The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest sitoshis, the best Bitcoin, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Jimmy Song, Bitcoin developer. Hi everybody, good to be here. John Light, longtime Bitcoiner. Great to be here Tom, thanks for having me. Tom Vays from Liberty Life Trail. Great thanks, Haramian and welcome John, first time in the show I believe. Not true, and I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue one, I'll have to check the chart later. Thanks to everyone for watching, it gives us a thumbs up and a share, help more people find this show. 164 already. Go, go, go. Do one complete blank screen, UAHF. This Wednesday, Bitmain announced a new way forward for Bitcoin. In response to the user activated soft fork, the mining company has created a so-called user activated hard fork. In a detailed blog post, the company lays out their vision for the future of Bitcoin, complete with an ever rising block size, extension blocks, and a healthy 5400 Bitcoin pre-mine for the mining company themselves. The UAHF launches 12 hours after the UASF begins on August 1st and will go live following the three-day pre-mine. Bitmain has drawn a line in the sand. The Bitcoin Cuban Missile crisis has become. Jimmy Zaw, who's bluffing? I have no idea. This is game theory and it suggests that Bitmain has something like a credible threat. I have no idea if they'll execute, if they're bluffing, or if they're going to go through with it. I will say, though, that the pre-mine is time-boxed and given the amount of hash rate they have on the network, the largest amount of blocks that they can mine by themselves in three days is around 900. They'll probably use less than that, so it'll be more like 400 or 500 blocks. That's it. I've written about game theory and UASF 5148 before. This was a predictable response to Bit 148 and user-activated software. They needed a contingency plan so that the rest of the people that are watching this can know that they're committed to this. Otherwise, the scenario that the Bit 148 people have been saying may come true and they may get wiped out. The interesting thing is that SEGWIT 2X has more or less responded by merging in a poll request, which recently says that they will accept the Bit 141 bit, so it doesn't conflict anymore. It's entirely possible that SEGWIT may activate before August 1, just given the way that code works. All of this, Cuban missile crisis, maybe much to do about nothing. If you watch my show with Thomas earlier in this week, I was pretty depressed, down in the dumps about this whole thing. I'm a little more cheerful because the possibility of peace or getting SEGWIT on the network and making everybody happy has gone up tremendously as a result of that poll request being merged into SEGWIT 2X. Given the industry support for it, I think there's a decent chance that that may happen. That said, I do want to warn everybody about the next thing that's coming after August 1. If the whole Cuban missile crisis August 1 is over, the next crisis on the horizon for Bitcoin is BUIP0055, and that is the Bitcoin Unlimited Improvement Protocol. That's number 55. That one is scheduled to activate on October 15 roughly around there. That is basically anyone running Bitcoin Unlimited as forced to hard work. They will start doing mining blocks that are larger than 1 megabyte, and it's based on emerging consensus. I believe it's been merged already into their code base. That's the next crisis point that we have to look forward to. Should August 1 go without anything bad happening? That's my take. I think we're in a much better position knowing what it means going to do. Their plans are now public. We were speculating that they might do this, but now we know. At least they didn't keep the plans for the Doomsday Machine private. John Light, your thoughts on the Cuban Missile Crisis of Bitcoin? I think that if there is a crisis on August 1st, that it would be a crisis of Bitmain's own making. All they have to do is signal for SEGWIT, and everything will be okay. Tones, your thoughts. That's it? No, I want to go back to John here. Give us a little more. What do you think about their plan in general? I go for it, Ben. Well, Bitmain signed the Hong Kong agreement back in 2016, and they signed the SEGWIT to X agreement just in this past May. They've already signed two agreements now to activate SEGWIT, and it seems like they're doing everything they possibly can to avoid activating these SEGWIT and making good on their prior agreements. Again, if there's a crisis on August 1st, it's a crisis of their own making, because everybody is else is operating under the assumption that they are going to make good on their word and signal for SEGWIT. So John, you would be in favor of the user activated software? Yes, the user activated software. All this mechanism really does is to ensure that miners are actually signaling for SEGWIT after August 1st. So basically, in the past, miners have signaled to show support for changes to Bitcoin, but they weren't actually enforcing those changes locally with their own node. And so they have lost money because of this in the past. So what Bit 148 does is it's a kind of forcing function to make sure that the miners are actually indeed enforcing these new rules. So they can't just signal and then not follow the rules anymore. They signal and follow the rules. Right. Ton Vays sounds like he's on the same page as you, UASF. Well, yeah, I am totally for UASF. I became totally for UASF sometime last month. I'm sorry, I came through this movement a little bit late, but I think I've done, I think I've made up for my lateness to the user activated software with the amount of information spreading and informing my audience of it. So I guess I should take this in a slightly different direction because I've already done an entire one hour video dissecting every part of Bitmain's statement. So I don't want to repeat all the everything in there. Now what I did say during that statement the moment it came out was this is pretty bad news. It's pretty panicking news. The price is going to panic. But as the more and more you read into it, the more you realize that their plan, like no other minor, other than a minor that is so dependent on their hardware, the minus well, be bit main is going to follow that plan. So I also said during that video is I was dissecting the article. I'm like, just give it another 48 hours or so for people to information and the industry is not going to follow it. And we're already seeing. But why don't you think they'll follow it to home? There's a 5400 bit coin pre-mind for Bitmain in the deal. The other minors aren't going to be to that. I don't think the other minors are going to be very happy about that. Not to mention all the other stuff things in there. We have three teams of unnamed developers that are programming this for us. But there are a couple of dilemmas that are happening right now. This is what I want to get into. So the industry is starting to realize that that grid. So a lot of these companies have put themselves in a bit of a corner, tiny bit of a corner. So everyone wants BitOne 41, but the 95% minor threshold is a little bit high and that doesn't seem to be feasible. So how do you get around it while saving face? Basically, how do you get around that problem? So the BitOne 48 is a bit forceful. Look, I understand it's a little hostile and it's kind of forced system. And Segwit2X is trying to play the happy medium. I immediately called them out. It's insane for them to code Segwit from like recode segwit. That's why there is not, I mean, I'm not a developer, right? I just generally understand it. That's why there's not a pull request where they don't have to reinvent the wheel. So here's the interesting. What about the support the word I've heard today on Twitter that they are on track. And it's been two weeks and they're meeting all their deadlines and Segwit2X is ready to go. Did it? That's the thing, right? There was one who was very silvered announcing it. That's the problem, right? So let me show you. So here's where I guess this is a specific version of game theory, which is in a way, prisoner. It's a kind of a prisoner's dilemma that's happening right now, right? So the core devs are still not in support of Segwit. The industry is in support of Segwit. Generally, not everybody, everybody's on the side of it, but it looks like the industry is in support of Segwit, which creates a bit of a... Sorry, Tom, just to clarify, you mean Segwit2X? Sorry, sorry, you're right, sorry, sorry. Segwit2X, right? The industry is for Segwit2X. Now, Gihans, I get not Gihans, sorry, Bitmain's statement, what talked about how if Segwit2X is going to be ready, then they'll follow it, but they're afraid it's not going to be ready and they're probably probably the most right thing they said in that state. So they have their own plan, which doesn't include Segwit, and then Segwit is going