American Original, the Bitcoin Group, the American Original. For over the last ten seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest crypto currency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Christoph Atlus, from Anonymous Bitcoin Book. Excited to be here, thank you. And Megan Lourdes from Bitcoin.bombs. Thanks for having me. 1. Bitcoin price drops after Chinese bank rumors. It's deja vu all over again as last week's top story. As last week's top story is this week's top story, but this time with a punch. The rumors that knocked Bitcoin down to 590 last week have knocked it down to 500 and now may be confirmed. Will China ban banks from working with Bitcoin exchanges? Is the rumor true? How low will we go? Christoph Atlus. I mentioned this one or two episodes ago, but I think there's something funny going on with Bitcoin and journalism right now. So a journalist who comes up with a fake story about Bitcoin, especially if it's a negative story. That can either give them a lot of positive attention because people want to hear negative stories about Bitcoin. They want to see it get chopped down. And there's a lot of haters out there. And if in when they're exposed to come up with a fake story later on, I'm not sure if they suffer the same kind of consequences that they would suffer if they lied about another kind of story that wasn't Bitcoin related. So I don't know if this story is accurate or not, but really all we have to go on right now is the word of this one journalist who maintained that it's a true story. And I am concerned about the incentives that are there for journalism. Just the other day I went on this, followed this one link to it was more of a not a mainstream media kind of website, but it was a site that called itself a news website. And the guy said, oh yeah, this is back in December. According to the latest Snowden leaks, the NSA can hack Bitcoin. It can make up big coins as much as they want to and so forth. And he misunderstood the material that was released by Edward Snowden and the journalist he's working with. And then there was no red action and I tweeted at him and I said, hey, are you going to wear the correction on this? You're a news website. You claim to be a news website. You claim to be a journalist. You were wrong about this. Why haven't you posted an update to the story? And he just ignored my claim and he said, oh, what are you saying? Bitcoin is just unhackable, which is not what I was saying. So I think there are some perverse incentives for non Bitcoin journalists when they're talking about Bitcoin. And that makes me concerned when there's these kind of bad news stories. So we'll wait and see what happens with this one. But in general, when I see a story that has kind of weak news, my first incentive right now is going to be to ignore it. I do agree, Christoph, with Bitcoin always dying. It's really easy to write these journalist headlines that come out and Bitcoin is dying because of blank. So they just keep writing more in the series of Bitcoin is dying, not realizing how embarrassing it looks for them. They keep confirming that the patient is dead and the patient keeps coming back to life. Yeah, I imagine if you said this about a person and you never corrected it later on to say, oh, shit, I was wrong. The guy is completely alive. We just saw him, you know, if 20 people just saw him at Starbucks, he's perfectly fine. That would be a big mistake for journalists. But when they talk about a cryptocurrency, then for some reason those rules go out the window. For a person or a country, you'd think they'd report on this kind of thing. They've banned you. They've broken your encryption. It's pretty serious news against someone or a country. And yeah, we're at a big point. They don't even publish a retraction. That's crazy. Right. Yeah, imagine the Brazilian currency gets reported as going under and they're just like, oh, well, I guess it's whatever. I guess it had turned out not to be true. So last week Brazil's currency didn't collapse. Oops, just move on. Right. Right. Right. Megan, your thoughts. So there are no apologies for bad journalism these days, but there are also no standards for journalism anymore. And this is a serious issue, especially if someone who's a writer who likes to report on what's actually happening in the world, you see so many bad stories, crap stories that are just rumors. And they report it as if it's news when it's really rumors. So I definitely do it with Christophe here. I'm not really going to believe it until we see some actual journalism taking place here. It really seems like it's dying out. The standards have gotten so abysmally low. It's very difficult for me to read. All types of news sources, news sources now. It's not just in mainstream sources anymore. This has really become widespread. And I don't know if it's just a matter of laziness on the part of journalists and reporters or on the parts of the readers for not really holding them accountable. Like you all were saying, if this was a person, they would be coming out. They would say, no, this is wrong and at least apologizing. But you don't see that happening at all with Bitcoin. I think these are rumors. But the bad part of it is rumors very much affect the price of Bitcoin. So whenever you have these unsubstantiated rumors coming out, it's making the price even more wildly fluctuate. And that hurts it as a currency. That makes it look very unstable for people who would otherwise invest in it. And it makes it, I'd like to see some stability at the same time. How low will it go? I'm not sure. I would like to see it maybe go a little bit lower. I'm super broke at the moment. I would like to be buying, but I'm not, obviously. But I do hope it goes a little bit lower and maybe stabilize, stabilize this for a while. But at the moment, these are all just rumors. And I think the Bitcoin community is very selective about their news and they're very careful about the journalists that they read and about the information that they're taking in. And we have to apply those standards at least for ourselves. So we shouldn't be the ones getting all worked up about it. We can let other people who may not be as educated about the topic. They can get worked up about it. They can freak out a bit, coincidentally, whatever it's doing. But we need to keep our standards high when we're doing the reporting. Because that's going to be the only way to counteract a lot of this really sloppy journalism that we're seeing. I wouldn't hold that any hope for those apologies. I'm