The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Aaron Van Weardham from Bitcoin Magazine. Hello. Kyle Torpy from KyleTorpy.com. Hey, what's going on, everyone? Tony Vays from Liberty Life Trail. Hey, everyone. Back in the US from Canada, over in Lake George. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one. Issue one, alpha bay, takedown. A massive law enforcement operation spanning three countries has shut down the legendary dark market known as alpha bay. All-only via Tor at its height, alpha bay served more than 300,000 listings, more than 20 times the size of the Silk Road, with a daily volume of more than $800,000. The United States and Canada both attempted extra-tition for one of the alleged administrators, Alexander Causes. But he was found hanged in his Bangkok jail cell in an apparent suicide. And Van Weardham, have we seen the end of dark market activities on the inner webs? Is the government's long nightmare over? Absolutely, yeah. This was it. It shows over. No one's going to take any drugs anymore at all. All of the heroin addicts done. This was it. It's about time that's all we had to do. It's over. Clear cut case. That was everyone go all. Yeah, no, it's just a dark war all over again. I was the game we've seen for decades. Now it's moved the line. They bust one guy. There's nothing's going to change. It's just going to be new. Unless people literally stop taking drugs, which is not going to happen. Or unless people don't want to buy it online anymore, which is not going to happen. It's going to it's just going to continue. Nothing will change. Low enforcement agencies will have a job. Directly others will have a job. No one wins. It seems like they tried to shut down Amazon.com. A new one's just going to pop up in another country. People like buying stuff online. They're not going to stop. Good stuff. Let's go. They're all going to stop. They're going to probably going to get better at it. They're going to learn from the lessons that needs to be learned. I assume that's it. That's all. There is no change. It's just going to be another big dark market. It's so pointless. It's got to be frustrating for the investigators. They do all their work. They get their man. They bring it down. Nothing changes. Maybe it's frustrating for them in a way. But on the other hand, this is how they make their money. On to the next. They still got a job. They get a pet on the shoulder. Maybe a race. If they're lucky. In general, I'm all for ending the drug war. That's my position because you're not going to stop this at all. Same story online. I'm not going to stop at all. They're just pushing that rock back up that hill. If anything, did the badder criminals take over and it's going to be a worse situation for everyone? That's it. Let's go to Kyle Torpey. Will the next dark market be harder to stop? Yeah, definitely agree with Aaron when he's talking about the markets are just going to get more advanced and it's not going to stop. There's two marketplaces I saw. There's an article that deeped up, when they went through all the other popular markets now besides Alphabet. It seems that there's one called Hansa Market and there's another one called Dream Market Place. It seems they're both equally as popular outside of Alphabet. I think a lot of people are going to just switch over to those two. The thing about Hansa Market is it requires all their users to use multi-sig. They're trying to set up a situation where they can't exit scam. This is something that me and Tony talked a little bit about last week where he was talking about you don't really need open bizarre or something like that. This goes to his point where you can just set up a multi-sig centralized marketplace and have people use that. There's still instances where they can take money when you first, because I was looking into it a few days ago, when you first make a deposit on their site it goes to a wallet controlled by them and then from there it goes to a two of two with the buyer and the seller. There's still that intermediary territory where they could do something but it's kind of like shapeshift where they can't really steal the amount that's being traded at that time. I guess it also, everyone thought that Alphabet was Russian but I guess we found out that that was not the case. I thought it was interesting. It's interesting to see they try a two of two escrow. I know open bizarre uses a two of three with a third party. It's kind of an anonymous escrow or something. They do two of two by default just because it's easier for people who aren't used to multi-sigs because I think a lot of other sites have multi-sig integration but no one uses it because it's like confusing and they don't understand it or they just don't use it. But they also have a two of three option if the buyer wants to use that but it's optional. It's interesting. Each time one of these huge dark markets go down we have a mini lesson on how to deal with one of your competitors suddenly going out of business. There's a rush of business to the other sites. You've even seen some sites that just shut down. When the Silk Road went down there was another Silk Road type site that just gave up. There's going to be too much traffic. We're getting overloaded. Our database is getting slammed. We don't know how to handle this and we're out. It's an interesting lesson for dark marketeers. We've got around 212 live viewers. If everyone could give us a thumbs up and a share that helps more people find the show. Now, tone veys, your thoughts on Alphabet. Yeah, that was, I think a few weeks ago when they went down and they came back and I said, it looks like they might be good for a little while. Clearly I was wrong. That was just last week. So, and it's funny is how Kyle now mentions how I brought up. Maybe there is no use case for open bizarre. You know what? Maybe there was a use case for open bizarre, right? Maybe people will go to open bizarre for security. I'm kind of 50-50 on that. It is probably complicated. The competitors are definitely getting a lot of, you know, the competitors are starting to get overwhelmed. And look, they don't get back. They'll find the way to fix the mistakes. I mean, this isn't really going anywhere. Just a couple of comments. Like I would question that suicide. I don't know. Like I think if a more thorough investigation on a suicide gets done, I don't know. I just don't see it. I mean, you already have a precedent with Rosubert going away for life. But like I don't know, it's just, to me, it feels like whoever that was wasn't the main guy even though he was making, you know, tens of millions of dollars. And there is always a bigger fish. That bigger fish might not have wanted to be identified. And when you're in a third country and you get arrested and you're in one of those prisons, probably doesn't take