The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the starfish centoces, the best bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists. Blake Anderson from Facebook.com slash God Blake. Hi everybody, thanks for tuning in. Tom Vays from Brave New Corin. Hi everyone, glad to be back on the show again. Theo Goodman from Transmission.rocks. Good evening everyone. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue one. Issue one, bit pay, hacked. Atlanta based Bitcoin payment processer suffered a loss of $1.8 million last year. So when they thought it was social engineering attack, that was $1,000,000. They were going to be attacking it. Bit pay inadvertently released the news as part of a loss to the insurance company. Who declined to cover the loss? Blake Anderson, your thoughts on this shocking development? Well as you were talking, I was getting so mad about what happened that I actually maxed out your connection and there was a whole bunch of sound issues. Yeah, I'm upset about what happened at bit pay because bit pay was coin based in bit pay. They were like the big Huey and Dewey twins that were going to bring everything forward. And what happened is unfortunate they were socially engineered to have emails that are tricky to be sent around and they got hacked. But I wrote an extensive article when I left the banking sector to work in Bitcoin about that exact same issue and how these systems need to be really, really, really secured. Since then we have things that have become extremely popular, like PGP signing encryption for email, multi-sig keys coming together in pluralities to be checked by governance and stuff like that. That stuff was not implemented at bit pay. And the fact that it wasn't implemented is negligent. And the fact that their insurance company is even smart enough to know that they shouldn't have to pay for them sending things voluntarily off is indicative of the fact that even your common lay person is aware of the fact that insurance is supposed to protect you from things that cannot be foreseen or prevented and that what they did slash happened to them was something that could have been foreseen or prevented. And now they're suing the insurance company and so they're going to be legal exploration as into exactly what happened, which is going to expose more dirty laundry. I don't think that this could have been any, any worse forebit pay and I think that this will severely limit their ability to succeed in the future. So really, really, really harsh week for bit pay, you know, Tony G and Stephen Pair, I think if they can come up with some kind of statement to make together about, you know, how they know that they made a mistake and they have a commitment to never doing that again that maybe they can resolve some of this damage, but they seem to be pretty defensive and thinking that the insurance company should pay, which really makes the whole thing even worse. So security is really, really important these days, especially as these Bitcoin businesses are taking off. So, agon there face for sure. Safety may be third, but security should still be first. You know who's really going to profit off this? Lawyers, lawyers and hackers, tone, vase, your thoughts. I pretty much agree with Blake. The only thing I will add is it just shows that we just need more responsibility in the space. I mean, that's really all it is. And I know the regulators are going to come down on this, but what people have to understand is these mistakes, they really only happen once. All these regulators are coming in to prevent us from the next Mound Gox. There's not going to be another Mound Gox, right? The exchanges now take things a lot more seriously. They know where their coins are for starters, which is something Mound Gox apparently didn't. So in a situation like this, the industry will learn from it and if BitPay survives, it's not going to happen to them again. They're going to have a lot more security. They're going to have people checking and double checking who you send emails to or what you click on. The only thing that, and whether BitPay survives this or not, honestly, don't see it as that important. The important things that the industry learned something from it and more responsible people are going to go in. What worries me about all these things is that it's an excuse for regulators to come down and say, you see, if we were in charge, this would not have happened, which is honestly complete bullshit. That's the only thing that really, really bothers me is how the regulators and government are going to use this in an excuse to put in a bunch of measures, a bunch of hoops, a bunch of speed bumps for something that no company is going to do again. These are public lessons. These guys are going to have a problem running an organization like that going forward. They're going to be replaced. In competence, it doesn't last very long in the private sector unless it's sanctioned by the public sector. That's it. It's just another lesson that goes to show you that try to keep all your bitcoins yourself. Don't storm with BitPay. Don't storm with all these third-party intermediaries. I really have to add. You're saying that a fool and their money are soon parted unless the government gets in the way of that process and then everybody suffers. I think that you're definitely on this up there. Yes. That's my only comment. We have stuff like this. Prior to BitPay, they're going