not even sure that Newsweek has apologized to Satoshi Nakamoto. Right. Finally, it could be worse that the journalists could be speculating on Bitcoin as the price is going down, knowing that they're writing a bad story or the news agency themselves. There's so much money on the table and clearly Bitcoin prices are affected by the news. It's only a matter of time before somebody goes after that money with some speculation like this. Exit question, what's the price this time next week? Kristoff. I think it depends on what we see, you know, how this story pans out. If there's continuation of new evidence to support it, then I expect the price to go up a bit. If there is evidence to support it, we'll go down. Obviously, investment in China is a big thing that's been fueling the price of Bitcoin over the last few months. In the long term, I don't think it will make a huge difference. But certainly in the next six to 12 months or whatever, the degree of investment in China is going to make a big impact. Megan. If I could predict what Bitcoin was going to be next week, then I'd be a Bitcoin millionaire by now. So I'm really bad at these predictions. I really think it because it's so sensitive to the news events that are going on in the world. There's going to be some fluctuation. So I really couldn't put a number on it. It all depends on what happens next. I hate to continue being wrong, but I'll go bullish with 650. And I just want to remind everyone at home that what's important about Bitcoin is how much money the venture capitalists have invested into companies to support this thing. That money is still all sitting out there. All of those companies are still working, even when the price goes down. They're still building new tools and new technologies that will help Bitcoin in the future. And the price will probably follow those new tools and technologies. Issue 2. IRS. Bitcoin is not a currency. The internal revenue service has labeled Bitcoin a commodity and declared that Bitcoin falls under capital gains taxes around 30 percent rather than foreign currency taxes around 50%. This is good news because it's clarification, but bad news because it may mean you'd have to report capital gains taxes on every Bitcoin purchase you make. Nullifying its usefulness is a currency. What will happen? Will the IRS decision stand? Will it kill Bitcoin? Megan Lords. It will not kill Bitcoin. I think they are doing this to, they see money that they think should be theirs. And obviously Bitcoin has been very popular and they're trying to just, I think they've kind of probably rushed these tax laws out just to have something right before tax season to kind of scare people and shake people up. But I really see it as pretty difficult to enforce the amount of paperwork that's going to be involved, it's going to discourage a lot of people from reporting. And I think you're going to see a lot of people not reporting for ideological reasons. Of course, you are going to see people who are going to try to play by the rules and pay their taxes. And I think you're going to find them get very frustrated with all of the paperwork that's involved in this. And I think I would like to see the IRS back off. I don't think they're going to, though. It's not in the nature of government. It's not in the nature of the IRS whatsoever. It's interesting that they made it a, you know, they classified it as an asset and not a currency. Obviously, they're smart enough at least to see what that would do if they legitimize this currency. But I think we all know that it is a currency. We obviously use it as that. Thousands of people do every day for transactions. We've legitimized it through our usage. So I don't think they're going to back down, but I think that they still lack the understanding of it. And I think it's going to be really difficult to enforce. I also think it's a good opportunity for some resistance to some of these tax laws. Many of us, you know, we were born after the income tax was instated and we feel kind of trapped by that. We have regular non-aggress jobs. And it's something, I don't think anyone wants to be an accada. I pay my taxes because I don't want to be caged. It's more worth it to just pay their bribe and go on with my life. But with my Bitcoin, I don't know that that's, that I'm going to go by those same rules. And I think a lot of people that are in the Bitcoin tend to be younger. They tend to have more of a mind to resist these things. So I'd like to see some, some heavy resistance to these ridiculous tax laws. It's a little reminiscent of the decision to go after Napster. You had the kids participating in this brand new ecosystem of music and you decided to kind of stomp on it. The rules on capital gains taxes have the ability to turn a whole generation off to taxes in the way that the Napster decision turned a whole generation off to the law. I mean, yes. Yeah, this situation like, even if you wanted to do your best, if you bought a book today at Amazon, you'd have to pay a different tax rate than if you bought the book yesterday at Amazon. The price of Bitcoin is always moving. It clearly seems to be a currency. And yet they insist on going through this whole temporary commodity phase. Kristoff? I think that the ruling is pretty much what I expected to come from the IRS. I fully expected that they were going to force us to pay capital gains taxes. I know that people are kind of worried about the paperwork that that will be incurred. But I'm not too concerned about it. I think it's actually pretty straightforward. If you have records of... If you have just a Bitcoin address, if you know the records of when you obtained a Bitcoin at which address you obtained it, it's going to be relatively straightforward to have a software that looks at the blockchain, pulls down the time that the transactions took place, looks at the fair market value, calculates the capital gains for you. I don't think that's going to be terribly difficult. There's going to need a new turbo tax for a Bitcoin or whatever for those people that I do want to report their capital gains and come on Bitcoin. I'm certainly planning on reporting all of my income related to Bitcoin, especially since I am a prominent figure in the area of financial privacy. I do think that there will be some people that won't want to pay taxes on their Bitcoin. What it will take for that to happen is we're going to need some ideologically driven software developers, people who are hardcore libertarians or anarchists or whatever, who really believe in