The Little Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest Satosis, 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 having me. Gabriel D. Vine from Future Rant. I'd just like to say I'm very grateful to be on the show again. Thank you. Tony Vaze from Brave New Coin. Hey guys, coming to you on location from my sister's house. My basically my Bitcoin religion is conflicting with my actual religion and guess for one because I am not at the dinner table. Theo Goodman from Has online. Everyone thanks for watching. I'm coming in live on site from my house. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Welcome to our viewers on WCN and Bitcoin.com. Moving on to issue one. Issue one valve confirms online gaming platform steam to accept Bitcoin. Steam the online gaming platform where you can download popular games like CounterStrike and Team Fortress. Announce what the internet already knew from their leak of their code a few months ago. They're going to accept Bitcoin. Blake Anderson has the tide turned. Is Bitcoin online acceptance back on or does the inevitable march of Bitcoin adoption simply continue with one more domino fall? This is very interesting news because I have been involved with steam purely as a fan and user I've never contributed anything of actual business worth to steam. But I've been involved with steam. Like nine, ten years. I'm actually checking right now on my steam community profile because I have a badge at 12 years of service. So I've been using this product almost every day for 12 years. And it's a brilliant product. It came after a game spy and some other kind of gaming consortiums. We made a space where people could talk to each other the light gaming and they all kind of fell apart and then eventually the steam community came up and became like the Facebook of gaming. They accepting Bitcoin and bringing the gamers to be like, what is this? Let's look at this and figure out what it is. It is absolutely massive. I mean, I know I sound like a hyper massive nerd right now because I've been a gamer for a long time. But I'm extremely excited about this. They have the best product out there as far as a gamer community encouragement. And now they're accepting Bitcoin. So I think it's great news. Blake, can you go to some background on steam? Does just one company sell games on there? Do a lot of companies sell games? Well, actually, that's a good question. Steam, it started out as it was a good idea for any games that are really, really new that are running on lots and lots and lots of computers. Need lots of updates and patches and changes. And people have to go out and seek out that thing. And it was really like, it was making it. So you have to update your videographic drivers. Sometimes your motherboard drivers and you didn't want to do all that stuff. So I mean, it didn't handle drivers or anything like that. People just kind of got better stuff. But what it did handle is every time there were updates that were released for games that were multiplayer, which required a common version for people to be able to use, I mean, to the extent where this stuff didn't just solve gaming problems. It was actually kind of a model that illustrated how you can solve problems with client server gaming or client server, you know, at all, any kind of client server relation software could take tips from software like this. So it ended up making it so that there were standardized versions that could then connect together to play online. In addition to having a huge treasure trove of different products that they brought forth is that these are good games and they, and not anybody can sell on steam. So there was also the fact that they had a curated gaming selection, which was generally of much higher quality. They had the reviews and things on the side, which maybe some of their competitors didn't want to have because the gamers wanted it. But the people selling games didn't want the review there right away. And I mean, they've just done a lot of things really right over the years. And I think they accepting Bitcoin is a very responsible business move that this shows. Like this is a grown up enough thing here now that this company that has brought all this stuff to bear and really engineered solutions is recognizing it for what it is. And I think that that's a great thing. Indeed, it's almost like they're risking their reputation by taking Bitcoin, but there really is no risk because Bitcoin is a great thing to accept. Gabriel, D.Van. Well, not really in the gaming community at all, but on the one hand, the Western first world acceptance of merchant Bitcoin usage, I don't think is where things are really going to take off first. Other uses like purse where it says a middleman and you're leveraging other types of pseudo currency, that for sure. But as a straight, like overstock accepting Bitcoin, Expedia, I think it's like a little bit of a convenience, but it's not like a massive use case. So on the just solid merchant side, it's not that interesting. But I think Blake made a really good point, which is that it's more of a community awareness thing. It's kind of a big deal. So a lot of people in that, that sort of tech neurotic gamer tech people are going to be that much more aware that Bitcoin is a real thing. But as far as straight impact on the ecosystem in the short term, I don't think it's big news, but it's just kind of a little piece added to the snowball, let's say. And I also want to, I'm sorry, you just picked my memory. There's also like a kind of a twitch streaming system that's built in this team. It's a little bit newer. And I think that Bitcoin and being able to tip people in a live streaming situation, which you can't really do on Twitch unless you're super involved with other stuff, I mean, that might have a big community following as well. Tony Vaze. All right. So it's funny. So I think Blake and I are about the same age. And while he's been raising about steam for about 12 years, I've only heard of it about an hour and a half ago. So it's kind of funny how things are. I think I was a big fan of the old school super Nintendo and that I might have gotten this far as PlayStation 2 and that's where my gaming days ended. So I'm going to take the opposite view. I mean, honestly, to me, it's so far as this is a non-event. The reason it's a non-event is because I don't think they are really serving the underserved. Because I think most of their community has access to regular paper. On top of it, they have no, they don't care about Bitcoin. They're not going to keep any of it. They're immediately converting 100% of it to beyond. So they're not really doing anything. They're just giving it another payment option. They're going to realize that without offering something new, that no one is really going to be using it. It's kind of like overstock. They're not really offering it. I don't know, Ton. I mean, there's people in Australia. They can't actually use this $1,000,000. So they were paying a 25% markup. So there's a little bit of it. There's a little bit of it. I know. I was going to get to that. They do mention Australia in the article. I don't know how big the Australian market is. I'm sure the moment, if it gets popular, I'm almost certain that whatever payment methods Australia was using, they're going to be like, OK, let's cut our fees down. Again, because it's all competition, the reason why people were paying 25% is because people were willing to pay 25%. Now that there is another option, what was charging on 25%, they can easily drop those. Yeah. But just the gamers. It's a very, very small group of people that have been freed. I don't know if it's going to change policy. Exactly. So the other point is they could make it more useful. Besides the fact that if they start to embrace Bitcoin and try to move it through their supply chain, another thing they can do is they could utilize the micro-payment option. Again, I don't know how steam works. But if they want to start building a platform and a community for people to share information and