that's related to Bitcoin. Here's the first story is micro strategy. No, no, sorry. Sure. Or at least stuff that's related to Bitcoin. Because the first story is MicroStrategy. No, no, sorry, Strategy. What a fucking interesting thing, because, you know, I don't know. I don't know what to make of this whole thing. For people who are not aware, MicroStrategy, change your name to Strategy. Simply Strategy. It's a new name, but same thing, right with that i've heard some people indicate that maybe it's the wrong move to make the wrong name to because if you do a search and strategy it's it's not just simply pointing to the company like if you do a search on microsoft you're not fucking going

anywhere else alphabet is a pretty shitty name and i think about it for sure they should have kept it as google yeah but they run the search so they don't know that that is true yeah until they don't and then what happens at that point then you'll never get to see what's going on in alphabet slash google but like this strategy thing like it's just you know it's just a new coat of paint more than anything else i'm not sure if you want to totally add anything to that but you do you think um like the way i view this they're just continuing to kind of get away from their software business, which by the way is losing money. So, you know, like does anyone really care at this point what they're called? You know, like what does it matter?

It doesn't, I don't think. Unless one of the best theories I saw is that it's actually a transitional theme between microstrategy and what they're going to eventually be called strategy bank. And that to me has a little bit more What is the bank? Well, I don't know, but they're obviously positioned to be a financial company.

So, you know, that B obviously is Bitcoin, but I think they could eventually add ANK to that before you know it. You're a strategy bank. I think they could eventually add a NK to that. And before you know it, your strategy bank, I don't like to me, I don't care about any of this. I did see that they bought the strategy Twitter handle. God, that must've been a pretty penny. That guy's probably. Yeah.

So, you know, all these things I just say are sort of noise for now. I've said my piece on sailor many times on this show. I don't trust them. I don't think anybody should trust him. He's now Mr. Crypto this, crypto that. For a guy who was, Bitcoin is Manhattan. He's sure using the C word an awful lot. We'll see what ends up happening.

They should have renamed it the Laura. Yeah, Laura. Forever Laura. Yeah, for sure. i don't really care about this and i don't really care you think to do that like is this like a millions of dollars oh probably has to be has to be i'm trying to wonder could they recoup this and now the new merch that they can they can sell maybe they did you buy any merch did you buy i never did but i'm certain people have bought it before when they micro strategy and maybe those same folks are going to buy it now a strategy they could have run the numbers and say okay this might end up costing us nothing because there's enough enough fanboys out there to just buy our merch

so it wasn't like so it's just it's like i hate to say it's irrelevant really what they're called at this point no one who's no one who's not in bitcoin cares about them and the people who care don't care what they're called so you know it's it's like if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it you know it's making any noise i don't know that's that's how i view this i don't think it's mining in the forest does anybody hear the fans running if you if no one's there to hear the words it actually hashing i don't know but like it's just it's it's uh again he's preaching in a in a you know to a congregation of the converted at this point i don't think he's winning anyone else over um Although we do have a story

today that we'll share. Somebody in Canada's market has gone Bitcoin and actually emailed us and will probably come on the show. But as far as big companies, I don't think he's winning anyone over. And I would also point to how many companies not named MetaPlanet, MSTR, or Semmler are having success with the Bitcoin strategy. There's a few others who are doing it. GNS is doing it. I forget what the other companies are, but there's a handful of others, and they don't seem to be doing that well.

I would put to you guys, not the people who listen to this show, give a shit about this, because you guys hate stocks in general, but hate MicroStrategy even more. I think there's a number of people that listen that like it. Listen that like it? No. People who know we do the show like it. And the people who don't listen like it, but the people who actually listen and watch the chat don't care.

And the thing I would say is, if you're one of these smaller companies doing the Bitcoin strategy and trying to draw capital to your stock, Bitcoin Well is another example. Liquid, I don't know, there's probably a few others but he needs to go public buddy they gotta yeah he can't go public selling chicken wraps unfortunately at least not yeah they're doing it but the thing i was gonna say is that like no one is a fucking burger no one's coming no one's coming to capital markets and saying i want to get the company that's fifth largest and fifth best at doing this i want to get the company that's the best at doing it and that's mstr and by the way the onlyaPlanet's really doing that well is because I

don't think you can buy MSTR stocks in Asia. So that's a whole other story, right? But you can't buy the same way you can't buy MetaPlanet here unless you have some specialty account, probably. You can't do MSTR over in Asia. If you had a chance to buy MetaPlanet, would it even be like anywhere? Well, this is what I'm saying. If you're buying the company for the Bitcoin treasury strategy, you're never going to take fifth on the list. Why wouldn't you just go right to MSTR? And so these other companies who are trying to do this, maybe they get a little bit of a look, but long term, I don't see how you can expect that those companies would outperform

