#138 — The Bitcoin Group #138 - Onecoin, Paycoin, Scamcoin - Bitfinex Troubles - Billionaire Invests

The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest Satoshi is the best Bitcoin, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Chris Ellis from ProTIP. Hello. The O Goodman from HAS online. Good evening everyone. Let's do this. Nonset from Bitcoin Uncensored Classic. What up party poopers? Toned Vays from Liberty Life Trail. Hey everyone, it should be a really fun show. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Before we can even start this week, there's a power outage in San Francisco. We have no electricity since around 9 a.m. this morning. The latest from PG&E is that a fire at a tenderloin substation was the cause of outages for 95,000 people. There's no timeline on restoring the power, though they claim to be back on at 1215. Now it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Still no power. The mayor claims that there are no major injuries due to the power outage and the power will be back on by 5 p.m. Notice how it keeps getting later and later. The police say that there are concerns because the power outage is also out in some New York City subway stations in Midtown and LAX and perhaps Chicago. But these incidents are not related according to the San Francisco PD. So if the show ends abruptly, it's because we're broadcasting from my cell phone and the battery power that's left on my laptop. So we're doing audio only and with no further ado, we're moving on to issue one, one coin, a coin, scam coin. Alleged cryptocurrency, one coin, went up in flames this week with the closure of their last remaining bank account. The one coin project which claimed to be better than Bitcoin seemingly never had a blockchain, relying instead on SQL servers and attempting to hire a blockchain expert at the last minute to build the one. He refused and the MLM project tumbled to the earth. On other alleged crypto news, Josh Garza, founder of Paycoin, has admitted his guilt and accepted a plea deal. Garza is accused of swindling more than $20 million through GaMiner's CoinSwap and Pay Base. Chris Ellis, I ask you, why is Bitcoin forever plagued by these fly-by-night scams? What can be done to prevent the next one coin? Nothing because it's an open market and the code is open source, so there really isn't anything that you can do to stop people making claims. It really comes down to individual responsibility and education. But education is hard. It's difficult to spread a message with such complexity as crypto and that complexity doesn't merely go away, just the more you repeat the message over and over again. So I don't think that the answer is to necessarily try to kind of police it in a traditional way. I think we do just have to engage in the very slow, long process of educating people so that they can regulate themselves. Special thanks to our 75 viewers for watching us. Please give us a thumbs up and a share. Even though you can't see us, we can see you. Theo Goodman. Yeah, definitely agree that there's nothing you can do to prevent it. What crypto has done has in some ways equaled the playing field for equal opportunity scamming. So before crypto, maybe it was a little bit harder to scam people in the form of financial crypto. I don't know what you want to call them, not really derivatives, but it kind of opened to opportunity where it used to be you had to be a so-called big wig to do this kind of scamming. And now everyone can scam. It's not that hard. Everyone can do a pre-mind. Anyone can make a token and everyone is free to scam. So there's nothing that you can do to prevent it. Per se is just like what Chris said as far as education. And yeah, education is not easy. And not only is it not easy, this kind of education is usually painful and involves losses and so on. And it's probably the best education that or the quickest education you can get is just to. Okay, if you really think it's worth something, then put something in it and see what happens. And then you probably will lose. Maybe you make money. Who knows? And that's just that's just the experiment of it. Now, I think yeah, just talking about it, like we're talking about it in a realistic way, straight up is probably the best way to continue the discussion and see what happens in the future. I think you're right, Theo. It's all about education and information. The investors into one coin had a lack of information and made bad choices because of it. And we're also going to go back to Chris Ellis for another comment on journalism, Chris. You ready? Yeah, sorry. I meant to mention really what it needs, we need better journalism in this industry and we need better investors to journalism. And I think Bitcoin uncensored did a good job, I believe, on the one coin thing you guys did do a little bit of an expose. You went in on that group, but anything like that, where you can get a deep dive and somebody actually does their research, does all the verification. I think we need more, less of the kind of the PR shit that we're seeing churned out on all these WordPress blogs. And we need more good old fashioned investigative journalism that does expose on scams like this so that people can be educated in real time about scams as they emerge. And now let's go to Janseth from Bitcoin uncensored. Have we seen the democratization of scams? Is he bringing the power of scamming to the people? Well, what I like about one coin is it's one of the only scams of a machine run by a woman. You know, so there's that. That's a great point. I think you've got a good point. It democratizes scamming, it allows everyone to scam. It's wonderful, frankly. And you know what, I really do disagree with every single person. Frankly, I don't think that education has anything to do with it. I think that people in Bitcoin are here like, the libertarian retardation that that pervades Bitcoin is what makes people, they go into this wanting to be scammed. So like, one coin, they wanted to be scammed. These people have plenty of information. What more information did you need? The pitch of one coin is giving me your money. I'll turn it into more money. There's absolutely it's a money making machine. That's literally the pitch. There's no more sophistication to it. What did you need to educate them on? They do. I want to criticize. It's like how to look at a blockchain, maybe how to run your own client. That kind of thing. But like that's the most complicated thing in the world. One coin is targeting idiots. It is one of the things that is quite an independent, epistemological problem. You just said idiots. That is an epistemological problem. I don't know if it's epistemama logic. Epistemological. Sorry, it is a question of knowledge then. But like they say, they're idiots. No, but they're idiots like because they're born that way Chris. Some people are just dumb. Okay, all right. Okay, that's an essentialism argument. That's fine. What it boils down to is that yeah, what people want to make. People want free lunch. You know, people want to be told they're going to get free money. They're going to get free ride if they just buy the ticket. That's what they want. And that's what they're sold. That's what they were sold. And that's what it boils down to more or less. I do find it funny that they were able to mention Bitcoin in their pitch and still get away with it. You could have gone out there just invested in Bitcoin, read about it, learned how exciting the technology is. It's not like they were hiding Bitcoin. That's why I found interesting about this. Well, I thought that was the entire, the crux of their pitch. They needed Bitcoin in order to run the scam. It just made it more exciting. Let's go to tone veys. Tone veys, your thoughts on paycoin and one coin. Well, actually, they need a blockchain to run that scam. That article was probably one of the best articles I've read this entire year. I actually immediately tweeted at the author of their article. So anyone that's listening to this, please grab that article from the description and like pull it up. Like here's what it says in the article. And anyone, I guess anyone who really wanted to know could have done this research, it says that Dr. Rujajig Motov has been convicted of 24 counts of fraud in Germany in 2012, okay, from a previous scam. All the other top people were involved in scams. And as you read this article, it's like, there were a couple of other really hilarious parts. I mean, I don't have it up because I'm trying not to share screen to, you know, ban with. But one of them was, you're reading it is like someone is like saying, oh my god, I can't believe I put $10,000 into this on the promises that this was going to be a blockchain. And as I'm reading it, I'm like, how's this different from all those banks giving money to R3? Like, yep, that part. Exactly. Oh, that was something happened there. Yeah, exactly, right? So as I read that, I'm like, well, how's that different from like 80% of all the other blockchains out there that people are out there pitching and other people like want to give money to? Why is it any different than fact? We're steaming it for that matter, right? I think it's actually kind of impressive that they did all this without a blockchain. This here shows the power of SQL databases and projecting your feelings. They saved a lot of money by doing it without a blockchain, right? What do you mean? That's a cost to someone to try and develop. What do you mean they did it without a blockchain? How is this any more of a blockchain or any less of a blockchain? In fact, they've hired people to build them, something that inserts data into the blockchain. It's a complicated technological process, whereas one coin, it seems like they had a SQL database, and at least according to this article, the last minute they tried to hire a blockchain expert to build them a blockchain. So they raised all the money before they did any technology, whereas what we were seeing in these other spaces, they're actually doing technology. So I have an on a flip side, how do you hire a blockchain expert? Like, who the hell do you hire? Do you go find Satoshi? I mean, there is