The Bitcoin Group, the American original, for over the last ten seconds, the sharpest cento-sheets, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Blake Anderson, from Cryptographic Economist, Christoph Atlas, from anonymous Bitcoin book. Hey, you could be here. Megan Lourdes from Bitcoin, not bombs, and crypto convos. Hey, thanks for having me. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World of Crypto Network. First off, we've got great news. Gavin Anderson doesn't want to be the king of Bitcoin. Glad to hear it. Hear, hear. Bitcoin billionaire, the iPhone tapping game, is apparently getting rave reviews. And Bill Nye, the science guy, wants Bitcoin in his analog watch, whatever that means. And I just got back from Vegas, and the money 2020 convention, which looked pretty much like this. Or maybe a little bit like this. And I met some people, like the blockchain CEO, the change tip CEO, and even Julia Transky, and Brock Pierce. And I met this guy. That's right. And I met Patrick Merck, Bitcoin lawyer, and now the director of the Bitcoin Foundation. I met the woman from the background too. Communications director of the Bitcoin Foundation, Jin Young England, just a week of mad bitcoins hob-noving with the who's who in Bitcoin, surrounded by hundreds of rich CEOs from all the legacy payment systems about to be replaced by a series of ones and zeros. And then I went to the pinball hall of fame. Rich restoration and pond stars. Yes, that's right. All three. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Issue one, Silk Road shut down. The FBI has added again, taking down online drug websites like it's going out of style. Operation Automus, that's hard to say. And ominous, the shutdown has apparently gone global, shutting down more than 410 sites and seizing millions of dollars in Bitcoin. It may have even been a honeypot from the start. The Washington Post says that the FBI has made the world a more dangerous place by shutting down the Silk Road and other online drug markets. While the Washington, while the Wall Street Journal warns that TORR has anonymity has been pierced. Blake Anderson, your thoughts. Well, I think that's people that are saying that the world is now a more dangerous place or absolutely correct. I mean, we have a market where you can exchange for services that are legal and dangerous in other places and then we close it down and we act like it doesn't make drugs or dangerous services more valuable and more contentious. So it's really, really funny to me when they keep you in like, we shut it down. It's like the dread pirate roberts is something that cannot be shut down. It's like, watch one movie and then you'll understand the name. It's really not that hard. It's not that complicated. I mean, look it up on Wikipedia. So I think it's funny when they lop off the head of the Hydra, fight more grow and they lop those off. It's like, well, what are you think's going to happen? So those are my thoughts. Kristoff, Atlas. There's lots to talk about with this story. Weird coincidence. The day that this news came out, I was just thinking to myself like, man, it's been like almost a year since the original Silk Road was shut down. I wonder what they're waiting for with the next series of shutdowns and it occurred to me like they're probably going to do a bunch at once. They probably didn't working on trying to do it. It's like a typical law enforcement tactic. They have in their mind that it's going to be, have more of an impact if you shut down a bunch of these things at once, of course. If it's something that grows exponentially or continues to grow despite the shutdowns, it doesn't matter really. But yeah, so I think it's sad news. But if you look, I don't know how much we can really trust the reports that the FBI submits with these arrests. But if you look at the report, they strongly indicate that this was a pretty massive operation security failure that people were basically already made from the original Silk Road weren't arrested intentionally at that time, got involved in the next Silk Road. The guy who is supposedly allegedly the administrator registering domains under his own name, just all kinds of stuff. So I think that if you, we actually may, so people already started to talk about like, well, what's the next generation of things? They're assuming that the Silk Road era is over. And I don't think it's over quite yet. I think that a really professional well planned out team could coordinate this stuff and use proper operational security to run the next series of marketplaces in this image. I think it will still be around for a little while. But even if that's not the case, we do have these decentralized marketplaces that are marching towards their version 1.0. And they're going to be a lot tougher for people like the FBI to deal with when they're available. We might see a Silk Road in a box software, which is just download and run your own drug market. And that's a good point, Christophe, that the FBI does all their hits at the same time, much like the mafia. This is the end of the Godfather. Reagan, Lord. I think the Washington Post was pretty spot on when they're saying that these crackdowns do make things more dangerous for people wanting to recreational use drugs and by other things that are legal in the government says you can't have. At the same