MSTR if the only draw is the treasury strategy you and by the way every even the mstr bears admit that no other public company can catch these guys now in terms of bitcoin holdings obviously because as soon as some other major starts to buy the price runs and that's it so i i just don't i don't understand now what these other companies are doing or planning on they're living in a fiat world it's a fiat system it is strk stuff you seem to have enjoyed this the release of this new i wanted it i mean me and mark were talking about it in the the cbp just give you an idea what this is so this is a preferred stock that's been released this past week i think it's was 80 bucks us was the sale price so it's a bitcoin security sorry bitcoin secured security uh with a nine percent yield on it and it's way more than what

you get uh with banks or anything that's related to the banks or any other companies so it makes it more attractive if you want to get some yield. And again, this is all fiat stuff. Yield where it comes from and all this shit. Anyways, STRK is the ticker. I don't care. I think the other thing to think about, and actually we should ask Mark. Mark is due for an appearance on the show as a guest anyway. But I think the thing to ask yourself if you're an MSTR common stock shareholder is why would you buy common stock over strike? You get the dividend and you

can take the dividend either in cash or in common stock. So again, the optionality is greater on the strike side. I will preface that or couch that by saying that your wealth simple is not going to have strike. You have to go to TD or RBC or Scotia, whatever your quote unquote prime dealer is for those preferreds. But you can get them at the retail level. It's available to me on TD and RBC. So if I wanted to, I could go that direction. I just think, again, MSTR is going to cannibalize themselves at least a little bit here because

no one with a sound mind is going to buy the common stock over the yield stock. It doesn't make a lot of sense. And by the way, on the earnings call last week, there was talk about being able to claim that dividend in Bitcoin down the road. So if you're a Bitcoiner, chances are- They would give up some of the Bitcoin that they hold as a way of- Maybe if they think that they can do better this way. I don't know what their plan is, but it's interesting all the same. It is kind of cool, right? You buy 100% of the stock and get 8% of your holdings back in Bitcoin. Well, that gives them 92% to do whatever with.

And they probably have a whole set of different financial rules around that preferred. I'm not sure what they are, but my guess is they can probably tool that in a way that makes sense as far as the Bitcoin accrue, the Bitcoin accruing that's going on. But I mean, they're cannibalizing the common stock because I don't think a lot of people are going to take dividends in common stock. You'd rather take it in cash and put it toward the preferreds. That's how it works in my head anyway. But we'll see some more ways to think about this people will think about it over the next week or two weeks and

we'll see some takes i'm sure i don't know what those takes will be but they'll be better than that one maybe we'll find out i have no take so whatever take you you have or anybody else have would be better than mine czech republic some news came out over there that the president has signed a law we've been talking about a lot about the czech republic every week yeah it seems like that we we're talking about the singapore dollar so now we have to do the czk whatever currency that is but the name of it either way their president has signed into law that is going to be very interesting for bitcoiners out there transactions up to 4100 usd per year doesn't have to be reported to tax authority so you can spend your bitcoin up to 4100 per year and it's taxes exempt also if you

hold on for three years your bitcoin it's no capital gains after that that's huge that second one is huge and this more than anything about all these central banks talking about it strategic reserve or anything along those lines this is the one that i love to see because then it it really itemizes that this is a currency that can be used anywhere you want and you don't have to think about the tax implications that come along with it if that's erased you hold it for three years and think about people that held on to bitcoin for three years now three years ago what was the price of bitcoin well that was during the big crash of ftx and all that other stuff it was like less than 10 000 i'm pretty sure no it went to 15k ish usd yes okay that was the lowest i remember imagine you bought in say 20 or 30 000 now you're

sitting at 97 just switched as i looked at it by the way and i see you more than 3x and that's just my example it could be way higher than that so the incentive to spend is there right everything has gone up in price things are getting more difficult and now you have this thing that is going up in value yes but you could tap into it without having to pay capital gains tax this i love the czech republic for whatever reason it is coming out ahead here and this was a dark horse nowhere was this even in my fucking card of countries to pick good for them good on the president and you know what on top of that and you know i said fuck getting the central bank buying bitcoin and adding it to reserve if any central bank is going to do it i'm going to cheer for the czech republic want to do it

because why not let them buy corn let them have their citizens spend a corn let's make this the corn country el salvador it looks like they have lost that title maybe czech republic could now have that crown i like uh i like everything you said there the we've talked in the past most of the time unfavorably about these policy groups that tweet a lot talk a lot but don't produce anything and this is a great example of what guys like Dennis Porter have been trying to get done. Mills and Wolf here in Canada trying to get done. Probably whatever European nation equivalent is out there, nation equivalents are out there trying to get done. Czech Republic did it.