maybe a few of them over a blockchain, but they will just laugh and they will tell you there's no way I can build your blockchain, even if you wanted to. I mean, that's what a blockchain expert would say. There are lots of blockchain consultants charging $1,600 a day in upwards. They've got LinkedIn profiles, they've got Twitter accounts, and they talk about the LT distributed ledger all the time. And they have no customers. Right. So like, maybe Periam Boring could build them like a blockchain, or like a DLT or something. And actually, you could put medical records on there, I don't know. I think he's already planted. Here's a thing, Chris. I don't know if I told you this. I'm actually a blockchain consultant. I charge $8 million an hour. Most expensive in the industry. It is a bargain. Well, I mean, I know what I'm talking about. $8 million an hour. And I give zero. Leave me yourself. You're underselling yourself, honestly, like you need to believe in yourself. That's what I said. The clients for the people who want to raise my price. I should raise my price. I'm actually on way under charging. What are you at, Tony? Oh, you don't want to know. I'm at, I think I'm up to $125,000 an hour now. Nice. You have no plans to. No, no, actually. All right, let's move on to the exit question. What would you say to a noob who invested in one coin? Chris Ellis. So, Lord truth to what Joshua said, you can't comment on this man, right? So, if you want to be cheated out of this money and deep down in your heart, you've left a little crack in the window open to someone to climb in and exploit you, go ahead and be violated. Oh, Theo, good man. Nope, do we have Theo? And with a minute, what's the final question again? The question, what would you say to a noob who invested in one coin? Oh, the only way you're going to make any money is on affiliate sales. There's still hope. John's to. Yes. Go ahead. What would you say to a noob who invested in one? I would help them download telegram and I get them into the Rare Pepe chats. It's never too late for Rare Pepe, tone veys. Oh man, I never even got the comment on Josh Garza. That's a whole other thing, which also, by the way, yeah, let me just comment on that real quick. Because Josh Garza also had like a criminal history before this whole thing. And the interesting part is that his partner in this, as that article points out, was a guy from, I don't have the article with me, but he was the credible person. So there was also an affinity scam going on there with Josh Garza's partner having some kind of credibility and he's probably going to get in trouble too. And that was another one that should have been obvious. It was ridiculous. But what would I say to a noob? I would say, well, maybe you should have googled what a blockchain is. And more likely, like a lot of these people, I mean, Josh will definitely, Josh Garza will definitely apply this. You try to explain to a one-cointer that they're in a scam and they like fight you. It's insane. What's going on? To be fair, googling what a blockchain is is not going to help you. Not a bit. I don't hope you a little bit. I'll take you to Bitcoin. It'll probably take you to one coin. At this point, maybe. No, you just got to ask people that, you know what? I have nothing to say to them. Like you said, man, they wanted to be scammed. We've all been there at one point or another and some of us got wiser. And we know much better now. What's good about one coin in like Paycoin and all these things is like, a lot of times because they're entrances for noobs, it resets everybody's Pokemon game real early so that they like, they get their scam out of the way. Every one of us has to be scammed at some point in Bitcoin. It's better when you're scammed, like when you're first here, then when you put like, you know, $2,000 into 18 cent Bitcoin's and then get scammed when they're like 800. Like Ethereum. Right. No, I agree. I made it on this show like what about like maybe three, four months ago. Chris, you were here. Remember when I made when I when you said, well, at least Ethereum is at one coin and I said, hey, let me, can I play devil's advocate? Let me explain why Ethereum was worse than one coin. Remember that one, Chris? Yeah, I did, yeah. Right. So yeah, so it's good. You cut the band-aid, you learn. If they all now go to Ethereum, they're going to learn another lesson. That's identical to this one. Excellent. Moving on to issue two, BitFindex, liquidity issues. BitFindex, the Bitcoin exchange that recently paid their customers back. More than $65 million from a hack began having banking issues earlier this month with the exchange announcing that they could not process withdrawals of Hong Kong dollars and Swiss francs. The problem widened on April 17th as USD withdrawals began suffering delays. At the current time, the price of Bitcoin on BitFindex has risen more than $90 or approximately 7 percent above the averages of the other exchanges. And CoinDesk has temporarily removed Bitcoin from its Bitcoin price index. Is this a problem with BitFindex or a problem with the banks? Theo Goodman. This is an issue with banks. And since there's more than one exchange now with issues as far as fiat pipeways into the exchange, whether that's with USD or other currencies, it's clear that this is something that is going on with banks more specifically. It looks like it has to do with banks in Taiwan. So what's going on is Taiwan had lack regulations or lack enforcing of regulations for some time a little bit easier to do some things. And now they're enforcing them and or adding to the regulations to comply with some things. And that's causing some problems down the chain. And yeah, it's definitely not an issue just with BitFindex. It seems to be that a lot of different exchanges are having issues with this. And yeah, that's pretty much what's going on. It'll be really interesting to see what comes out of this, what the solution is. I don't see a real clear solution right now as we're doing the show from what I can tell. But I'm sure that the exchanges will come up with something. It's just about getting how do you get fiat to an exchange and ongoing problem. Of course, everyone watching, especially for just getting into Bitcoin, check out local Bitcoins, check out Masilium wallet. You could also check out Paxful if you want. There are other ways to get Bitcoin besides going to exchange. Most people at the exchanges are trading and it's the main reason they're probably there. But of course, if you're not able to get a bunch of fiat to exchange with that effects, the whole market makers and the whole situation at the exchange. And we're also seeing different things happen with the price because of the money flow issues. So yeah, let's see what happens with this. I do not see a reason to panic right now. Can't tell if I'm disconnected. You're still here. I hear you. And I still love you. Let's go to Joshua Thunceth. Go ahead, Johnson. I don't think that there's a difference between when it comes to business, I don't like when you ask a question, who's whose problem is it? It's BiffinX's problem. It's the banks problem. The banks are assessing their risk. They're deciding they don't want to do business with BiffinX. Some banks. And BiffinX is receiving the consequences of the risk of the industry. That's exactly how this works. And maybe they'll find a way to get the money out. Maybe they won't. That is in fact the risk of keeping your money on an exchange. That's the risk of keeping your Bitcoin's on an exchange. Banks do risk assessment. And BiffinX right now falls outside of their risk profile. As apparently does Coinbase in a lot of these other places. It's not as simple as whose fault was problems it. Because the reality is that it's the problem of the company that is being affected. And I don't see that ending anytime soon. In fact, it's why Bitcoin makes so much money. Bitcoin makes money because of all of the inherent risks that surround it. That's why it keeps going up. That's why it's volatile. That's why people, that's why it's interesting to us. And that's going to go on until a lot of those risks are removed. And as it's been said historically, several times on the show by Davy Barker, it's always the point where Bitcoin touches Fiat that there's a problem. It never seems to be a problem with Bitcoin. It always seems to keep working. But it's on and off points where we always have this problem. But that's always going to be the problem. Because like that is where you can identify. Users that's where you can do KYC. There's a reason that KYC is done by banks and countries and mandated and whatnot. Because it offloads a lot of the risk of sending and receiving cash. If you're using Bitcoin, it becomes very difficult if you're dealing with people who are non-compliant. People like tone, they. Tools is a very non-compliant person. Yeah, so at the moment, I am actually more pissed at a coin desk than everybody else involved in this. Because thanks to ShowMe.Tweeth Thomas, because I'm like, what the hell you mean? Coin desk removed Bitfinex from their index. It's an index. It reflects the price of Bitcoin, which reflects how much value a Bitcoin has. Unless there is fraud involved in Bitfinex. Unless you know Bitfinex is in solvent, Bitfinex's price is a legit price. Unless there is a data error involved or whatever. Right? The same price for Bitcoin as Bitfinex has also exists on Poloniex for the same reasons actually. It has to do with the banking system. Even though Poloniex doesn't actually even touch Fiat, I can talk about that in a minute as well as to why their prices are so similar. But the point is that's the price of Bitcoin. To me, local Bitcoins has the real price of Bitcoin. Because I will never buy Bitcoin from Gdax, from Coinbase, from Bitfinex. I have to go out into the street and buy Bitcoin. So to me, local Bitcoins has the real price of Bitcoins. So the coin desk index is always wrong and it always undervalues Bitcoin. So when they removed Bitfinex just because they feel like it, that is completely messed up. If I was in charge of an index, I would never ever do that. I would say, no, that is the