to happen again. They're going to happen on a smaller scale. From what I've noticed, this industry is regulating itself and policing itself quite well. The latest exchanges. The latest bid stamp got hacked and bid finance got hacked and they lost less than 5% each. They weren't major things like before. Same thing here. I don't expect the same thing with Coinbase because now they've learned from BitPay and so on. This opens up the door for a more responsible company that BitPay. Even though I really like BitPay, I like what it is for the space. I like Tony a lot. If they're not going to be competent with other people's money, then somebody else will be. My only concern is regulators using the SIS and XQs. That's all. Theo, good man. I agree with Tony and what Blake said, definitely. As we see here, the weak point in the whole process is the humans, not the technical side. The social engineering is the weak point in almost all systems. It just goes to show again, doesn't matter. Bitcoin banks or whatever kind of business you have. If you're holding other people's money, then you might not want to click on every link in your email and be a little more careful about it and have a protocol to go through when you are communicating with people because people are going to try to social engineer you if it pays off. Bitcoin is cash, as we know. There you go. Theo brings up a good point about P-Back. The problem exists between the chair and the computer, which was pretty much Bruce Schneider's conclusion from the book Secrets and Lies, where he said, no matter how good you build a system, there will always be humans in the system who answer the phone and give away your secret phone number and they reply to your email and they give away your corporate secrets. You just have to train your people. You can't just have good systems. Absolutely. We need to have stuff flowing back and forth right now and in the age of what we have to have stuff moving, we need to have a lot of people with a centralized point of data honey pot failure that can be socially engineered and in-controvertibly as we move towards more and more people knowing more about technology and more technology being available, we need to in-controvertibly decentralize those honey pots of storage because they are inherently and fundamentally at risk. This is what happened to BitPay. I guess on the lighter side of it, this could be an illustration to everybody of why we need more decentralized systems because even BitPay, they made a mistake but they didn't have terrible infrastructure. This is really indicative of the fact that these data honey pots need to be decentralized. It's a giant boon for all of us that have been saying this for a while. I just want to add one more thing because I just remembered when Theo was talking. I was at the scaling Bitcoin event, the workshop and Montreal this past weekend. The last speaker of the event was the only non-technical speaker. I forgot his first name. I know his last name is Negroponte and he's a big tech guy for the last 20 years. Honestly, I absolutely hated his presentation but that's a different show on that. But during the presentation, he talked about a story where he was socially engineered and they hacked his bank account because they broke into his Gmail and literally sat there and waited and watched and learned his habits of how he emails his personal assistant and his CFO to pay other businesses and other people from his group of companies. Very similar to what happened to BitPay. After they learned all that, they created some accounts with names that would be similar, like real names similar to what other people he was using. Basically, we're writing the self-checks from his business account. They got him pretty good but because it's Fiat and obviously it was all recovered. I think it was a record. I'm not sure. I know he's got FBI looking into it. This happens. This isn't the Bitcoin problem. This is just a competence problem. It's not an exactly new attack vector taking over someone's email but the waiting and the watching is what people need to think about. It's not just about taking over your accounts and robbing you instantly. They might choose to wait. They might go a little longer. It's not interesting. It's like, it's like, you're a boss. It's a long, like, how can I actually maximally benefit from this and that's what you have to worry about. Moving on, exit question. Yes or no question. Will BitPay be able to survive from the fallout, from this loss? Not only the loss but the loss of confidence, Blake Anderson. I think if they admit their mistake and drop their suit against the insurance company and both Stephen and Tony come out and say that they made a mistake and they're ready to move forward with more security that they will recover. I think that if they don't, if they continue to pretend like they made no mistake and try to see the insurance company, the exploration will probably rip up and pay apart. Tone Vaze. I agree with Blake. Everything he said. In the long scheme of things, honestly, I don't think it matters. You're good. Yes, they will survive. He knows right. BitPay survives. But this does hurt them. I hope he's wrong. It's you too. IBM adapts Bitcoin technology for smart contracts. Yet another article on the media's ongoing series about separating Bitcoin from the blockchain. This time from the Wall Street Journal claims that IBM is close to isolating this