The de minimis 4,100, that's pretty good every year. That's a nice chunk. And then the three-year hodl, not even a cycle, by the way, the three-year hodl, no capital gains, that's exactly the kind of law you need. And by the way, the benefit is not just, oh, my Bitcoin's going up. If you have to hold Bitcoin for three years, how much did you change as an individual, as a man, in the first three years

you held Bitcoin? Probably a lot. It's not even the first three. It's the last three years. It's just incredible how things... My eyes have opened up to what's going on. Sorry, I don't want to digress. You're right, though. I'm asking you.

That's what I'm saying. You change a lot. And if you have a lot of people in your society or 5% of people in your society who suddenly have that light switch moment, light bulb moment, I should say, then you're going to benefit more than just in your pocketbook. You're going to benefit broadly across all sorts of different silos. You're going to see better bureaucrats, better police, better teachers, better neighbors, better community leaders. You're going to see people emerge with capital who understood that three years was a good amount of time to hold. And those people will have better ideas. They'll be the sort of people

that understand longer time horizons and the value of planting a tree under which you will not enjoy any shade. It's for future generations, stuff like that. That's the value of planting a tree under which you will not enjoy any shade. It's for future generations, stuff like that. That's the kind of thinking you need. And Bitcoin encourages that. In the past, we've been accused as a community of being get-rich-quick enthusiasts, of pump and dump enthusiasts, of tulip enthusiasm and things of this nature. We've been accused of all these things, all of them now being shown to be incorrect.

And it's not just because we had to wait for 100,000 for 12 years or 13 years. It's because now having waited, the group of people who didn't sell at 40, 50, 60, 70, and still are not selling now understand time horizons. And those people now have more capital more influence and are fully formed or closer to fully formed that's great i i'm really looking forward to seeing what happens in the czech republic now you know five years ten years from now what kind of people you think are going to be living there what kind of people you think are going to be running politics there that's that's a you know or economic policy in the czech republic based around bitcoin as a central idea sound money money as a central idea?

I'm pretty impressed at all. That old bag of bones will be dead by then. But the point is that this is big for a country that we would not have otherwise spoken about on this show. Right? I don't think we've talked about the Czech Republic for four years. Aside from maybe Hasek or Jager.

Now, this eases the sting from 1998 and nagano when so that's what they're thinking of they're definitely thinking of that they must be because now i i am at peace with them so this this move certainly eased that sting uh costco in the u.s joey yeah not sure if you think this is this is i don't care about this at all i put it in the notes but i this is like this is the moon boy clickbait title of the week for me it's it's exposure it's more exposure to bitcoin where it gives people optionality to buy bitcoin sure so are people going to use it i don't know but i like the fact that there's another

on-ramp that they're going to be offering customers of Costco to do now for people that are unaware what that I'm talking about. In the US and Costco, they're going to be installing Bitcoin ATM machines at some of their stores. They have in the United States 600 nationwide Costco's from what I gather. And the company Liberty X will be installing the ATMs. So people over there could simply just buy Bitcoin. And they have right now 30,000 ATMs in retail stores across 44 states currently. So they have a fair amount of market exposure. And it's not KYC free from what i understand they say you have to download the liberty x x x liberty x app you have to create an account and then provide your wallet address and so it's just like an exchange so to

speak but a lot of people would probably just have cash in their hand i want to buy bitcoin they have an opportunity to do like that and these are the people the liberty x folks they installed the first bitcoin atm in canada in vanc, I think in 2014. I could be wrong on a date, but it was in Vancouver at the time. So they have exposure in North American totality. Now, you're not bullish on this. It's kind of a clickbaity story. I like the fact that there's just another way to unwrap on a Bitcoin. And I think that in the future, it's going to be the opposite. I don't know when it's going to happen. But-ramp on a Bitcoin. And I think that in the future, it's going to be the opposite. I don't know when it's going to happen, but I think