make it share software and share it like game tips, they can do it in real time. For like 10 to 20 cents, right? I'm just throwing stuff on the top of my head. If they build a platform for people to exchange small amounts of Bitcoin for in-game tips to help them play. They already have a hyper, hyper, hyper massive in-game item community where there's this giant consortium of different games that have items that can drop in the game and there's actual trades and they actually have market values for those different, weird virtual. So like voxels or whatever, theoretically maybe this that steam already have stuff and it might be kind of silly or whatever. But the fact that they have that micro-penny stock economy, they're going to implement Bitcoin in any way because I do know I'm sorry about steam. The way that their company works is that they don't really have a really big stack of hierarchy at the point when you're employing computer engineers anyway. They all kind of work together to make things up. Right. What you're getting at is absolutely not only correct but a big reason why people are excited that maybe we didn't touch on enough. Right. And I think that's, I think that'll be excited. Like if they drop all DIA, all references within their peer-to-peer community. If they have a peer-to-peer community network on their platform. If they drop all references to Fiat currency, they can get the hell out of regulation and allow gamers to pay each other peer-to-peer with Bitcoin, just them being the medium for them to talk to each other. And having like, I mean I'm sure a liking network will help them a lot when that comes out. But yeah, that'll be excited. But now, and so a few guys in Australia will say 25%. I'm sorry, I think you're excited about that. I do want to say that I've introduced more people to Bitcoin through steams and in real life by like 500% and I've introduced a lot of people in real life on flights and stuff like that. Giving people money in a game once they figure out that you're not a douche is like the best. Because in real life, unless you're on an airplane where they stuck next to you, I don't want to pay attention to you for long enough for you to do that. Right. There's a game where the demographic is perfect. They will figure out Bitcoin in like minutes, they'll know what the hell to do with it. So the demographic is great. Now all they need is an easy way for people to pay each other in Bitcoin within the platform and they're good to go. So I see potential there, but so far they went like out of their way to explain how they don't care about Bitcoin. They're just using it as a Bitcoin in and be out to them if they embrace Bitcoin a little bit more. I'll be happy. Maybe they're just trying to look cool back and on Bitcoin. I think they're all that DLT distributed ledger tech. They're just into DLT now. It might be posturing too. They might be like, we got big plans for this. We don't want the government looking too close yet. So we're like, yeah, it's going to be on the fringes. Don't worry about it. That's a great comment. That would go well on our Bitcoin. Theo Goodman. Yeah, definitely DLT is the main reason I'm sure. Now actually, I think that in a way, it's also going around regulations. Because there's a lot of underage gamers. Now they can pay with Bitcoin. They don't have to worry about their parents. They can't get a credit card. They can just use Bitcoin. Blake was saying they can speculate and trade on all the weird markets that are all in there. You got these 12, 13, 14, 15 year olds all day trading swords. I don't know, like, Counter Strike grenades or whatever the hell they trade or speculating on the newest, it's kind of like altcoins basically. But you can use them in a game. So it's kind of weird. Interesting. That's actually a huge entire economy around them. It's just funny. Yeah. You can compare it with boxes or whatever. You're like, wow, that's like, you guys don't have anything started yet. Hey, what about the next level? I know the term voxels, sorry, I know the term voxels is referring to 3D pixels. What are you referring to? And also, what is the base currency of the steam marketplace? The base currency, I guess, just USD and voxels, I mean, it's just like, you know, the 3D pixel currency. It just, it seems so theoretical. So my, my cop, like, when I'm comparing it to your actual items, it was a crowd sale for digital tokens that are going to be used in a 3D world to purchase 3D items. Yes. And it's, I don't know what 3D world or what 3D items, but it was a very popular, very popular crowd sale. So it's a popular crowd sale. And it's for something that's super theoretical versus the excitement proposition of all this stuff that's already been built by steam and other allowing something in that's really going to turbo power it like oxygen on a fire. Yeah. Hey, so I think, I was going to jump in real quick on something you said, Theo. I actually thought about the concept of them serving the underage gamers as, as the Bitcoin serving the underserved. But again, I have to throw a counter argument in there. I don't think underage gamers are underserved. And the reason is, unless gaming is illegal in their country, so it's a gamer in Singapore Korea, or maybe some world's for gaming is illegal. Because yes, that's true. A 12 year old can now pay without asking their parents. But how did that 12 year old get the Bitcoin? At some point, he needed some kind of money to get the Bitcoin. So either he had to go through his parents to get that money. And if he has money, he could always get a parent or an older friend to take for them. Because the concept of, again, unless they're playing, I don't know if there's like rating system for games. If a 12 year old was to play like an R rated game or so, or an NC 17 game, then perhaps they're serving the underserved. But I don't, again, I don't think it's that big of a deal for a 12 year old to play a game that he's legally allowed to play. Just for the throw it in there. Just to be a little more. Of course. Well, yeah, of course. You know, it's, some of that is subjective, but yeah, I mean, if you use it for porn, then it's for underserved, basically. Yeah. I mean, there is a rating system for games. They do have restricted games that the kids could probably get into with Bitcoin. Well, there's a thing about them saying, look, you're kind of like in the country of your parents, you know, I mean, that kind of, they kind of set the rules. Yeah, it's not the same. That's definitely true. I didn't even know. You know, partially, yeah, it's definitely, it's not the same as being in North Korea, but in a private property. Yeah. Exactly. You get, it just allows them more, a little bit more freedom than what they already have. And I think that it matches to gaming a lot, like all the other people said, Bitcoin in general. And I hope that, yeah, it's part of a bigger plan. You know, that they like, like some people said, like it's part of like a marketplace where you can buy, you know, grenades live online and then explode them or you can buy like bars of gold or water or whatever you want to buy on these things. And you can just pay with small amounts of Bitcoin. And then you can't do that with credit cards because that costs too much fees and other issues with it. So, and I heard, which I have not researched, that steam did have a lot of chargebacks with credit cards. So that could be another motivation from them. That's all. Well, also, I wanted to, I wanted to comment on the age thing. And to really, really, really interesting question about kids and computers and everything because like my parents for a long time were like, oh, the computer can, you know, get to whatever. And like I guarantee that I was getting to all kinds of stuff that they didn't know about. And to the extent that if somebody said you can't have a piece of software, especially because it was expensive, like some of like the $900 photo suite software stuff back in the day. It's like, well, guess who learned how to torrent that