correct price. That is the price people are legitimately willing to pay for. Unbitfinex to get their damn money out, which is what they can do with Bitcoin. So CoinDesk is just completely responsible between their articles and their index. It's absolutely terrible. How do you deal with that when a price is way out of whack compared to the rest of the prices out there? But that is a judgment call. Why is it out of whack? Why is that? They have the same price as Poloniacs does and pretty much what local Bitcoins does. Why is that they are out of whack price? Maybe the 1230 on Bitstamp is the out of whack price. How are you to make that judgment call? There are some more exchanges that are trading at much lower prices. That is the case. Today, what about tomorrow? What if Bitstamp and Cracken have the same exact banking issues tomorrow? Absolutely. What happened? And the price and their exchanges goes to exactly the same price as Bitfinex does. So what is CoinBase going to do? We will roll on it. But in the stats, instead of often removing the high end low, that is what we do to basically get a more normalized price. Well, if that is your policy, that is fine. But that was not their policy. If that is their policy, then this shouldn't be a problem at all. You don't get to temporarily, but you don't see companies going in and out of the Dow Jones on a weekly basis just because they don't like that. The way traders are happened to be trading that price, unless there is something malicious going on. It seems like they only remove the high price. It doesn't sound like they removed any low price. What do they do? How do they deal with CoinBase going to like four cents or whatever was it CoinBase? Well, that's an area that stands there with their mouths open and the drool starts to train the data executors. Pretty much. If it's a data error, it's a data error. If you're building an index and I've done this already, you need to not have that data point come in. If you're running an index, you need to have data validation checks that would kick that out as an erroneous data error. But even if it does come in, that's a bad print. That's different. If a real transaction took place, this is why I argued with people that the 1242 all-time high that took place on Mount Gox was a legit price. Because someone traded at that price and that someone had the ability to get the coin out of Mount Gox. That was a legitimate price that should have been the all-time Bitcoin high until recently. I mean, if your policy is, we remove the high and the low, that's fine. But that needs to be in the terms and conditions of building your index. Otherwise, you're picking and choosing what the price of Bitcoin is as a PR company, which I think is ridiculous. But anyway, let's get back to the actual situation at hand. So the problem stems is that they did have money in Hong Kong. When people would drew their money, they would send them wires. They would also send wires between companies. I guess the volume of BitFinex, because they were the biggest exchange. This is the thing. The reason why this problem happened to BitFinex as opposed to anyone else is because they were the biggest player, sending around the most amount of money all over the world. And the banks didn't like it. And the banks decided to cut them off. So BitFinex should be representing the most accurate price of Bitcoin on the market. Because if they're having this problem, then the next biggest exchange that it's going to be doing these wire transfers across the world are going to have the same problem. All these banks are pretty much connected. Now, the crazy part is what's happening with Tether right now. Because Kraken has the only Tether to USD listing. And it's always been one to one. And Josh, you will agree with me on this. Neither one of us had ever thought it should have been one to one. Because there's inherent risk in Tether, especially the fact that the cash is just sitting there in a Taiwanese bank. But now, because of the issues with the Taiwanese bank involving BitFinex, and the Wells Fargo was one of the middle men that kind of started this whole mess, people looked at Tether and said, wait a minute, they're using pretty much the same banks as BitFinex does. So if BitFinex is having all these problems, Tether is either about to have these problems or already is having these problems. And I believe Tether, the company, has pretty much the same issues. Which is why Tether is now trading at a discount. But Tether is technically also solvent. But I'm always worried that this money can be confiscated. Like the US government and the US banks can strike a deal with those Taiwanese banks and say, hey, we want this money confiscated because we don't think Bitcoin is legit. I mean, it should, it's a non-universe value transfer. And they can classify it under a terrorist activity or whatever the hell they want to do. And just confiscate all that money, which is why I always consider money held at these banks as having confiscation risk, which is another reason why you need to be careful trading on any of these exchanges. So that's pretty much what's happening. And I mean, it is what it is. I mean, that's why Bitcoin is important. And I do think that the price on Polonia X for a Bitcoin, the price on BitFinex for a Bitcoin is a legit price. If I'm selling my Bitcoin right now, I wouldn't sell it for the BitStamp price. I'd sell it for the BitFinex price. If I'm buying, I'm going to try and buy it for the BitStamp price. But I just hate the fact that CoinDesk is just gets to pick and choose what exchanges are convenient today versus not convenient tomorrow. I mean, so regarding the Tether stuff, I'm not entirely sure what I think Tether ought to be trading at in terms of a discount. Because the thing about Tether is that it's hot potato. We all know it's hot potato. At some point, Tether is going to explode. It has to confiscation risk is probably the most. But the reality is that nobody's holding Tether for a long period of time. So you're trying to get basically one dollar out of it. And you're going to, you know, they until the point at which they do explode, they essentially guarantee all of those assets for a buck. And they've made pretty good on those promises. So what you're assessing when you buy Tether isn't whether Tether itself has more risk than these other assets like USD. What you're assessing is that like we'll, like one of the question, the big question you're asking is will Tether in fact explode for the small amount of money that I'm moving to get out of Tether? Right? And in fact, it does trade it essentially trades at less than one dollar USD. Considering that on the other end, you actually have to pay Tether a fee to get out. Right. So like you do have to include that in the discount, right? Well, I'm not even counting that. But yeah, but I mean, we're essentially saying the same thing. I mean, that is the risk. The risk is while you're holding on to Tether, you know, if you hold on to it for too long, you've got a problem. The reason I mentioned it is because like I'm receiving people asking this thing, like I told you Tether was the problem. Like why never said it was the problem when I said it was like it's going to trade at one dollar perity, probably until the point at which people feel as though they may not get the money out. I'm thinking of overshoot. And then they're going to overshoot which is what's happening right now. Tether trading at a 7% discount right now is probably a little much, but that's because, you know, people panic. And when nobody has an idea that maybe it's exactly the right amount. Like maybe there is, I agree. I always thought it should have been about five. So to me, it seems to have overshot, but I could be wrong here. But what now could you possibly have used to get to 5% discount? Oh, I'm not. I'm just pulling that out of my prison wallet as you like to say. I'm just saying. You're just like my... This is my... Just like my prison wallet, you know? Right. I mean, it's just my... That's just my semi-professional guess. That's all it is. All right. Nice. Let's move on to Chris Ellis, your thoughts on the BitFinex and Tether issue. Yeah, so first of all, you have to say that I do work for IFinex, Incorporated. I do not work for Tether, but I can address some of these issues. And I've been on Whalepool team-speak all this week to talk about it. I would recommend this article on WhaleCalls. That's medium.com for slash WhaleCalls. And they wrote a really good article, basically banning the fud. A lot of people were, you know, were self-motivated to post up Fuddy articles because they were in a certain position and it kind of served their purpose. But yeah, as I was mentioned already, IFinex is not the only crypto business to be affected by it. So you know about OKcoin. You also have banking partnerships in Taiwan, but also BTCE, who I don't think actually do have a Taiwanese banking. Maybe they do, but they also recently switched up their banking. And yeah, largely this was down to the switch up in the AML banking reforms that was due to some, I believe, a Taiwanese tightening the banking regulations due to something that happened back in August, which you can read about in the, just go to Google News. And you can see that now actually more recently, prosecute to say that they found no evidence of illegal activity in the mega bank case. So I'm not into sure. I haven't read through all of these articles yet to get a full rundown. But what I can do is tell you what happened. I can actually say, last week, they would be able to process wire transfers in Hong Kong dollars in Swiss francs. And some of those wires did go out successfully. But because of the extended bank holiday weekend, what transpired was that on Tuesday, we started getting some correspondence back from the bank, or at least the managers ofife and ex got started getting correspondence back from the bank, asking for more paperwork. Like, for example, can this customer accept, sorry, Hong Kong dollars or Swiss francs? And it seemed to be that a lot of these wires were effectively bouncing. So now the management have got together with