onboarding a Bitcoin will eventually become more difficult in Canada, maybe United States. But for the time being, they're opening up more avenues for people to get into Bitcoin. So I think it's a cool story. Okay, a couple things. Costco clearly trending

toward making hard money available for its clients, its customers. The gold bars, silver bars, now this in store. That's a good sign. You and I have talked before about the nature of the ATM and the kind of person that wants to use an ATM and pay the premium. Who is that person? That person is maybe trying to convert cash into harder money without dealing with a bank or going to a metals dealer where you

have to show ID and whatnot. That person is probably very privacy focused and probably wants KYC free stats for a purpose, either immediate or in the future, a purpose that KYC stats can't serve or don't do as good a job serving. So who's the person that's going to go in, scan their Costco ID, walk through the store loaded with cameras, put cash in there, and then leave? Who's using that ATM is my question. Somebody who just has money burning a hole.

I just don't buy it. I just don't think it i don't i just don't think it makes any sense i don't think they have what is the number at 30 000 atms in 44 states i don't think they're putting these up for charity they're making money i don't i yeah but like my my question is who's like who's buying them by the way you can't i don't think you can even use cash at costco it's debit or their credit card so you have to actually bring the cash to the cost like i don't know i don't know i don't see it i don't see it is it bullish bearish who cares if anything it's neutral until costco shows me on an early earnings call that people

are ripping through these atms and they're having to you know take cash out of them 20 times a week then i i reserve my uh yeah i reserve my all i look at i'm not saying it's a raging success just the fact that they have a lot of atms throughout the united states 44 states um and it's a business they're they're not doing this to lose money or to just be a charity case clearly they're making money somewhere people are buying it who i really don't give a fuck who's buying it as long as they're putting in legitimate cash it's not fake money and they're getting corn as a result so good on them i want to see more exposure i want to see more opportunities by bitcoin i want to

see this everywhere not just atm but just everywhere people have the ability to buy and spend bitcoin without being fucking subjected to taxes that would be fucking incredible let's all go to the czech republic yeah good good comment cbp think about that yeah good comment from tor up in the chat it's eyeball marketing and helps me tell grandma look see you know like when grandma's in there in costco with you buying you the uh the latest turbo man doll you can tell her uh what's a turbo man it's from jingle all the way arnold schwarzenegger spends the whole movie trying to get a turbo man for his kid put the cookie down don't i think she's in the shower you want me to go check don't go check this it's just let's talk about sparrow quickly i'm sure there's a lot of people that use sparrow

i use sparrow myself and there was just an upgrade this past week i suggest people that are using sparrow and are are also using Ledger. Shame on you if you are. Upgraded to the latest version. The last one I saw was 2.1.2. There has been two releases of the 2.1 series within the past week to fix some bugs. And one was to fix transaction loading file

and signing on older Ledger devices. So again, if you're using a Ledger, I would suggest you use it. But also the new one gives access to the Blockstream Jade Plus, which we talked about not too long ago. And I just wanted to do a clarification on something. I was incorrect when I said

the Blockstream Jade Plus has a secure element chip in it. It does not. And what it uses is a blind oracle, the same way the Blockstream Jade OG uses the price of the unit. I was at one 49 to one 69. I seem to do it. Yeah. Something like that.

So why would anybody want to buy this when it doesn't have a secure element ship in it? Sure. It might have a better camera. It might be bigger screen and all this. The camera is not good. And you know, one of the,

I just pulled it up. The reason you jog my memory there, it's actually 250 Canadian before shipping. So you're getting closer to the cold card. Like why, why not just buy the cold card? You're going to go to this price point. A hundred percent.

Yes. A hundred percent. And somebody was mentioning that the camera is not robust enough to scan a seed QR. That is the standard QR code thing provided by seed signer for the 12 or 24 words. So for whatever reason, the camera wasn't able to scan that accurately or at least do it without any

issues. So even a camera may be better in the plus it's still nothing to really write home about in the end. So to go back i talked about block stream jade plus and it looks like it may be a total miss from what i see i have never tried it and so i can't give any first-hand reviews but just from what i see here i i don't know why you would want to do anything else than a cold card or maybe a seed sign or something like that but certainly block stream jade plus nah it's i wasn't impressed with the jade like i'm looking at the jade right now and i wasn't impressed with it when we tried it before and so i can't i can't imagine now don't