to happen as an afterthought, maybe after the extension blocks, whatever. So no one wants that, right? So Segwit2X, some people assumed that Segwit and the big blocks will happen at the same time, but in reality, that sounds like that's not going to happen. It's going to be Segwit first and then two blocks later. So here's the big dilemma. No one, no, because the core developers and other people were berated, maybe I'm using the wrong word here, for signing the Hong Kong agreement and then saying, not on our nose, the hard work is too dangerous, they were given a hard time about that. So why would they sign a Segwit2X agreement because it's the same thing as Hong Kong and they're not going to, no one's going to make the same mistake twice. Now, because it's all looking like it's going to be Segwit first, what's happening now is some of these industry players are saying, okay, so here's the good news, right? Segwit enforces bit 141 with an 80% signaling mechanism instead of a 95% signaling mechanism, right? So if you support Segwit, you're kind of sort of get around the 95% restriction, which was a little bit hefty and you're dropping that down to 80. And then, if you get the Segwit2X version, right, the new version of Segwit that we're riding on their own and we don't know anything about. Well, not anymore, right? And now they're agreeing to using the Segwit pull request that was signed off on by the core developers, okay? But the core developers will not agree to Segwit2X because then they're going to be taken through the calls again in six months or three months that you agreed to a hard fork. And they're not going to make the same mistake twice, you know, fully wants Shema Ne, fully twice, Shema Ne, you kind of thing, right? So they're not going to do anything. The only argument is that the lightning network could solve scaling on its own. So you wouldn't need a two megabyte hard fork, you wouldn't need to make the blocks bigger, you wouldn't need to take all of those unnecessary risks that the miners are just seeing as necessary risk because they just want, you know, larger pipes. They want more internet. Right. Now, I know I'm taking on longer time than I should, but this situation is a little bit complicated only in the fact of what everyone is thinking. And I'm also trying to analyze what other people are thinking because I don't really talk to the industry players. I decided I'm going to figure shit out on my own because otherwise everyone's going to, you know, blame me for chilling for one side or the other. So my view is the core developers cannot sign off on Segwit2X because of the 2X part, right? But now that Segwit is actually going to use the segregated witness code that the core developers wrote, it makes the industry players more comfortable and it drops to 80 percent signaling signaling. The moment no one actually has to run Segwit2X code, this is important. Everyone knows the reason why there's LOLs in this column is because everyone knows that even if, even if Segwit2X uses the proper implementation of segregated witness, there is still other coding involved and no one is going to use even a comment from these guys that are coding Segwit2X in any kind of production code. So what may be happening, right, is people are agreeing to signal for Segwit2X, but what signaling for Segwit2X will do is it's going to implement Dip141 with an 80 percent threshold instead of a 95 percent threshold, locking it in for two weeks prior to August 1st to avoiding the user activated soft fork, Dip148, which could come with potential problems. Here is the other dilemma on these industry players, which is what I am going to give them a hard time, but maybe I shouldn't, maybe I should just be happy that everyone is going to signal Segwit2X, let's get Segwit in there as a Dip141 avoiding the August 1st problems and then, you know, and then those that never actually supported Segwit2X will get to keep their head up high and if likely networks are of the problem, then there's no more conflict. But a lot of these industry players were anti Dip148 because of its short term and rushed timeline and now these industry players are in a little bit of a vice right now because well if you thought Dip148 was too rushed and too quick, why are you supporting Segwit2X? It's three times more rushed and by the way, Dip148 was signed off on by three core developers. Yes, it wasn't 40, but it was at least three looked as junior and Vladimir and one more I forgot who. So a couple of core devs did sign off on the code involved in generating those Segwit blocks. But if the industry players said Dip148, user actually so focused too rushed, then him supporting Segwit2X is very hypocritical but him signaling for Segwit2X may not be hypocritical and this is the, oh, let me stop sharing it screen, sorry, I'm sharing it screen for too long. So this is the little presenters dilemma that all these players are in. Everyone kind of wants to avoid it now and the miners should be realizing how crazy it is to follow BitMain and I don't think they're going to do it. So now everyone is trying to find the best solution and it's possible. Like I am not a supporter of Segwit2X code. However, I will come out and say it to X is not necessarily a bad idea. Just like if you're signaling for Bitcoin unlimited, no one is freaking running Bitcoin unlimited. So signaling for the damn thing. So but signaling for 2X may not be a bad idea because you are showing your support for Segwit first and as long as 80% of the miners signal for Segwit2X with industry wanting Segwit2X. Even if most of that industry is thinking we'll get Segwit and then let's hope we don't deal with big blocks later on. Let's hope this problem gets resolved at its own or Bitcoin unlimited guys can go forth themselves in October. So these are just some of the things. So just so people know I've been very hostile to Segwit2X but signaling for it is not the same as running it. All right. All right. I'm trying to bring the rest of the panel in here. To me it sounds like a bit of a poison pill. Should the Bitcoin developers accept Segwit2X, Jimmy saw? Well so the way this whole thing works is through something called bit 91 and that reduces the threshold from 95 to 80 makes it instead of a whole two week difficulty adjustment period. It takes like two and a half days or so. It's many fewer blocks. I think it's something like 436 blocks something like that. You can use bit 4 or bit 1 to signal. So that will essentially activate Segwit at a much reduced and quicker time window which can be beneficial especially if you're looking at August 1st at sort of like the drop dead day. At that point, bit 148 goes on its own and you have a software. So in that way I can see how this can sort of keep the piece but it's not a permanent piece. It's sort of a temporary DMZ or something like just temporary ceasefire or something like that. It's also a bit of a Vaughan Ribbentrop pact here where we would be agreeing to the Segwit side of it but not necessarily agreeing to the two megabyte hard for side of it. So we're kind of being or if you agreed with it in that way you'd be duplicitous. Should we be duplicitous to make the piece? Is that good or bad? Here's the thing. There's October 15th is coming up as well right and presumably even if Segwit's been activated by then there's a hard fork ready for sort of a big block that's going I mean it doesn't buy you very much time honestly. And I'm not sure. Yeah, but no one is actually running that software right. I mean they're signaling for it. They're not actually running. I don't think it's kind of the fork is part of the software. So I think that they can signal for it, run the old Segwit and just kind of ignore the hard fork part. I don't think that. Yeah, I mean so that may cause like an actual fork in the network as well. I haven't thought through exactly what would happen. I probably should write an article at some point but basically the next big date after August 1st if August 1st is avoided and that happens if Segwit gets activated or locked in on the network even if it's five minutes before August 1st right. We can finally see like if it locks in like five minutes before August 1st, great. Nobody like UAS at BIP 148 software does nothing because Segwit has been locked in. But that also just delays it for two and a half months because October 15th then becomes like sort of the drop dead date again. But this time. I'm not worried about that. I'm not worried about what BU guys are going to program right. The last time BU guys program something this is what happened. I think what happened the last time the BU guys program something. That's totally fine to not take their threats seriously and I'm not sure it's that credible threat honestly but code's there and it's a deadline and if you're running it then it goes off on its own and who knows what happens. I'm sure we'll hear much more about it as that date comes closer and you know