day? You know, or whatever, if I have to defend it. And then you have the massive, the maximalist's immersive ability to get any media that you want. So, I mean, where does that come down with all this? I'd say that steam accepting Bitcoin would, you know, hopefully there's at least a few people that are going to pay for it instead of go torrent it because, you know, maybe they'll save them a few seconds. I mean, we're kind of at a race to the bottom. It is possible that steam didn't even have an age verification system before and was merely using credit cards. If you have a credit card and sign up, you must be of age. With Bitcoin, you can have the money. It doesn't matter what your age is. It's a interesting difference. I'd like to mention at this juncture, the existence of a functioning game which uses Bitcoin as its internal currency called ULORA. A pretty sure, mere ship, Pope Eskou is behind it. It was an eccentric Romanian billionaire, really strange person. But he basically, they've got a geological scarcity system on the planet so you can't just grind through and have creatures respond. This is an actual sort of world or series of worlds that have scarcity built in in the sense that there's veins of gold that can get tapped out and such. So, I can't go farm the billionaires dogs until I level up. That's right. If you do that, then other people won't be able to do that or whatever, because there's actual scarcity built in. I know that they have a functioning economy as a result of this scarcity. That's a genuine game integration with Bitcoin. It's also, I'm assuming, it's inspired by Neil Stevenson's novel, Green Dee, which has, it's like, read me, but with M&D search back and forth, they've got a game world in that with actual scarcity in it. Moving on to the exit question. Exit question. Online transactions and Bitcoin go together like peanut butter and jelly, both Twitch and Steam except Bitcoin directly. Online gaming has clearly been disrupted by Bitcoin. Which industry or category will be next? Blake Anderson. Digital scarcity, online games, digital universes, they go together so well that the comparison, the number two comparison of that number one is going to be a pretty far number two. I don't know. Banking and finance itself, we need math-based scarcity because our other systems of scarcity are just not working out. Gabriel, D's on. I think peer-to-peer e-commerce might be next in unbanked and underbanked geographies. Tom Vays. Oh, oh, I wore the choices again. What kind of economy or category will Bitcoin disrupt next? Honestly, I think this is going to take over the gambling industry. I mean, they might be able to peg it to a dollar, maybe federal will help them from the gambling perspective side. But what I think, like draft kings and whatever else, it's got popular for a minute. It's all going to come back three times bigger under Bitcoin in my day to year or two though. Theo, good night. Sorry for the delay. Yeah, I agree with Tom actually. I think gambling, sports betting, anything like that is going to be. It's already growing and that's going to be the next explosion. Gambling is a solid pick, but I'm going to go with transportation. Ride sharing applications like Lyft and Uber need a one-way payment system like Bitcoin. You don't have to create an account. It's a lot easier. That's what I would like to see disrupted next. Issue two, Bitcoin price passes 448 to hit a two month high. Chart watchers claim that Bitcoin is broken out of the channel. It's formed a new upward penny. Shroged off any worries about scaling and started ascending. Just in time for the Bitcoin happening in July. Gabriel D. Vaan, your thoughts about the price of Bitcoin? I've been expecting a move and I've been expecting it to be upward. It's been pretty clear from very simple technical analysis that Bitcoin was in a triangle. The channel was narrowing and narrowing and narrowing. Then we hit an all-time record low volatility where it was just really, really stable in a 1.5% range for weeks, which is totally unprecedented. I was pretty clear that we were going to be shooting up. Tour de Mastar is a great analyst on pricing. I definitely follow his comments. I've been in agreement with him that we hit our low already a few months ago at 180 or 200-ish. We've been heading up since then and I do believe we will continue heading up into the havining at which point we may cease a little bit more volatility in the correction. Then I have a feeling we're going to be heading up even a lot more after that, just like in 2013. Tom Vays. Well, I've been saying for at least three or four months that I expected Bitcoin to stay flat to kind of down till it worked on full, these overboard conditions and what expecting it to go down to like 300 and then when back there, it is starting to break out. I kind of stopped paying attention to Bitcoin for a little while. The volatility was just nowhere. I even cleared it out. The volatility number is the other day. It's actually been less volatile than gold using a 30-day average volatility. I do think we're breaking out. I think we're going to go up. I have my own series. It's going to happen around the havining. I think we'll go up into the havining mostly on trader hype and speculation. I think after the havining, the price will drop a little bit. I don't want to get into the reasons for that. We'll see that for more technical show. Correct. Do you mean job? Correct. Which kind of the same thing? It's not going to drop far. But basically, my speculation is that the reason why we have such a ramp up in difficulty is because all the miners for the last three to four months, basically since about December, all the way up to now, all the miners were in a race to get every possible block of 25 points. They went out of their way to put as much mining power online as they can. At the same time, I think they're going to try and ration their points because they've got to look ahead. They've got to look ahead of what happens when the reward gets cut to half, all of a sudden their profits get cut to half. They need a bit of a push in. I have the speculation that miners are really racing to get the points, but they're not in the rush to sell those points at the moment. They're going to be selling extra points after the happening in order to keep their basically outlays of costs kind of flat. It's just a speculation on my part. I think I'm the only one that's been saying this for the last three to four months. I have nothing to back to myself. I'm just getting it. Theo, good man. The price went up finally out of a long consolidation phase. Let's see what happens. I think you're giving us a prediction at the end and exit question. I think that still needs to go up a little bit more to be totally, quote, broken out, but it has broken out of the non-volatility cycle that it was in for a long time. That's for sure. Blake, Andrewson. Yeah, I mean, good comments all around. I'm in strong agreement with the panel. We're kind of breaking out of a stable period. We're now getting close enough to the happening event where the Bitcoin supply is obviously cut in half that the laws of supply and demand are going to fundamentally, very strong as they suggest that there's going to be price movement around that happening. What's happened before is it goes way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way up and then corrects down a little bit and then hopefully goes back up from there. Traditionally, it's corrected down a little bit deeper after initial corrections, but regardless, I mean, having a long investment horizon and investing in Bitcoin has been a very good idea way, way more frequently than not over its inception. So yeah, just keep those horizons long. You should be just fine. Exit question, forced prediction. This time next week, the price will be higher or lower, Gabriel Devon. I'm going to say a little higher. Tone vase. I'm going to go with fire as well. The O Goodman. I'm going to be the contrarian here. No, I'm just joking. Yeah, I think higher. I think I can