financial privacy, who really believe in the ability to evade taxes. And those are the people that are going to provide the software to people that want to not pay taxes on their cryptocurrency holdings. That's absolutely something that's going to happen. I don't think it's going to come out of the mainline Bitcoin developers so much. I don't see that ideological drive in any of the core developers that I'm aware of, even in the case of Dark Coin, the main developer for that coin is, political comments are pretty tempered. I don't know if that's for legal reasons or what, but I do think that it's going to take software developers that are really passionate about this kind of stuff that are going to put the time in and make it a priority to push this software out. So we're just going to have to wait for that and see how it goes. There definitely seems to be a shift going on into the community where the older libertarian members of Bitcoin seem to be being pushed out by the newer, richer corporate members who have a different view of what Bitcoin should be and don't seem to think that they need the libertarians anymore. So they're trying to get rid of them. That's right. And I do wonder about the potential for people to be made examples of, especially if you are highly prominent in Bitcoin and you're coming out as a tax resistor. That's always a danger, and that's something that we have to expect. Exit question, will the IRS stick with their decision or will Congress get involved? Does this ruling stand? Megan Lords. I think it's going to likely stand. Yeah, I think. Yeah. Christoph Atlas. The only possible, there's a very limited set of scenarios where politicians try to make things more convenient for Bitcoin because a Bitcoin is fundamentally antithetical to their best interests. The ways that could happen, there could be some powerful lobbyists in the Bitcoin community that bribed them. That might be something that could happen, although I'm skeptical about that scenario. But that they're certainly not going to do it out of the goodness of their heart. They're not going to do it to create jobs or stimulate the economy or any of that stuff. Because Bitcoin takes power out of their hands. I do think that if they were to take some kind of decision like that, Bitcoin could do amazing things for economies all over the world. But politicians are fundamentally not concerned about how the economy is doing. They're concerned about tax revenue and who happens to be office at the time. So I think that if the Bitcoin laws change with respect to the IRS, they're only going to get worse from here and drive people deeper into the underground markets. There is a possibility that Congress could put a stay on the current law because the capital gains on purchasing could be so complicated and onerous. But the long term, I think they will have to change it to a currency eventually, but it's going to be longer term. Issue three, two exchanges fall, one exchange ascends. Vicarx and crypto rush are no more. One due to large withdrawals, one due to errors, but both former Bitcoin exchanges. Meanwhile, at Kraken, they've cryptographically proven their reserves. What's the future for exchanges? Compliance and cryptographically proven reserves like Kraken or loss, bankruptcy and failure like Vicarx and crypto rush. Kristoff, Atlas. Well, I think clearly exchanges like Kraken are setting the standard for the other exchanges. So more and more, we're going to see this form of positive self-regulation. Proof of reserves is an absolutely wonderful thing. We'll see more auditing like Coinbase has had the standard for. We will see things like voting pools, all of these cryptographic technologies that help secure customer funds and reduce liability for the exchanges. Whether they would become more compliant with government laws or not, it's not clear to me. I think exchanges over time will be driven towards the tax jurisdictions that have the most friendly regulation and the ones that are currently exists in heavily regulated areas. They're either going to have to move or they're going to go out of business. I'll call it right now. I don't really see there being any exchanges in New York City five years from now, aside perhaps from those exchanges that tailor exclusively to a very large scale investors. But in terms of the average person, I don't think they're going to be using any, even a single exchange that's based out of New York due to the regulation. And the regulators, they're some of the worst and they're just absolutely not going to back down on this stuff. So that's what I see happening with exchanges. And I think that Kraken is a wonderful development. I'm excited that they have made these changes so quickly and the rate of improvement on this securing customer funds and just innovating is just really impressive. Megan Lawrence. I think the exchanges that are going to shut down are going to be the ones that aren't competitive enough and aren't doing the things that Kraken did. They're not cryptocravically proving their reserves. I think that's setting the standard and I think that you're going to see a lot more self-regulation because that's going to, and I think you have to see that because that's the alternative to government regulation because you can't, I mean, if people are losing money on an exchange, it's going to upset them. Not everyone in Bitcoin is a libertarian or anarchist. They're going to run to the state for help and they're going to say, we need to crack down on these Bitcoin exchanges. And I definitely agree with what Christoph said. I don't think you're going to see any in New York or any of the other states where finances are highly regulated. But I would like to see more self-regulation. I think that's the natural direction things are going. And I think that's very good news. And I think it's going to be reflective of the community as a whole in a lot of other aspects. So I'm excited to see that. And I think that obviously we have the means to do that with these exchanges to prove the reserves. And that's going to become the norm. I agree, Megan. And self-regulation is really the only way to restore trust after the failures of crypto rush and Vicarx. If people are going to trust these exchanges, they're going to have to prove their reserves and be much more public about what they do. They're joined by Derek J Freeman from Peace News now. Derek, we were just discussing exchanges, Vicarx and crypto rush, which went down and Kraken, which is now cryptographically proven. Your thoughts? Yeah, it's