see how it gets you sort of in this additional game essentially. It's like August 1st is just round one guys. Like October 15th is coming and if that doesn't happen November 15th is coming that's the well actually I guess November 15th wouldn't matter if Segwit happens to be at August 1st. So there it is. And you didn't take the UASF seriously at first either. It was roundly reviewed and tossed out and if you look at it as well you have to look at shouldn't it may be advocated for what we just discussed. Should they be saying we could do this 2x thing we could have it you know get really close to a war but not have a war. Isn't that the safest and most responsible way to protect your clients money if you make mining machines if your future is about making mining machines. Shouldn't you be more risk averse rather than announcing that you're going to start your own coin and have a three day pre-mind. That seems very risky. Jimmy? Well I mean this is again sort of like a response to 5148. I think their goal is to just prevent the situation altogether and I think that that was the goal of 5148 for that matter right both sides don't want to go to war. Both sides don't want to have to work and I think the preferred outcome for both sides is to stay on a single chain. Whether that happens or not is still sort of up in the air and I'm not sure what will happen but you know I mean we have two dates August 1st is obviously a big one but it looks like and I'm cautiously optimistic that we will get set with before then so we'll at least avoid something happening on August 1st but then the next date is October 15th we'll see what happens then. So John we're hearing a lot of savers being rattled they're moving the missiles to the silo where we have a war. What do you think? I'm actually just very surprised about the tone of this whole conversation we should be celebrating that we're going to have seg with on August 1st why isn't this a celebratory conversation. I think there's a fear of a silent or a fear of a pork. There is coins. There is no war. We have over 80% of the hash power who has agreed to activate seg with. We have a very large part of the economy including exchanges, wallet developers, software, core developers and all of the a lot of the essential players that we would want to be supporting a seg with if we want to have this upgrade activated on the network who agreed to do so. So my personal opinion is that August 1st is going to be a complete non-event especially with this new pull request that James Hilliard made to the seg with 2x repo. I was already very confident before that but now it just seems like a certainty to me. This user activated hard fork move again. It just seems like a move that is basically a bit main showing their hand which is that they actually don't want to activate seg with. They're going to do everything they can to avoid activating seg with because if they would just signal for it as they agreed to August 1st wouldn't be such a crisis as they're trying to make it out to be. So a user activated software that methodology is very important for the economy to ensure that this agreement is upheld because any blocks that do not signal for seg with after August 1st are going to be rejected and that's the way that consensus works is that miners who don't follow the rules have their blocks rejected. So John, you keep saying that you need a bit main needs to hold up their end of the agreement. Do you feel like everyone else needs to hold up the 2 megabyte part of the agreement? Everybody who signed it certainly. Of course my personal opinion is that they should have sought consensus from the wider community before deciding to do this. But hold on, they apparently feel that they have that consensus. And so, again, as very influential members of the economy and the hash power majority that exists on the network, they have made the decision that their customers aren't going to abandon them for supporting this agreement and that they have the support of both the mining and the hash power, excuse me, the economy and the hash power majority to do this. And my personal opinion is that I would like to see further testing of seg with plus a 2 megabyte base, non-witness hard fork, whatever you want to call it. I want to see more testing of this to make sure that it doesn't result in further minor centralization or the degradation of node performance and other side effects like that. But everybody who signed the agreement, I think they should uphold what they said that they're going to do. I think the reason we had to have this New York agreement in the first place is because people who had signed the prior agreement didn't uphold what they said they were going to do. I think we have an opportunity to show real consensus among the miners and the economy and I would like to see them make good on that agreement. Let me push back on that a little bit in that. I did talk about the Han Kong agreement on my show a few days ago where I felt that the core developers that signed that agreement did uphold to the agreement and they looked into creating a 2 megabyte hard fork. This was done back in February of 2016. They started even programming the code to get the hard fork implemented. But then in their research, plus watching what happened with Ethereum, plus their research, plus them asking the community and pulling the community and doing research, they came to the conclusion that a hard fork was still unsafe for the timeline that they thought the hard fork would be done. They came back with their findings that the hard fork would be dangerous to attempt in the summer of 2017. They were absolutely right. The other community didn't accept that answer. I don't feel like the core developers broke the agreement. I feel like the other side broke the agreement. I never mentioned the core developers. I know, but I kind of am. Just to clarify. Yeah, that's fine. I know. I know you didn't. I'm mentioning them. The moment that Han Kong agreement was signed, Bitcoin Classic or Bitcoin XT attempts to hard fork Bitcoin came out from some. The end being supported by some of the people signed that agreement. If anyone broke that agreement, it's the big blockers in my opinion by not allowing sounds to take place. Anyway, I'll just, I'll end it there. I do kind of agree with your sentiment, John. I also feel that we will have Segura and August first. But I'm not. I'm pretty much as certain. But the community in as a whole is not yet certain. And the price somewhat reflects that. Once the price rebounds a little bit over the next month, there will be a lot more certainty that that everything will go smoothly. The price, I believe, will play a pretty good barometer. But are you okay with the individual people and economic nodes running BIP 148, but the miners, Segura 2X to get that 80% like are you okay with that environment where everyone is happy, right? The users like myself, like yourself, maybe not Jimmy are sitting at home running our own nodes that are BIP 148 compatible. But the miners are going to go with signaling for Segura 2X in order to get BIP 141, activate Segura and then everyone somewhat walks away happy. That sounds about like the outcome that I expect. Yes. Okay, great. Oh, one final little comment. One thing that bothers me the most about Segura 2X is if Segura 2X is the activation mechanism for Segura getting in there, very silver, very silver is going to take all the goddamn credit and that's going to piss me off probably more than anything else leading up to this debate. I wouldn't let your ego get in the way. I would just be happy that we have Segura. Yeah, I agree with John. If that happens, I think we'll see Bitcoin go up significantly. I don't know. I guess you're the technical guy. But sentiment will be very high as far as sort of the community being able to come to an agreement and things being able to be done and things like that. Yeah, I mean, it may be premature, but again, I feel my sentiment is very high right now. I feel like, again, I was very certain before James's poor request yesterday, but I feel even almost 100% certainty that we're going to have Segwit and there's not going to be damaging chain split on August 1st. So I think everybody should be celebrating. John Lites. But not immediately leading a charge in the Bitcoin market. Very nice. Ton, more negativity. No, no, that's it. I'm just saying, what just happened with the pull request? I kind of thought that's how they were going to start off Segwit 2X. So again, I don't want to praise Segwit 2X for finally doing what they were supposed to do on day one. So anyway, I'll let it go though. And if we have to thank Barry Silver to have peace in Bitcoin, there are things we have to do to have peace. So I'd like to thank everyone for giving us a thumbs up and a share. We have 511 live viewers. So you guys are really helping out. I hear the chat is scrolling by like crazy. I'd like to moderate it. But of