much to get something fixed. So I would, I mean, I wouldn't be doing that investigation. I don't know if the authorities will. But I mean, I would kind of question that. Like there's really not much else to say. I mean, the space has dealt with this before. It'll deal with it again. Another major site is going to rise to the top and they're going to take over most of the volume. I mean, this just reminds me of the Napster and the music downloads. I remember like after Napster went down and it was a disaster. I was using Kaza for a while. Oh, I heard people were using Kaza for a while and then lime water and bear share. It was, I mean, it was a free for all. There was nothing good until Torrent came out. So maybe someone will come up with a really good system that you just can't shut down. And we're just going to watch it happen. But I mean, Bitcoin price may or may not be related to this. People are, I mean, there isn't as much demand right now. People are trying to create accounts on other websites. It's going to be interesting. But I just hope that Bitcoin speculation and like the Bitcoin economy has finally grown to be strong enough not like to survive with the elimination of Bitcoin being used for these dark web markets. I don't think we're there yet. I still think we need an alpha bay to keep Bitcoin demand up. But it would be a very interesting test for Bitcoin if there isn't like another site that comes to this kind of volume that alpha bay had. But I think something else will take its place soon. It's also impressive to see Bitcoin maintain its price after the take down of alpha bay. I don't know if anyone recalls, but after the dread pirate robert or ledger dread pirate robert went down. The price of Bitcoin went from maybe 900 to 300. It was an incredible collapse and it was a crazy day. I think it went right back up the next day. But the price has been strong until that's an interesting theory that it could have been other members of the team covering up their work. I had just gone more towards a Chinese government that hates it when you deal drugs inside their country and is kind of personally offended. I'll say that. Well, one last thing on the price. I remember the sale, crore closure. It happened October 1st. The price was around 110, 115. Within the next 24 to 48 hours, the price fell from about 115 all the way down to 85 bucks. It then recovered all the way back to 110, 115 within like 48 to 36 hours. And within a week, we were at new highs above 125. And then it just took off in October and November 2, 1200. Was the craziest time and maybe it'll be the craziest time again. Let's move on to the exit question. Exit question, will the takedown and fatal ending for Alphabet serve as a message to other potential dark marketeers? Will they stop before they start? Aaron Von Weyrden. There's a wide open markets jump into that sense. What's another thing? I don't know. Am I breaking the format of the show if I bring up another topic? No, go ahead. What do you have? So is there any idea like how they have been caught? Does anyone know anything about this? I do know like a couple of days or recently they started accepting zero cash, I think, or serocoin, whatever it's called. And Poloniacs had problems with that. Like could that be harder? Does anyone keep up with this stuff because I don't really? So thinking with Poloniacs, someone mentioned that to me yesterday, but I think I don't think that was related because Poloniacs was having trouble with like a bunch of different coins. It wasn't just Z-Cash. I don't think there's been any official information leaked about how they were caught if they made a mistake. Had an inside man, usually it's something like that. Someone sent me a report about an exploit that was someone disclosed to Alphabet or something like that, but I haven't looked at it yet. So it could be that too, but I haven't looked into the details of it. So someone, maybe they got hacked. I don't really know. I'll have to read through the report. Someone sent me. I'm not sure if I ever bought it, but they said the Silk Road had some kind of misconfiguration in their settings that was leaking their IP address. No idea if that's happened again. Yeah, it was like the capture setting was on the clear net or something. I don't think they ever really explained it. It was very strange. They had that, and then they had the old information, and we weren't sure if it was that, or maybe the NSA's listening program that brought that one down. This one we have no idea. As Trump is fond of saying, they listen to us on our televisions now. So let's see. Aaron, did you have more on the exit question? Will they stop? Is this going to teach people not to do this in the future? No, no way. Kyle Torpey, also a short answer? Yeah, it's not going to stop. I mean, Hansa Market had to turn off registrations because they're already getting so many people that want to sign up. One thing I want to kind of think about, I haven't looked at the correlation yet, but when the member, like the number of transactions with the networks dropped, I can't remember if that was around the same time as Alphabet was stopped working. So maybe I've seen a joint traffic that correlated the time. It said when they officially went down, when they first went down, everyone was worried, that's when the spam attack stopped. So we have no idea if they're connected or other ideas. Yeah, we might be able to track the growth of this Hansa Market just because they use two of two multi-sig. I don't think there's that many two of two multi-sig used to get an early share, but that also seems like it would be bad for opsec. They can just look at all the two of two addresses and be like, oh, that's a Hansa Market, darknet market transaction. So, don't tell Bitcoin, I think they have a patent on multi-sig. Let's go to tone veys. I hope they don't have a patent on multi-sig, that would just be screwed up. They tried to get one years ago, but everyone was very upset. Yeah, no shit. All right, so I actually think it'll be the reverse. I mean, when people read the details of the guide that actually died in prison, in Thailand, I mean, I've read or I've been told somewhere, he had literally like $10 million. He had like four Lamborghini's. He was living the life. I think if anything, this just shows you that if you have a little more opsec and everyone thinks they have just a little more opsec, they can be like the raw subrig that doesn't get caught. They could be this guy that doesn't get caught. I think once they look into his lifestyle, I think there's only like few more people wanting to be the guy that doesn't get caught. It is worth noting that Ross Ulbrich though, he was taken down by an act that was designed to stop drug cartels that he had no Lamborghini's. He shared an apartment in San Francisco to use Wi-Fi at