the legal team to try and basically set up a trust to take custody of the remaining fear, money in the banks, so that they can then do a one time disbursement to the customers to secondly the final contractual agreements thatife and ex has with its customers. And that's basically the state of play. In the meantime, of course, the management are trying to build up new banking relationships and new banking partnerships with new banks in various different territories. But this, of course, is going to take time. In the meantime, obviously, crypto is completely unaffected. Deposits and withdrawals are happening already. I don't work for tether, but I will comment on it before I came on air. I did speak to the tether team and I tried to get some certainty. The Taiwanese banking situation only affects foreign trade. So it only affects the wires going internationally. It doesn't affect domestic transfers. So there is shared ownership between the tether andife and ex. They have similar corporate structure in their own by some of the same people. And as a result, a tether bank in Taiwan, the same asife and ex do. So there's no problem withife and ex sending wire transfers to tether incorporated. So when tether issue their tether tokens, they back it to a USD in their account. And when that USD tether goes off to Plyonix or it goes off to Kraken, it gets traded over there. It comes back to Bitfinex and then Bitfinex will settle it one for one in theory, minus fees. And then Bitfinex will send the USD equivalent back to tether's Taiwanese bank. So at the moment, the reason you're seeing a slight discount, this is Kraken USD versus USD tether. The reason you're seeing a slight discount is obviously because tether at the moment cannot send USD over to Kraken who are based in the US. They can't send the USD from their Taiwanese bank over to the USD Kraken exchange. And as a result, we are essentially relying on the traders and the trading community to put money onto the market in order to bid it back up to parity. The problem is that in order to do this, what someone has to do is they have to deposit Bitcoins or cryptocurrency onto Bitfinex. They then have to make a USD t transfer over to Kraken or they have to transfer over to Kraken. They have to buy up the USD t here and then they have to send it back over to Bitfinex where they get the once one and then just repeat that process. And in that process, you have lots of fees involved. Of course, you added like an extra leg. You can just all you have to do is... Oh yes, sorry. You can just send the cryptocurrency. If you just have money to extract it, you buy up tether on the cheap and send it to Bitfinex and send it exactly. Yeah, sorry. But then you're buying Bitcoin at a higher price. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I'm just saying, all you have to do is basically send the crypto insert to Kraken to buy up the USD t, send it over to Bitfinex, then get the once one parity, effectively it's free money at the moment. You'd be making 6%. And then you can convert it into a theorem classic or a theorem and then send it back over to Kraken and repeat the process. But because of all the fees involved in that loop, effectively what you're seeing here, represents either the opportunity cost because the trade has got to go to the trouble of doing it. Plus then you've got to do it in a certain magnitude. There's got to be thickness, has to be there on the book. There has to be enough, you know, bid support and enough, you know, spread in order to be able to perform this arbitrage opportunity. And I guess what we're seeing right now is basically represents the market's appetite for that opportunity. Excellent points, Chris. Let's move on to the exit question. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 0 meaning no worries at all. And 10 being absolute hyperbolic panic. How worried are you about Bitfinex? And now we do have power is back on in San Francisco. I've migrated over to the local internet and we are good to go. Theo Goodman on a scale of 1 to 10. I'm worried about 1 point PEP. Sounds dangerous. Let's go to Johnson. I think that my worry is even less than Theo's number of Pepe's given. Here's the thing. I took to one's advice a long time ago. I keep going money on exchanges other than my Pepe's. I send them wherever the hell they want to go. And so like, what the fuck? Like it's not going to affect me. Bitfinex can go belly up and then be hilarious. Well, not funny. I'd be very sad. I would cry like Andreas and to not be a problemless. Sad for those involved. But like you said, tone warns us not to keep our money on your thinking. Here's the thing. Every time like the ideal situation would be like someone hacks Bitfinex and then sends it to an accidental bird address. And then just to let's all that money for all of us to be a great gift. Or they could send it to madbitcoins at madbitcoins.com. Let's go. Wait, wait, wait, wait, just to be clear. So you're okay with receiving stolen funds, yeah? I wouldn't be able to tell where the funds came from. It's going to be tumble for us. In a fencing operation. No, no, no, no, you want to be tumble. You're okay with that. Yeah, it's on. It's only for a company receiving funds from a bank heist. The FBI is okay with it. I'm okay with making jokes about all kinds of joking topics and humor. And I'm okay with comedy at any point or anytime. I'm not afraid of comedy, Chris. But if you want to make it into that kind of zone, we could do that. Tones. Tones gone. Tony, I'm not giving no fuxx. You just try to disgust it by your own. You're not disgusted by my privacy. Except for your money. Let's go to Chris. Are you worried about BitFinex? Yeah, of course I am. I think this is a threat to BitFinex. This is also a threat to BitCoin as well. You know, I really hope that this doesn't create such a disconnect. I mean, only like three or four months ago, everyone was quoting the Chinese price. Everyone was looking at okay coin and the okay coin, quarterly contract now. China's completely irrelevant. Do you remember the days when China used to move? And then the price they might have been. Because the price was higher. The BitFinex price is higher. I think that's the one we should go with. I used to go with the Gawks price because it was higher. The days, Chris, that was like last month. Well, the Chinese price was like, you know, it's funny. It's funny. You know, you're an old timer when people like mentioned things are like, yeah, that was like last week. I remember back in the day when we went to TNAVC and like a venture capitalist was on stage. And he was talking about how he'd been in Bitcoin a really long time since the price was $100. And honestly, the price had been $100 like four months earlier. It's a really long time in the crypto space. It really is a crypto time. Let's see. We've got tone, veys back. Tony, you want to give us a number on BitFinex then we'll go back to Chris. You guys see me okay? Yep. Can't hear me, Tony. You can or can't? What? Hear me. We can hear you. I can't hear you. Head to. All right. I don't mind my computer exacting leaders. Anyway, what was I going to say? Yeah, I missed the tail end of that argument you guys were having. But so it's not that I'm worried for BitFinex, right? It's more like I will give it like a worry out of 10, maybe four, that it's going to affect all of these exchanges that have wiring money through US or EU because it's all going to be like joint jurisdiction. So yeah, I've always been paranoid about that, which is why I've always been telling people not to use Coinbase or any of that, right? So for me, this is either a wide issue that's going to affect everyone or it's not going to be just BitFinex, right? BitFinex probably has some of the most responsible management out of any other crypto exchange. Their security might use a little more work, but as far as the responsibility of the management, I think they have some of the most responsible management. And also, as far as the price goes, people that are selling at this high BitFinex price, thinking that they will arbitrage, while I think the other exchanges have a higher chance of catching up to the BitFinex price than BitFinex does, than coming down to those, I think, where we're about to see a nice bull run. Also, one final note in that, if this is going to be a widespread problem with Fiat transfers, this doesn't bode very well for old coins, because now everyone was championing, oh, you can now buy Ethereum with USD, you can now buy Dash with USD and these exchanges. Well, guess what, if USD goes away, now everything routes through Bitcoin once again, and now you're really going to trust the dominant one. So this is even worse for the old coins than it is for Bitcoin. Do you dream of that Dayton? Do you dream of that? Do you wish for that on Dash and Ethereum and all of these shit coins? Oh, it's coming. Oh, it's coming. It doesn't have to dream. Let's go on to Chris Ellis, your thoughts on BitFinex. Yeah, sorry. So yeah, of course, it's a concern for BitFinex, but they bounce back from many things in the past. So I'm not too concerned. I'm more concerned about the wider ecosystem. And like I said, it isn't just affected Finex. It also affected the Chinese exchanges. I think there was an article published in Coin Desk back on the 9th and February. And as soon as that happened, of course, China stopped being relevant. People stopped looking at the OK quarterlies contracts like everyone used to all the traders in TeamSpeed used to be glued to the U.R. price. But now the liquidity on there is just nothing. It's just completely dead. And what I am concerned about is a disconnect in the prices of all the exchanges, where you get these massive discrepancies in price, where in one country, Bitcoin is trading at one price in another country, Bitcoin is trading at a completely different price based on the local regulations and based on all these kind of jurisdictional issues. So that's kind of what I suppose concerns me the most. I'm also concerned about contagion, about whether this sort of spreads into other issues. I did ask, let me just share my screen for a second. I asked a