time, I think a lot of these sites are probably run by the government, ironically. I don't think they're probably the safest to use. And it's unfortunate that it's probably really difficult to tell which ones are legit and which ones aren't. Like Christophe said, there are some pretty strange signs of the owner registering under his own name, things like that. They were just very strange. If you're wanting to run something very securely, you wouldn't be doing things like this. And I think a lot of them are traps for people. And it's unfortunate that instead of resorting to something that actually makes things safer for people and just letting people buy the drugs, the government's just going in and tearing things up and just trying to trap people even more. Because if the drug war isn't already destructive enough, just targeting people not online, but just on the streets and things like that. So I do expect more to pop up and I do expect them to become a lot more efficient and a lot more secure, though. I think there's a lot of really promising projects that are going to be coming out. And I think it's something that they can't stop ultimately. They can try to stop it. But already the cultural tide is shifted towards pro legalization, at least in the case of cannabis. So I think you're seeing a lot more of a cultural shift and a societal shift in that direction in general. And I think that a lot of these crackdowns are going to be seen in more of a negative life by your average person in the next few years. And so as they really start to realize how dangerous and awful the war on drugs has been. It seems whether recreational or pharmaceutical people want to take drugs or need to take drugs. Maybe the government should set up their own drug market to protect consumers. Exit question. Yes or no. Will there be another dread pirate robberts? Blake Anderson. Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's incontrovertible. It's the dread pirate robberts unless, you know, the entire purpose for the name falls apart. And every single expectation should be that there will be. I mean, I can't believe that if all the people on earth, not a single one of the first to be like, I'm going to take up the DPR man to why not? So I think perhaps at one point the DPR will only be a symbol. Christ off atlas. Yeah, there certainly will be the first two alleged people to operate these websites on the DPR name. They're both from San Francisco. It leads me to strongly believe that there is some kind of dark market incubator going on there. And so it's just a matter of time before we see the next DPR. Probably from San Francisco as well. Megan lords. Absolutely. And people think of sometimes of dread pirate robberts as this one person, but you have to separate dread pirate robberts. What we know from the Silk Road, you know, dread pirate robberts trademark from the meme and the idea and the concept, which is someone's going to pick up this mantle. And I think it's going to become a lot more symbolic too. I mean, the whole point of dread pirate robberts comes from the movie The Princess Bride. And it was an idea that, you know, kind of spread throughout year. So someone kept picking up the mantle. So of course, I think we're going to see this happen. And there's going to be a lot of dread pirate robberts is to. The answer is yes. Moving on issue two, Feds begin their crackdown on Bitcoin stocks. Even Wired magazine is speculating now about the possible crackdown on Bitcoin 2.0. The emerging world of digital commodities such as crypto stocks, counter party, ethereum, and even made safe. Sighting only that one amateur college student investor got a letter. Wired admits that no other companies have received SEC letter. This off atlas is the crackdown coming. I'm sure that they'll do everything legally within their means to interrupt crypto stocks or things that would resemble crypto stocks. They even do some things that are beyond legal means. And I don't think that some people on Wall Street or any of the politicians in bed with those Wall Street folks are going to take too kindly to any kind of free market competition. They'll do what they can to either outright ban such things or just make them as inconvenient to use as possible. Megan Lord. Yeah, there's going to be, I think there's going to be a lot of crackdowns. And the way this, these stories have been written about is really concerning to me because first you had the, I think it may have been a coin desk article, which I know what you all think about coin desk. And I think we're pretty much close to the same page. But they were saying, oh, there's been this huge SEC crackdown. I remember the first article said, oh, well, these people are saying that no information can be disclosed to the press. They got these letters, but the letters say that they can't be disclosed. And then you had another article kind of following that saying, okay, maybe it wasn't that big of a deal. Maybe it's just one person. And then you have this wired article kind of saying, not really providing a whole lot of evidence. And what's really clear to me is that these journalists are not doing their research whatsoever. And that's really concerning. And that should concern everyone who's trying to really pay attention to the subject. But I think ultimately, regardless of how it's