course, Google's not working right now. And I'm doing other things. Moving on to the exit question. Force prediction. On August 1st, will we have a UASF and a UAHF or a UAHF, but no, no, UASF or the thing we predicted today, the 2X adoption or nothing at all, another day in the life of Bitcoin. Jimmy saw. I'm going to say that Segwit gets adopted. Nothing happens. It's good for holders. Everyone's going to be celebrating, but then we'll have another crisis October 15th. John Light. I think that August 1st is going to be a non-events. We're going to have Segwit on or before August 1st. It's going to be a great day. I'm not worried about August 15th, because I don't know anybody that runs Bitcoin unlimited. Whereas Bit 148 people were worried about it because a lot of people support Segwit. And a lot of economic nodes and miners are starting to run Bit 148 software. I don't think Bitcoin unlimited has the same level of support as certainly not among economic nodes. Tony Vase. I'll see. All right. So I guess in a perfect world, like I said earlier, people like me and like economic nodes would be running the 148. The miners would be signaling for Segwit to X. I just 80% and then we lock in Segwit with a weaker so to spare. Segwit is in under Bit 141, the original code. So in there, because of Segwit to X. However, I still have zero confidence in the development of Segwit to X. And I just have this feeling that they will not, they don't have the time, like even like Segwit to X. Like if there is anything there to be screwed up, they're going to find a way to screw it up. So I have this feeling that Segwit to X will not lock in Segwit before August 1st, not because of a miner signaling, but because it's probably going to be a buggy piece of code. Therefore, I think the user activated software will come into effect with a 51% majority of mining and things will go fairly smoothly, maybe one or two days of, you know, shooting a little bit or people nervous, people not spending their coins or the hashing power of the user activated software will be 35% 40% on its way to 51%. Like I still think that Segwit to X is way too ambitious, it's not going to need to deadlines. And the user activated software will do it. It's going to be a little bumpy, but smoother than bumpier than John things, but in general fairly smooth. Moving on to issue two, Bitcoin price tumbles. The mainstream media, which has no way of truly understanding the technological and societal advances present in the invention of Bitcoin, continues to focus only on the price, which is collapsed from all time highs in the 2900s to the 2200s before returning right back to the 2400s. John Light did Bitcoin simply go up too fast or did the UAHF spoil the pumping party with the cold hard reality that Bitcoin has a scaling issue? I don't really have strong opinions about the price. I don't follow it very, you know, day to day or anything. Bitcoin is twice as high over twice as high today as it was at the beginning of the year, so I don't see anything to be upset about really. Tom Vays, you love talking about the price. I'm on screen share, price, and now we're getting to my domain. All right, here we go. I am going to make this one quick. I mean, the major story is done. This is the... All right, come on. There we go. This is the big level. I'm kind of zoomed out. John is absolutely right. I mean, look, you should be happy. Bitcoin has doubled in price this year. I tripled in price or quadrupled in price over the last few years. As far as technicals go, we're a little low here, but look, as long as we close this week above this red line, the bullish trend is intact. And then next week we would need to close above 2000 and the bullish trend is intact. So nothing really looks all that bad on that front. Let's take a look at the daily chart. Should load in one second. There it is. Oops, no, no, that one. Let's do this one. There we go. So it looks like it's good. My tweets were good. We did bounce from between the green and the purple, which is where I thought that we can bounce. If we were to go back there, then I would have expected a much larger correction, but it looks like people are recovering. The industry is realizing that the hard fork is very unlikely at this point because of the details of BitBain's plan. And it looks like this, I believe that this low is in. And now we can just look at the short term view. I did expect this bounce into the slide. I expected this line to be a bit of a formidable resistance. It's working out fairly well. But I think we're going to bounce around this line for another day or two, and then the price is going to shoot back up as more and more support for SegWit2X. And the user activated soft fork, going to affect more miners, start to realize that they can't follow BitBain's plan. So I'm fairly optimistic on the price. I do think we're going to stay above 2250 on BitFinex, adjust to your exchange accordingly. At the moment, I give this scenario a very unlikely chance that we go back to new lows and lower. I am now leading to the fact that the low is in. It will be a little bit bumpy for another few days. And then we should go back and challenge the highs. Jimmy Song, are you a bull and your bullish? Well, so I noticed that volatility tends to follow large price rises. And this certainly has been a very large price rise. It's like John said, it's doubled and more than doubled since the beginning of the year. So this sort of thing happens all the time. And before last large run up back in 2013, a lot of volatility is out, everything affecting things. The BitBain needs definitely affected things. I have no idea how much, but it certainly did. The SegWit2X news also seems to have affected things. But my investment thesis has been that scaling is not as nearly as important as Bitcoin's property as store value. I did find it interesting that F2 pool and Vixen shared similar statements. And their statements were worded very weirdly in large part because they're not native English speakers. Like the grammar was completely off and things like that. But it did, you did get the sense that they were trying to do a delicate dance, not pissing off minors, not pissing off SegWit2X, not pissing off core developers. They're sort of like saying, hey, you know what? And many different ways. And if you, depending on who read them, they would sort of feel like these minors were on the side of whoever was reading them basically. And that's kind of interesting to me because these minors do have sort of like, they don't, they do get their equipment from BitBain, but they also know that there's a large part of the community that doesn't like them. So they're, I don't know, it does feel like they're sort of like repositioning themselves at least a bit politically. So you know, I found that to be an interesting part of this whole drama. I'm not sure how it affects the price, but it certainly seems like there's more of a run towards the middle, which is good because I think that'll keep a big coin together. Moving on to the next question. I got to put a quad question for Jimmy. I'm actually surprised. None of these mining operations, none of these mining pools have reached out to you to kind of, you know, help them write these kinds of press releases, right? I wish that I would. I think you would do a pretty good job actually at that. Well, I think they should hire a normal translator to do that. You know, just I have, if anyone from China is listening, I have names that I can give you that are very good at both Chinese and English and can write nice press releases. Yeah, it would be a good thing if they could, but it seems like, yeah, I, I, I, I, I, I, they also need, they also need someone that understands what the hell it is they're doing, right? You can't, I don't think a normal translator would do it. I think you need someone from the industry. Well, I mean, I just find it good. Google translate is good enough, right? I mean, I, I don't know Chinese, so I can't, I can't translate. So, but I mean, there are perhaps a lot of other people that are available that would be willing to do that for them. You know, I mean, there are plenty of people in the industry that that can speak technically and can write. So, I mean, hire one of those people, please. I mean, it's kind of like the Winkle Vos twins. I really wish they would get some speech coaching. Like, that would be amazing because they're smart people. They just sound not so great when they do public speeches. Kind of the same with a lot of these mining companies. I would like to see them hire higher quality PR firms or at least somebody that knows English and can, yeah, yeah, hire Thomas, hire Thomas. Like he could, he could totally write good press releases. That is very true. But now we have to move on to the exit question, the price of Bitcoin this time next week. Let's put John Light on the spot, hire or lower. Again, I don't follow the price state today. So my