terrific to see examples like Kraken or Kraken, however, it's pronounced, approving full reserves. Cryptographically, this is the future that I want to see. And I'm glad to see someone step up and show us how it's done. In the future, this is what companies will emulate. We're also joined by Will Pangman from Bitcoin Milwaukee. Will, what are your thoughts on the new exchanges? Yeah, I think it's a great model. Like Derek pointed out to show this willful self-regulation, so to speak. I know Timeswin, Andreas did some third-party audits for Coinbase and maybe someone else as well. But that kind of self-regulation is really important. You never are going to see that from the banking houses and investment houses, central banks, certainly not, full comprehensive, transparent, self-auditing that can be trusted and cryptographically proven. You're never going to see that. So to see it here for the first time and this new model is really fantastic and Boads will well for the future. Like Derek said, if it's kind of going to become, I think, what's preferred by the community? I mean, so-and-so's maybe very well-funded from a VC backing and stuff like that, but in good names, running the exchange good management. But if they're not willing to go the full extent in terms of proving reserves or just being fully transparent, they might have less of competitive edge in the market. For not going that full extent. So to see this from some leaders in the space, obviously, Crackin, a US-based exchange, that currently operating in the US. But certainly one of the higher volume exchanges, kind of taking the high road and a lot of these regulatory things with, there's a lot of oversight over them. They're very compliant. That's why they're not operating in the US. But they're very attuned to the community as well. And they're trying to show that they're listening to the community and what the community wants. And I really appreciate that. It was great to see Coinbase independently audited by Andreas Antonopoulos. As many of you know at home, Mt. Gox was never, ever independently audited. Exit question, will we ever have another situation where an exchange is run by a single person like Mt. Gox, Derek J. Yeah, of course, I think we're going to see that. It's only 2014. Obviously in the future, people are going to learn and say, oh, we need to have a balance of power here. But right now, we're used to the old model. At least I am. If I see a company, I want a dictatorial leader who can really get things done within the company. Decentralized models are probably going to be more popular in the future as technology improves and helps us use that. But right now, sort of authoritarian companies work well. So I think we'll see more of the Mark Carpelli's doxings in the future. But it's going to change. Christ off, Atlas. Yeah, I don't think this is something that's going to change across the board. Immediately, we will continue to see some of these short-term failures. But they'll fall by the wayside more and more as time goes on. Megan, Lord. It is what we're used to. We're used to giving one guy control of everything on, have it kind of a top-down structure. So I think over time, you'll see that decreasing. But in the long term, it's very easy for an individual to do a lot of people into making them think that they're trustworthy. So I think you're going to see that probably a few more times and hopefully decreasing in the long term. Well, Pangman. Yeah, you're going to continue to see it until some of the next generation protocols and decentralized exchanges hit the market. Once there's proof of concept with some of those, exchanges run in the responsible fashion that some are being run today. And of course, also the irresponsible fashion, as we've seen from some, namely most notably probably mount gocks. We'll continue to see exchanges and businesses run that way. So whether on the black market or on the up and up, yeah, there will be central authorities in that respect until I think we get to the paradigm shift of decentralized exchange as an application on in the cryptocurrency space as a whole, which I think will quickly change the landscape. And hopefully the most nimble of these companies will be able to pivot onto that type of an implementation and their companies will survive. And that'll be advantage for them to decentralize in that way. So it'll be interesting to see, whereas in the last century or maybe even few centuries, centralization being kind of a galvanizer for the company's bottom line. Whereas in the future, perhaps decentralization will be the galvanizer for a company's bottom line. It'll be really interesting to see. All right, great. I hope. Sorry, go ahead, Kristoff. Sorry, I wanted to mention the, we'll mention the black market and I covered this the other day on dark news on the world crypto network. Silicrow 2.0, they were hacked a little while ago before Mt. Gox related to the transactional transaction, maliability stuff. And the first thing that the admin had to say about this is, look, we're not going to do centralized ex-trows anymore. We're shutting down the escrow until we can get a true decentralized multi signature kind of escrow going. And so it's really interesting to see that the black market who you would think would have the least incentive to be innovative and to stand by their customers would do that. But they, you know, that that was exactly the case in the Silicrow 2.0. And not only did they do that, but they are also allegedly paying back all of the lost customer funds with their own, you know, pocket money. And so it's really curious to see if the black market areas are going to continue to be the leaders in this regard and I'm interested to see what that says about the the white market players. I was very impressed to hear that Silicrow 2.0 is paying back its users according to reports. And as for the having one person in charge of an exchange, I'd like to believe that we've grown out of that. But I think we're all kind of forgetting the computer whiz kid theory. If there's a whiz kid out there that can write his own decentralized exchange, he's probably going to be in charge of it. He's probably going to be the only one with the keys and the programming and everything. So I don't know if we'll see another one of those. I don't know if Carpellis was one of those or if he just got into a good situation. But decentralized exchanges run by one person. I suppose it's going to happen again. Issue 4. Grab bag. Which is the most exciting development for Bitcoin. Walmart