reported and the way it's reported, there's going to be a lot of crackdowns. And they're going to make it very difficult for US citizens to get access to these services. So either by making it impossible to start these kinds of businesses in the US or with people do move outside of the country, preventing US citizens from using these services. And that's really concerning. But I think we have to be prepared for that. It's really unfortunate. But I think this is a situation where we have to expect the worst. And like Christophe said, they're going to use illegal means and illegal means to probably do this. Blake Anderson. Well, by the time you go all the way through debt securities and equities and things like that, the big danger here is that you're going to have to defend complex economic subjects as they go into technology to a jury of your peers and not to sound completely pompous, but do a lot of us that are core in this game really even have any peers that know all of the different stuff. So if something looks like a duck and quacks, like a duck and it's like, this looks like securities or a promise of future payments and stuff, are these people going to be able to argue well, no, there's math and stuff and it's not a negative equity situation and things like that. A jury of your peers is going to be like, the government said that you do this. You need something wrong and it sounds really complicated. You're going to jail. So I think that that is the really, really big concern because you can technically make things that are not by definition securities, but the definition is so broad reaching that it will be really, really hard to defend in court. So that makes a lot of people really, really nervous. And I think that they should tread carefully. Especially when you have a company like crypto stocks, it seems pretty clear they're into crypto stocks. Now a counterparty, at least it's a party. A big question, which service is under more threat, counterparty or crypto stocks? This is the exact same question from last week because it's the exact same topic. Who cares? Moving on. Did you know, mad bitcoins and Bitcoin and Blake were sent to Las Vegas to cover the money 2020 convention? Thanks to the support of Roberts and Roberts Brokridge. You should try it today by gold and silver with Bitcoin at rrbi.co. Issue three, characteristics of Bitcoin users and analysis of Google search data. A new study from the University of Kentucky shows that Bitcoin users fall into four categories, computer programming enthusiasts, speculative investors, libertarians and criminals. Megan Lourdes, what do you think of this study and what category do you fall in? I think this is an interesting study and I think it confirms what a lot of people have been saying for a long time and especially the way the media portrays Bitcoin supporters. So as far as what category I fall into, I would say I definitely fall into the criminal category. Blake Anderson. I have to go say exactly what Megan said. You know, I'm a hardcore criminal and I do criminal things. I mean, my criminal buddies like the criminal aspects of Bitcoin. I'm a computer nerd at heart. I'd say I have to go into that category, trying to go into finance and stuff as I've been pushing that direction through my project management career makes sense. But if we could all not deal with funny money and just have real Bitcoin money, I would go back into computer stuff because that's what I enjoy. Kristoff Atlas. Is there really any difference between libertarians and criminals? Are they not already guilty of thought crime? I think that there's a strong case to be made for that. So clearly I would fall under the computer nerd category and I think that a lot of these criminals are probably like extremists that are dissatisfied with the wonderful dollar currency that was given to us by our masters and they're shaking their shackles and rattling the bars and it just really makes me nervous. And I would be in a little bit of each group. But we've got no time. Moving on issue four. The World Crypto Network covered the money 2020 convention this week with more than 750 CEOs and one mad Bitcoin. Ben Loskey made a speech and promised to leave programmers and minors alone. Hooray for him and the great state of New York. Blake Anderson, what do you think of Ben Loskey's promises? Well I think that Ben Loskey's promises may or may not be accurate because I've held you know as a truth for a long time that Ben Loskey's goal is to create an exchange with a token substrate that does not actually represent the Bitcoin token so they can be leveraged. So he's like, oh people that I don't really want to come and crush her if, right? Don't worry, I'm not going to come after you and then people are like maybe yay. But at the same time I think that if they are able to get another GOC situation with a fractional reserve token thing going that's connected with all the legacy financial systems that's going to be really bad and will do even more damage than GOCs. So it was a good or neutral news? Yeah maybe but do not stop looking out for really really malicious stuff that can want a New York. I don't think it's going to be good by the time the dust settles. Just off atlas. Yeah, to me it's sad to see people that are having a positive reaction to this news. It's like the wife abuser that