prediction is basically worthless. But you have to choose one. It's Sophie's choice. It's always a good time to buy. Oh, always a good time to buy tone Vays. This time next week, I'm actually going to go with hire Jimmy's home. My prediction last week was that my follower account and the Bitcoin price were pretty tightly coupled for about three months there. It stopped. They decoupled this week. I'm afraid to say my follower account is above 3500 and Bitcoin is lower than 2500. So there's a big wide gap. I'm really hoping that they can come together again. There are a bunch of people unfollow me or a bunch of people buy Bitcoin or some combination thereof. I am kind of sad that that's not a good indicator anymore, but I will say it'll be higher to two in the street now. Many people are hoping that Bitcoin starts following my followers at 24,000. That'd be nice. Let's move on to issue three coin base disables, old racked account. Coinbase, the hosted Bitcoin wallet and trading service became political once again this Thursday when it froze the account of Ross, old racked defense fund after the fund transferred in 16.5 Bitcoins with the plan to sell the Bitcoin for USD to pay for their continued legal defense. Tone Vays has coin base taken a political action against the defense of the dread pirate Roberts or is it simply an error or an automated program triggered by transferring in too much Bitcoin? Okay. So apparently I read different story number three that was supposed to be on this show. Thanks for flipping it on us. Maybe it was just me, I don't know. So I don't actually know the details of this unfortunately because I heard it happened. I've been as critical of coin base as pretty much as anyone in over the years. Even from their very, very early days, like to the point where Brian Armstrong has me blocked on Twitter and whenever I go to Brian Armstrong's Twitter, Twitter suggests that I should follow the NSA. Okay. So I am not surprised that coin base would do this. I really haven't seen anything good that coin base has done. Like I guess in a way they didn't introduce people to Bitcoin, but they're not introducing people to Bitcoin in the way that I respect. So I mean, them closing Russell Brooks account or Russell Brooks defense account is I think is like goes against what this entire community stands for. But if any company would want to go against what Bitcoin stands for, I'm not surprised that it saw coin base. John Light, your thoughts. Well the good news is Ross O'Brick's legal defense fund got their money unfrozen. So there was an announcement following a follow up tweet essentially. That's it there on the screen. Coinbase has enabled the free Ross account. It was an automated security response. So there's that. The on ramps and the off ramps to Bitcoin have always been perhaps the most sensitive bottleneck in the Bitcoin economy because in so many countries, these companies are regulated like banks if not sometimes more stringently than banks. And so in the state that Bitcoin is a technology is in right now. Bitcoin fungibility is under threat. And these things unfortunately happen when people go to the large pools of liquidity to sell their bitcoins. And so you just have to, the lesson for me is that we need to do better about fixing fungibility in Bitcoin. I would also say it's not a good idea to transfer so much money at the same time. I'm not sure whether that had anything to do with this but by transferring all of their money presumably with the attempt to sell it all again, they put it all at risk. If they just like five at the time, you know, but again, how do you know what to do? Yeah, I mean coinbase, coinbase is in exchange $20,000 or whatever it was is really not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. And so it shouldn't have been like going into it, you shouldn't think, oh, I shouldn't do this. It's really, you know, traders trade much larger amounts of Bitcoin and money through the exchanges all the time. And so, you know, on the one hand, like I said, I think we should do more to fix fungibility. But on the other hand, you know, companies like Coinbase are under the gun. I think what we really need to do is to fix these regulations that force these companies to be so totalitarian and intrusive with what their users are doing on their platforms. And so, you know, people around the world, they've got to get their governments under control. I'd also say to anyone that's used a PayPal in the past, you know what it's like to have your money frozen. It's maybe once you've had it done once, you're very suspicious of every other centralized institution that you put funds into. But the PayPal example is very heavy for a lot of people. Jimmy Song, your thoughts on the disabling of the old bracket cabinet? Yeah, I mean, it sounded like a mistake. You know, I mean, I agree with the panel. Coinbase is a choke point, right, for US dollars and lots of other exchanges are choke points for other things. Every exchange is sort of vulnerable to government action, essentially. I mean, I would encourage people to use local big coins or my Sel<|ml|> I mean, I would encourage people to use local big coins or my Selium trader and sort of do it person to person if you can help it because that will let you have your big coins. And hopefully you don't need to come or, you know, that will let you get cash for it. And then you don't have to answer anybody. That said, yeah, I mean, I agree with John. Fungibility is very, very important. That's a big problem that a lot of other coins have tried to solve. I'm hoping that we could have side chains for some of this stuff like, I think, elements is supposed to have confidential transactions. So that would be great because that would give you fungibility, right? There's no way to link anything with anybody. And you would need sort of like a decentralized exchange or something so you can get cash for it. Yeah, it's just sort of, I'll have more to say about sort of government intervention and how they use choke points. But yeah, it's a sad story and you really hate to see that, especially when somebody's legal defense fund. I'm afraid that the way you don't way to get bitcoins is to use local bitcoins where you have to go somewhere, you have to meet somebody and it feels kind of shady. I think the easy way to get Bitcoin is coin pace. And so many people choose the easy way. Tom, Jim, more of this? Well, I clearly agree with you. That's how I always acquired my bitcoins was through local Bitcoin. But I really liked how Jimmy started off his answer on this. It sounds like a mistake. Well, yeah, but you can say that about coin pace almost every single day. It's like another mistake. It's like they can't keep their servers up anytime, like the price is actually moving, right? And the whole IRS thing is it's like coin base makes a mistake every week that feels like an honest mistake and eventually they pile up on each other. So that's why I'm not a big fan as to just quickly comment on what John was saying. Look, my view is this. Like everyone, I have like this weird view on regulations. I hate regulations. I like regulations. It's whatever your opinion of me is. And I'm going to make it like very clear like I always do. We are not only in traditional finance and whatever I just say right now, it goes like 100 times more for the crypto world. We need consumer protections. The traditional finance needs better consumer protections and the crypto world sure as hell needs better consumer protections. My problem is that I would love to see a future world where consumer protections do not come with the scrutiny of the consumer. Like I want the word money laundering eliminated from the dictionary. I don't want money to ever be a crime, but I want stringent regulations on these damn ICOs. I just don't want you know people being hunted down for tax reasons or because the government thinks they have too much money. So I want to triple the consumer protections, but I want to completely loosen K by C regulation. Good luck on that. You're going to have to end the war on drugs first and the new administration seems to be doubling down. Let's go to the exit question. Long range predictions. How many presidents until Ross Ulbrich receives a presidential pardon for his work on the Silk Road? Let's go to John Light because he's running out of time. Thanks Tom. Yeah, I'm going to have to leave after this one unfortunately. But I actually I would love for it to be a presidential pardon because that's probably the cleanest and fastest way to do it. And I hope some president that we have soon has the heart to do it. But I actually think it's probably more likely that we overturn the war on drugs laws first in that all nonviolent prisoners of war here get pardoned. Ross was unfortunately charged and found guilty of a couple of other crimes too. So maybe it would take a pardon to get him out. But I think that he's going to be free within my lifetime and