the coffee shop and the library. Let's move on to issue two. Issue two, Bitcoin sign guy. As Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen was speaking to the House Finance Servants Committee on Wednesday, saying that she would oppose almost any attempt to audit the Federal Reserve. Something interesting happened. Almost perfectly placed behind her right shoulder, a sign appeared, telling people to buy Bitcoin. Thus, Bitcoin sign guy drove news all over the world and maybe even caused the price of Bitcoin to go up as a frenzied group of traders did exactly what the sign said. They bought Bitcoin. Kyle Torpy did the Bitcoin sign guy an important moment in Bitcoin history? Or because he received $15,000, will this kick off a swarm of aggressive and annoying copycats? Yeah, I thought this was obviously really cool because it kind of got back to why everyone got interested in Bitcoin in the first place. It felt like the early days, someone posted someone doing something like this on Reddit. It reminded me of the guy on college game day that put up a sign that said, hey mom, send Bitcoin or whatever and he got like $25,000 or something. You took my answer. It was the operand game. I was talking about that. I don't remember much from this. You can take the rest. It felt like 2012, 2013, kind of like a lot of Bitcoin hype going on and someone does something like, pulls this kind of stunt on TV and all the big corners get really excited about it. It's kind of a break from all the scaling debate stuff that's been going on. This is something everyone could get behind because it's why everyone got interested in Bitcoin in the first place. Just reminded me of the early days and trying to replace the central banks and all that kind of stuff. It was perfect that she was talking about how she didn't want to get, she didn't want the Federal Reserve to get already and as he put it up. It was just like so perfect. If Bitcoin does blow up and become like a global reserve currency, then that will be like an iconic picture probably. It could be a picture in textbooks to come. As a good point, Kyle, it gets us back to our roots of opposing the Federal Reserve something we could all agree on. It's got a ton of ways. Yeah, that's exactly what it reminded me of and actually when people sent me that video, like I'm watching that video and I didn't even believe it. It looked like a fake video. I had to actually Google multiple times. Like did this really happen at the Federal Reserve meeting? Well, the kid is so good too with his suit and his pink tie. He's just dressed to the nines. It didn't look real at all. To me it didn't look real. What if he get that seat like who is he? I haven't had time to look at his background. I want to say that he's an aide to a congressperson or someone involved in the DC line more. They dragged him out. I probably lost his job. Yeah. I mean, look, that's one way. That's an awesome way to go out. Look, it's really, really cool. But it's exactly like the guy with the college game day holding up a sign that said, Mom, please send Bitcoin with the QR code. He ended up getting like 20 something thousand that he ended up donating to a shones outpost. But it reminds me of that. I mean, I don't think there's going to be all that much about it. I think everyone just wants to up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. Like there'll be like a bigger event. Maybe there'll be is going to try to beat him. Maybe like hold up a sign, you know, like doing a Trump speech or something. Like, like, I think someone is going to want to up that. Now I think in about six months, we're going to move on and no one will barely remember it. For the short term, however, I strongly believe that this did bump the price. It created a huge buzz in the space. Those were trading accounts, you know, bought a Bitcoin on the news. And this also goes to show you that no matter what the news, you can't change the overall trend. And the overall trend has been bearish for a few weeks now. And no matter how cool or good the news, it can bump the price against the trend for, you know, 12 to 36 hours. But the ultimate trend wins. We are back to new lows. And the user acted everyone, like everyone got a nice distraction for 24 hours. And now it's back to, you know, the user activated software, real shit going on. So maybe it's not over yet. Aaron Von Weard, I mean, you're going to be standing outside of some sports stadiums later in the day. Huh. Don't, don't wait for it. No, what can I add? I agree with both Kyle and Tony, the whole, the screenshot, if you see the screenshot with the capture of, it's a work of art. It's like the timing was amazingly brilliant. It's just, it's too funny. And not only the capture also is smile for me. Yes, it's smile. It's almost like he's saying I told you so. Like, I've been saying, I've been telling you, you got to buy Bitcoin. There he is with his sign. So that's, and it's getting me in a fight as well, which is great. I don't know. I've seen the one with fluffy pony. That was so funny. Like, you've got the same sort of gift going on. And then you've got fluffy pony who holds off his sign, which is don't buy Monero. That's yeah, I've seen one with Vitalik where he says buy ETH. Where, where, where, where, where, where, when did fluffy put up a sign that says don't buy Monero? Well, they're, they're editing the original and making a meme out of it. So, I think the way that I was making a bunch of them. I probably, I probably ruined the joke for those who haven't seen it. Sorry about that. It was funny. I, I will add one more thing. Look, what I'm really happy about is, oh, I'm getting an echo. You might want to mute Aaron. So what, what, what I am really happy about is the fact that this guy didn't hold up a sign that said like, you know, buy Ethereum or like, you know, buy Dash or buy some other scam, right? Like, the, the fact that it was Bitcoin is what's important. Because one of these days, some moron, owed up on some scam coin we never heard of. And then he's going to pull this kind of a stunt just for himself to get rich on that scam coin that has very little liquidity and no use at all. So I'm just happy that it was Bitcoin on that sign and not some garbage. Yeah, we saw that with the popcorn in Dennis Rodman, right? When he went to see the North Korea exactly. Exactly. And then popcorn is the complete scam. And popcorn did go up in value after Dennis Rodman was spotted wearing their t-shirt. Now, let's move on to the exit question. What would be better than a sign behind the Federal Reserve? Where should the next sign be? Kyle Torpe. I like the tones idea that Trump rally. I can't think of a better, better place. But, uh, and also I, after I tweeted out that picture yesterday, I also had like ten or twenty people ask me if it was real, like on