says, well I only actually hit her four times and not five and everyone's like, oh god what a relief you know. It's sad to see this. I think that these regulations are going to have a very negative effect on Bitcoin. I expect to see the state of New York continue to move the bar just whenever we feel that we're getting comfortable with the current set of regulations. I think that they're going to hold back innovation massively beyond what they have already inflicted through regulatory uncertainty. And I suspect that many regulators in other places will copy their bad behavior and it's unfortunate. Megan Lorde. Yeah the worst thing about this is it sets a template for other states to follow and I think it's going to be really really bad and I think it's something that we need to take very seriously. But I guess you know it's unfortunate because in order to get mainstream adoption if you're looking for that you're going to need to go through the exchanges and the exchanges are the most easily attacked by these regulations and they're going to be what's targeted by any state and any regulations. And I think New York is going to come down very hard on them and that's very bad news for people who are looking to get into Bitcoin and start businesses of their own and try to provide services to people. So we're going to have to find alternatives and hopefully that hopefully we can survive it. But I do think it's going to be ongoing. We have to expect this in the same way that the internet got regulated and some of these other things that were really great got regulated. And it is kind of one of the things. The less they understand it, it could be better for us. It's only a matter of time for the I think the regulations get worse and worse. It's bad for New York and it's bad for Bitcoin. You still have a chance to submit your questions. Submit your questions now. We're running out of time for that. But here's a little bit of stalling. And finally tonight the Bitcoin group has been immortalized in comic book form by Brazilian Illustrator Rock from rockincomics.com.br. What's up? Indeed. Follow him on Twitter at at rock. Well, it's supposed to be there, but it's not there anymore. At rock barcellos B-A-R-C-E-L-L-O-S. Yes, his real name is rock. Maybe send him some change tip too. Anyway, moving on. Your questions. We've got one question from Simutra. Simutra says, I like the way the way Losky was talking. It really looked like he's in delusion that he's helping or he's a really good actor. And I could agree with that. I was there for the speech. And when Losky describes the mountain gocks moment, for him it's like the JFK assassination. The whole world stopped. My goodness. A really crappy looking PHP application in Japan has failed us. One programmer is not to be trusted. We need teams of competent programmers and oversight. Is this such a surprise to me? And apparently to Losky was a huge surprise. And the bigger surprise to him was that the Japanese regulators hadn't heard of Bitcoin. They weren't ready. And he was going to protect people. It's a very paternalist attitude. It almost seems like a parody of what the libertarians think of government. Government has a big father. Losky is a protector. And what was so funny is if you watched the question and answers as well, which you can watch on World Crypto Network, is that they ask about the credit card collapse and the collapse of the banking system and the mortgage system. And they say, why didn't you protect us for any of those things, Losky? Why didn't you protect us from all our credit cards being hacked? He doesn't realize that's his job too. And that's also a much larger slice of the pie than Bitcoin. He should really be minding his own house before he goes out and starts taking on more responsibilities. What did you guys think about the way Losky was talking? Blake? I agree. I mean, like his responsibility is to the currency that was made by the people that he represents and works with their system and stuff. And I'm not saying he represents me, but arguably that's your stuff. You did not invent Bitcoin. You have nothing to do with it. Go the hell away. Get out of here. I do not touch this stuff as that yours. I was talking to Paul Snow after he spoke and Paul Snow was like, yeah, he slipped up and said, this is the face of finance or this is the face of economics and pointed to his own face. And Paul Snow was like, I recorded it over a second. And I didn't hear him say it, but Paul Snow is a pretty cool guy. So Factor was awesome. And a lot of the funny things about it, Paul was right there to a point out. He tweeted about it too. I was down the plains. I've only seen the recorded coverage, but his delusional quality that the Sumitred pointed at is true. I mean, he's either delusional and really believes it or just a bad actor. And from a consumer perspective, like consumer protection, no one's been put in jail for the mortgage crisis. They put all this bad fish in boxes and they sold it as good fish. And of course, they were going to be found out. And the idea would be eventually they'd have to lose their money. They'd have to go to jail. They knew that. They knew that when they were sending out the bad fish, it would be caught. It would cause destruction, disaster in the economy. They're very smart. But they haven't been punished. It's