public question of Barclay's employee, who I'm a acquaintance with here in London the other day, Anthony Macy. If there was going to be any problems with Barclay's stopping any domestic transfers from Bitcoin exchanges into that Barclay's bank accounts, just because a couple of people in my friendship circle had mentioned something to me about that. I don't want to spread any fuddle rumors. I'm basically inviting you that if you do have any information about this, please reach out in the comments below, reach out to me personally on Twitter, and Mr. Crissellis, because if this is true, then we're going back to the bad old days when crypto first started and Barclays were basically blocking anybody. Santander has already done that, for example. If you trade on Bitstamp, you're not able to, or at least last I checked, you weren't able to make deposits from your Bitstamp account into your Santander bank account. Let us know for a quick bit. Like I said, Andrew, though, who promoted the mean-off Ponzi for years and years and years? They had a great history of this, making good calls. Right. Excellent points, Chris. And although this does seem like the banks are returning to a, then they fight us type of mode. I'd give this about a three. I'm not that worried about Bitfinex, but I am worried about the banks. Moving on to issue three. Issue three, billionaire invests 10% in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Mike Novigratz, former hedge fund manager, manager at Fortress Investment Group, former partner at Goldman Sachs, who was added to the Forbes billionaire list in 2008, claims that cryptocurrency has been the best investment of his life. The billionaire claims that Bitcoin will easily go to $2,000 this year, and while there may be a bubble, he's into cryptocurrency for the long term. Johnson, is this just one man or the beginning of a trend? Will more millionaires and billionaires be drawn to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency? Let me just say I'll approve that Bitcoin is at the vanguard of an entirely new financial system. Well, Bitcoin is not at Vanguard yet. I'm hoping that someday it is. I will say, I can't wait until that guy gets his Pokemon Game Reset. That hacker is going to have a field day. He's going to take so much goddamn money. I don't know how much that guy has, but he's a billionaire, what do you say 10%, he's claiming as 100 millionaires. Oh, well, Johnson, Johnson, Johnson, you got to, he was a billionaire in 2008 because he was in a big hedge fund that he afterwards got fired from, right? Because he lost like 20 or 30%, like he might find it. Tony, Tony, Tony, he could be over 10,000 bucks. I agree with you. I don't think he's nowhere near a billionaire. He was a billionaire at the height of the real estate boom, working in a financial industry. Okay, and he's nowhere near a billionaire today. Okay, and fortress, well, I wouldn't find a billionaire, it put 10% of his funds into this, they're 15% of his funds. I would think the price would be at a very different level. We have a really thin market here. Like it becomes very difficult for the person to get a world where people are dumping $100 million in Bitcoin. And like, all of us are like, ah, let's call him out. It's so big, he the price is like doing nothing. And you know, that's like, frankly, the price is pretty stable. It's going slowly, but also notice how he comes out now now that a theorem has, has bubbled up to 50. So I bet, and he personally met Vitalik, which is how he said he found out about this. So I bet you most of that value, whatever he's made came in a theorem and it did not even come in Bitcoin. He was probably a little late at a party. He probably didn't buy as much as you and I think, especially not Bitcoin, he might have bought a bunch of actual Ethereum. Maybe Vitalik gave him a discount. And the reason we're hearing about it now is because he's, you know, riding the bubble of Ethereum price. Right. Right. And, you know, I think there's going to be a day when people do hold some Bitcoin. Like we've talked a lot about that as Bitcoin being gold. You know, it might be. But like, here's the thing. Like if it is really stupid to tell people how much Bitcoin you have, really stupid. Because like, it's, it's all on a private key. You know, like, you have one guy show up your house tell you he's going to break your legs or kill you. You're going to give up your private key pretty quick. So like, it's not like Bitcoin doesn't come with the same regulations and infrastructure that banking does. I know that's an unpopular opinion. But like, it doesn't come with the same like safety sort of valves that banking does where you can like, some money back or I don't know, they can, all sorts of other ways in which you're protected. Bitcoin is in fact just, it's a digital bear assets. So you tell people that you just bought a hundred million dollars with the Bitcoin. I mean, it's not going to be too long before you have someone show up at your house and, you know, taking it from you. So, you know, 10% of his wealth is in there now. Soon that 10% is going to be, he's just going to be 10% less wealthy. No, I agree. Oh, and speaking of, sorry, speaking of like bear assets at the banks, I'm currently in a big fight with Chase because I sent, you know, Chase Quick Pay. Anybody on this panel is familiar with Chase Quick Pay? Josh. I love Chase Quick Pay. Right. Well, because you have, you have employees and you pay them with Chase Quick Pay, don't you? I don't pay them with Chase Quick Pay. That's gay. And I don't mean that in a defensive way. I mean, that in a least defensive way possible. You mean it's not sexual? Well, I actually like my business actually pays employees in Chase Quick Pay. So you might be interested in this, right? So my business does. So the way I, all of my experience with it was if someone doesn't actually have Chase Quick Pay, you send them the payment to their phone number or to their email and they're notified to set up a Chase Quick Pay account. So with one of our employees who's had the same phone number for like 10 years, we did that. The text message saying your money has been, you know, transferred to Bank of America. Your Bank of America account, he's like, well, wait a minute. I don't have a Bank of America account. So probably his phone number was used to set up a payment channel through their backhand of Chase Quick Pay, which is like X something. I've already forgot what it's called because I called them too. And Chase is telling me, we can't get the money back. I'm like, what the hell do you mean? You can't get the money. So anyway, I'm going to make sure argument with them right now. Should be a Bitcoin. Tony. Yeah, exactly. I told I was literally arguing with the people at Chase and I'm like, well, this is why I pay my employees in US dollars and not Bitcoin so that in case this happens, I can get it back. What the fuck you mean? By the way, I'm looking into joining the Ethereum Alliance. Just everybody knows. They're always looking for one more. Let's go to Mr. Chris Ellis. Tony, have a pair. No, I said apparently banks do have better assets, banks to banks as I'm learning now. Seems unlikely. Just need to talk to their supervisor. Let's go to Mr. Chris Ellis. I've got to admit, I'm finding it really hard to get motivated about this question. Do I need to care about this? Is this something I need to like occupy my mind with? There are lots of things that I could, you know, I can say myself with, but like just some rich dude, like buying some Bitcoin, really? Sounds like an epistemological argument. It does, doesn't it? It does. I reckon René de Caud had a real problem with this. It's like the continued. It basically sounds like a former hedge fund guy that ended up losing a bunch of money and getting fired from his hedge fund wants to be relevant again and he's in a new style. If we say this stuff, he's going to start to like screenshot of his bank account. You just wait. I can't wait for that. Right. Well, as long as he's not using any kind of like homosexual payment channels, I'm, you know, that's cool. It sounds like he has a question. He has a question there. Let's move on to Theo Goodman. Your thoughts on the billionaire. Theo doesn't even know what's the question is. You're going to have to repeat it. I know exactly what's going on and it's clear if this person is investing, then they're going to go down the buffet. I mean, they've already gone to the ether buffet. So, I mean, once you've entered the buffet, you don't just get one item. Well, sure. You try some of each, right? So, you know, once you've entered the buffet world of crypto, then you make the coherent decision to buy one of everything that will include many altcoins, many ICOs, and perhaps some medacoins that are on top of the Bitcoin blockchain that use the power of the hash power that is secured by BitMain. Thank you very much, BitMain, for securing the chains that we can have these awesome tokens. Very good. Let's move on to the exit question. The one that investors left silver rats in the Winkle Vi, who reportedly had $11 million in Bitcoin, and now have $132 million in Bitcoin, is Bitcoin repeating the same old story of the rich getting richer. Johnson, is that true? The rich are just getting richer. And so, that works. It's called compound interest. You too can partake in compound interest. Take a dollar, put it into a bank, and maybe buy an S&P 500 index or some sort of all-market index. And then leave it to your children. 