be much higher next week. We are agreed. The price is going higher. Buy and sell anything for Bitcoin. Get 20% off Amazon. We give you a reason to use Bitcoin at purse.io, making Bitcoin useful. Shop now. Issue 3. MIT Chain Anchor Project. Bitcoin developer Peter Todd exposed a frightening new development from MIT, the home of the fighting subsidized Bitcoin developers. Chain Anchor. Chain Anchor has said to force users to register with their real world identity before being allowed to use Bitcoin. The system would also centralize power and system administrators, granting them the sole ability to add and delete users. Chain Anchor. It's necessary to step forward to add KYC and AML to Bitcoin Core or a Leviathan that must be stopped at all costs. I ask you tone vase. Oh, man, you're starting with me on this one. All right. I need to call out the names of the geniuses that decided through this project. They are, oh, man, Thomas. So they are Thomas, hard journal, and Alex, parentheses, Sandy, Pantland. Oh, man. So, I don't even know what to say. Of course, this is terrible. I'm not surprised that it's coming from an institution of lesser learning, I like to call them these days. It's frustrating. And I've even spoken at MIT. And I've spoken at Carnegie Mellon as well. And then Carnegie Mellon was responsible for like messing up tour and identifying tour nodes. I don't know what to say. I mean, you can't stop people from doing what they wanted to. The problem is making people understand that they shouldn't be supporting a North Korea style regime. I'm mentioning it again on the show, to identify people. It stems from the problem that people have been engraved since they learned to speak that money laundering is a crime punishable by anything. Because money is evil. Having money is evil and rich people are evil. And the government is good, and they need to know every penny you spend. Now, there are tends to do this in Bitcoin is a waste of time and money. And it's actually a waste of my money. Because I guarantee you, even though it's a private institution, this garbage is being publicly funded. So it's actually a waste of taxpayer money. They will not be able to pull it off. If you are able to pull it off, you're recreating the US dollar and the Chinese U-1 and the British pound. I don't want to say the euro because by the time somebody hears this, the euro might not exist. But I'm going to stay away from that one. But you're basically recreating a fiat system if you do that. Clearly these guys have no idea what Bitcoin is. They don't know how it works. They have a channel assist. Here is others who also is doing this elliptic pivoted to this because they realize no one is going to trust them to hold their Bitcoin. So they're going to be identifying people. It's not going to work. Every time I read something like this, it makes me hate the big blocks now crowd. Because in order to have big blocks now, you're catering to the visas and the paypal. So I have to identify everyone. This is terrible. I mean, thank God Bitcoin Core would never employ anyone that thinks like that. So I want someone to give a plug to Bitcoin Core and block stream because they wouldn't stand for this kind of garbage. I yield my time to you guys. I think I've ran it enough. Theo, good. Yeah, I don't think it's necessary. I don't think it adds value to Bitcoin. On the other hand, it takes value away if it's ever implemented. It's kind of like white listing coins and all those other things that Tonemanchin too. I don't know who's actually behind it where the real conspiracy lies. But it would be interesting to find out if it's just someone's science project or if there's a sinister three-letter organization behind it that is using divide and conquer techniques in order to just create confusion among the Bitcoin community. Which could be, but that's a total conspiracy theory upon itself. But I wouldn't doubt it. Blake Anderson. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. So, this is absolutely pushing the bounds of not getting it to an extent where it's like, where, where, where farther could you push? And then, I guess, yeah, they could push and then exceed the bounds of not getting it. Which I think that, like, that's how you do this with, like, with code program this out. And then you're like, look, see how much I don't get it. And then you're like, wow, you really don't get it. That's all I have to say about that. I'm sure in the future we'll be trading Bitcoin on pieces of paper. Gabriel, D.Van. You know, I came across an interesting comment on Reddit from one of the researchers. I'm not sure if it was one of these parentheses, Sandy guys or whoever, but they mentioned that the, the current version of the paper actually did not mention implementing chain anchor, which by the way, perfect name for what it is. You're completely putting an anchor on this wonderful free chain that's floating, that anybody can get on your, just anchor it down and it's just stuck in the mud with this, you know, user identification. We need to circumcise it too after we chain it down. Yeah, exactly. It's just, it's completely neutering and just, it's basically an anchor on this wonderful ship that should be roaming the seas of freedom. You know, he said that the final version or the latest version or whatever the paper doesn't mention using chain anchor on the Bitcoin blockchain. And only mentions Bitcoin in passing. It's a purely distributed ledger space oriented paper, blah, blah, blah, which really prompts the question, why did you have it in the first place and why did you take, what made you take it out? So, I mean, it's actually more suspect that it used to be in there and was taken out. That means you guys were planning to do it and realize that it wouldn't go over too well and took it out and has nothing to do with what your actual plans are. So it's just even more dishonest. I think it's like, hey, hey, Jeff, do you want to go notice how the sleazy shit we're talking about? Should I redact it? Yeah, let's get rid of that stuff. Okay. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, exactly. And then suddenly the problem goes, oh, it's in an old version. So it doesn't count anymore. Well, I think it's interesting that Peter Todd, he was obviously trying to raise a ruckus about this. It's not really much of a chance of miners falling for it. If they're not going to fall for big blocks, they're certainly not going to fall for KYC on the blockchain. No better way to completely destroy their entire business model. So I think that the bright, so now that they realize that coercion is impossible because we have anonymity among the miners, they're going to this standard government next technique, which is bribery, as you can see in my blog, Future Grant. Yeah, I'm going to jump back in there real quick. Because I agree with Gabe, miners are not going to go for it. One of the reasons that miners got into it, I mean, yeah, some miners are in it because they're being profitable. I'm sure Vid Fury is in it. They're very public. They're part of the blockchain alliance, which I personally hate. So they're in it because they say they have money and they think they can be profitable. But they're not the only miner out there. I would say the majority of miners are there to be anonymous. They're there to convert. They are registered value as friends of mine, as space like to call it. You're registered value for the pain of electricity and you're converting it into anonymous value of Bitcoin. I think that is a major thing for them. So miners are not going to go for it. And the other thing, the incentive in that paper, they talked about how well the registered value, the registered, your white addresses are going to be cheap for you to send money. And if you want to stay anonymous, well, maybe some miners will do it, but you'll have to pay a large larger fee. I mean, that is just so regarded of thinking. Because if people start paying larger fees to be anonymous, where do they think the miners are going to go and mine those