very strange. Chris, I always think that. Yeah. Are these people delusional or are they good actors? It's probably a little bit of both. Certainly if you look at other historical figures who were well known for atrocities, they seem to really believe ostensibly that they were doing something noble or for the greater good or whatever. This is something that they talk themselves into. And it's quite possible that Ben Moskis in that position. It didn't start with Bitcoin. I mean, this is a person that has a career of thinking that he can work the way up the ladder to positions where he dictates how people live their lives over a vast geographical area for millions and millions of people. I mean, that is a crazy idea that's generally accepted in society right now. So I don't think that we should be particularly shocked when he brings this to bear on the Bitcoin space. It's pretty consistent with his history overall. Megan? Yeah. It's really unfortunate to think that some people are going to actually trust this incompetent person to protect them. I mean, just he's utterly useless. But I mean, it's not surprising considering that Congress has 11% approval ratings and 96% or so of them got reelected. Really? I mean, this is the world we live in. So unfortunately, I think people are going to believe him. And I think he believes himself. I think that he really, really believes in what he is doing and he's used to having that power. He's very comfortable where he's at. He's used to kind of being seen as an authority on these things. And the truth is, I mean, he's not very helpful to people who need the protection. He's already proven that. And it is interesting. I had what Paul Snow said. If he did actually say something like that. Like, do you really want to say that? Do you want to be the face of that? Because it didn't really work out for a lot of people there. So yeah, you know, it is interesting. I mean, I think he comes across as very phony and while at the same time probably believing a lot of what he's saying. So people in power tend to really believe it sometimes. So I think it could be totally genuine. But I think this is another example of one of those people who is pretty much useless at what they do and still is seen as some kind of authority and say, you know, it's a point it or I guess in the case of Congressman, it would be reelected. And, you know, the cycle keeps going. I guess I'm sorry to be so pessimistic. But I had wanted to be there because I wanted to ask him questions. I wanted to ask him questions that weren't about Bitcoin, but we're about JP Morgan, Chase, the ITIL certification servers being hacked about risk management. I mean, if you go to Google right now and Google Risk Management, go to Wikipedia and read that article. That is one hell of a long article with some really complex stuff. And if Ben Loskey was going to help out, he should have a giant risk management information science team that helps these big banks manage risk. Because as a former information technology project manager for math based security and risk management, I know that the legacy financial institutions are not secure of risk. Not even close. Ben Loskey should be working like 20 hours a day trying to do that. And all he's doing is talking about Bitcoin. It's like, I would have loved to be there and been like, let's talk about risk management a little bit and about ISO and if he would have been able to answer that. Not even going to produce the risk management documents until after he releases his regulations. One question is if he's even done them. And the question I would have asked is along the same lines, why do you want to be first? If you're a really prepared person, you know the first one at regulation always fails. Unless you're completely full of hubris, which could be a possibility you're not releasing documents, you're acting shady, you think that for you know doubling a 45 day period to 90 days is a significant expansion when we're talking about new technology that you don't even understand. Why do you want to be first, Loskey? Don't you think that first is going to fail? It's important. Why let why why why don't I have someone else fail first like Bangladesh or Russia or any of these other forward thinking leaders that are attempting to control technology they don't understand? Why not let that be first? One of the things that it's clear watching him speak is that he exists in quite a vacuum chamber with a lot of yes men around him. One minute of conversation with an honest, well informed person and he would completely collapse. I mean I think you it's very, very unlikely that you're going to see him, you know, debating with any kind of real libertarian or whatever in the conversation it would be a real like short conversation. You'd say why are you doing this? Well we have to have the guard rails in place to prevent terrorism and I'm in the know I've seen the terrible things that can happen in New York in 911 and you know you may not be aware of all the bad stuff happening underground with the terrorist financing. It's like okay so what is terrorism? How does that compare to what the US is doing in Afghanistan and in Iraq and in other places and blank out? You know that's that's what I and Rand called the blank out. It's like I don't my mind doesn't need to go there right that that's