Twitter and contact me directly because I didn't believe that they thought those photoshopped. So then I had to go back in the video and like point it out to them. It does look almost too good to be true. And when Aaron mentioned it was a work of art. I thought someone might actually take an oil painting and give us a beautiful painting of this. That's a good idea if you're an artist out there. Let's go to tone, Vaze. Where should the next sign be sticking with Trump? I'm trying to think if there is like a bigger venue. I mean, unless it's like the Super Bowl or something, but we already had, you know, uh, BitPay already tried doing commercials during the Super Bowl. That didn't really do it. Like it's, um, the stage is getting bigger and bigger. Um, I don't know. Maybe one of these days, um, some of the old school bitcointers become really rich. And then you're like sponsored the first shuttle to Mars or something and then when the rocket takes off or the next trip to the moon, there's like a big Bitcoin logo on the actual rocket going to the moon. And that would that would be cool. All right. A rocket ship. Aaron, can you top top a rocket ship? I don't think you can top this one. This is it. Like behind Janet Yellen, like does it get better? I don't think so. I, this is it. This is a perfect. It's a bit of a stretch, but it would be hard to top it. Maybe an Oscar winner. They get up there to make their speech and they just show a little science as by Bitcoin of being incredible sacrifice of their speech. No, it wouldn't be, it's not as powerful because it's not economic, right? That should have happened first. Like there should have been a build up. We should have first half these other things. And then like this was, I can't think of anything better. Hey, man, if you get if you get the opportunity on a big stage, you take it, man, you don't drop one step down to build up to it. You just go for it. Hey, I would love to get in touch with this guy if you're watching. Hey, Google tone vase would be awesome to have you on this show or any other show. It's also worth noting people could just hold up their phone wallet if they need a quick QR code. He might have gotten even more donations if he had a QR code instead of the actual address written out, which led to a lot of copycats, changing it to their address and so on and so forth. But let's move on to the next issue. Issue three. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive. The case of the India based alleged Ponzi scheme, Gain Bitcoin has just become infinitely more complex. And now instead of just promising their unrealistic rewards for their cloud mining, they've also launched an initial coin offering. The ERC 20 token M cap raised more than $19 million at a crowd sale price of $5 a token. With the influx of new capital, the scheme has allegedly been able to repay their initial investors, creating a new link in the chain. Tone Vaze I ask you was PT Barnum right that there's a sucker born every minute, leaving us stranded on a planet full of suckers or has Bitcoin, Ethereum, cloud mining and multi-level marketed, created a revolution in scams, returning us to a time before time when everything old is new again as the digital con man smiles on the face of a billion roots. Well, you know what? Maybe it just feels like, I don't know, some crazy journalist named Kyle Torpey is just going after the same guy multiple times in this Bitcoin magazine publication. I'm just kidding, Kyle. So this is clearly not the first time you've investigated this scam or out of India. Look, it does get annoying. And you know, this is the fine line. This is the line where like at which point do we become responsible for like getting these scammers arrested or in jail? And I don't like anyone getting arrested and going to jail. It's just, it started to get real crazy and Ethereum is a scam designed platform designed to create more scams on top of it. So in a way, I hope this guy gets like ghost to the next level and then everyone follows his lead. I mean, I'm fully expect by end of year, I'm expecting more ERC 20 straight up scams than any kind of legit projects because that's what Ethereum has built. They're not there for there's like one or two legit ICOs and Ethereum. Everything else is an outright scam. And now they're getting bolder and bolder and bolder. And this guy is up there and look, it's really interesting to me at least that this is what a theorem wants to bring to the world. Now all of these people think that they're liberating and everyone should be allowed to get scammed. But it's getting tiresome. It's getting tiresome to me. And I'm sure people at like UNO coin are very upset. They're trying to run a legit Bitcoin business out of India. Some other people are as well. And then you have these people with their cloud mind. One thing. The cloud mining, non-scams, future Ponzi schemes like Genesis and BitClaub, I don't think they're helping either. I think just because there is a couple of semi legit cloud mining, it kind of opens the door for the straight up scams pretending to be cloud mining. It's really unfortunate. And I don't know. Some people will bring this down like Bitcoin started all this, but not really. So yeah, let's see what Kyle and Aaron have to say about it. But that's just, you know, it's what we're going to deal with and it's only going to get worse with this whole Ethereum ICO bullshit. It's also worth noting the size of this operation. This is a front page ad from the Sunday Times. It's a full front page ad. And I do agree with you, Tonit. It's as if people are climbing ladders without any safety regulations. We're just saying, be careful up there. Don't fall down. And they keep climbing higher and higher and higher, ignoring everyone. Well, no, we're getting like, let me see if Kyle and Aaron, you guys have been in the space probably a little longer than me. You Thomas have as well. And I was just in Montreal and I was like joking with that with people. It's like my friends, they're probably not watching this show and never have. Like my friends, like my pre Bitcoin friends that didn't listen to me in 2013 or 14 or 15 to buy Bitcoin are now contacting me, telling me how great a theorem is. Like that is now bothering me to no end. I don't know if anyone else on this panel is experiencing this phenomenon. Yeah, I'm getting the same kind of thing. I get like obviously my friends are asking me, hey, I heard about this a theorem thing. It's supposed to be better than Bitcoin, should I buy it? And then I get also like people that barely know that I've like met once, messaging me, like trying to get contact me and try to get some recommendations from me too. Like people just coming out of the work would work that I haven't talked to in like five or six years. I want to know if they should buy a theory. Very