500 years from now, they will have more money than the Lord Jesus Christ. So there's no class reset. Bitcoin is more of the same. Tongue Vays is still with us. Yes. I mean, look, anyone had the opportunity to invest in Bitcoin if you sold early. Yes, those that have a lot of money can go and buy Bitcoin right now. And if they buy a lot of their coin, they will drive up the price. So if you end before them, you will make a bunch of money and you can sell it to them at a higher price. I'm okay with that. I mean, the way I always talk about it is, like, I'm kind of anti-taxes because to me, like a rich person that honestly made his money will know better what to do with that money, to better society than the government does in general on average. So I'm perfectly okay with this. It's great to see and heredits well spent. Chris Ellis. It's called the Matthew effect. And it's basically a phenomenon in sociology where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Not saying it's true. It's a epistemological problem if you think about it because it depends on how much you know about the issue. But essentially, it boils down to the fact that if you already have money, then it's easier to get money because you can start diversifying and put your money into all these different. Investment schemes. And I don't think Bitcoin changes any of that pre-existing dynamic. You could make an argument for the existence of a new-vow reach that is emerged from a sort of a priestly, technicality class, let's say. You could make an argument like that where basically a bunch of geeks and people on fourchan in around, you know, circa 2009, 10, 11 all got rich because they were frequent seeing the right kind of forums on the internet. Maybe some of the drug users were lucky enough to be on the Silk Road and they learned about Bitcoin purely by happens of circumstance, right? They just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And they got into Bitcoin and they bought a few and then they held on to them. I know a guy, for example, who went to a festival in the Isle of White back in 2010 where they were giving away Bitcoins. So when you bought a ticket to the festival, you could buy a little bit more and they would just give you 50 Bitcoins. Right? Just 50 Bitcoins. You got with your ticket. And so this guy's like sitting on a small fortune, he's just never sold it. He's kind of like, I can't believe this thing. He's still got the private key. It was like printed out, you know, and like a paper wallet, I think. And so, yeah, you could argue in many ways, especially with all the hacking and the sophistication of all the hacking is more and more of our lives becomes digitized. It's essentially, you know, it starts out in Rome, I guess you could argue, with all the record keeping and the census and documenting all the borders and the lines and the citizens and tracking everybody, that when the computer came along, essentially it was a digital version of the filing cabinet. That really, that just went on steroids and the Western civilization to start it going crazy, just writing everything down, documenting everything. I mean, the third right really, really loved records. When they marched into Holland, they had the records already right in there. And what you can do with that is you can control, right? You can control people because you can address them. You can find out where they are. And that's, I guess, what a state wants, is it, wants statistics. It wants to know the statefulness of the environment. It wants to know where its citizens are. It wants to know where it can find you. That's why it does KYC. That's why it wants to know you as a customer. That's why it wants to deputize all the businesses that can address you and sign you up for loyalty schemes and then sell you lots of products that you can fill up your house with so that you feel burdened and weighed down so that you don't really want to move anywhere so that you're fixed. And so, yeah, that's my philosophy. And it's because they love you. It's wonderful though. Is that a big question? Yeah. No, no, it's horrible. Yeah, I can. Nightmare. I just want to live in there. You said that like, rich people have the opportunity to make more money. That's true. Rich people also have a lot more opportunities to lose money, which is what happens more often than they make more money. How unfortunate to inherit such difficult opportunities. Theo Goodman. Is this the exit question? Please repeat the exit question. Exit question. Is Bitcoin repeating the same old story of the rich getting richer? That is a very interesting philosophical question, Mr. Thomas Hunt, Matt Bitcoins. It's epistemological. It involves letters. Yeah, we're still on the exit question, ladies and gentlemen. And because it's the exit question, I'm going to say no and stop the feedback loop. No more feedback. Let's move on to issue four. Issue four, India and Japan. The good news for Bitcoin adoption in India just keeps on coming. First, we had a tweet from Uno Coins saying that they'd grown more in the last month than they had in the previous two years of their business. And now there are indications that India's reserve bank may push for the company to officially recognize Bitcoin as money before the summer and to impose attacks on the fledgling cryptocurrency. All while the continued war on cash attracts new Indian Bitcoin users daily. Meanwhile, in Japan where the government did legalize Bitcoin, we see Coincheck. One of Japan's largest exchanges launching a charity donation program in partnership with the city of Hiroko-Sai to save their historic cherry blossoms. Everywhere it goes, Bitcoin frees markets, aids the unbanks and assists charity. It is no surprise that more and more countries are looking into Bitcoin every day. Tones, well the Indian and Japanese Bitcoin adoption examples inspire other countries to follow suit. Are we seeing the beginning of a worldwide Bitcoin revolution? I don't think so. I still see the United States and Europe doubling down on anti-money laundering laws. So I really don't see it. I also find it hard to... I'm seeing it happening in India and I have to give all the credit in the world to Uno Coins because they probably have the money to hire like the top lawyers in the entire country. They probably have the ear of the top regulators in the entire country. From what I hear about India, everyone is private so they can probably get some nice laws passed. I have a message. That's right. They can probably get a lot of nice favorable laws passed over in India towards Bitcoin to continue on doing those operations. As far as Japan goes, yeah, I mean if they're looking to tax it, they're trying to do that stuff. But for US and Europe, I don't see it. I really don't see the US and Europe following anyone's lead. If anything, they're going to be pissed at those countries and trying to like subjugate them. They're going to the US laws. So no, I don't see a happy ending in this situation yet. Chris Ellis. I think Japan would be great. I'm not sure about India though. I heard that India made Bitcoin illegal. Or tried to recently. Is that not true? Is that all right? They knew the trade. I don't think they were going to be illegal. Yeah. Okay. I think Japan would be great though. And a lot of traders have started moving there recently. And that's been quite a hot topic on TeamSpeak as well. So I think that the yen will be a good currency. But I do think, you know, rear earlier conversation on the banking system. I do think that the banks are afraid of Bitcoin. And at the moment, what we are currently about $20 billion market cap, I think that they'd rather stamp it out now and just kill those on wraps. I mean, one of the things that I've heard sort of unofficially is that the one of the biggest problems that they regulate as have is with local Bitcoins because it's kind of peer-to-peer. But just because it's peer-to-peer, I think a lot of the sort of Bitcoin support to say, well, they can't stop it if you're just going from person to person. Well, you don't understand. It's that law enforcement have all kinds of sophisticated software now. So they can actually work out if you're trading on local Bitcoins. And exchanges also have access to enterprise software, which can in real time tell you where some, you know, Bitcoins have come from. I mean, what other business entity it has come from. So if you're dealing on local Bitcoins, the question for me is, what point you know, these companies decide that you're guilty before you're innocent? And what point do they decide what you've got to prove to us first that these coins are legitimate, that they're safe, that you've got them from a credible source, rather than just deciding what because it's in Bitcoin, we just automatically assume that it's unsafe. And we can't just suppose that because certain countries like Japan, which is an archipelago, and as a result is kind of, you know, always going to be dependent on external sources, it's just going to be able to say, well, whatever, we really like this thing, that always going to be subject to political forces from outside, let's say the US, right? So those banks there need the cooperation of the US. And if the US banks start to withdraw their cooperation with those banks, that puts political pressure on them to maybe not cooperate so much with crypto businesses locally. It's always a problem with the banks. Theo, good. Everything sounds good. India eventually will come around. Why? Because India likes cash. India likes gold and silver. They get it. They get that that is the real deal. And eventually they'll come around and get that Bitcoin is the real deal to. That's about it. People will learn to use local bitcoins. You'll always have a fight of whether, oh, this is like legitimate coins. These are not legitimate coins. What do I got to do to make them so-called legitimate? I've got to do XYZ. Well, then people will do XYZ and the cost of XYZ will be added onto the trade of the local trade and over the counter trade and so on and so forth. And it will just continue on and continue on. Just like in any other market, I think. So yeah, I think that it seems like India is going to go forward. And the exchanges that exist now are trying to deal with the government. Probably in a good way, they're going forward with them as, hey, let's talk about this kind of attitude. So let's see what comes out of this in the short term and the long term, I think, probably people will catch on with it that it's really cool and it's cool and everyone will figure out how to use it. And I don't really, I think that only positive things about Indian bitcoins, same thing with Japan. People will figure it out regardless of whatever regulation comes. That's just like in every country. You have regulation. There are