not my department and even though it's an incredibly critical question that would for me to answer to justify myself as an ethical actor and a human being I'm not going to go there and we're just not going to see that conversation take place I would assume. All things are being done with drones overseas and it's all by us it's not the terrorists it's the us. And tenable arguments would not be good for his cognitive dissonance he would not do well under it because I was so anxious to be there and ask him about risk management but I didn't get pensions. It seemed very much like the convention started on Monday but they had a day on Sunday that no one came to so it was a very odd scheduling decision probably cost cost based and being as I imagine. We've got another question from Samutra he says did anyone show Loskey and Dreas' Canadian Senate video maybe he'll get out of this delusions and I'd imagine sadly that he didn't watch it because it's from Canada even though New York is right next to Canada still Loskey is an American he can't be watching the Canadian Senate. We've got a couple other questions here. Samutra asks will the FBI go after anonymous coins and drug related coin developers yet next? It's tough to say the main thing about the counterparty and other situations is that it really feels like they might be issuing securities and crypto stocks clearly says stocks in the title. Those are clearly illegal. Perhaps these other tokens could be more novelty based is tough to tell. The anonymous coins they could go after them but they've already published their code. Some of it's been open source. Some of the dark coin, dark wallet code has been out released. Both dark coin, dark wallet, crypto notes, all of this stuff is open source and using it is not in and of itself illegal. We're actually just very starting to see initial stages of these being implemented in these dark marketplaces. We just saw two small marketplaces that haven't been shut down yet that adopted dark coin recently. I wouldn't expect to see them go after those coins in particular. I would expect them more to go after the marketplaces. That must be so embarrassing for the FBI to shut down so many illegal websites. There still be two or three more that they've forgotten about or they came up during while they were taking the others. That's so annoying. You're trying to wipe them all out and the new ones just keep popping up. I don't know what they're going to do about that. That sounds like a real problem. We've got another comment from Brandon. I was going to come up with that last question if we have a moment. Do you think so? Yeah, I go ahead. Okay. I would say there's a gradient of where you should be worried if you're making a proof of stake coin and you pre-mind a whole bunch of it and you own it and the rest of it's going out and stuff like that. That's like almost issuing a security. I would be very, very careful if you're doing that. What I'd be really careful right now they're going to come after you tomorrow. No. But down the line, if you made a proof of stake network and it went out there and it's working and more people are using it, you have the lion's share of it or making an asset token, I wouldn't be too confident there. That being said, again, I agree with Atomis. We're really worried about things that have stock or security in them or even counter party which doesn't really say anything about securities. They're business that's issuing cryptographic securities. I would not put together a really huge multi-billion dollar business plan and go raise money from people thinking that the government is going to leave this stuff alone because security's fraud is one of the way that they go after people and troll them to secure their iron grip on the market through the Dow and the NASDAQ. They want to take kind of to that but don't be too worried yet if you have a small market cap. That is a good point. If you had a holy proof of stake coin that didn't have any proof of work and you held the early coins, you would be able to mine incredibly efficiency and it could be like a commodity or equity. The interesting parties are not just the Benjamin Losskies of the world either. Patrick Bern has brought up some significant evidence that the Russian mafia is involved in the stock market at this point. There's a lot of nasty people that would not want to see cryptographic competition with these marketplaces. Very good. Moving on to the next question. Brandon Johnson says, Thomas, you forgot the air quotes for well-informed regulators. I just assumed you put them in. It's like an honest politician. We've also got from Silverminer. He says, did you see the Kaiser report talking about Nick Scabo being Satoshi? Any thoughts? I'm not sure if this is an interview with Scabo or if they were just talking about it generally. I would agree there's been linguistic analysis on the Satoshi papers and the linguistic leads me to believe he was involved in the papers. I don't know that that means he's Satoshi but maybe he proofed them. He added parts to them. Maybe even Satoshi copy and pasted his own work into there. Linguistic analysis is pretty strong and obviously Scabo is a very smart guy in this field. A lot of these ideas that Satoshi used were his ideas, much like Richard Stahlman and Linus Torvalis, the way that they work