accepts gift. You can now convert your bitcoins into gift cards with g-y-f-t.com that you can use at Walmart, Target, Whole Foods or Amazon.com or World Water Day accepts Bitcoin. Community funded project to bring water wells to Africa accepts Bitcoin. Donate today at thewaterproject.org. Meanwhile, I was going to mention Dodge Doge, but they just donated $15,000 for World Water Day. But what I was going to talk about is founder of Moolah, sponsors Doge, NASCAR because of typo. A $2 million Doge donation quickly became a $20 million Doge donation thanks to one more zero. And now Doge has their own NASCAR. Is there anything Doge can't do? Derek J. Well, first of all, I have to say how surprised I am that the CEO and founder of a payment processing company would make a typo error when sending a payment. But it's interesting also to see his take on that was not, oh, I made this mistake. Please can I have my money back? Instead it was who's going to match this donation and step up to the plate. It was a nice attitude. And the Doge community has shown this donation and Doge. They go hand in hand. That seems to be the number one use of Bitcoin as well. But what's the most exciting news? The water thing. Man, come on. You can get this is what Bitcoin is. That's the most exciting part of it for me. When I heard about Bitcoin, I knew this was going to change the world because we can send micro payments to other parts of the country. People who are in need are going to get the help that they need from independent people like you and me. And we can send a donation to help someone drink clean water. I mean, it doesn't get more fundamental than that. And I like that the website even gives you the option to go from one person all the way up to a school. It really gives you a nice scale to see how many people you can impact. You just yourself. Very cool. Kristoff Atlas. I'm going to go with the water story as well. And what exactly about it is I like to see Bitcoin, a charity is taking place. Both because they're helping people and because they put out a positive message about Bitcoin. But also, I think that the way that we convert the world to Bitcoin is to touch as many people with Bitcoin as possible. Whether that's giving them a small amount of Bitcoin to get them started with their first wallet or whether it's people in Africa that they're going to have a major change to their lives. And I suspect that they'll be aware that Bitcoin was involved with this positive impact on their lives. So I think, you know, by whatever means that we can make it happen, the more people that we touch with Bitcoin, the better it is for the world. That's more and more people become friendly to it. Megan Lourdes. I don't know. I'm pretty excited that I can buy stuff at Walmart with Bitcoin. No, not at all. Like the water thing obviously is the biggest story in this. And that's why that's the whole reason I'm in Bitcoin is the charitable aspects of it that you can show solidarity with your fellow man, no matter where he or she is in the world. And that's really what's going to bring people on board. And that's really what I'd like to see highlighted more. You don't always see that highlight. I mean, of course, I'm always blabbering about it. But you really don't see at least a lot of the people that I've talked to that heard of Bitcoin or know maybe a little bit about it. They don't know it's potential for charity and helping other people. And that's so important. And I'd really love the Dogecoin communities attitude towards charity too. They seem to have that at the forefront of Dogecoin. Whereas with Bitcoin, you kind of see it tucked into a corner, like maybe you can have a charity panel here sometimes, but we're going to be talking about like regulation and like the tech aspect. And maybe your panel's going to get cut or something like that. I mean, there's kind of like a shoving charity into the corner and less it's convenient to kind of bring out to the forefront. But with Dogecoin, you're kind of seeing that at the forefront. And I think it is interesting that they have a NASCAR card. That's an interesting approach. But I think, especially what Derek said, when the guy made that mistake of sending 20 million Dogecoin, he was just like, oh, well, like you guys match this. Come on, like throw in your Dogecoin. So I think that's great. And I think that's the attitude that I'd like to see more of in the Bitcoin space. So if we could kind of like marry those kind of, you know, the enthusiasm, the attitude, the Dogecoin community, with the Bitcoin community, I'd like to see some working together. And let's help people who are really struggling. Let's help people who are suffering and who could benefit so much from our help. And let's do it in a, you know, through currency too. Not everyone has the skills to be or even the ability to be able to travel to other countries and actually physically help these people and help them build structures that they need or help them get water that they need. A lot of people go to these other countries and they don't have training and construction and background and some of these things that you really need to actually be on the ground helping these people. So leave it up to specialization, leave it up to people who know how to do that and put the financial backing behind them. It's so easy to do too that I think it's going to be very easy to get people on board with in general. So I I'm so excited about the charity aspect of it. That that to me is the biggest thing in Bitcoin pretty much period. Will, Penguin. Yeah, I will agree with everyone that the coolest story out of those is probably the water one, but I want to spend more time talking about the Dogecoin guys. And just to pick up really where Megan left off, you know, Bitcoin has always had since it became even somewhat newsworthy, has always had a PR problem. And there isn't much out there trying to clean that up. And there are those who are doing a very good job with, you know, some PR outreach in some smaller areas or certain niches or among certain, you know, professional circles maybe. But plenty of, plenty of work still to go. Of course, you know, the headlines are still kind of atrocious. They're getting better. I got to say I've been noticing a lot more aptitude as far as understanding goes among most of the press out there reporting on it. But of course, it's still a problem. And Doge going to seem to address this head on and they get the charity side of it as Megan pointed out. The NASCAR thing is a brilliant