within his. And I think that all lovers of liberty should help work to make it so. Very optimistic. Thank you so much John for being on the show. Yeah, thank you. Bye bye. All right, let's go. Jimmy Song, how many more presidents before Ross Ulbrich receives a pardon? Well, I was tempted to say never, but never is a really, really long time. I'm going to say six. I would have to be a really libertarian leaning president and, you know, they would probably do it the last day in office like all presidents do with pardons, but that's my gut instinct. I'm going to be more optimistic. I'm going to say next president and whether that's Trump, a second term or somebody else after Trump, I just I don't see it guys. I do see. I do see the legalization of drugs coming, which is okay. Don't get scared Bitcoin hotlers. Or price of Bitcoin will do even better because the war on cash is going to be way harder than the war on drugs. So that will completely maintain the price stability. But I do see a lot more lenient drug laws and I would like to see Trump actually pardon him on his way out in seven years. People optimism from tone, vase. I think the correct answer is four, two to end the war on drugs and two more to feel bad about it. And even then I think never is a possibility as well, sad as it is. Moving on to issue four North Korea. For his fifth visit to Pyeongyang, Dennis Rodman, former NBA All-Star, five time NBA champion, two time defensive player of the year and seven time NBA rebounding champion. More a different jersey. He wore a popcorn jersey. Rodman's diplomatic mission was sponsored by the Altcoin, which was once featured on a weekly show on this very network. Learn your WCN history. Check out my friend, mad popcorn. Rodman gave the North Korean government the gift of Donald Trump's 1987 success Bible, the art of the deal. North Korea has been accused of perpetrating the recent Wanna Cry ransomware attack that took down the NHS and others. With Rodman's visit and the Wanna Cry accusation, is North Korea a hotbed for cryptocurrency activity? Jimmy Song. Jimmy Song. Yeah, you know it's like sort of like a global currency when North Korea, the most closed country in the entire world is featured twice on this. That's talking entirely about Bitcoin. I mean, there's two sort of common things about both of these stories. First is popcorn, obviously, and second is sort of North Korea and Bitcoin. They both target the same thing, and that's financial sovereignty. Popcoin was mainly developed, at least with the idea, that getting a bank account for anyone sort of doing anything with marijuana is very, very difficult. That's a very hard thing for any of them to do. It makes it very difficult to run their business, and popcorn was sort of developed with that idea in mind. North Korea also has a lot of trouble financially, right? Like I mentioned last week, how Russia and other countries are eventually going to come up with some sort of pia coin in large part, because international sanctions and things of that nature always work by sort of choking work. That's been the case for about the past 100 years. Government controls commerce through money, and not just one government, but sort of like the UN and the international community. St. Chins and these bank accounts, the way that they work is that they always sort of prevent the transfer of money. The choke points are always where money is transferred. Both of these stories sort of point to that fact is popcorn, the government will just basically seize your bank account, right? With North Korea, if you ship anything to North Korea and try to get paid for it, well, they can't pay you because they don't have bank account anywhere, and there's no sort of sound money that they can use. And as a result, what ends up happening is when North Korea wants to trade with Iran or something, they have to sort of have this weird coincidence of wants because they don't have like sort of a common money that they can trade. Iran has to ship like a bunch of barrels of crude oil or something, and North Korea has to ship them back nuclear secrets or centrifuge or something that they built. And it makes it very difficult. Now, there are arguments for doing that or whatever, but the whole reason that this whole system works where there's government policing people out of doing whatever it doesn't, is essentially like a victimless client and like international community preventing trade with North Korea, that all happens because there's no sound money, right? If there was sound money, if you could just sort of give a bar of gold, then they couldn't do anything, right? Like when people wanted to trade with North Korea, but as it is, governments control all the money and this is sort of one of the ways in which it will sort of show itself is things that are sort of quote-unquote considered illegal, where these that are sort of trading goods that don't hurt anybody necessarily and it sort of happens this way. And this is the thing to learn about Bitcoin is that government control is degrading because there is now sound money. Bitcoin is sound money and the cat's out of the bag and it's even better than gold was, right? And you don't have to have physical delivery of stuff. So it makes government and international organization control over these things a lot more difficult and we can expect that going forward. And this will put countries like North Korea in a slightly better position which hopefully will mean that their people will have a better life than they do that. And just like that, I've had the idea for two new shows. The first show I was talking about earlier today, we could go back and analyze movies and say what would that movie be like if there was Bitcoin? And this is similar to going back and looking at a movie and say what if they had cell phones well, they would have just called each other and never would have had all that confusion that caused the movie. But now I'm seeing a similar show where we could go back to historical events and say would these two countries have gone to war if they had Bitcoin, a sound, stable, independent version of money? We'll have to have Jimmy Song on that show. Tony Vays, your thoughts on North Korea and Dennis Robbins' incredible ability to rebound, earning him the nickname the worm. Oh, speaking of it, I think if the only had cell phones, I think half of Seinfeld would not make sense if cell phones had existed during the time that show was filming. But just for the record, I did everything in my power to keep the story off the show today and I failed. This is a important story and it allowed me to use Rodman's picture in the thumbnail. So win-win. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Okay. So I read the story, I didn't realize I looked at Twitter the other day and I'm like, why do people care about Rodman and North Korea again? And then it was the whole popcorn thing and then I read the Washington Post article. It was unreasonably long. Like all the other articles today. But that's the thing. It's not like he was meeting the North Korean leader in a popcorn shirt. And listen, whoever that short fact guy is, that's his manager probably. I mean, that's the guy. That's the popcorn guy. Someone, a popcorn people probably paid him a bunch of money to just wear those shirts. They offered to pay for the trip or whatever. Just for a silly promotion to promote their scam coin. Okay, no fan stop. It got pumped right? It got pumped like 80, 90 percent. I don't know. I know. I know. I know. And again, right? Like at what point does the, like all of these people keep screaming about the evil bankers? But at what point does the SEC committee say, wait a minute, you can't just like buy up all of this stuff and then purposely, you know, go and pay Dennis Rodman to like tweet it out, right? Like this is the kind of thing that like, let's not stop there. You can't pay Mike Tyson either. You can't play Sammy Haggar, Floyd Meather, Mayweather. There's a list, right? Well, see, that's the thing, right? Like you can't pay, you can't, these are unlicensed on registered securities. And this is exactly, I mean, again, right? Well, all of these people like, they're like, oh, regulation is terrible. But this is now the world you're living in where some kind of a scam can't put together some money. They can give somebody like Rodman and his manager, I guarantee you was his manager's idea. Trust me. It was not right. No one reached out to Rodman to do this, right? You reach out to the manager. Rodman was browsing coins on CoinMarketCap and he said, right? Right. I mean, this is like, you completely, this went through the manager. Now, what I really enjoyed about the Washington Post article is that it didn't even mention POTCoin once. They couldn't care less. They were actually focused on what Rodman was doing in North Korea. So I am going to do the same. Like to me, the POTCoin part is complete nonsense. I don't care. It's irrelevant. Okay. I