people that are cool with the regulation and they're okay with doing crypto and regulation that people learn. Not cool with it. I handle figure out ways around it. And that's just how it goes in every country basically. It's a good point and worth noting, Theo, that India is the country where they have had something taken away from them. There is actually a war on cash and there's a reason to adopt Bitcoin. And we might see this have other countries not want to do a war on cash because of the existence of Bitcoin. Let's go to Johnson. All right, go ahead. I mean, he is prime for Bitcoin. You know, they with this war on cash stuff, it's it's it's it's ready to go. You know, so I don't know if they made a legal run out. I don't know that it matters. In fact, it probably doesn't matter. What I do know is that Bitcoin's been used for a lot of crime in India. And that's what we've all trapped off. You know, we're here in the Bitcoin space. We pray every day to block change Jesus that he make that he make Bitcoin sufficient and and adequate to be used by crime bosses everywhere. And it seems as though he's done that. And I I have to tell you that I I we worship a good a good God. You know, this kind of criminal adoption is making Vitalik Booter and jealous. You really, you know, every single other chain operator wishes that they could pull a lever and have I don't know murderers and long errors and you know, uh, kidnappers and other people like, uh, I don't know, like people people like scammers like like Rooja Ignatova, like they wish they could turn on, uh, turn that on and they just and suddenly one day have this mass adoption among the world's greatest criminals. Um, it would be it would be wonderful. We'd all be very wealthy men. It is worth noting that the monero and dash pumps may have been caused by their acceptance on the dark markets. Well, you have to ask yourself to with that with like alpha bay, like are they there's been some speculation here? This was actually I think proposed by Christa Rose, um, who was Bitcoin and censored. Now I'm doing Bitcoin, um, censored classic. Uh, he he was saying that he thinks that there might be some evidence that that alpha bay is in fact just, uh, possibly pumping. Um, because they know that they can make money here and that's actually a really logical thing for them to do. It frankly poses a lot of risk for them because as it gets up, that they're about to do that. There's a weird sort of, uh, uh, KYC thing that happens with their, with their employees where their employees are doing a lot less good op-sec than like maybe the people in charge. But, uh, but they might be like, they might do, they might have separation of concerns enough that they can have, um, their employees have bad op-sec and the principles that, you know, have to worry about any of the consequences. So in that world, they can pump these coins, they can just announce every week a new one. Um, they can spend a bunch of time acquiring these coins and then they can, they can live, uh, they can, a great, wonderful source of revenue for alpha bay that someone like Amazon could never do is, these, these great little cryptocurrency markets where they can pump and pump and, uh, and then dump. Is this a better exit scam for a, uh, black market operators that better to start a new currency, go to that rather than doing the classic steal everyone's money exit scam? Um, well, they can buy, no, both. They're, no, they would do both. They would, uh, that, that's the optimal one, right? Uh, I, I speculated on this show that they alpha bay, well, I said, well, I bet you all the, the main volume spike, spike sort of taken place before anyone knew this was happening because insiders always know in case. Yeah. I mean, like, you're going to do whatever it is that, that makes you the most money, right? So like, um, if, if, if exit scam makes the most money, uh, then you're going to exit scam. If, if, in fact, it doesn't make the most money, and instead, uh, you know, pumping Ethereum does, you're going to pull Ethereum. And, uh, and that, that's just, that's how, that's how the world works. Let's move on to the exit question. What part of government can be most improved with Bitcoin? How should a country use Bitcoin in a way that it's currently not being used? Tone vase? Oh, that's easy. I've been talking about this for years and years, uh, tax revenue. So government should, uh, take in tax revenue through the Bitcoin blockchain and then allocate their tax revenue that they get through the Bitcoin blockchain so that people can see what the government spending money on. I see John's stuff is going to disagree with me, but I think that is the, uh, best use case so that the government becomes transparent and how the money is actually being spent because you could make Bitcoin, you know, great idea. If you, KYC itself, which the government should be let's go to Jonsoth, where a response on that. This is stupid. All right, go on. Well, they're like, like, why would the government want to subject themselves into the volatility of Bitcoin? And I mean, like, I guess it's a wonderful, I mean, as a Bitcoin, or it's a wonderful idea to have 310 million people using the Bitcoin blockchain to pay their taxes. I really like that idea. Yeah. No, I agree with you. I agree with you. They wouldn't want to subject themselves to the volatility of it, but as far as you're, you're not going to say you're going to say, don't I think that the better you would, the more the more the tax you would, the tax are going to get. I think, who they should be taxing in Bitcoin, however, people that are doing crimes. Like if you're a, if you're a business, if you're kidnapping business is unto is a new ring unto yourself millions and millions of dollars, I think the US government should take your Bitcoin. Like you should pay taxes in Bitcoin. It is currently on the books that the IRS expects you to pay taxes for illegal criminal monies. That is currently part of the books. Bitcoin allows that. You know, Bitcoin allows criminals to be compliant. And as we all know, that's what criminals really, that's really the heart of hearts desire. It's really is a dream currency. We're being inspired today. Josh, no, no, I agree with you. The volatility has to go away. But for me, in the future, like if you know, there's enough value on chain that the volatility of Bitcoin, if Bitcoin could become a unit of account, the best use of it would be in government tax collection because right now, the citizens are running blind and the government can spend it will inily. And I'll go over and will do that is like when they allow me to pay my taxes and S&P shares. Tom seems to be arguing more than it would allow us to see what the government's doing. I would argue at a certain point, it would be impossible to collect taxes any other way. Bitcoin may be the only way to get any kind of donations. Let's move on to Chris Ellis, your thoughts on how the government could use Bitcoin. They could like completely dissolve themselves and then everyone could be involved in the process of governing rather than just having like an autocratic kind of technorathically up the technocrats, I mean up at the top. On the issue of taxation, so taxation is basically part of the scam which helps the government to prop up its currency. Because the speculation on the foreign exchange market, a $5 trillion a day industry, is that if you've got 310 million people that all need to pay their taxes plus the businesses that need to pay their sales taxes every month, needs to be holding these US scammed dollars in reserves in order to do that. Then clearly they are propping up the value, yes, because by holding them in reserves it means they're not selling them and they're not disposing of them in another way. So when people talk about Bitcoin being volatile, I'd like to draw your attention to the British pound, for example, which has also been somewhat volatile in percentage terms recently. I could also draw your attention to South African Rand as well, which has also been pretty volatile recently. Do you want me to carry on? Let's go to the next compaiso. How about that? How about that for volatility? You like that? So when people say that Bitcoin is volatile, what they need to understand is that the world is a volatile place. It always has been. And when people talk about the untenability of Anarchy, you need to understand that Anarchy is the default state of this planet. There exists a society of states, a club of kings and queens, if you will. When a country invades another country, there isn't a 9-1-1 emergency service that they can call up to seek immediate like restitution or relief or support. Because what needs to happen is committees need to form. And the same process that you've seen recently over this whole so-called block size debate would need to happen. People would just need to sit down and work things out the same way they do at the UN, the same way they do it any of these meetings and these treaties that they get formed between nation states. So it's Anarchy for the rulers of the world. It's statism for everybody else. Because I think you could make all kinds of political arguments. I'm not going to go into them here, but you could make an argument that Anarchy just doesn't scale for everyone. That really it only works for a handful of people on the planet. And for everyone else, well, tough luck. You've just got to be exist under this kind of oppressive regime. I get lots and lots of choices to make decisions about my physical appearance. I get to decorate myself, but I get very little decision making over what goes on outside of me about what decisions get made in that part. And one of the things that appealed to me when I first got into Bitcoin is that I really like the fact that governments, it was resistant to government interference. One of the promises of government, of course, is it gives us the potential for change. It's an institution that, in theory, gives everybody some recalls, some ability to have a say over the way things progress. But the problem with the current political system is that it tries to avoid catastrophe at all costs. And I'm