get me wrong there's value in you know iterating and trying to improve incrementally and things like that you know model the model version to version but things like the camera if you have a camera the camera has to work otherwise it's just a vanity project right here's a camera it doesn't scan anything well that's great but uh you know when push comes to shove or in crunch time or whatever you know analogy well you know you never know when you have to take that quick dick pic and you just gotta grab that first thing that's nearby oh here's my block stream plus jade let's take a picture of my junk cock stream jade plus the one thing that the jade plus does have over the predecessor is that it's totally air gap but i'm not going to use that as the be all and end

all to use that instead of something a better device like i would suggest cold it's air gas but it doesn't have um uh whatever what did you say the thing the cold card has two of now the secure element ship element exactly yeah so i don't again listen i i will be the first to admit that on this show sometimes we split hairs all these things are pretty good you know like even theger, for all its shortcomings, has some good things about it. The ledger is better than leaving it on an exchange. Yeah, yeah. I'll say that.

It's better. Yeah, it's better. All these things, you're making gains incrementally and giving things back incrementally from device to device, and you trade some things for ease of use, while other things you get less ease of use for more security. There's always trade-offs but on this on this show sometimes i do think we split hairs about well i can't use this one because it doesn't have a secure element or i can't use this one because it uh stores you know seeds in the cloud or or the big key has the

the you know inline multi-sig with the the server and device and one other person or one other place, whatever it is. All this stuff is fine. The problem with the Jade is the price. And for that price, you can get better devices that don't make the trade-offs. That's the problem with the Jade. The Jade is small. So the screen is not going to be good no matter how many pixels they cram into it. The camera's not good. So it's not going to be good no matter how many pixels they cram into it. The camera is not good, so it's not going to be convenient to take a picture. It needs a phone, so it's not going to be this thing you can use on your own. It needs a phone or a Sparrow iteration, whatever. Things like that, you're not going to get any less than that with the cold card, but you do get more.

You're not going to get any less than that with like, I don't know. What's another good example. The passport. Or a Keystone. Like the Keystone devices are pretty good too, you know, and Keystone is true air gap now.

So like why. Wasn't that a rip off of, I don't want to even. Passport was rip off of something. I don't want to say what it is just in case I'm wrong.'s where i think right is that uh yeah i don't want to say anything but apparently it was a pure ripoff of something and that was a story that was a story foundation foundation has been trying to push those devices a lot and they're spending a lot of marketing dollars i've never seen or met anyone who uses one have you didn't Didn't you get one? I got a Keystone.

I have two Keystones that I got from Keystone. Both of them I gave away. But they're good devices. They're both air-gapped. The screen is huge. The camera's good. One of them is fingerprint sensor ready if you want it to be.

Keystone, to their credit, has two versions of their firmware. One is you can get Bitcoin plus everything else, and one is Bitcoin only. And people say, well, the Bitcoin only one, you're still exposing yourself to all the other hardware. The second version of the Keystone, once you go Bitcoin only, it bricks the rest of the capabilities. You can't go back. That's a good iteration. That's a company. You say what you want. Oh, they're located in China or they're an Asian company, whatever. That's a company who's at least listening to what people are saying about the device. And I look at Jade and I'm like, who's asking for

the improvements you made? And the improvements you did make, are they really even that good? No, they're not. Everyone seems to agree. So I don't know like do what you want man but you know a 250 you could do better than a jade plus that's without shipping 149 enjoy 149 169 it's 250 canadian i'm using usd this canadian thing everything i get is in usd so that's the only number i see for anything i go online i'll be seeing that a lot more when we're the 51st state in a couple weeks. May happen. El Salvador, they are

still buying Bitcoin. Remember the whole fiasco with them and the IMF? Oh, yeah. The IMF said, with the money we're going to give you, you can't buy any Bitcoin. Well, El Salvador seems to be ramping up their Bitcoin buys. This past week, they added another 21 Bitcoin to their treasury. Now, 21 isn't a great deal, but it's a heck of a lot more than I could buy in a week.

So I have to give them credit for doing that. Was the number 21 also on purpose? That's another question I have. I don't know. I think it's just coincidence more than anything else. But more than anything, I don't want to say that their deal with the IMF was good or bad, but just maybe, just maybe getting this money from the IMF or this deal with the IMF freed their capital.