strange. Let's go to Aaron or people asking you about a theorem. What do you think about the gain Bitcoin situation in India? I don't know much about the gain Bitcoin situation specifically, but I'll agree there's something depressing about this idea that Bitcoin itself looks a lot like a scam. And I don't think it's a scam, but I mean, I don't think it's a scam at all, but it's, it has a lot of sort of attributes of a ponsus game like this. You know, if you get in early, you benefit a lot and there are attributes that sort of have similarities to a scam. And what Bitcoin, which is not a scam, has done is it has sort of paved the way for all of these outright scams basically. Or sort of following in its trail and you know, you even see that sort of motivation or excuses or you know, when you call it out as a scam, people will be like, yeah, that's what they said about Bitcoin. You know, that doesn't mean it's not actually a scam just because people for Bitcoin was a scam. It can still be a scam. So you see that a lot in the whole space and it's, it's a bit depressing. It's from me kind of the way more than illegal use of Bitcoin. This is the real sort of dark side of Bitcoin that people just can't scams and all of these Bitcoin related altcoins or now it's ICOs. And I'm not convinced that every ICO scam, I'm not necessarily convinced that scams are, are that ICOs are scam necessarily, but it's very clear to me that Bitcoin has paved this way and it opened the door for a lot of scams and scammers are very happy with that. Let's go to Kyle Torpy. Yeah, so, but Thomas said it is like a much, this is does seem to be like a large scale Ponzi scheme that's going on in India. I've been trying to get some estimates from people over there because I send me, that's, I have a few people there that keeps sending me like, various updates on what's going on with the scheme. And I'm trying to get some like estimates of whether it's like hundreds of thousands or millions or whatever. And now they're getting like they've bought out front page ads on two of the biggest newspapers in India to pump. Well, the ads refer amidst new book, which is like the cryptocurrency for beginners or something like that, which is, which makes sense because he's obviously just targeting people that have no idea what Bitcoin is. And when you buy the book, you get like a little bit of the MCAP token. So he's trying to like disperse the token that way. And yeah, like what Tone said, there's no one really, like I said last time I talked about the first article, no one really seems to care that much about this Ponzi, huge Ponzi scheme that's going on like in the Bitcoin community. Like no one's really paying attention to it, but like it, this kind of stuff affects regulation of Bitcoin in India. Like the regulators look at Bitcoin and you can just see like the biggest use case right now in India for Bitcoin is this Ponzi scheme. This like everyone that's stealing money from people. And just anyway, we can, we can help relate people to it. Kyle, I know it has Bollywood celebrities. Could we imagine if this was like the cast of the save by the bell and they're out selling us? They've got a currency and they've got ads in the front page of the New York Times. And this is happening everywhere. And instead of our friends, they ask about Ethereum, which say what you will, it's a legitimate technical project. They're trying to do something to have something like one coin or perhaps this gain Bitcoin similarly spread by people. It's trust, right? I mean, it is very similar to one coin too. Like I watched the video that they put on their website and it was like it showed like the games of Bitcoin over the years. And then it showed the games of Ethereum over the years. And then it says like an Mcap is expected to go to $100 by March of 2018 or something like that. So yeah, it'd be like some, some person that was like a big movie star 10 years ago. And they just tweeted out like, oh, I just read this new book by this guy who is a scammer. And I have no ideas of scammer. And all the tweets look kind of the same. So it might have been, he might have just like bought, like paid them to tweet it out. And they have no idea what the project is. I tried to get their attention on Twitter yesterday about it after someone reached out to me, but I haven't heard back. Let me see if I missed any. I'm just going over the article to see if I had, if there's anything else to mention here. It is kind of, I didn't realize this until yesterday the day before, but it is similar to what Josh Garza did with the Paycoin. Apparently, I didn't realize Paycoin. I didn't realize he just released Paycoin to keep the payouts going for a, a Gal miners, like their cloud mining scheme. So it's like he's really going through like the entire Bitcoin scammer playbook from over the years and taking all the scams and putting together into this huge, gigantic Ponzi scheme. And presumably you could keep doing this with other countries, not just India, India. You could pick up this playbook, drop it in a new country and run it until the scams, until there's regulation, till someone wakes up, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't think I, let me see if there's anything else in the article worth mentioning. I did get, he bought press releases and like news, BTC and crypto points news too. But that's kind of things expected. Kyle, but this is no different than the dash playbook, right? I mean, like you have someone like Evan that pre-mined a bunch of dash for himself and now he's able to pay, you know, for sponsorships and sponsor conferences and pay Amanda to make videos. Well, like it's the same playbook, you know, you print a bunch of your own money and then you're using that money to, you know, buy people and influence. And eventually back it fails, but no one knows when it's actually going to fail. It's going to keep going. Yeah, in the 19 million dollars thing that you mentioned before, that's what they claim there is. So I don't think we really know how many tokens they sold. They made 100 million of them, I think. So they're kind of just like saying we raise this much. So that's the valuation of the coin. And I think it kind of, it's also worth reminding people that there's no regulation. So if you gave me a million dollars, I could take that million, take it out, reinvested in my own ICO. Now I have two million, right? Out again, three million, four million, and I don't even need a million. I could do that with a dollar if there's no regulation. I can do whatever I want. And it's even worse than that, right? Because this is in India, four people in India, right? So this doesn't even touch US citizens where someone can at least complain to the SEC that has global jurisdiction. But in this case, I don't think any American was stupid enough to buy