blockchain and creating their own version, perhaps a clone of Ethereum that will not only contain blockchain but also be able to handle smart contracts. Tone will upstart IBM Coin, replace Bitcoin. No. No, that's right. Should I elaborate? I can stop right there. Look, there is definitely a need for private blockchains. They can use it. It's not, I don't think it's going to be as useful in this case. I think the Internet of Things should be using more of a public blockchain, which of course is Bitcoin. I think there will definitely be a need for private blockchains for companies to work internally or work with their trusted partners. The best analogy I can give is we have the Internet and then every company has their own Internet. Now if you add up all of the information sitting on the Internet, the internal Internet, the local area networks of these business. Right. So if you add up all the info on there, I'm sure it dwarfs all the public information on the Internet. However, independently, there's a lot of adult entertainment out there. Just remember that. There's a lot of, oh yeah. Well, I mean, like information, right? Not videos like written stuff. So if you add up all the private Internet combined, they are probably bigger than the Internet. But individually, they're significantly smaller. And I think that's the where we're headed with Bitcoin versus private chains. I think there will be a lot of private chains and I think they will be very useful. But interaction with the average consumer, you got to go with the public one. You got to go with Bitcoin. I understand why they don't. They don't really trust it yet. But I think at the end, if they want to engage the average consumer or they will have to build a portal, right? They can do it all internally. But then when they interface with the consumer, they would have to convert it into Bitcoin. So that's pretty much my thoughts on the issue. Theo, good man. Yeah, I think, you know, they're doing their own thing. They want to make a private blockchain and have their own system. That's fine. And that has its own utility. I don't think that replaces Bitcoin or is really even a competition. It's just a different way to use it. It's open source software. And if you want to build your own little sandbox and your own little playground and do what you want in it, that's fine. But I don't think, I don't see it as a competition. I see it as something else. And yeah, I agree a little bit with tone that the public will have to trust IBM then. Because if it's a private chain and the trust lies with whoever is the custodian of that chain or the custodians of those chains, I guess it depends on how it's all set up. A lot of this stuff is really still theoretical. So let's just see how this plays out. I'm interested to see private chains working and doing good stuff. Let's see how it is. But I don't see them as competing. I just see it as a different thing, kind of like how you said, intranet, intranet. They're just two different things for two different utilities. Blake Anderson. Yeah, I mean, IBM is a big dynasty. Richard Brown is a really, really smart guy. They're working on trying to do and get things which is good. I fear that sometimes they're going to be pushing the boundaries of not getting it and making things which are not necessarily helping to expand the circle of trustlessness that Bitcoin represents. Yes, we can understand that they're a business and they don't necessarily have a huge invested interest in that. But perhaps they should. Perhaps more of these companies should try to help Bitcoin gain value and make backwards compatible systems within instead of making a SaaS model block chain private contract and trying to separate the currency from everything else under the realization that if our money systems fail in this pervasive, pervasive debt crisis, nobody's going to have anything. So let's all work together to create this net that will be able to catch that and do this stuff before leapfrogging over Bitcoin 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 4.5 to Bitcoin 2.0. And then you have these smart contracts which aren't even automatically executable or admissible where people are like, well, it's cool that I can have this contract digitally. But what are the actual utility applications? What are the use cases for this? And I've seen some very, very niche use cases where maybe this or that. But IBM having a reputation as being business infrastructure, giants, the amount they've contributed to this space is really, I think, an indictment of the legacy technology systems and businesses. I think that we're going to continually see a pattern of when big goes against small autonomy and purpose and forms the small party with more and better ideas and that big continually fails with their extra overhead. Unless the new news about their technology is really good and I can dive into it and find a lot of utility for it. My views right now that I'm expressing will be reinforced. It's interesting, Blake, that you'd mention in a roundabout way, David and Goliath. I just started reading the new Malcolm Gladwell book, David and Goliath. It's funny to think about it. You think David is small, Goliath is big, but in reality, according to Gladwell, David as a slinger throwing rocks in his sling. It was like having a pistol. As long as he was far away from Goliath, he had no threat from Goliath's giant sword or giant axe or his huge