Instead of now using earmark their money to do whatever improvements, they could use the IMF money to do whatever improvements. And the money that they originally allocated for that is now free to do what? To do stuff for Bitcoin. Maybe this is one way they're giving a middle finger to the IMF. They're not buying Bitcoin directly with the money they're getting from the IMF. They're doing it indirectly by using the money that they would have initially used. So I'm just looking at this.

It may be still a shitty move that they did with the IMF. But again, I don't live there. I that they did with the IMF. But again, I don't live there. I have no skin in the game with respect to El Salvador. I can't vote. I didn't vote in Bukele and I'll never be able to vote there. I have no intention to move there. This is simply just a move and hopefully it works out best for the citizens of El Salvador,

because really that's what he's trying to do. I think is represent at best the citizens of el salvador so 21 bitcoin they added to her balance sheet maybe more next week who knows when did he buy it it's within the past week you sure when apparently that's what it says yeah i'd be shocked that was true there's they're buying one a day they have been claiming to buy one a day they've been claiming a lot of things. I'd be shocked if that was true. I've said this before.

I will say it again. The IMF doesn't negotiate. They kill your family. And the idea that these guys took an IMF loan and are going to use money to buy Bitcoin on the side or use that money to buy Bitcoin, I think is wrong. It is just wrong. It is just wrong. Confessions of an economic hitman isn't written about a bunch of people who go there and ask nicely for you to play ball. That's not what hitman means. So the idea that any of these companies or countries, I should say, are pulling a fast one on the IMF.

Didn't they provide an address as a way to get it? That's not my concern. That's not my concern. I'm not saying they don't have the Bitcoin. I'm saying the likelihood that they bought it since agreeing to this loan or since the terms of the loan have come into effect. You can check this.

Again, if there's an address which you could check, you could see when the Bitcoin is coming in. It's not like it was held somewhere you could maybe was held somewhere else and moved there in the past week but again this is something from what i gather you could check i don't have the address handy but before we yell the guy to the cross find out yeah man let's find out because if this is indeed true he got the 21 like great you know he's adding the hardest fucking asset that we know of to their treasury i i can't see anything that's terrible with that decision maybe other decisions may be questionable but that one i like it they also did another thing they're outsourcing or

i don't know what do we describe it their penal system remember so i'm not sure if you saw this story joey are you there oh yes i'm looking at something here okay so look well i'm reading this thing from reuters about how the imf is not going to let them do this the government's announcement that it would make more bitcoin purchases this is from december. The government's announcement that it would make more Bitcoin purchases, this is from December 24. The government announcement that it would make more Bitcoin purchases, quote, might just be a way to counter any negative blowback from a perceived diminished status of the cryptocurrency in El Salvador.

Given the size and the likely terms of the IMF deal, it was worth for Bukele to do that, to say that he was going to keep buying. But I just don't... I don't know, man. We will see, okay? But again, don't forget Jaime Garcia, great friend to the show,

came on here many times over the last four years. And what does he say all the time? He couches these great Bukele statements, these strong showings, these incredible presentations. What does he say about Bukele? What's his history? Do you remember? No. He's in marketing.

The guy's a marketing guru. Came from that industry. And so when I see stuff like this grand announcements bitcoin city all this stuff i'm looking and i'm seeing the stuff that jaime said more than i'm seeing a guy who's willing to go against the imf i'm not saying he's willing to go against the imf i'm just simply saying that they are adding bitcoin to their treasury i like it i like it and if you're adding more down than they were before all all the more power to them. This is going to be a power to citizens.

We're going to see. Yeah, of course. One thing that I was going to say something, I was off track. Did you see this past week? They are going to be offering up their prison services to the United States. So the United States will be sending prisoners, I don't know

what type of prisoners, I guess Salvadorian prisoners, I don't know what type of prisoners i guess salvadorian prisoners i don't know to el salvador to be incarcerated there that's everyone's seen videos of el salvador's prison system uh another bukele presentative special um doesn't look fun does it these guys in handcuffs basically strapped to each other's backsides human centipede style does not look good over there if you're in uh if you're in confined makes you think twice for sure that's that's deterrent it's capital punishment is probably the most extreme version of a deterrent this is damn close to that yeah david sacks i know very little about this guy i i like sacks but yeah oh i was wrong i thought you didn't like