into it. So they can't play the cross-border card to get a jurisdiction with some teeth after something like this. Well, it's not just that. A lot of people just don't even want to talk about it in India for fear of retribution. I get a lot of people that send me information, but none of them want to, I can't quote many people on it. Right. Go ahead. I was just saying on top of that, I mean, if you are invested in this thing, your goal is to get your money back, right? And God forbid you've got some friends or family into it. And now you're responsible. So you have absolutely zero motivation in order to bring this scam down. It's like, even if some major investor, like when the New York Metz, I think, lost a lot of money in Bernie Madoff's hedge funds, and if the New York Metz baseball team found out like three, four years earlier that during a Ponzi scheme, it's to their advantage to just stay quiet and delay it for three years, right? Because that guy may not be employed there anymore. And I'm like, why do you want to fast up that you're going to lose millions of dollars if the Ponzi keeps going? Like you just want to delay it as much as possible? I don't think the Metz have any problem losing millions of dollars. They just do it on their contracts. Let's go to Kyle. Yeah, I was going to say there was a story about a bunch of the one coin guys getting caught in India this week too. And they were caught, like, apparently they had gained like 11 million dollars or something like that through a one coin. I don't know if it was like the head of one coin or just like a smaller subsidiary or something. But the police did say it was a scheme where like what Tom was saying, the victims become the fraudsters as well because they want to keep it going. Too many scams, not enough time. Let's move on to the exit question. When will it end? When will people stop investing in cryptocurrency scams? Give me a time period. Tonvese, six weeks, six months or six years. Going to Tonvese is still muted. Can you hear us, Ton? I'm having a bit of a data break. Can you guys, I hope you guys can hear me. Okay. I think the question was how long is this going to go on? Six, what is six weeks, six months or six years? I'm probably going to go between six months and six years, but definitely closer to six months. So I'm thinking more like nine to 18 months. Aaron, then weird. When will people wake up to these scams? Go ahead, you're muted. Yeah. Never. They're not going to ever wake up to these scams. But I am hopeful that it will decrease in size over time. Over time, people are hopefully going to learn. As you mentioned earlier, there's a new sucker born every day. So it's going to continue forever. But hopefully, it's going to decrease over time. Only education and perhaps some painful losses can help this. Kyle Torpey, how much longer will it go on? Yeah, like Tonan Aaron said, it would probably be forever. What we might see is some of the new layer two technologies that can sort of, where you can sort of make it a positive, but you still have control of your funds. Or like we're seeing with Hansa Market where they use Multicig instead of just trusting Hansa Market, some anonymous person somewhere with millions of dollars, which is how the dark net markets have worked at this point. So maybe when you're able to choose an organization that you don't have to trust instead of giving some guy your money, maybe when the option's available, it'll decrease a little bit. It's worth knowing that one of the features of Bitcoin is that once you send your money, it's gone. But that's also one of the downsides of Bitcoin that once you send your money, it's gone. We've got about 503 viewers. Thanks to everyone for giving us a thumbs up and a share that really helps people find the show. I can't wait to look at the chat later on to see how much it's scrolling. Let's move on to issue four, the struggle for the heart of Bitcoin. Original Bitcoin or a mere talkie recently gave an interview on the Tatiana show where he discussed his thoughts on the Bitcoin scaling debate. For talkie, it comes down to issues of trust because he is familiar with the individuals involved. Talkie sides with Bitcoin core developers like Peter Todd over others such as Gavin Anderson and Roger Vier. Talkie worries about the idea that Bitcoin could simply fire the core developers and move on without Bitcoin's values. Aaron Van Weir, to my ask you, does Bitcoin need its philosophy going forward or is it time to leave the past behind? I think it needs its philosophy, not for philosophy sake, but I think that's also there's a market need for that. There's a market need for censorship resistance, you know, bearer cash. There's a market demand for the very thing guys like Amitaki, Peter Todd stand for. So regardless of my personal hopes or dreams, I just think that's a Bitcoin or a Bitcoin that will people are going to want to store their value in or they're going to. If you have a Bitcoin where a group of companies or people can come together to change the rules, you know, is that really a safe store value? I don't think so. I don't think, you know, there may be speculative value. There may be user value for, you know, the getting value for me to be and moving in about all of that. But if you're really interested in storing your value in you know, trustworthy Bitcoin that can't be changed like that, I think there's going to be huge market demand for that. I think probably the most market demand. So, yeah, Bitcoin needs this philosophy for that reason alone. Kyle Torpey, do you agree? Yeah, I agree with what Aaron was saying. I had an op-ed in Bitcoin magazine this week called Y-Segwit2X makes no sense where I talked about how basically Bitcoin needs that the base layer to be as decentralized and censorship resistant as possible. And then you can build these more trusted centralized systems on top of it. So, like, yeah, these businesses can try to hard fork to two megabytes in November or whenever October or November, whenever it's supposed to be. But we can also just have everyone on the same network and not have a split if like we had the base layer for digital cash, the cypher punks. And then you have like this other layer, whether it's lightning, a federated sidechain, a drivechain, there's a lot of options where you can and even tumble a bit to where you can have like a semi-more trusted system that's really still very almost trustless. And all the big companies can use this for micro payments and stuff like that. Like, you don't need what Bitcoin provides to buy coffee at Starbucks, really. Like, you can build that. You can build Starbucks payments on another layer, basically. And you can't do it the other way around. You can't have the base layer be like a more centralized system and then try to build decentralization on top of that. It