muscles. David actually had the advantage in that fight. I think a lot of people need to reinterpret that fight and a lot of other fights. I think the Gladwell book, as a thought experiment, is an interesting idea to go about that. It's also the tortoise in the hare because I think that there's some fall down, some attempts to jump over. Version release, one point out, two point out. You don't think there's going to be anything that we need to work on in between there. I think there might be a tortoise in the hare element, too, where the smaller guys are doing the slow and steady work and communicating. These bigger businesses are trying to reach for backwards compatibility and cutting corners and doing so. You can't put the cart before the horse. Moving on to the plug, introducing Perse instant by anything on Amazon, instantly with Bitcoin for 5% off. It's just that easy. Shop today at Perse.io. Moving on to issue three, New Hampshire House of Representatives to vote this week on a bill that would allow you to pay your taxes in the new digital currency Bitcoin. The bill is deemed revenue neutral, meaning that it would not affect the bottom line of the state of New Hampshire. Yet, it would allow Bitcoin enthusiasts to pay their tithe to the state without having to convert their beloved Bitcoin into the hated fiat. Theo Goodman, is paying taxes in Bitcoin a good thing for Bitcoin? I think it is. I think that would be great if you could pay your taxes in Bitcoin. That gives a kind of mixed Bitcoin legitimate for a lot of people. Now, your opinion on taxes or whether you should pay taxes or how much and all that stuff. That's a different discussion, in my opinion. Let's just say that we agree. Let's just say that I'm someone that agrees that it's okay to pay taxes just for argument sake. Then it's great because that's one real big reason why fiat currencies or currencies in general have value because you can pay the king taxes in it. If you can't pay the king taxes in the currency or money or whatever you want to call it, or depending on what it is, then no one's going to accept it. But as soon as you can pay the king taxes in that, then people are going to want it. You can't say king. That's offensive, but it's glorious leader. Yeah, but I mean, it goes down. It comes down. Yeah. You know what I mean? It goes back to the day with kings and queens and all of the big completely before that. I get, of course. But I think it's good. As far as you could even, I don't know, they said it's neutral, so that's okay. It might even save money. I don't know if it's going to save them in fees or something. It might, let's just see what happens. Never forget that the reason Jesus was born in a manger is because his parents were out of town to pay taxes. It might have been the census, but either way, we're going to call government, and we're going to get interference leading to our saver being born and straw. Blake Anderson, before I say any more blasphemy. Sacrificious. It's good to be able to pay taxes in a medium. Like the people that are here in New Hampshire trying to do this, understand history just like Theo, and that the king and whoever you pay taxes to is a giant use case for money that's going to spread and really, really, really, really, you know, bedrock the foundation of that currency. Also it's good for the citizens of New Hampshire that don't have to pay any kind of conversion fee or whatever they can directly give their Bitcoin to people without having to do a lot of run around and then, you know, paying any conversion prices. So I think that it's, you know, benefit in every which way. I hope that the more free market oriented citizens of New Hampshire can convince the government of that. I'm going to take the other side of this. Obviously, well, I'm going to take the other side of a couple of things. I actually think paying taxes is absolutely terrible. I don't think it's a good thing because they don't go to anything good. But other than that, no, I don't see this as a good thing. I don't see this as a positive thing. The only thing when it comes to taxes and Bitcoin that I would agree is a positive thing as if the government is actually keeping, I mean, they don't have to keep the money in Bitcoin. I don't wouldn't expect them to because of price volatility. But I would love to see actual accounting and a public ledger. That would be nice. I would also like to allocate my taxes to where I want them to go. I would be happy to use Bitcoin and actually put them into Bitcoin wallets that go, that the Bitcoin goes to certain things. This is why I would love to see government actually use Bitcoin in the use of taxes. But paying your taxes in Bitcoin, no. I would not advise anybody to do that. That's just one more channel for the government to know exactly what your Bitcoin addresses are, how much Bitcoin you have, where it's coming from, what it's going through, is just another point of identification. And honestly, we're going to get to this in the next topic. My view on Bitcoin and government is very, very pessimistic because they're fundamentally half-complete odds with each other. So many people in the space hate me when I say this, but you want to minimize your interaction of your Bitcoins with any kind of pseudo-government or government entity as little as possible. So you're saying that government and value adding are mutually exclusive. The government is going to run it in that