not going to go into it now because I don't want to go into a big political science thesis. But I think that Bitcoin has its place. It needs to exist in a continuum of many other commodities. And I think that eventually, my hope is that it will put the US dollar in its place. It will eventually be a regulating factor on all of these other government entities. And it will force them to think a little bit more, you know, perhaps competitively when it comes to issues like taxation and jurisdictional arbitrage. Nothing like a little bit of competition for the government. Let's move on to prediction or story of the week. I think we're going back to Chris. Chris, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? Let's go about this. Let's go ahead. Go ahead, Leo. Sorry. This is very important. This is beyond important. This is highly important, actually. And it has to do with this show today, actually, because today, Thomas didn't have electricity. And whoever the government of his city said, said, oh yeah, it's because of a fire and whatever other reasons. But we all know what really happened. The electricity of Thomas's city was hacked. And the city had to struggle to get Bitcoin to pay the hackers to get the electricity back. So that's a real simple use. That's a real simple use for what governments can use Bitcoin for. They need to have a stockpile of Bitcoin. Just like many governments have a stockpile of other currencies. A lot of governments carry a bunch of currencies. They need to have Bitcoin in case they don't have power. And they can't go on a Google hangout to make an appeal to the voters or whatever they need to do. So it's a really simple government. This is an alert to you. You need Bitcoin. You're going to get hacked. You're not going to want to have to deal with it. And you're going to want to just pay for it and get rid of it. So just know what it's going to start to pile up Bitcoin. It has been suggested that many governments and schools, especially hospitals and schools, places where they might not have a large IT budget, could actually save money by investing in Bitcoin now to pay off the disastrous crypto locker failures of their future. It is a good point, you know. Just comment. You can also get Macintoshes. That's what I would suggest. But as Tone says, there's only one kind of computer, the Microsoft surface. But let's move on. Yeah, no, they can't get Macintoshes. They wouldn't find anybody to work there. Well, let's go to a prediction or a story of the week. Let's go to a chance. If you have a prediction or a story of the week, just another round of funding. And it's not just any round. This is another round. They got a bunch of money and an extended A round, which I don't know what the other A rounds were because I think this is a 14th first round of funding. No, no Chris. It was not a B round. It was an A round. They're A round. And you know, I feel a little bad because I was making the joke a little while ago. I put a prediction on what I think is going to happen this year and just a bunch of joke predictions. But in the predictions, I have at the very beginning, fact and closes their B round. And then later on, the prediction, I fact and closes their B round. And then later on, I have fact and closes their B round. But you know what? I was pretty much fucking sure. They didn't close their B round. They haven't even closed their A round yet. I think we're going to have another year of A round funding for fact. It's an incredible invention. Eight million dollars more towards whatever they're building. Interesting people. And I put it. You're putting prediction on your own. And it's really complicated. I guess. I'm going to abandon the blockchain and become something else completely, probably consulting. Maybe they'll move to VR. But whatever the fuck it is. But like right now, they have a blockchain. I think it's running on like one or two servers in Ireland. They're paying for it. Nobody's using the service. Other than the the the the hashes, they themselves are paying to put into the chain. So this is a, at least that's the way it was a few months ago. I can't imagine anyone's actually using the service. And I feel bad for people like Wayne Vaughan, a material who like raised, I think he raised like one million. How are you going to compete with a company like fact and doing exactly the same thing you are when they're raising eight times as much for the exact same useless service? At least fact and has a blockchain. Unlike one coin, fact and built the blockchain first. Maybe. I mean, Paul knows competency is question. We'll have to see. Keep an eye on the fact and in this space. Let's go to tone, Vaze prediction or story of the week. All right. Well, this is where I usually talk about the price. So we'll stick to that. I don't think there's any real like stories that are. Now, so if we look at which is the lower of the prices between Bidsfinex, we're basically about $30 away from a weekly closing high. So I mean, there's no problem there at all. And here's the Bitcoin liquid index. And just so you know, with this green arrow, the price is actually blocking. I drew this in February, if not late January. So I expected us to, you know, get stuck around this red line kind of when above it, when below it. And right now, we're following this green arrow. So I'm still expecting a bubble. Right. And. And the hero goes up just like Bitcoin goes up. Again, well, actually, I believe you were there, Mr. John Sep, when I drew this green arrow inside my channel down in Miami. And so far, we're following it pretty good. I know I haven't always been right, but they've got there eventually. But I didn't panic on the sell. I'll tell you that much right now. We will hit a bear market sooner or later. So that that's pretty much it. I'm bullish on the price. Like I said, I was quoted on January 3rd, that will hit 2000 sometime in August. And I'm going to stay with that prediction from my January 3rd. All right. Tony's out. And he thinks it's the scam. Mr. Chris Ellis, go ahead. Okay. So I'll continue what I was saying a little bit earlier, which is that well, markets are conversations. Okay. And the thing is that when we say a asset class or some commodity is volatile, what we're really saying is the people trading it are feeling volatility. It's not Bitcoin that's volatile per se. It's the people that are volatile. And largely, I'm going to share a chart. I don't usually do price predictions, but I thought I'd do one up on tone. So this is your volume profile here on the right, which shows you areas of liquidity that was previously shown in the price. And price in markets tends to seek liquidity. So where you see these bars coming out, the price will generally be drawn to areas of volatility and liquidity that was previously shown. And that's because traders have memory in the market. And they want to revisit previous areas. So if I go to a daily, this is a 12 hour. And by the way, I should mention, I'll show you as well. This is basically a combination of GDAX and Bitstamp. And the reason I'm using those is because those are the two exchange to the moment that allow both deposits and withdrawals. And it's also the one that BitMex is using for its perpetual contracts, which a lot of traders are now using, a lot of the margin traders, a lot of the degenerates, the degenerate gamblers. So, yeah, like tone, I am kind of expecting a little bit of a pullback on Bitcoin. I think, like, for example, once the money is able to flow out of the exchanges again, some of the exchange has been affected recently, I would expect a bit of a pullback because actually I think that's kind of bearish for Bitcoin rather than bullish. So that is my prediction. I normally make price predictions, but if the banking flows continue to be stand, then I think that we're just going to keep on going up because all that's going to happen is people are going to eventually once get their money off the exchanges and they're going to be forced to take off crypto because that's the one that is an affected. Yeah, I'm okay with that. Yeah, I'm okay with that. I just forgot to throw one more chart. This is actually the spread between BitFinex and Bitstamp. And with this is the fourth highest, it's been in the last three years and I've listed the prior ones, they've all involved two of them involved hacks and actually the three prior ones involved hacks and the other one involved a BitFinex flash crash. So it's interesting. I'm very curious to see how high this current spread will get. All right, let's go to Theo Goodman for one more word or story of the week. Go ahead Theo. The story of the week is of course the appearance of the blockchain-based token Kaiser Pepe on RT network on the Kaiser report itself. Mr. Max Kaiser finally realized that there is actually a rare puppy trading card that is of his likeness and is in some ways mocking his pump and dump actions that have happened on his show. But he showed it on there anyway and Kaiser Pepe appearance. Actually the back to back Pepe appearance on Max Kaiser show is probably story of the week per se. Of course you could say story of the week everyone panicking BitFinex story of the week tether story of the week price is going up and up. No, no, no, story of the week is Kaiser Pepe. All right and we're running out of time. Pepe is a meme. It's not fucking news. All right, it's on his network. It's already made up. You just want to get the price to go up. Go if it's a company whatever that's right. But it's not news. This is a meme. But but RT is a Russian propaganda network. So what's he? What do you think a Bitcoin got to the moon? To the moon is a meme. Right. Yeah, I'm just saying we don't have to do it here on the show. I'm not saying that other people won't do. I'm not in control of RT and whatever they do. I'm just saying who is there? Here we don't have to do. Rare Pepe was on RT and congratulations to them. But we're running out of time. I just got my power back. Hopefully the rest of the city is turning on which means I can actually do things today. I don't just have to sit here in the dark. But until next time we're out of time. Bye bye. Bye bye.