marketing play, a brilliant move. And whether or not the extra zero as part of that donation is legit or, you know, just another crafty, you know, PR strategy is beside the point. The fact is they're sending Jamaican Bob sled team to Sochi for the Olympics. They're wrapping a NASCAR in Dogecoin in Cygnia's. And I mean, the amount of awareness that that raises is huge. How many people outside of the typical IT security computer tech savvy crowds slash libertarian crowds are going to come to Bitcoin in this next wave of adoption by way of Dogecoin first, you know, because of the great work that they're doing. That's happening with a lot of people and the tip bots are indications of that. And the fact that charity charitable giving is so plentiful in that community and such a top priority in that community. I think there's a lot of lessons that growing Bitcoin businesses can learn. You know, aside from the like let's say the big dozen or the big 10 or whatever Bitcoin businesses out there, there's some really, there's some they've ignored marketing pretty much, you know, they've ignored some, you know, the regular menu of things you do for advertising and brand awareness and stuff. And even some of the big, big guys aren't really out and about doing a whole heavy bunch of marketing. A lot of their budgets are tied up with regulatory compliance these days or with other, you know, development research and development issues or just not on their radar. But these types of people seem to be helping grow the Dogecoin community. And I think Bitcoin can learn some lessons from that as Megan pointed out. It's really exciting to see the what can Dogecoin do? What can Dogecoin do? What can Dogecoin do? I don't know. It's pretty fantastic to see for this from a joke currency that's continuously inflating. Is it, you know, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, the Doge NASCAR is very zoom and much fast. Moving on to questions and answers. Your questions are answers. Justin Cohen writes, how many months slash years do you guys think the IRS ruling is set back mainstream adoption? Loaded question. None? None? Well, Derek? Yeah, I'd say zero. Kristoff? I can't imagine that anyone expected something completely different. So I don't think it's going to make a difference. Megan? I pretty much concur with that. I don't think it's going to make a difference. Yeah, everyone thought that they were going to have to pay capital gains taxes on this anyway. I think most people were planning to just in advance even before the decision. Yeah, there's a lot of reason to think that this is a, you know, the fact that there's an answer period is a plus, right? That's clarity and that's a plus. Clarity helps. Whether it's, you know, poorly, poorly designed or not is kind of beside the issue that there's an answer. That's great. The other thing is, you know, I've heard lots of people who would fall into the kind of philosophical camp that we share here as panelists on the show I might argue and they also have like a lot of skin in the game and they see this as an advantage. Just, you know, I'm not aware of the particular loopholes, but being classified as property, there's a, you know, if you're treating Bitcoin as an investment, even if you're using it as a means of exchange, you can essentially, there are loopholes out there I'm hearing to kick the can down the road, so to speak, with your property taxes on these assets. And, you know, through some methods, you know, I don't know, tax law very much at all, but I've heard and read some things in recent days about this that I think people will find some of these loopholes and for lack of a better term, allow actually the common man for a change to exploit them as opposed to just the Uber rich. You know, Bitcoin is an incredibly scarce digital asset that anyone can possess. It's not just exclusive to the Uber rich who have access to incredibly special privileges at high levels of banking or high levels of finance. So now everyone can have access to these things and soon through the open source nature of this of this community and the sharing that goes on, I'm sure we'll all become hip to some of these really interesting things that have been available to billionaires that are now potentially available to the small Bitcoin user. I think that the interpretations of the law are going to get weird too, because let's say you get some, you acquire some Bitcoin and you have a multi-sig address where you have half of the key and your friend has half of the key who owns the Bitcoins at that point. There's going to, as the currency stuff gets more complicated and more sophisticated, the attempt to legally interpret the stuff are just going to get, I think, incredibly convoluted and they may fall way behind the technology. And the real issue here is that the government is acknowledging that Bitcoin exists. This is the first step towards currency. Our next question also from Justin Cohen, I'm in Australia. In Australia, however, many countries look to the US for their own guidance and the US can apply political pressure on other countries to follow their lead. Will the US decision lead to other countries adopting similar tax decisions? I certainly hope so. I mean, you know, not that I'm in favor of these kinds of decrees by Fiat, but I do appreciate the clarity and I think they got it, they may not have meant to get it right. I see the potential for this interesting game to be played where you can't be compliant under Finsen and the IRS at the same time and they're both agencies out of the treasury. So that's interesting game that might be going on, but bottom line, they might have gotten right one thing and that is that Bitcoin truly is property. You know, you actually have private property when you possess those private keys and you maintain good security over them. And so I kind of hope more jurisdictions rather than having a contentious stance or an unknown stance can have, you know, again, as you mentioned Thomas, maybe this is the first step having this kind of a stance, hopefully classifying it in some way around this property concept, which I think is the right direction to go. It's going to have an impact on the countries considered within the Anglo-American empire. You know, Australia, the UK, they will follow the leadership of the United States, but I don't think it's going to have the same impact in other countries that say want to compete with the Anglo-American empire. They may have different rules for Bitcoin. Christoph? Yeah, definitely the United States has