transactions? They're going to go for the larger fees, especially what block rewards are being cut. So all you're going to do is you're going to use government money to subsidize cheap transactions for these miners. I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, it's taking currency manipulation and economic manipulation to level 10 from what we currently have. It's just silly. It's not going to work. No, yeah, totally agree. It's not going to work. I'd actually like to call out James DiAngelo from the World Bitcoin network. Yeah, don't get me started on him, please. Uh oh. I'm just going to call him there. Yeah, I'm going to call him out. I think a lot of his educational videos in the past have been really excellent. But he's gone on an interesting different path lately. I say interesting with a grain of salt. On Twitter, he's been pretty combative, aggressive, uh, in, um, go, in, uh, promoting his view that, um, miners anonymity is causing centralization of mining and that the solution is to require, as for the users of Bitcoin, to require total registration and total transparency of identification of miners, which, um, I think is an interesting, uh, different perspective. So he's like, he's using centralization as an excuse for, um, KYC in a way, um, which sort of works together on the other side of chaining, like centralization as an excuse for centralization. Well, basically, he feels that the anonymity of miners allows them to create, um, large, uh, cabals without anybody knowing that the miners, for example, somebody could control 95% of them because it's totally anonymous and nobody would know that. Now, of course, that may or may not be true, but on the other side of the equation, we have the typical problems that can ensue when miners aren't anonymous and this subject of, of chain anchor, you know, kind of touches on that too. So it's, you kind of between a rock and a hard place with decentralization. It's really important. So I try to understand his, his argument, because like, I mean, if you can have a preposition in an argument, inform a rational argument, his argument is that there will be a centralization of power in mining and that represents risk because it could be act and then 51% can mess up the chain for a while or what? Because anybody that says that they're going to, you know, program chain suicide but 51% control, the, you can't do that and be that would be the most anti-pragmatic thing to do ever. I mean, pragmatism is a very, very logically strong thing that comes down and says, okay, that risk factor, you're worried about how pragmatic or anti-pragmatic would it be to assume somebody who has material value invested in such an operation to do that? And I think that a lot of arguments and flood around this kind of thing totally fall apart when you're like, how pragmatic would it be for the person that has all this power that you're assuming to kill the golden egg laying goose and I've not seen any very strong argument from James. They have a stronger argument. I'm not hearing you read. It's kind of, it kind of seems like. I'm not, I'm probably not portraying his argument very well but there is an entire video about how he supports strict identification of all minors on the Bitcoin blockchain on his channel on YouTube, the World Bitcoin network. Yeah, I'll comment on this as well. That is part of his argument, Blake. And you're right, you took it a lot further than he has. I don't think he's thought about the end goal of why would they want to kill their old system that they've invested in so much? So he's not taking it out that far. One more thing that I want to say that he talks about is he's very, very worried about chip manufacturing. So his view is that the chip manufacturing has been monopolized and there is like only one or two companies that are building these chips and they're the companies that are also mining. So that's also his view. So again, to me it's like the same shovel argument, right? Oh my God, we have a monopoly. One mobster decided to build all the shovels and then handing them out to the gold people. So again, I don't see much. If they're monopoly, if they're monopoly hinges on their ability to put so much money and R&D that people can't compete, then I mean, I kind of fuck anybody that doesn't understand why that's okay. You know what I mean? If somebody really can't understand how that's not a traditional monopoly, the regulatory capture, it's kind of like, well your ideas about economics are so fucked up that I don't even know where to start. Yeah, no. I think the angel has gone off the rails officially. And it's unfortunate because I really liked his earlier videos. I still have one of his videos on my blog. It's like one of the best videos I saw. The name of it was the S curve. It's in my Bitcoin education section. But lately I just wow, very, very, it's, it's fresh. And then he talks about how Satoshi was 51% attacking the system and then you're like, but he didn't really attack it because why do you want to destroy his own system? If you only apply that logic, like why would Satoshi create the system and then he had yes, he was mining at 51%, but he has no reason to destroy it. The same logic applies to any miner right now. The idea of the model. So the more material and value consideration that exists in Bitcoin. So when Bitcoin was smaller, this was a material risk. Like some asshole who really hate the entire value proposition could get enough money to come in and fuck it up, but that is no longer possible in any way, shape, or form. And even if people do all kinds of really mouthpiece and things, I'm saying he has no point at all. I'm not saying that no negative consequence can come of this. But if we take his argument to the logical conclusion and say, what's the maximum badness going to be? Is it going to be the world shattering situation that some people are using your argument to paint? And generally, no, is it going to be a fork at some point? And if so, what would the motivation be to fork and to wear and how much would that cost? And it's already a problem here. I mean, and this also dials back to the entire argument of, you know, when, when the things matter, when do people come in and weigh in and when does the block size change? And when do we raise the debt limit? It looks like from human history, wouldn't it become such a big problem that we have no other choice? And maybe that's just the way the things are supposed to be. Yeah. I know. I agree. And for more on James the Angelo, there was a very good interview with James the Angelo about this topic on the podcast Bitcoin Uncensored. Just looked for the episode where James the Angelo is the guest and they asked him some pretty tough questions to try and, you know, break down his arguments. And let's just say where, you know, I've met James. He's a good guy. I like his videos and maybe we don't disagree. We disagree with him on this argument, but he's made many other arguments that are interesting. And this is how discussions work. We go back and forth. He puts his idea out there. We discuss it. He puts another idea out there. Maybe he changes his views. Maybe we change our views. We're having a discussion. I think this is really healthy and good stuff. Yeah. I mean, as long as we stick to logic and nobody uses its office tree or fallacy or anything like that, I mean, the disagreement with people is extremely important. So, you know, all the power to them to keep trying to illustrate which way is better and figure it out. Yeah. Unfortunately, I agree completely with what you said Thomas, but unfortunately a recent exchange on Twitter was definitely displaying some relatively aggressive behavior and some fallacious points definitely having to do with the mining hardware points where our own from the Bitcoin Blab vortex was patiently calmly trying to understand what James was getting at and was asking some excellent well phrased pointed questions about how precisely he imagined the mining hardware infrastructure staying centralized over the long term. And