together. That's just how open source works. Crystal? Just to be difficult, Abda Kit there. One of the things that's come up in the Silk Road 2.0 stuff is if they screw up a pooch on operational security, what are you supposed to do? For the people that are actually doing real dark and operational security, one of the things that we'll commonly do is that one of their fallbacks will be to use the identity as someone else. If I'm Satoshi, I'm using Nick Sabo's work, I absolutely would use some linguistic analysis to write the white paper in such a way that it appears to be him to throw people off the scent. That's certainly a possibility. It's not science fiction. It would be pretty easily accomplished. Just keep that in mind. That would be absolutely brilliant. But then again, we're talking about the guy who invented Bitcoin here. It's not far-fetched at all. Let's move on. What else we got here? Silver miner, pump and dump on the dark coin, piggybacking on the Silk Road news. Christoph disappears. I don't know what's going on. Sounds like dark coins going up. I haven't checked the markets in a few days. I've been away at the con. Have you guys see any action on dark coin after the Silk Road going down? I think the one of the biggest use cases for dark coin would be various different exchange markets where you want to be as have your identity as obfuscated or as obscure as possible. I can see that there would be a little bit of a dial back if people think that there's nowhere to acquisition gray market services with that coin. I think that's the case. Hopefully it won't be too big of a pullback on that news. But if people are really shaken, it might be a pretty serious drawback. I guess the price has gone up in the last day or two following the news. I don't actually see immediately any evidence of a pump and dump just people buying the rumor, so to speak. Interesting side note. Did the price of Bitcoin crash? I seem to recall when the first Silk Road went down, everyone freaked out because what do you use Bitcoin for if it's not drugs? But this time wasn't even affected. I think we're actually up a little, right? Yeah. Well, the Silk Road wasn't using dark coin, so you would maybe expect it to be positive news for dark coin. It didn't exist when the first Silk Road was around, so we don't have that to compare to. Very good. Bitcoin is right now at about 342, so. 342. So hardly any effect. Major black market destroyed. Bitcoin continues, which is really when people say to you over and over again, Bitcoin is used for drugs. It has an illicit purpose. Why didn't the price collapse when these dark markets were closed? Why does it seem to be expanding far beyond that every day? We've got another question for Blake. He asks, Blake, is that why Satoshi's original Bitcoins have not moved? Would the government charge him with securities fraud if he took those early coins? Well, no. I mean, actually, so you have proof of stake, which is, you know, I'm going to be hyperbolic and call it communism, and then you have proof of work, which is labor theory. You have proof of work, which goes out, and then people worked to create different things and then they were rewarded for that work, versus proof of stake, where you're staking coins. The way that the proof of work system operates, that it went out there, it was autonomous. He happened to mine the Genesis block and get coins for himself. Just the way that Bitcoin works is, it doesn't work. I mean, it works like an equity, but not a security, in my opinion. It's very, very, very, very, very unique, which is what, you know, part of the difficulty is in explaining people that are new, that compare to something. You're like, well, anything that I compare to is eventually going to betray, meaning when you go all the way back to the etymology and the rhetoric and meaning. So I don't think that that's the reason that Stoichi doesn't sell his coins. I think that, hey, they're valuable, and B, he's probably got other accounts with coins in them as well. I think a good comparison is the fair launch of Litecoin. Everyone got a chance to mine Litecoin from the beginning. Anyone could have gotten into it. Whereas with proof of stake coin, if you earn those, have those early proof of stake minors, you can let them run for a couple of days, and you're the only one on the network. You're getting all the blocks. You're getting all the coins. It's a questionable start. Great stuff. Yeah, I object to the use of the, I want to kill the term fair when it comes to distribution of coins. I think it's extremely relative. I agree with Stephanie Murphy, who recently remarked on LTP that basically fair is whenever you happen to get the coins, and it's unfair when you don't. That we should focus on what's secure, and it's certainly true that proof of stake compared to proof of work. If there's a large stakeholder, that's a bit more risky than anything to do with proof of work. I vehemently disagree. I think that Bitcoin is fair. I think the proof of work is fair, and I think that pre-minded proof of stake is not fair. People have the distribution charts for proof of stake, and they try to get them to look similar to Bitcoin. But that is, it doesn't matter how much you split stuff up and gave to different people to mimic the actual market forces of mining and stuff. I think that market