exhibited tremendous power in terms of pressuring other countries to adopt laws when they want to. It's worked well in Sweden and, all over the globe. So I definitely expect that there will be other countries that will follow suit. Megan? Yes, I think you're going to see a homogenous approach to these kind of Anglo countries kind of falling in line, following behind the US, but there are a lot of other countries who desperately need Bitcoin due to the currency for the much more serious currency problems they're facing. I think you're seeing a lot of these countries are wanting to be more competitive with the US. They're wanting to gain more of a foothold in these world markets. So I think you may see less regulations, or maybe even no regulations because they recognize the potential Bitcoin has, and how having these lower regulations or no regulations, maybe in some cases, they can bring entrepreneurs and people into their countries and boost their own economies and make themselves larger players in the world markets. I agree, Megan. There may be a chance for other countries to differentiate themselves by choosing different laws. Is Switzerland going to be the Switzerland of Bitcoin? Next question from Daniel Richardson. Bitcoin, finally, some negative views on Bitcoin here. Bitcoin, as a currency, in my opinion, is doomed. The protocol and the blockchain are really good at this app, but I believe smart contracts, wills, etc. will allow us to prove our assets and wealth to people without needing a monetary system at all. Why have money? Interesting opinion. I agree with this a lot from the anarcho-left, types of folks, trying to stop thinking about money altogether, abdicating themselves or absolving the human race from the use of money, because it's always seen as evil traditionally by that set. I don't think that something in an animate can be evil. Again, I think we've seen that the rules behind it make all the difference. So if you have a usurious financial system, that's pretty evil because the rules are usurious, right? Predatory, of course, by nature, and they disrupt equilibrium because there's a false scarcity going on and there's control from top down. With Bitcoin, you can basically just take the opposite of all of those features, and that's what you have essentially. Is this really naked, opposite thing to that, which is, again, maybe more capitalistic for lack of a better term, at least traditionally speaking, which is not something that anyone should push anyone away. I'm eager to hear what the rest of the panel has to say about this because I know we're all in relatively the same camp from that kind of perspective, but I want everyone to use Bitcoin. I want the biggest statists to use it. I want the farthest left anarchists to use it, and everyone in between it, with everywhere, right? It's open for reason. I don't think that seeing it as a token or a currency to answer the question, to say it's doomed is pretty strong. The person asking the question may be right that the protocol lives on, and we see things more widely adopted in, in, in, or whatever, non-Bitcoin or things riding on the rails of Bitcoin, which would be great in my opinion too. I don't think we should be so quick to divorce ourselves from the concept of money, just the concept of usurious, predatory, rules for the money, and those things coming from top down. Derek J. Man, I hope this guy's right. That would be a really cool future to live in, where everything's so efficient and can be proven, and we don't need money. I think that would be great. I have no allegiance or special, you know, need or love of money. I just find it useful, and you know, as long as it's useful, I'm going to keep using it. I like Bitcoin because it's more useful money than stuff I've used in the past, but hey, if we come to this future that this guy's imagining, I'm all for it. I don't need Bitcoin. I just need an easy way to transact with my fellow human beings. Christoph, Atlas. Well, I think that money is an incredibly useful tool, and certainly I prefer to use money. I think there are sound economic reasons for it, but the great thing about Bitcoin is that it is 100% opt-in. If you do not wish to use Bitcoin, you don't have to. No one's ever going to make you use Bitcoin. So if you want to live in an area or a particular society where they do not use currencies and everything works off of some kind of smart contract system, then be my guest. Go for it. I think that's fantastic. I love to see people trying out and experimenting with different things. I personally don't want to join into the experiment, but as long as you allow me to use Bitcoin in my own space, then I have no objection. Megan, Lord. I think there's a lot of room in the future for competing and cooperating economic systems. So it sounds like this person may be supportive of an idea of a resource-based economy, which I've seen coming from the left- to the left- to the left- to the left- to the left- to the left- and I think there's a lot of merits to some of their arguments. I don't necessarily view money as evil. I think that there might be a separation between money as a thing that's used to facilitate commerce and the idea behind it or the problems when you have accumulation of a lot of money that is kind of bonded together with power. So I think there's room for a lot competing systems and I would kind of like to see that. I'm very excited about smart contracts and all of these other developments in blockchain technology. And I think we're going to see a wide variety of options become available to people who want to support a more anarcho-capitalist approach to it or even a more status approach versus someone who's looking at more of a resource-based economy. And I'd like to see some cooperation among all of those things. I think it's a very exciting, there's so many exciting developments and with the idea of decentralization being at the forefront, you're going to naturally see these breaks in ideology anyway. I think while you could have smart wills and smart contracts without electronic money, it's easier to have them with electronic money. The idea that my will is in the system and every month someone will be paid from this address to that address seems like it should be right there with the rest of the contract. I don't see a reason for separation. I don't know that Bitcoin is for sure the cryptocurrency of the future. It could be some new coin, but it's definitely going to be a cryptocurrency from the way I see it. What do you think about the next