loss. How could you say that? It's not like we have negative $100 trillion right now. Never mind. Well, I'm not even going that far. Look what happened with the IRS. IRS was one of the first agencies to come out with what they think Bitcoin is. I think them or Vincent said it's money. IRS said it's property. And one of the things that the IRS did when they first came out and said, all your Bitcoin gains, you have to pay capital gains and all your Bitcoin appreciation. And it goes back to January 2009, the very first block that was created because somehow government thinks that they facilitated Bitcoin and because you profit in Bitcoin, they deserve 20% or whatever. So Toshi didn't build that. So Toshi didn't build that. Yeah. So my view is that the more they know, they're just going to come after it. You're putting yourself at a major risk and I know it's going to be local government. It's not going to be federal government. But still, I mean, every government is broke. I mean, older, again, we're going to talk more about this in the next topic. Every government's broke. They need money. If they think they can squeeze a dollar out of you, they will. And if they know you have Bitcoin and they can connect you through your addresses, then they'll come after you to get the money. All it is is money. It's all comes down to. So I encourage people to limit their Bitcoin usage when it comes to paying for government stuff, taxes, parking meters, whatever it is. If it's a private company, sure, if it's a quasi-government company, then I encourage people to stay away from it. They're putting themselves at a legal and a paperwork nightmare years down the line because all laws are now retroactive, which is technically not constitutional, but what do they care? I do agree that I agree with Tone that if I had the option to pay the state with any kind of Bitcoin, regardless of where it came from or how clean it was, I'd be like, you know, I'll probably just convert to something else and not go through that headache. I could definitely see what Tone is talking about. From a risk management perspective, I'd probably do act the same. And I think Tone makes a very important point about keeping your addresses clean. If you were going to pay your taxes in Bitcoin, I'm not sure how you do it. You do a series of tumblers, maybe take it from one site to another site, read about it on the internet if it's important to you. But yeah, I wouldn't just send them some Bitcoin from your big account. A lot of people in New Hampshire bought Bitcoin early. I think you should try to keep those gains. That's not official advice, but you know, you certainly shouldn't unnecessarily expose your gains to the government's eyes if you can avoid it. No, no, no, it's the complete opposite, complete opposite. If you put your Bitcoin through a tumbler before they go to the government, that's worse. They got a good state of mind. They're like, why do you not stay in debt and you're shot gun on your porch? It's like, that's a felony. Right. I mean, that's the thing. It is the most frustrating thing for a person that doesn't like, I love to use tour. I want to use tour. I don't use tour for anything illicit. And it's so frustrating to use tour because it's slow as hell. I mean, if you're using tour for something illicit, it's your only option and you're happy that you have that option. You don't care how slow it is. But if I want to look up something on a Google map because where I'm going and I want to use tour and even though I'm going to my friend's house down the street or in a different state, I just want to be private about it. Using tours is incredibly frustrating because it's so slow. Well, Torin made people lazy too, but people need to be learning how to create manually and form tunnels that go through proxies and actually have their own control. How much bandwidth do I want through this connection? Oh, Blake, come on. That's way too complicated for you. That's what the future is going to require, dude. No, it's going to get built in. Once we actually have smart programmers not going to work for the NSA but just going to work and get creative, which is starting to happen, all these things will be built in. Basically, what I'm saying is if you're not really hiding anything but you still want to stay private, that is like a giant red flag. Well, why are you being so private? This is where I don't use tumblers. I don't use my Bitcoin for anything illicit. But again, if I'm going to send it to the government, the last thing I want to do is put them through some kind of a mixer and they might know that I put them through a mixer and then I got to defend why I put them through a mixer and the CIA is it your people? And then the CIA comes knocking on your door. Right. And this is the problem. It's like the more you try to stay private, the more you look like you're doing something wrong and when you're not doing something wrong, it's an additional headache you've got to deal with. This is what I deal with every day. That's why it's so frustrating. Sounds like people should just pay their taxes with dollars. Exit question. Force prediction. The new Hampshire bill will pass or fail. Theo, couldn't. I think it'll fail. Maybe they'll do another one, but probably the first try will fail. Blake Anderson. I was part of the Port Huron statement. Not the later compromised one, but the first one that was uncompromising. I agree with Theo. I