doesn't it doesn't work like that. Tonveys, your thoughts on the struggle for the heart of Bitcoin. Yeah, that was a really good article by the way, Kyle. And, oh man, I was going to like read one part from it. But I don't think I have the article open. There was just like one part that a mere talkie said, let me see if I can get a real quick on my cell phone where you quote it in. That was really, really good. Okay, here we go. So let me just read something that Kyle, we quoted from a mere. It says, and this is a mere talking. I was involved in Bitcoin since the very beginning. So I interacted with a lot of the different people. I know that the person I know what their personalities are, what their personal motivations are. I kind of think that most of the guys who are on that side have a pure intent, which is an intent for Bitcoin, not for their own personal gain, not to elevate themselves. A lot of them even existed in the shadows or even had the chance to gain power at different points, but then really fight to take power over Bitcoin. That was really, really good stuff. I mean, I mean, I really respect them, you're talking. And this is what it boils down to. Almost everyone that I respect in the space is on the side of core development, is on the side of blockchain, is on the side of secret. And they are against this push for bigger blocks. They are against this segment to ex nonsense. And if you are on the big walker side. Oh, we seem to have a technical difficulties. Ton, are you with us? He was cut off just as he was getting to the meat of his argument. We'll see if Ton rejoins us. We'll go back to him, but for now, let's move on to the exit question, which date is more important for Bitcoin? The July 21st signaling for Segwit 2x or the November-based hard fork to 2x. Let's go, Kyle Torpy. Hey guys, sorry, I'm back. It should be much better now. Somehow managed. I somehow managed to lose my, well, by internet switch to a completely less bandwidth internet. So now I should be back. I don't even know how that happened. All right, you're telling us about the big blockers and then you got cut off. All right. So did you guys hear what the quote that I said? I know you put it on the screen. Yeah, you played the quote good and then you went on to talk about the big blockers and okay. Yeah, no, no, no, I'm good. Now I'm back to good bandwidth here. So look, I respect the Muir talkie. In fact, like all of the people that are on the side of blockchain, there are on the side of core devs, these are the people that I respect. I respect them before this. I hold debate happening. I respect them now. But anyone on the other side of this debate, I have completely lost respect for almost all of them, all of them. Like, and there's no coming back from that. There is just, I don't understand what they're doing. And I guess in our closing statements and our predictions, I'm going to talk about the price and how this whole mess has been affecting price. But it should be like so obvious what the right solution is. And it should be so obvious to the right people in the development of Bitcoin. You need to trust. And like, it just baffles me that people want to hand over their trust to Jeff Garza, to Gavin and Treeson. People that were literally kicked out of core, who are my best guess is a combination of being incompetent and not having the right idea of what Bitcoin is and wants to make it into a new visa as opposed to something that can actually change the world. I mean, the Muir talkie says it better than I ever can. I'm looking forward to meeting him and prog completely come to that conference. We're both on the speaker list in our cover. It's also also worth saying that PayPal, when it was found, it had a similar revolutionary ideas. They wanted to create money for the internet. They were very exciting in the beginning. And then it just kind of became currency that you spend on eBay. It never really became what we dream PayPal would be. Let's go back to the exit question. What's more important? I mean, while PayPal exists, right? It works pretty well. It doesn't just exist. The amount of money held in PayPal is actually bigger than any single bank by savings deposits. Yeah, well, my point was going to be, is there really that much room in the market for another PayPal? I'm not so sure. PayPal does own Venmo, which is the closest competitor to PayPal. There you go. But let's go to the exit question. What's more important? July 21st signaling or the November hard for it? Let's go to Aaron. Good. I don't know about the July 21st. Are you hearing me or am I muted? I'm good, right? Yeah. Are you going to hear me? Go ahead. So I'm not sure about 21st, but August 1st. That's going to be an important day for reasons I don't think I have to explain in this show. That's going to be a key moment. I think the hard fork itself, that's so far away. That's three months after that in Bitcoin time. That's ages and so much can happen. For me personally, it's not even really on my mind. We'll get there all we get there. All right. Let's go to Kyle Torpey. What's the most important date for you? I think it seems like we'll get Segwit before August 1st. I think the more controversial date will be the hard fork. And I agree with Aaron. It's too early to figure out what's going to happen with that, especially since I think we'll see how much support the hard fork actually has after Segwit activates. We might see some people decide they just kind of wanted Segwit, but maybe that's just speculation. But Aaron has a good article in Bitcoin magazine where he goes through all the timelines for Segwit 2X and dip 148 and all that that everyone should read. And one last thing that a mere talky article from today is all based on his appearances on the crypto show and the Tatiana show. So if you just search for those episodes, you should definitely listen to the entire show with his interviews. It's definitely worth checking out. It's always good to hear from a mere. Let's go to tone vase. Tone, are you with as you still muted? Yeah, sorry about that. I'm still getting used to Windows 10 Hall. Let me just open one thing and then I want to share screen. Here we go. Let me share screen real quick. Yeah, hey, so I think, Aaron, I think this is your chart from Bitcoin magazine. I didn't actually make the charts, but it's from my article. Yeah, from your article. Yes, I kind of took your article and I added a date to it. And then I wrote my article. So to me, there are two critical dates on this chart. It's August 1st, a bit 148. And then it's August 11, which is the date that I wrote about in coin telegraph three years ago back in August of 2014. So these are my two most important dates. I don't, I think, segment 2x is done on arrival. I could be wrong. But to me, the critical dates are these. Like, that to me is a