question? What do you think about the coin desk article today about the Isle of Man becoming a Bitcoin hub? I'm not that familiar with the article, but it sounds like a good idea. I assume the temperatures are good there for the miners and it's close to England for the rest of access and everything. So let's see we have a question from Tom Pee who I believe is in the United Kingdom. He says so much apathy in the US. Let them walk over you. Your whole tax system is technically illegal from the instigation in the 20s and against your constitution. About time you took a stand against something Bitcoin would be a strong start. Derek J, are we not being revolutionary enough? It's not my constitution. I don't know who this guy is really talking about, but everyone in the world is free to do what they want, regardless of what people in fine hats say. Christoph Atlus. I think the constitution was that really old piece of paper that there was these dudes, they wrote some suggestions down and then for a little while they were following the suggestions kind of sort of, but not so much anymore. I think the best way to opt out of the system is just to use cryptocurrencies and figure out how to work around the state. Trying to put up a stand against the state is I think pretty much a fruitless endeavor. Megan Lourdes. Bitcoin is an excellent tool for a peaceful resistance kind of opting out of the tax system. I don't really have strong opinions about the constitution. I used to, but I no longer find that my life is ruled by this arcade piece of paper. So yeah, I would like to see some resistance to it, but there are going to always be people who are going to say you're not anarchist enough and you're not pure enough and all of that. So while I appreciate the commenters, I kind of radicalism because I very much believe in that, you're not going to be able to please everyone. Will Pangman. Yeah, just to echo everybody else, I know we all agree here. It's like, I don't think it's wise or safe for any person. I know some people may need to do this because of the kind of system that we all live in right now. Not just in America, but the world is very much, this is permeated throughout the world in many places. So America is kind of its own, you know, petri dish of excitement, but yeah, it's some Bitcoin is one great tool that allows you to choose to be away from this system. Like it's the first time that we can actually have a solution that's created by all of us. We can all work together remotely, easily without, you know, having to work very hard in our physical bodies. We can have our computers do this hard work and, you know, for us and we own these machines and just maintain them and it's going on in the periphery. You know, resistance in general, whether it's peaceful resistance or whatever, that puts a target on your back. And I want to live a long life because I think I can do the most good and have the most effect the more years I spend with putting my hard work and time into making life more wonderful for me, my family and all of my dear loved ones out there. Not just the people in my geographical proximity, but, you know, the people I love communicating with, the people asking these questions, the people who always come on this panel on this show, projects that I'm working on remotely with so many great people. Bitcoin brings these great people together. It's like wonderful in that way. You get these really smart, really friendly, really love, like people full of love and life, right, that work together on this stuff. And that's what it's exciting for me. So as a tool to peacefully opt out and like, I want to just say goodbye to the system I don't like and don't want to be a part of. And slowly but surely, we're going to be able to do that more and more, especially thanks to the huge leap forward, the huge floodgates that we open with this private money, this digital private money that we now can play with. So that's, you know, I don't think getting angry, I mean, I'm, I got angry and now I'm not, I'm done being angry. Things happen and they still kind of poke at me and make me angry, but anger is a stage. And once, you know, let hope people out there who have been angry for many, many years and they're like, it's not a stage, I'm always angry. And then one, find some ways to like transcend it, get beyond it, resolve it and put your energy towards building this thing or whatever your skills can lend to making life more wonderful for you and those around you with the idea of freedom behind it. And we're going to have to do these things like somewhat rebelliously just because we're not towing the line. But we're not hurting anybody. We get to just opt out and live more and more of our lives in the, using these tools that aren't tools given to us or granted to us or whatever. Yeah, and aren't participating in the perpetual harm of people because, you know, it's, you look at paper, I look at paper money nowadays and I know this is probably true of some of our panelists as well. But it looks to me like blood money, it looks like blood money, looks like war dollars, you know, I know what that money does, I know how it's used. Now, you know, some people are just learning how it's used and how it works. And, yeah, so that makes people angry. I get that. But let's get beyond the anger and let's get to building, you know, a building in all inclusive place where people can come and voluntarily cooperate with each other and win, win. I would like to say in defense of the young American people, it's very difficult to rebel against events that occur before your birth. I'm certainly against the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. I'm also against the Dred Scott decision and I would have stopped them from meeting on Jackal Island and I would have voted against it on Christmas Eve. And more recently, I think, Citizens United should be thrown out as well. So we are doing our thing over here in the colonies. We're doing the best we can. I'd like to thank Magical Rainbow Night Mage for watching at home. He says, we are all free to see a rainbow. And our last comment, I'd just like to thank this great comment from Daniel Richardson who writes, I'd just like to add that I watched this group since episode one and I think that with the Bitcoin channel and mad Bitcoin, you would without them, you'd be left out of touch of what's going on in the crypto world. Keep up the good work and people do appreciate your efforts worldwide. Peace. A good note to end on as we're out of time. Until next time, bye bye.