mean, like I think maybe a new iteration will go through. I'm not sure that the first one will be able to catch enough attention and have a good enough value proposition. Yeah. It'll have to say you can you can pay your taxes with Bitcoin, but if you tumble at first and you go directly to jail, do not pass go. And by the way, NSA, could you speed up tour for me? Thanks. Tone vase. It might depend on whether they're using bit pay as the processor. They're all wrong. The future is crazy. The bill passes. Issue four. Bitcoin is officially a commodity. According to the commodity futures trading commission, the CFTC announced Thursday that for the first time, it had found that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are properly defined as commodities. Markers, what market watchers hope that the new classification will prevent a repeat of the dreaded Mt. Gawks collapse. But it's also said to increase the cost of doing business. Blake Anderson, is the CFTC right? Is this good for Bitcoin? Well, everybody wants a piece of Bitcoin. We have the shameless middleman people that are trying to make a service that is going to be able to make money as we decentralize these things. Then we have all the government bodies that are trying to regulate Bitcoin so they can all take a big wet bite out of it. What's funny is that Bitcoin really is many different things. It's a payment network. It's mathematically approval digital scarcity. The digital aspect informs the value of Bitcoin is a commodity. It's also like a currency. You can use it to... It transcending all these old definitions because it was designed to be the perfect currency. It's funny because now you see the government be like, yeah, that's some of my share too. The benefit that can come from this will all start to talk to each other. Maybe the government will start fighting itself. We can get some respite that way. I think that all is going to be like, well, we'll just slice up the pie and we'll stay out of each other's criminal jurisdictions. We'll all just take a piece. I think that if that happens, it will push even more development underground. Hopefully that'll go even faster. It's just an indictment of the legacy systems. I think that everybody is like, we're in charge of this. Even though it's already regulated, we're going to regulate it even more than derivatives. We don't need to continually regulate derivatives of a debt-based currency that's inflationary. We need to regulate mathematically-provable digital scarcity that can't be manipulated. It's like that it regulates itself. This is an assholes maximum. It's a good point, Blake, that some things can be more than one thing at the same time. I'm reminded of what the Cheshire cat said. Some people like to go this way. Some people like to go that way. I like to go both ways. Don't waste. I am totally not surprised that the CFTC called it a commodity because that's what they regulate. Just like Fence and calls it money because that's what they regulate. I arrest called it a property because that's probably the easiest way for them to collect the taxes. I'm trying to think of who's left. I'm sure there'll be other agencies coming out of the woodworks saying that Bitcoin wanted to use this way because of this and that. We get a piece of the pie also. The piece of the pie basically comes from Fines and basically just Fines. All these agencies, companies, they're all broke. They're not companies. They're just government agencies. They're all broke and they just need a piece of the pie and they're going to tax and find whatever they can. If they can, they will find you. Just like Ripple, if you are successful enterprise, they'll find you. The moment Ripple started to become viable, here comes, was it Finsend that find them 400 million or something? I don't remember anymore. I'm still waiting for the SEC to come down. Probably on auger, if auger is profitable, they're just going to come down saying you sold the security. Same thing with the theory. Yeah, we haven't heard from the SEC yet. I'm sure they're going to say that Bitcoin is a security because they all need money. They're all going to, they're just all want to piece it up high. Of course, Bitcoin is a brand new asset class. It has features of all of those things. My view is the more complicated they already started. The more complicated it gets, the more people are just going to say the hell with it. I'll just use Bitcoin directly. Bitcoin has one major advantage on anything else in the world. In that, once a person uses Bitcoin, they're never going back. I know people that have lost thousands of coins in my own docs. In one case, that was every single Bitcoin that person had. My conversation with that person was, and they were saying, yeah, I'm just waiting for a good time to buy more Bitcoin. It's not going to stop you. It's not going to stop you. It's the use of Bitcoin makes life so much easier that I don't see it failing. I see the progress going forward. The more complicated government makes it, the more it becomes peer-to-peer, which I think is good. Those are my thoughts on the issue. All those derivatives exchanges are now in trouble, but they're not really US entities, and there is no centralized derivative exchange. I have no idea what CFTC is going to do with these Asian Bitcoin futures. All they can do is regulate the American companies, but they were filing with CFTC anyway. Tarex change was doing it and