him i like him yeah i i like him overall but i would say as far as like his role as a crypto czar he's more david snakes than david sacks but anyway why do you say that well give the story and then i'll tell people why no he's saying that the bitcoin reserve will be one of the first things you're going to look at yeah for a while there's been a lot of hype and a lot of letdown with this whole strategic reserve and adding bitcoin to the balance sheet but really i think with a lot of people being anxious about this i'll say this who the fuck cares it shouldn't impact your ability to buy and hold bitcoin if the if the united states does anything with bitcoin number go up great if they don't do anything numbers stay down great so yeah with respect to david sacks i have really nothing to say i i thought you would have at least like give some

comments or snippet because i could i could talk about him i've heard comments about you and i always thought the comments were always negative about him that was i like sacks is the guy who makes the all-in podcast go the all-in podcast fucking sucks without sacks there um from like a sort of quality of a product standpoint that podcast thinks without his points of view and his contrarian. So I'll give him that. Or the Bankless. How would you rank that compared to the Bankless stuff? Oh, Bankless is a great show, but for different reasons.

A lot of different reasons. Are we going to do a collaboration with Bankless? Yeah. Those guys will be working for us if the ETH price keeps moving the way it's moving. That's good. Those guys can be our EAs if we play our cards right. So the thing about SACs and the reserve. Okay, a couple of things.

Let's deal with the positives first, okay? Since I'm being told here, I'm going to say something negative, and I probably will. The positives are that. I don't care if it's positive. Okay, the guy is the AI and crypto czar. Has anyone heard him say anything about AI? I haven't followed him, so I can't care if it's positive. I just... Okay, the guy is the AI and crypto czar. Has anyone heard him say anything about AI? I haven't followed him, so I can't really say anything. As far as I can tell, he hasn't said anything about AI.

He's saying way more about crypto, which is great. That's a good sign that these guys are doing stuff with crypto, whether it's Bitcoin or other garbage these guys have in their bags. Fine. I will take that. That's a win. I will accept that probably the idea they're going to review or consult on or consider or form a committee about a strategic Bitcoin reserve, I don't think that's great language you know this guy made a promise trump i'm talking

about now to a couple of big crowds over the course of the campaign in the summer of 24 that he was going to do a bitcoin reserve um did he say that i did he did at the big conference he said that okay so he said that i just dave bailey give him a pass because I just don't want to give him a pass. Dave Bailey wrote that for him. I am fucking sure of it and got it right. And he said it. And he said it a couple of times and hasn't done it yet. Now, I will also grant you on the positive side. It's not that he hasn't done it because he's been doing nothing. He's very busy, this guy.

He is on fire in the White House. That place has done more in the last two weeks than in the previous four years combined easily. It's not even close. So that's a positive. The negative is that, and I'm not the first person to say this, but if you look at the language they're using about the strategic reserve, two things jump out at me. One, they're starting to say it's going to be Bitcoin and some other stuff. Don't love that. That's an indication to me that these guys are looking to pump their own bags. More on that in a second.

The other thing is that I'm not convinced that consulting on and forming a committee on and we're going to do something in the next 100 days means that they're going to do a reserve, mostly because it's hard for me to imagine these guys hold Bitcoin in a strategic reserve without being a miner. I don't see how the US can say to themselves, we're going to hold this thing. It's an impartial third asset. It's an impartial global settlement layer, whatever they call it. And they decide, we're not going to mine it. We're not going to help verify the network. We're not going to help secure the network. That doesn't make sense. It's not something they do in any other realm in terms of assets, whether it's treasuries, gold, the US stock market, you name it. They are securing the

quote unquote networks across all those other silos. And so I expect- They're not even buying gold. Well, they have at least Fort Knox. They don't repatriate gold. That's like a wallet. They influence the repatriation of gold from both New York and London to countries who quote-unquote don't deserve it. That's securing the network in my view. And don't forget, they haven't marked to market their gold yet.

So they're keeping that price artificially low and keeping that in their back pocket. That's another thing. Wouldn't Coinbase and Fidelity be part of that securing the network? Well, this is the thing, right? There's some element there for sure. But the mining thing is the thing that makes more sense to me that they should be doing. I don't understand how they would do it. What about gold doing. Do they gold mine? I don't know. Like this Newmont?

Yeah, okay, maybe. But again, here's the thing. Here's the thing. If gold goes to $5,000 an ounce, Newmont's going to get a call from the Department of Defense. Barrick is going to get a call from the Department of Defense at $5,000

an ounce. Bitcoin goes to a million. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like there's going to be incentive for these guys to mine. And by the way, if they start to add it as a reserve asset, it's going up in price. And so they're going to do both. That's the other thing. It's, you know, hold on, hold on.