actually like the idea that Dennis Rodman is the bridge between North Korea and Donald Trump. I personally do not have a problem with this. Okay. I remember like a year or two ago when I was on some podcast. Oh, I remember who it was. You remember, oh, what was his name? Seals with clubs. The guy that ran Seals with clubs out of Nevada and then he had like, you know, SWAT team like breakdown is door and arrest them. I remember the story, but I don't recall the guy's name. Oh, man. I can't believe I forgot his name. I got to reach out to him. So he had a podcast and I was on his podcast. And at the end of the podcast, we got into a philosophical like debate. I think I asked the question or he asked the question. If I, well, I think I am the most likely one of us three on this panel to potentially end up in North Korea and get my ass in trouble. So the question was if you get in trouble in North Korea, like those two Asian girls did, do you want Bill Clinton coming in there to try and like get you out or Rodman to come in there and try and get you out? So that was the question I posed. So I'm curious. Let me ask you guys, if you somehow shrolled by accident at North Korea and ended up in detention, do you want Rodman coming in there or do you want Bill Clinton coming in there? All right. Well, before all the Americans get mad at me, just based upon administrative competence, I'm going to go with Bill Clinton. So Jimmy. Yeah, probably Bill Clinton, but you know, Rodman has pulled with Kim Jong Un, right? Like he actually has pulled. I remember he said something about Kenneth Bayway back when eventually Kenneth Bay got out of North Korea. I don't know. There's something. It's very tricky. Yeah, I wouldn't fancy my chances if I were stuck there. If we do want to analyze Rodman's move this time, giving them the book, the art of the deal is actually a really great move diplomatically. It helps explain a lot of what Trump's about, a lot of the bluster, the way he negotiates, the way he says, I want 120% and then he'll fall back to 80 and then 60. I mean, a lot of his negotiating style is in that book. It's not a bad read if North Korea takes the time. Tell me more on this. Well, no. I mean, like the obvious and simple answer is Rodman. I mean, to me, this has not even been close. I don't even want to take a chance of like Clinton showing up there. I don't know, Flutton or Hittin' on his daughter or something like that. Well, I don't want to take those chances. So he did get those two women out and they sounded like they were journalists, but they might not have been journalists. So I think it's a much more harsh position than us where it would likely be some kind of a Bitcoin infraction or some kind of a minor issue. I don't know why we would be in North Korea to begin with though. All right. Oh, let me not talk about that. Well, Thomas, clearly it's because you're translating for the Chinese miners who start using mining equipment in North Korea. But you know, you're the PR guy, right? Well, look guys, like, what? Yeah, good. Tell us. Mine is different. Like when I travel, right? Like I don't really have that much of a desire to go to Italy or Germany or Switzerland, but I'm really pissed. I canceled my trip to Kazakhstan in India, right? Like that's what I want to see. Like that fascinates me. Like I live in New York. Like going to Tokyo is, I mean, I'm sure I'll have fun. I'm sure it'll be great. But I'm like, honestly, I'm more interested to just like seeing what's going on in some of these terrible countries that I never ever see on TV. So like even like Cuba and potentially North Korea, like it's more interesting and more fascinating to me to see what's going on there, probably not be it. Trust me, if someone told me you have to stay in this country for a year, I'll certainly pick Tokyo over North Korea. But if someone said I can go and check out North Korea for three days or Tokyo for three days, without getting into trouble, I will probably want to check out North Korea because I can see Tokyo on television. See now I'm a big fan of civilization. So I'd have no problem to look at other civilizations. If they've found a way to do things better, I'm interested in that. It's unfortunate that many parts of the world are still developing or third world or whatever you want to term you want to use. But yeah, I would prefer to tour the civilized countries. Jimmy Song, your tourist destination? Well, I mean, I've been to a lot of those places that Tona said. So I'd be more interested in sort of the third world-bitch places just because your dollar goes a lot further. So I mean, once Bitcoin takes off, I imagine you can like travel there on like, you know, 30 bits or something, you know, a day and you'll be able to like party it up. And that's more attractive to me, having your dollar go further, whereas like, or your Bitcoin go further, sorry. Whereas like in Switzerland, it's like, man, that place is so expensive. You can't do anything there. I picture Jimmy Song sitting on a throne made out of swords. I like Game of Thrones. Sounds pretty bad. It's going on right now. So what else we got going here, totally distracting me? That's great. Exit question. Exit question. What will be remembered more about Dennis Rodman, his pot coin sponsorship or his brief marriage to Carmen Electra? Follow up question. Where does this stunt rank in the list of all-time greatest cryptocurrency promotions? Keeping in mind that we have witnessed the amazing Doge car, the stunning Doge sled, and the Bitcoin bowl, Jimmy Song. I'm going to say it's up there. It's really up there. And given how pot coin went up, as you mentioned, I'm sure we'll see bigger and more interesting stunts as we go along. I'm waiting for somebody to run naked and the Super Bowl with some logo of a coin or something. I mean, it really comes down to how much is a person willing to humiliate themselves for money. And we know from reality TV shows that that number, I mean, like pretty much you can find somebody that will humiliate themselves given enough money. And there will be a lot of humiliation left to go. So this will be tough, but it's up there right now. Tony, this. I'm going to say this is nothing. I mean, the Bitcoin bowl was a much bigger deal, even the Doge car was a bigger deal. There was a race car with Bitcoin all over. There was an airplane with Bitcoin all over it. I think there will be other of these crazy promotions, but pot coin isn't going to last. And this is going to go down as nothing. I actually totally forgot he was married to carbon electron. I remember him like showing up wearing that dress and that that was a more memorable Dennis Rodman stunt. And I remember watching him play. I guess it shows my age there a little bit with the crazy hair and stuff. But I think Dennis Rodman might be remembered for North Korean negotiations as much as he ever has in playing basketball. I think that on Rodman's claim to fame has not yet fully been written. And it's not going to be pot coin. It's not going to be pot coin, guys. And of course, I think about North Korea's movie, the interview with Seth Rok and that famously North Korea hacked Sony over. So it's hard to back that one up. If you have wheat coin, if you have other like crazy coin, just contact this manager, he'll give you a price. And next time he'll be wearing another t-shirt. Like these things are totally fluid. I mean, he's an entertainer. All right. We have one more follow up question. Will the Kardashians get involved in cryptocurrency bonus question? Which card which alt coin will the Kardashians use? I thought Kim Kardashian had a coin or something. Well, there was a Kanye coin. Oh, man, you got my reply. I can't get it. Kanye would be a great one. Yeah, the coin, that was a great coin for a while. Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to guess the Kardashians will get involved as soon as there's money. And I mean, like, I don't know. I browsed steam at one point and there was, I think, what they call catfishing. There were all these impossibly beautiful women that were introducing themselves on steam and saying it's me when it was clearly not the case. So I imagine if Kim Kardashian finds out she can make money by endorsing something, much like that woman that does the dash show now. I forget her name. That will happen at some point. I mean, it's kind of like a celebrity endorsement to alt coins. Yeah, I can't imagine this not happening. It's just too profitable for these people. And the Kardashians have been brilliant with their marketing so far. Kim sponsored an emoji app, sold a ton of copies. They had a day in the life of Kim type app, sold a bunch of copies there. They're fantastic at what they do. Let's move on. We have a prediction or a story of the week. We've reached the end of the show. It's hard to believe. Jimmy Song, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the one? Sure, I have both actually. My story of the week is the Ethereum chain is now 185 gigabytes, which has now surpassed Bitcoin's, well, no, no, no, no. Well, versus Bitcoin's 150 gigabytes, note also that Bitcoin has seven and a half times more transactions. So scaling is going to become a much, much bigger issue on Ethereum because they have one almost like one eighth of the transactions and their chain is much, much bigger. So ICOs, in addition, make the problem much, much worse because they're on coins and there's a whole hype cycle around each one. And it sort of shows and sort of thinking about this. It shows sort of the markets wisdom in not letting Bitcoin's chain grow too fast, right? Right now Bitcoin is 150 gigabytes. Ethereum looks like it's just going to grow by leaves and bounds as these ICOs just come and come and come. In the next month alone, I think there's something like 30 or 40 different ICOs that have been hyped that are going to come onto that platform. So watch carefully to see how Ethereum sort of reacts to this because this is going to cause some serious networking issues as more coins come on Ethereum. Their blockchain just gets bigger and bigger. One terabyte this year or next year is not out of the question. And five, 10 terabytes is not out of the realm of possibility. So thinking about that and sort of comparing it to Bitcoin and how we've been careful about scaling, I just want to remind the audience, we've made the right choice, I think. And it's a very good thing that we've thought very hard about this and had all this debate as painful as it's been. It's been worth it because we are going to last and we're planning for the long term and not necessarily sort of flying by the seat of our pants as Ethereum seems to be. That's my prediction and story of the week. It's got a tone, there is. Yeah, no, that's a good one. I've actually been talking about this for a while long before. If way before these ICOs came about, I was already joking that Ethereum blockchain is going to explode and this was just obvious. Like you don't have to be a computer scientist to understand what they were trying to do from the start. I just add a little bit to Jimmy, not only is it, would you say like Bitcoin had like 80 times more transactions? Like 80% more transactions, I forgot that number. Now seven and a half times more transactions than Ethereum. Bitcoin has also been alive more than twice as long as Ethereum has as well. Like I think Ethereum started trading in 2015. So Ethereum is only like two years old of trading. Bitcoin is already on its ninth year or not ninth year. Sorry, Bitcoin is almost at eight years old. If Bitcoin will be, I think Bitcoin will be eight years old. It's been a half years old. Eight and a half years old. Okay, so it's getting to nine. Right, and Ethereum's only two years up. It grows up and it grows up. Right. So Ethereum has only been around, Bitcoin has been around four times longer. And it's still, it's blockchain is now smaller. So yeah, you're absolutely right. Like our developers know what, how to try to scale this thing. All right, so my story of the week is right here, at this point, someone unnoticed because of all of the scaling drama, but in reality, this is a pretty damn big deal. I would be all over this if it wasn't for the user activated software. A little surprised, this didn't make the show as a topic. But basically, there is a bill. It's not passed yet. This bill is basically doubles down, if not triples down on cash or the cash being evil. If Bitcoin being pulled right along with it, of course, there's always people are reading in a little too much into it. But assuming you read every line as the worst case scenario, it gets very, very ugly. Like some law experts are speculating that you might have to declare all of your Bitcoin every time you travel by law, because technically you have access to all of your Bitcoin at any time, and it's like cash. So it's basically, even if your Bitcoin isn't in your cell phone that you're getting on a plane with, technically, it's as if you're getting on a plane with all of your piles of cash and all of your gold coins that the government doesn't know about. So it depends how much you want to read into the fine print. It also talks about making companies like Amazon and everybody else be additional deputies of the federal government for tax evasion purposes. This is all about tax evasion, guys. Don't get sucked into this nonsense of terrorist financing. That's just bullshit. OK, this is all about taxes. The first world, the socialist world, it's going broke. And like all prior societies in history, they double down on taxation, they blame the rich, and they try to confiscate all the money they can. Now, this, of course, the Amazon part, right here. I don't know if you guys can see it. It is zero hedge. They are gloom and doomish. They do take it all too far. But this line right here says, so amazon.com, which issues and redeems prepaid gift cards will be required under this bill to file reports to the government. Now, this always goes into my little suspicion as to why I never used purse.io. Because when you use purse.io with your Bitcoin, there is a record of a Bitcoin transaction. And on the other end, Amazon has a record of where the goods are being shipped. So one way or another, there is an address associated with the Bitcoin spender. And if you put the two and two together, if the government is going to crack down even on gift cards and especially Bitcoin, and they make someone like Amazon via deputy that does create a bit of an issue even through a middleman if you're using your Bitcoin. But again, this is a little too conspiratorial even for me. But in general, if you don't even read into the fine print, any bill that makes cash illegal or cash-like instruments, illegal even more, it is in a way a huge boom to the Bitcoin price because it just means that they're being threatened. And it's going to be a problem. I've always recommended people not to associate Bitcoin with your government identity, especially if it's the US or the EU government or Australian government. Canada is a little bit better because they don't tax you if you work out of the country. So you've got lots of leeway there. But just be careful and keep an eye on this and know what's coming and we'll see how it all goes. And I would say, Tom, that the government has no other choice. Although I usually don't talk about bills that are just proposed because you can propose anything and you can write anything you want into it. It's when it's passed, it's when it starts to become a real bill. That's when you have to worry. But what other choice does the government have? Both gift cards and Bitcoin take money out of their system, make it difficult or perhaps impossible to track. And if the government wants to succeed in the future based upon taking in taxes and giving out services, what other options do they have? I mean, I think it sounds direct. But what else are you going to do? You really are moving all your money. We've said this before as a positive of Bitcoin. But the government could obviously take it and make a negative. All right, but the greatest thing the government can do is ban prepaid cards and gift cards. Like if the government has the power to ban those because those are issued by entities. But we know my gift cards are protected. They're very profitable for these corporations. People put money on them. They never use them. The corporations carry that on their balance sheet of sales. These are all, you know, presumed sales. So I agree. I agree, but the government doesn't care. Right. The government just sees it as tax evasion and they think that they're being ripped off. So if the government makes that kind of stuff illegal, which they can, it's in their power to do, that would be the greatest thing ever for Bitcoin because they can't make Bitcoin illegal. Right. So in a way, you want the government to crack down on gift cards. You want the government to crack down on prepaid credit cards. Right. So the government to crack down on all these things because that helps Bitcoin. It hurts the common man, but it. Or woman, let's not get into it. Let's not get me into trouble here. But, but it definitely. It definitely helps the Bitcoin industry. Now, if they try to crack down on Bitcoin, it'll be a bit problematic. But, you know, Bitcoin will definitely survive through it. And the vice that is Bitcoin continues to tighten on the governments. I don't really have a prediction or a story of the week this week. Just want to thank our 580 viewers for watching. We peaked around 580. It's pretty sweet. We're shooting for 700 though, maybe a thousand. And thanks so much everybody for giving us a thumbs up. A like and a share. I'm going to go read the chat. Looked like it was scrolling by like crazy. I could barely see it. And after the show finishes, leave us a comment. Hit us up on Twitter at Mad Bikcoins. And until next time, we're out of time. Bye-bye.