ledger is doing it. They were going to file with these guys anyway, but I have no idea what they're going to do about the Asian ones. They'll probably end up shutting down. Even the regulation with what was the gold transmitters and stuff like that, like what Stephen Maca-Skills company called, it's not bogger, it's something like that. I talked to him in Tim Fry recently because they got... Are Maggie Metals or something like that? Yeah, Maggie Metals. If you have metals and currency and stuff and representatives of different things, then it has to be somewhere where we can blob a blob. It's like, well, what about stuff that's stored in other countries with... This doesn't even start to scratch the surface of the scope. They've proven that they don't get the issue. I think that you're right. Every single regulatory body they can touch it and if you're like, that's something that we can get a piece of that we want. Yeah. Anytime I hear an SEC person talk of these conferences, I haven't said it yet. What are you guys going to... You guys just sit around and watch porn all day. That's already been proven. You haven't caught anybody ever. The only thing you have with... Look, SEC does two things. They find companies when they need money and they negotiate the fine ahead of time, kind of like, yeah, so how much can we find you so that it doesn't hinder your operations and it doesn't affect your share price and that will be the fine that you get. So, like if someone had a neighborhood and I came in and robbed people in that neighborhood and then I came and talked to Tom and was like, I'm going to do some illegal stuff in your neighborhood, but you can have a piece of it and so Tom says, oh, I can have a piece of it. That's okay. Yeah, and the other thing that they do is, and there are videos about this. I'm trying to think of, I think tragedy and hope. I forgot the name of the person in tragedy and hope, but basically he lays out the whole case how if you're a whistleblower and you decide to whistleblow through the SEC, you're done. Richard Grove actually experienced that. Richard Grove. Yeah. They will, SEC will tell you what they care of it. They will warn the company. The company will build a case against you and you'll have legal bills the rest of your life. If you're going to whistleblow, send it to WikiLeaks and disappear if you have something big. If you go to a US regulator, your life will pretty much be over. And Richard Grove. Mr. Really, really, really good guy. What are the YouTube channel tragedy and hope? That's his YouTube channel. And that YouTube channel, if you look at the content of the videos, I was trying to inspire people to make you happy and make you, like, this is not some guy that was like trying to scan the SEC and they were forced to take it. This is a good guy and this is what happened to him, you know? Theo Goodman. Yeah, I basically agree with Tony. I don't think it has much to do with the technical definition of a commodity currency or property or whatever you want to call it. It just simply has to do with, okay, so if we define it as A, and then we can regulate it and then we can get money. So let's just define it as that so that we can do something because we want to remain relevant too. Everyone else gets to play with Bitcoin. We want to play with Bitcoin too. We heard about it. It's really cool. And so why didn't they ask us? We're left out. Why did they? We want to play too. We want to join the game. It's kind of like, you know, they see everyone playing in the playground. They're like, why aren't we invited to the party? And so they say, wait a minute. We're allowed to play because this ball is our ball because it's a little bit colored like this. And even though the other guy has their color on the ball, they say it's their ball. It's our ball too. And so yeah, I think, and I don't think it's by chance that, you know, the events, you had bit license came out and then, you know, probably they were, okay, we're kind of getting ready. Okay, now we're going to make our announcement. Now it's our turn. Okay, so now they got to, now they get to be in the spotlight a little bit and then who's next? Well, it could be SEC. So what if, I don't know what they're going to do. I mean, what if they say, Bitcoin is a security or I don't know, whatever some kind of crazy idea like that or altcoin, IPOs are securities and support terrorism or who knows whatever kind of crazy stuff they're going to come up with, but they're going to want to get more involved too because they can't be less involved than the other got other bully on the block, you know, so it's kind of like an ongoing competition. Now, I think that they can't really do, I mean, they can, what they can do is they can make the on and off ramps really difficult for US citizens to use, but I mean, they can't shut down a company that's located in, I don't know where, but they can make it really difficult for them because probably a lot of customers and, you know, can bank connections and all that kind of stuff. So they can make life difficult, but they're not going to be able to just shut them down. So I think that, yeah, this is going to cause a situation where, you know, people are going to do what they want to do, illegal or not, and they're going to, if they want to, if the CFTC or whoever makes it really hard to trade Bitcoin derivatives, then people will just find a way to do it on whatever other platform