Let me backtrack. Let me backtrack one second to the these guys pumping their bags the trump liberty fi group filed for an etf plus all the bitcoin plus account bitcoin plus what is that well here's the question a lot of people are saying it's big it can be bitcoin plus other assets why can't it be bitcoin plus miners i don't know is nobody knows right now what the hell it could be you have a sovereign wealth fund that's going to be buying u.s equities do you know that the white house crypto council now brought in brad garling whatever that's on that's unofficial that's that's unofficial so my carling house has been saying he's consulting with every major global power every fucking mover and shaker bitcoin boy okay who knows what that guy's talking about no one cares

i would say that the likelihood that the that the u.s government gets into this stuff and just says we're just going to buy some bitcoin or keep the Bitcoin we have. Whatever they want. Or just keep things very close to them. Yeah, but there's no way they're going to do it and just keep the Bitcoin. They will participate in other ways because the network makes it easy to do so. And it's irresponsible of them not to, I think. For whatever reason, I can't see them just simply...

They won't print to buy... They're not going to print to buy bitcoin printing to buy bitcoin is a bad idea printing to buy anything doesn't make sense yeah yeah it's a bad idea it's very difficult to go to your citizens and justify that in the short term long term certainly but the short term the currency is going to take an absolute pounding prices of everything is going to go up significantly in the short term and people are going to pay the price for that in the long term it may certainly be a good move but given we're talking about election cycles of four years it's you have to take that in consideration trump though to his credit he doesn't have to deal with another election i don't think no maybe just one just one

other just one other equation to think about here they They also announced they're going to run a sovereign wealth fund. Sovereign wealth fund, most of the time, is commodity-based. So you see countries buying oil and whatnot, energy stocks, things of this nature, energy itself, energy commodities themselves, and using them to enrich the country because there's a bit of a flywheel there. That's good. In terms of their involvement in mining, I think it makes sense for them to take equity stake in American miners if they buy Bitcoin as an asset. National security thing. Exactly. And it's easier to make that case to the American public than it is to say we're nationalizing Bitcoin mining, which they've done or tried to do with gold mining in the past and it's been met with resistance and so this is a little easier i think fort knox has a stockpile of the amount of gold they say or any or gold it's got gold they have gold for sure they have gold okay so you have no doubts or you're very confident that there is gold there maybe not to the degree that they say maybe they do maybe they don't but they have some gold there yeah what's it marked that you know

that the price is 42 an ounce i'm pretty sure what is it right now per ounce it's three thousand why why is it like that because as soon as it's like that because as soon as they market to market it becomes a more valuable reserve asset than the treasury. I think. This is what the market has defined it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

You know what? Bitcoin is a dollar per coin. You can't. The thing is they can't. Hear me out. Bitcoin is a dollar per coin. I have 1 million Bitcoin and I have access to have the 12 to 24 words to get access to those 1 million Bitcoin. I say it's $1. The market says otherwise.

When I go out there and start selling this, it's going to go up like that. And the price after I sell it for $1 times 1 million, it's going to go up to where the market dictates it's going to be. These guys could say it's $42 per ounce. But the reality is once it goes to market, that's the real price. Granted, if they do have all that gold that they say they do, $3,000 per ounce won't hold.

It's going to go down once they sell all that in an instant, but it's not going to be $42 an ounce. That's a, that's a, you know, that's 1972 prices. That's not 2015, sorry, 2025 prices.

I think it's four. I think it's 42. I don't remember what it is. Whatever it is. It's a significant difference. It's 19. Oh, for 19 oh for sure yeah i mean even if they're marking it a year ago it's you know up 50 or something it's just it's all just numbers and well people will say why don't you just make a three thousand dollars an ounce and pay off the debt it really isn't that much in the grand scheme i think it's like a trillion dollars or

something i don't know half a trillion like it's the total gold market is what 14 trillion in the us is 35 trillion right 36 trillion something like that so it's yeah it's huge it's multiples of that gold market but i'm not sure how much gold has been mined in totality since the beginning of time but that's a completely different topic that's the end of this fucking bitcoin segment joy i think it's good all right let's uh let's move on if you're on video twitter a bunch of you guys here hang out we're not going anywhere if you're on audio only listening on the podcast side wait for tomorrow for the back half of the show and until then take care of yourselves and please don't be a cock please