theory is fair. So we can have our disagreement. Which will be fun. All right. We've got a follow up from SilverMiner. He says there was a rally early on today in dark, and then Twitter lit up with the usual buy dark coin, and the price pulled back. So remember, there's always a dump after there's a pump. So everyone needs to watch for that madness. And finally, some mature rights. Can we have a shout out to DJ Booth for his awesome videos? Everyone should check out the flip side on the World Crypto Network where the DJ Booth is doing a weekly round up of Bitcoin News with jokes. That's right, Bitcoin News and jokes. We're moving on to predictions or a story of the week. Blake, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? Yeah, my story of the week is it went to Vegas to money 2020. We were sent there by Roberts and Roberts Gold in the precious metals. It's like the best company ever. If you ever need any gold or precious metals, you have to go to Roberts and Roberts. Don't go anywhere else. And it was a blast. Parts of the money 2020 convention were a little bit, you know, not as cuddly and coasy as some of the Bitcoin tech conferences. But it was a good time. And Vegas is crazy. I'd never been there before and it was fun, but I was definitely ready to leave. By the time we left, it is a unique situation wherein, oh, there's gambling here in the desert. Let's take all these resources and build a giant tower of babble in the desert. And to me, it just looked like a giant flaming tower of babble the whole time. So that was kind of fun. Four or five days in Vegas is a long time. Christoph Atlas. Yeah, it's just on, I was on this panel last night in Decentral Vancouver. And one of the things we were sort of tossing around was like, what is 2015 going to look like 2014 was supposed to be the year of multisig. It was supposed to be the year of making Bitcoin services really accessible and easier. And there was definitely some multisig and some improvement of interfaces and all that stuff. I think that was somewhat true of 2014. What is 2015 going to be like? I'm sure we'll talk about this more as we get closer to the end of the year, but just to get the ball rolling, I think that 2015 is potentially going to be a real turning point for Bitcoin, right? What I saw in 2014, a lot of was a kind of decline in passion and tenuation of focus for the people in Bitcoin that are doing it for revolutionary reasons. Part of that has to do with the price. There are all kinds of stuff that factored in. And what we saw a lot more activity within was like the Silicon Valley, venture capitalist funded kind of stuff that is more focused on not making a lot of Bitcoins, but making a lot of dollars. And that's quite a different meaning to lend to Bitcoin. So I'm really curious what 2015 is going to look at in that regard. Are we going to see this resurgence of the spirit of Satoshi with the release of Ethereum and OpenVizar and all these cool things that have been on the back burner for a little while? Or are we going to see more of this new trend, which is like we're just going to keep pumping this Bitcoin bandwagon to make a few million dollars for specific people that already hold a lot of dollars and is that going to be the full meaning of Bitcoin? That would be a sad ending in any way as Bitcoin and I'll certainly be doing what I can to push in the decentralized version of Bitcoin. Megan, Lord. So I wanted to let everyone who may be attending Libertopia Festival next weekend that I'll be speaking there. My talk will be titled Everyone Hates Activists and How Bitcoin Could Change That. So if you're in the San Diego area, come check it out. It should be pretty fun. And I also have a prediction. I discovered something today or not today. It was probably a few days ago that I think will be something that causes Bitcoin to go mainstream. And that thing is called shittexpress.com. And shittexpress.com allows you to send food to people in decorative tins with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And I think like vengeance is a really strong market that you could appeal to. And especially as a 2016 election start coming up, people start getting real angry again. We just saw this with the midterm elections. I think things like that are really going to push Bitcoin adoption a lot further. So a wonderful business idea. Shit in a jar. I hope they can get a bulk discount for all of the stuff that's going to be sent to the White House. Yes. I need a possible price right now. It's like 1650 or something to like. And it's a very nice looking tins. You can pick your animal too. I'm just worried about Super Nintendo Loskey. His office is going to spell really bad. Don't send any to him. Don't send any to him. I use my own personal operations. Shit. And you can light it on fire first. Anyway, I bet they're probably going to add that the lighting it on fire. I didn't want to. And flambé. Maybe a singing telegram. There's a lot of options. It's a good business. Meanwhile, prediction. We're witnessing the changing of the guard. We are surrounded by dinosaurs who are only now beginning to struggle in the tar pits. Sites are shut down, but new sites open. The idea of Bitcoin as a payment and a transfer protocol continues to spread like wildfire. Like wildfire. Oh, we're out of time. Until next time. Bye, bye.