that offers it. They're not going to be able to stop that. So people are really creative. Crypto moves really fast and CFTC moves really slow. Theo makes a good point. Government agency suffering from FOMO, they all want to play with Bitcoin. Exit question is Bitcoin a commodity or currency? Blake Anderson. Bitcoin is mathematically provable digital scarcity and a decentralized payment network. And that means very, very many things. Like you have the IOU and the actual good fused together inseparably. So like these organizations are necessarily wrong. They're just, they've been transcended. Tom Vays. I see it a little bit more of a currency than I do, than I see it as a commodity, but it's both of those and a lot more. It's value transfer over the internet. It's value transfer and we really something we really needed. One quick thing I wanted to add is for the CFTC is jobs, right? I mean, all these agencies they want to get in because it's more jobs, right? More money from the parent, federal government to create more jobs. Jobs jobs. Well said. Theo, good man. One of the above Bitcoin is magic internet money. I think the answer is both or perhaps neither. And now question and answers is still broken. Thank you, Google. Maybe we'll find the setting for that next week. So we're going to move on to predictions or story of the week. Blake Anderson, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? I predict that a lot of the people that are in Bitcoin trying to make a SaaS model or trying to make some kind of model that upsets old systems without going towards full decentralization have just fucked it big time. I mean, this is a race down to one cent as far as what you're going to be paying and then down to one bit and then either lower and lower and lower. So these companies that are getting all this great technology together and the making of SaaS model and cutting profits will get their stuff forked. They will fork out where they have involvement that will be decentralized out. And again, I'm not being facetious or silly. Any company that doesn't know that and puts a lot of money into doing this and gets forked fucked it big time. Like this is what they really need to be aware of. So I'll be more and more excited to see the technologies that disrupt and decentralize and then the technologies that come from these legacy giant institutions that get forked and then go into that direction anyway. So my prediction is being in Montreal over the weekend for the scaling Bitcoin conference and watching all the core developers with a few other notable names like Peter Todd, Adam Beck, having some really good discussions. And my prediction is that sometime in the very near future you're going to hear something coming out of the core dev space about raising the block size in a reasonable way that everyone within the core dev kind of agrees with because they understand that they need to buy a little bit of time while more useful solutions to the scaling problem get developed. So I'm looking for some really positive developments coming out of that conference. I thought it was a great event. So something to look forward to just keep an eye out. I really think they're going to announce something real soon that is not going to have the kind of controversy that Bitcoin exceeded. Theo Goodman. My prediction, when I started of the week is the, well we already went over this CFTC, everything having to do with it. And my predictions are that they're going to continue to send whoever they want, fishing emails, not fishing pH, but fishing for information. Hey, are you a Bitcoin user? You mind talking to us on the phone about something? Now you didn't do anything wrong, but just maybe we can have a phone call and, oh by the way, anything you use can and will be used against you, but you're not under arrest or anything. So it's a voluntary. They're going to keep sending letters like that, all kinds of government agencies are going to be sending letters like that out, trying to get whatever free information they can out of whoever I predict that. And I predict that if that continues and they really go after some of these offshore or onshore exchanges, then more bucket shops, some more other alternative exchanges that are kind of like PTC style will just appear because the market wants them. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. I know I will never personally get any of these letters in the mail because not a single one, not a single company that I've ever used Bitcoin with has my address. If they ask you for your address, that is not a way of planning to use Bitcoin. And that's one of the problems. Like the people are going to realize you have this amazing tool and if you're using it in the same old way, then you only ask him for trouble from those with guns. Point of clarity. When people ask you for your address relative to Bitcoin, don't give them your physical address where you live. Yes. And finally, a prediction. A jack of all trades is a master of none. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. You can't always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes, you can get what you need. And what you need is to activate two factor authentication on all of your Bitcoin related accounts and on your Gmail immediately. Enough is enough with these phishing attacks. 5,000 Bitcoin sent away ridiculous. Activate to a fade today. Oh, we're out of time. Until next time. Bye, bye.