James was really more just attacking and kind of not really making any cogent points on an economic level. Unfortunately, but I completely agree that it's from our side, certainly I want to keep it very friendly and cordial and it's just maybe a logical difference of a thing. Well, and I mean, I hate when ad homies use is a silver bullet, but sometimes ad hominem is relative or is relevant information. If people have an emotional response to people bringing up points that are tenable, I mean that's how it's a signal too. So I mean, take everything with a grain of salt and he's got a lot of good stuff he's put out there, but also don't ignore when anybody that you respect does things that you don't approve of. So, mix it all together. And while we're still on the subject, let's give a shout out to James' theory about secret balance and their importance in our government. In the 70s, Nixon eliminated the secret ballot for legislators. Workers were discussing the bills and then voting on them and with the secret ballots, the lobbyists couldn't check that their work was successful. They couldn't say, oh, our legislator voted the way we wanted them to because it was secret. And Nixon, who no one likes now, wore on drugs, et cetera, et cetera, Nixon changed this law and made all the ballots not secret. What made it so all the lobbyists can check their work. They can say, oh, he voted the way he's supposed to. We have it on our checklist. They can then pay him more. And James has a very interesting idea about reversing this and about the possible harms that transparency could be doing to our legislative process. And it's very counter-tuitive. You have to think about it to really understand it. And I don't know much about this argument. I haven't read it. I haven't watched the podcast. Bitcoin Uncensored. Everyone should check it out. Sounds interesting. But, you know, let's discuss these ideas and grain of salt. And James will come around. I'm really glad you brought that up because it's almost the opposite of this argument in a way. That's interesting. There's definitely a relation there, politically and philosophically. Yeah, Thomas, I did not know that actually. It's very interesting. If you have a good link that talks about this in detail, please throw it in the show notes. I'd mainly suggest James' videos about it. And I'd say that on an academic level, James has announced recently that he's working with a Harvard professor to write this into an article and then perhaps a book. And this idea, this interpretation of what Nixon did, hasn't really been discussed publicly in the way that I think it should be. I think it's counter-intuitive. We like to think that transparency is the best thing. But when you're thinking about legislative and creation of bills, that as a lobbyist, check the work of the senators. You can pay them a lot more because you can guarantee that they voted for you. I think he should stick with that crusade. And I think that that is a very important crusade and that there's some conflation going on between his very good arguments there and what's going on with minors right to privacy. General Thomas Thomas, just a backtrack that transparency is an awesome thing. We should have transparency. This is the problem. I want to see full transparency. But I want to see privacy as to the actual people involved. I don't want these bills to be hidden. I want the voting on these bills to be public. But I don't have to know which senator vote like this. The Obama is going to make it so that all legislation has to be online for five days before it gets signed. You should vote for Obama in 2008. Yeah, so I'm all for transparency. But the privacy comes from the actual people. People need to remain private. But things like this, no, they should be public. We should know what's actually in the bills. But we may not know. We may not. We don't even need to know who wrote it. Those don't know what's in it. I think that we were kicking a man out on the idea of an after show. If anybody's interested in that, I don't know if we're going to do one on this show. I think maybe we will. But the privacy and how that affects all kinds of different things. I think would be a great, great, great topic for the after show. Because I think that we could all talk for a long time about how to optimize privacy towards different people in different situations. I think the classic analogy here is that this sausage is delicious. But you don't want to know how it's made. We're going to skip the exit question because I think everyone agrees chain anchor will not be adopted by Bitcoin core. We are running out of time, so we do need to talk quickly. But we're going to do a couple more issues here. Issue four, Bitcoin is dead. At least says a prominent thin tech exec whose products directly compete with Bitcoin. Why does the media keep allowing this ridiculous grandstanding about Bitcoin being dead over and over and over again? At what point will the meme of declaring Bitcoin dead finally be dead? Feel good. I don't know when that, well, that meme will end when the people that say it don't have an incentive in order to say it. Okay, check this out. How could I get a lot of free advertising and get my company name on the front of Yahoo Finance? By saying ever telling itself stuff. Right, or I could just say Bitcoin is dead. They give me a nice headline and get a good link. Oh yeah, and by the way, I happen to provide a service that has to do with money transfer and that has nothing to do with Bitcoin. I'm saying Bitcoin is dead from a total objective, scientific, academic, and every other kind of point of view. I've done a lot of research about it, and that's the main reason why I say that. Nothing to do with a new product that I've just released that's basically competing with Bitcoin and it's maybe one cent cheaper than credit cards. It has everything to do with a lot of evidence that I've found. So as soon as people don't need this in order to get on the front of Yahoo Finance, then it will go away. Blake Anderson. I think it'll go away once people finally understand that that's a great way to destroy their reputation as far as for their future, and then people will stop doing it. And I hope that happens before the incentive goes away, but maybe it won't. Who knows which will come first? Gabriel D. Vaughan. I just want to point out the actual quote here. Bitcoin as Tavet Henriqueca said, Bitcoin, I think we can say is dead. There is no traction. No one is using Bitcoin. The Bitcoin experiment, I think we can say again, I think we can say, is over. Just hilarious to see him trying to phrase it as if it's a foregone conclusion. And I don't think people will stop saying it until they look so ridiculous that they risk completely destroying their careers. Like Clifford Stoll, the professor who wrote the article in 1995 saying that e-commerce will never happen. And now we have this multi-billion dollar industry giant just within a few years of his article. So that's what's going to be like with Bitcoin where all these articles, calls will be trotted out and these people will be seen for the idiots that they are. Tony Vays. I'll try and make this fast. I'm not going to repeat what everybody else said so far because I agree with them 100%. I'm going to read another quote that he said. I'm going to read a word for word. This is what he actually said. So begin quote. What really happened was a gold rush to continue. People bought Bitcoin because they thought it would be worth more tomorrow and a lot of people got lucky. But we're not seeing real people use Bitcoin and we don't know what problem it solves. Now blockchain I think is a genius at advancement and technology. But I'm not sure we're seeing yet where to apply it. I'm pretty excited about our three and digital asset holdings. I think there are many areas where using blockchain is great but it's still early days. So this is incredibly frustrating to read because he thinks the blockchain is an amazing technology but he has no idea how it's going to be used. And this is the problem. Blockchain is not an amazing technology. Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is the blockchain. Our three and digital asset holdings are silly. I honestly think they're just going to lose all of the investors money. And this guy doesn't understand what problem Bitcoin solves and he specifically says there are no real people using Bitcoin. So this is where I'm going to about to piss off a lot of people like watching this. I wasn't even born in this country but if I remember correctly at one point black people were considered two, three, fifths of a person. So he's saying no real people are using Bitcoin. He's taking that concept one step further. So there are some drug dealers using Bitcoin. There are some prostitutes using Bitcoin and they have to use it because they don't have a choice. So he's saying they are just not real people. They are not people at all. And this is what's frustrating because guys like that don't understand the other end. They don't consider that there is 25% of the world economy but they don't like and they don't believe that there are people on the other end of those transactions. They're not people. They're something else but they're not people. And that is why he does not understand Bitcoin because it is serving the underserved and why he thinks blockchain is amazing but he has no idea what it's used for and he's right. I don't know what blockchain is used for either other than Bitcoin. And I don't know how you secure a blockchain without a token of value to reward people for using your network. I just don't get this blockchain argument but we'll wait till it fizzles out. The exit question was going to be this article came from Yahoo Finance. Who is more dead? Yahoo or Bitcoin. But I think we all agree that it's Yahoo. So we're running out of time. We're going to move on to issue five. This is a bonus special issue today. I just thought it was interesting. Issue five. Whole coin. Hyjak. Whole coin and experiment in localization by the people of whole England has been hijacked by Chinese scammers. The scammers used online articles written about whole coin to scam investors out of thousands of dollars. Is the hype around cryptocurrency so strong that even a year's dead local coin project can attract millions? But only as a scam. The money always goes to scammers. Never to real work. What is this maybe around cryptocurrency? Blake Anderson. Well, I mean, it's just the thing. Everybody is like, yay, Bitcoin and like, yeah, Bitcoin. Well, you know, whole coin must be pretty similar to Bitcoin. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, nobody ever said that. And like, well, they got out of there. They're next to each other at the grocery store. So I bought a whole ship ton of whole. Now it's gone. Altcoins are not Bitcoin and people sometimes are like, you know, the maximalists are going nuts saying that other stuff isn't Bitcoin and stuff. And it's not like we do that for our own health. Like, I've been involved with Bitcoin materially since the price is in the single digits. Like, I've seen a lot of altcoins and a lot of stuff come and go. I'm not trying to crap on any altcoin. I'm really just trying to let people know that from my experience, unless it's proven itself to be true, like the implementation of the blockchain has proven itself to be true. Although people apparently can't see that. Like, these things need to be tried and true and tested and the altcoin, suckering people in. It just shows that there's a lot of people that are still really desperate and wanting, you know, a penny stock to go way, way, way up. They don't recognize that Bitcoin goes way up and down and corrects with its block halvings. They're like, well, any penny stock is going to be the next Bitcoin. It's going to go from 200 to 1200. And I think that that needs to be dispel. Bitcoin didn't do that because of luck or because, you know, everybody is just, you know, really lucky. It did it because of mathematical and economic principles that were laid out in a way that was like, wow, this is a really, really, really good idea and program that's going to work. That's why Bitcoin went up so much. And unless these other altcoins can illustrate that they can add value, commensurate with that value add, which is almost literally impossible, be very, very, very skeptical of things like altcoin. I'd say it more as any penny stock can be the next penny stock. Gabriel D. I think this is all just a misunderstanding. And halcoin is definitely the future. I'm sure that a retraction will come out from CoinDesk on this article because halcoin is a bright future. It's really great. Keep your money in halcoin. Don't sell your halcoins. And everything's going to be awesome in a future together in whole England, which is a wonderful, beautiful town. To the moon. Actually, my real comment is that I think language barriers are really important thing to take into account in cultural shifts here. The whole fool in his money is soon parted. Suckers born every minute thing. It applies just that much more if you're going to invest in something in China and coverage about it or if you're Chinese, you're going to invest in something in the West and you can't do your due diligence and your proper research. You're going to get fucked. Tone vase. All right, so I just want to ask a question to the panel. What is the real scam? Halcoin or some Chinese guy hyping up halcoin? Someone basically hyped it up. Halcoin was actually a real project. No, I don't know this. Oh, no. No, no, no, no. I know, I know, I know. Just a hypothetical. To me, halcoin is the real scam, right? Not some guy hyping it off of thinking that's bandage of it. Yeah. Well, the article is about the new scam on top of the scam. Right. It's a scam on top of the scam, right? So you're blaming the scam on top of the scam and it was easy to create a scam on top of the scam when your original scam is government back, right? Or at least government approved. So you have a government approved all that then someone says, oh, this is government approved. Why should buy it from me? I'm representative of that government. And the same reason the FDA fucks up so much shit like the FDA they're watching us and then everybody takes a biox and goes, definitely can't smell anything. And they're like, oh, oh, right. So again, and then you have a problem with when you create an old coin where there are people responsible for that old coin, those people then have to answer questions when someone they don't know does something. And again, this is where Bitcoin has a huge advantage. No matter what Bitcoin does, there is no responsible party for Bitcoin. They just don't exist. Theo, good man. Yeah, I think that I believe even on World Crypto Network sometime in 2014, speaking with someone that had something to do with Hullcoin at some point. And I remember then being skeptical and it was pretty unclear how it would work. It was like, yeah, we're going to give it to people in need, but they can't use it for alcohol because then nobody will adopt it. It was already getting really weird as far as that goes. And it was really unclear how it would be implemented ahead. I didn't really hear a whole lot about it after then. So I guess they wanted to, quote, do good. It's just that it didn't really work out from the beginning of the concept of money and all that kind of thing. And yeah, someone just was clever enough to do the scam on top of the scam. Now, I don't know if the original Hullcoin had an IPO or anything like that. If anyone really invested in it, I don't think so. So someone just kind of took this almost dead project and revived it and added there are a little two cents to it and hyped it up and bam, there you go. And that is up with that is the Cryptomania, ladies and gentlemen. Anyone and their mom can trade basically penny stocks with very, very low friction. And the SEC will not stop the pumps and dumps. There you go. That's the mania. The band and experiments will persist just like old email accounts that you abandoned a long time ago. And for the record, we did discuss Hullcoin on the World Crypto Network. We talked to some of their representatives and we had people in England at the time. And Hullcoin was an interesting kind of a quaint project. They wanted to run a single server mining Hullcoin in one of the government offices. They wanted to give them out to lower income people that they could use them at a discount at local stores to encourage local purchasing or perhaps as a supplement to their income. I'm not sure it really got further than that idea. It was like a neat cryptocurrency token type idea. My main concern is that someone would come in and hijack it, take over the mining pool. But it's interesting that the hijacking came from totally unconnected people. They didn't have to contribute any mining. They certainly didn't contribute any marketing to Hullcoin. They just took the idea and the articles and started raising capital with it seemingly easily compared to I'm sure Hullcoin, which had trouble raising any capital at all. It was kind of a side little project by a government guy. It wasn't very serious. Tom, did you have something to add? I got to run. I'm already like an hour and a half late that they're I think the dinner is already over. But I think I've asked for as much as it is. So I'll let you guys do the predictions. I'm going to go. What's your prediction, Tom? I honestly don't have one. This is the one section I know. You've been prepared to get out of here. I don't have one. I usually think of one while you guys speak. And I don't get this chance right now. Bye. Bye. Enjoy your dinner. And now the exit question you've all been waiting for. What is your favorite Bitcoin related scam? Lake Anderson. My favorite Bitcoin related scam was the whole lucky seven debacle into cryptocurrency with all of its inside outside cleverness. Like if a scam is just like taking people money and lying, like it's kind of like, yeah, that's not that's not good. My favorite scams are the ones that are so clever that it's like these people went to some like new age crypto currency exchange thing and then got a Trojan into one of the wallets when they were thinking, that's still money. I mean, I don't advocate for theft. I don't I don't support it at all. I just think like wow, like security these days is ridiculous. Gabriel D. Vine. My favorite scam was definitely the FBI agents on the Silk Road case stealing bitcoins out of the criminals. I forgot the name. And also just the name of the one of the main guys in that Karl Mark force the fourth. It's a perfect government agent name. I pretty sure they made it up. It's a fictional character. Theo Goodman. Well, Gabe, you really hit it out of the park with that one Karl Mark's force. I want to always call it. Yeah, yeah, I always joke that it was really that's his real code name is Karl Mark's force. But anyway, without going down the road, I pick an old one or old in the crypto world, but good one, MCX now. Now you could debate me on whether it was a scam or not. So it was an altcoin exchange. It had fee shares. They sold the fee shares when bitcoins are around 90 bucks, I think, or 100 bucks or something like that. And then you know, it went up to about 400. And then suddenly there's this announcement on the on the exchange something like I'm really ill and I think I might have to shut down the exchange. And of course, the price of the fee shares went down like 90%. And then a month later, it's like, oh, yeah, I'm back. Everything is cool now. And it just kind of went on and on with this lot of different antics and so on. And of course, different coins coming on and so on. But it was a, I forgot the username on Bitcoin talk. It was also like a known scammer, but it still worked anyway. So it was a pretty epic scam in the history of Bitcoin. I'm going to go with Paycoin. I actually got to go to the Bitcoin convention in Miami that was sponsored by Paycoin. And it was really something to see the level of sponsorship that this essentially pump and dump scam had. Paycoin had multiple booths at the convention with multiple expensive printed backdrops. They had the best swag at the convention. I got a polo shirt, some magnets, a pen, a t-shirt, a bag, everything. It also has pay-base, which is like coin base. They had nothing else to spend it on. They had a loan company there. They were doing loans in Paycoin. Paycoin was, of course, I don't know if you guys are familiar with it, but it was guaranteed to stay at $20 a coin. They claimed that they had money that they were going to use to buy it up if it ever went below $20. And of course, everyone started short again and started testing. Will it go below $20? And oh boy, did it. And there was a lot of trouble. There was a guy who invented Paycoin. I think his name was Josh Garza. He actually went to the convention and he attended with two large bodyguards claiming that threats had been made against him and his family. And this was before Paycoin even became a huge scam. This was back when it was still kind of acceptable. And I was at the bar of one of the parties. They had the Paycoin video playing on the screens. It was professionally produced and words flying over the screen. It could have been a coin base ad if you changed the word at the end from Paycoin to Bitcoin. It couldn't be a coin base. And there was one more detail I want to share with you. They projected onto the wall of the words North American Bitcoin conference spinning Bitcoin logo. And because it was sponsored by Paycoin, they put the word Paycoin on there. What's so interesting about this is I was at the party quite a long time. And eventually they turned off the Bitcoin science, but they kept the Paycoin sign on because the Paycoin people must have paid more and said, leave our sign on all night long. So an incredible amount of money went into this marketing scam and it turned out badly. I'm sure for all the people involved. But that's my favorite scam. We're running out of time. Do you guys have a prediction or a story of the week, Blake Anderson? I'll save it for next week. All right. Gabriel D. Vine, anything to add. Yeah, story of the week made safe when a very interesting project. I've been following closely. They have completed their routing layers. They've got a minimum viable product and things are being developed on there. Once they finish up the messaging and vaults, they will be launching their non blockchain altcoins. Should be very interesting. That's off to made safe, a very interesting project. Big fans of page and David, good stuff. And although it is interesting to see them not using a blockchain, that's going to be difficult with the distributed ledger tech environment that we're in now. Them not having a blockchain is really going to confuse people. They might want to add a vestigial blockchain. Maybe we used to have one, but we cut it off. It didn't look good. Theo Goodman. I really like this comment. I remember when I think it was page and maybe someone else was on-world crypto network. I asked that how can I send a coin to you? And I know that you don't double spend without a blockchain. But there is an answer, but I just don't remember it right now. Anyway, story of the week is there is an after party to the show. You've got to check out the Twitter, the OG double underscore. Check it out in the lower third and I'll link it out. You can come to the exclusive after party. You can even get on live video chat with us or you can chat with us or you can just hang out or you can tell us we're full of shit. Anything like that, that's cool. And everyone will be retweeting it out and everything. You've got to come to the after party and check it out. That's the story of the week. Very cool. Check out that after party and join the world crypto network Slack. Make your own shows. Put them on YouTube. Send them to us. Don't invite you to the Slack and then maybe someday you'll make your shows on World Crypto Network too. Up, we're out of time. Until next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.