critical date. And then August 11, because I, I think the market price is also telling us that contention is coming for August 1st. If segregated witness was a shoe in before August 1st, no way in hell would the price be dropping to $4,150. The market is telling us that there is no way that the clown show sometimes referred to a segment 2x is actually going to do anything. Can I wait in real quick? Sure. I'm not a price guy at all. Like, I don't normally care about the price. But today's drop to me seems to seem very related to the new difficulty period starting and minor synops thing only for segwits. It could be unrelated to your, I don't know, I'm just, I'm not a price guy, but for me, it seems like that coincided pretty closely. Right, right. But Aaron, if you're saying that, um, smiders not signaling for segwit, then that adds to my view of, um, you know, segwit 2x is not happening. segwit 2x will not get a segwit before August 1st, and we will have a chain split. Coming August 1st, now the shorter the chain split is the better. And, um, the August 11th, they, that I talked about three years ago, I'm, I'm assuming hopefully will get everything resolved by August 11th. And the chain split will resolve into one segwit chain. I don't even think about the hard for like if segwit, if segwit 2x never activates segwit. How in the world is this going to matter? The only way segwit 2x hard fork is going to have any teeth is if segwit 2x is instrumental in saving Bitcoin from a chain split. If segwit 2x never even gives a segwit, then what, but like who's going to take this seriously? And even if segwit 2x does activate segwit, no one is still going to take this seriously. There's not going to be a hard fork in October, November, December or any other time. It will be an old coin that will immediately die. It's got a Kyle Torpey for your thoughts on this. Yeah, I don't think the chain split will happen on August 1st. So I'm going to disagree. I don't think anyone, the miners, the developers, the businesses, the users, I don't think anyone has an incentive to see a chain split. I know more people are saying like, oh, a chain split would be good. Everything like that, but there's a huge difference between what people say they want and what kind of code they'll actually run on the network. And it's, I mean, it's possible that there's a theory out there that BIP 148 is what led to segwit 2x and it kind of pushed everyone to just like go forward with that. And if you, I mean, if you look at the two proposals that common denominator is segwit. So it's something everyone is willing to run on the network one way or another. Hey, Kyle, let me just jump back and be real quick. I am almost 100% certain that BIP 148 is what led to segwit 2x. In my mind, that's not really a theory. That's actually, yeah, that's pretty much in the books. And you write, a chain split is not a good thing. I don't want the chain split, but I believe that it's going to happen. Now, the shorter the chain split is the better. And I believe that once the chain split happens, I'm almost first, I think within 48 hours, there will be 20 to 25% hashing power on the BIP 148 chain. Like it's it's going to you'd be surprised how many miners are playing possum. There is absolutely no reason for any miners to show their hand and admit that they're going to mine the segwit user activated software side of the chain because that's competition. They want everyone every other miner thinking that no one is going to mine that side of the chain. So that when they throw their two or three percent hashing power onto it, they have a better chance of finding the first block or two. So it's complete game theory on the miners. And like for example, if I have to pool and bid fury, if they're sitting there saying they're supporting the legacy chain, but as of August 1st, they now start mining the user activated software, which I personally believe they will, along with all of the private miners. Like I'm going to I'm eventually going to set up my miner before August 1st, other people that I know of like a lot of people are just not, they may be signaling for segwit, but they haven't shown their intention yet as to which side of the chain split they're going to go at. And I think that on August 1st, the user activated software side of the chain is going to get so much hashing power. Everyone is going to be caught by surprise and I'm going to be on the show saying I told you so. That's what I'm looking forward to. All right, a bold prediction by tone phase. And I think we're going to move on to predictions or story of the week. Aaron van Weirden, we didn't tell you about this part, but there's a part at the end where you have to either predict something or give us your story of the week. So here it is, you're on first. We could come back to you if you're not ready. Yeah, well, I've got predict anything. Predicted anything or just tell us like what was the most important story of the week for you. Get back to me. All right, let's go to Kyle Torpey while Aaron's thinking. Let me see. I'll pull up what I'm working on now so people know what to expect next week. I sent a bit pay CEO Stephen pair a few questions about SegWit 2X and HardForks because there was some people saying he like completely switched his mind after they took money from BitMan. So that I'll publish his responses to those questions early next week. I'm not sure where yet. Let's see. The yeah, I'm not sure if there's really any. Oh yeah, I tried to reach out to Hansa Market to get a interview with them. There's some questions about their market and stuff like that. So maybe they haven't responded yet. So maybe I'll have something next week. And if you want to get all of my stories and stuff, go to KyleTwerpey.com and follow the newsletter. Just follow me on Twitter. Or however you want to follow. Definitely subscribe to Kyle's newsletter. He's doing a daily Bitcoin newsletter. I think at KyleTwerpey.com probably around there. Go to tone veys. He's got some charts. All right, so I'm going to go with the price. This is scary. So this is the weekly candles, the weekly charts. The weekly charts like I've been saying people the entire week on Monday, once the price went below 2462 on BitStam. The long term view was on a short trade. And I tweeted this out the moment like the same day. Then I said, you know what Bitcoin is a short. Shorting Bitcoin is dangerous, but that's if that's what the chart is saying, then that's what I have to say. So the weekly chart looks very ugly and getting uglier. It's getting very bad. This is very reversible, by the way. All the miners have to do is start signaling for Segwit. Start signaling for VIP 141. It's too late. They already screwed up. It's too late to get 141 in. But all they have to do is say they're going to mine the user activated software VIP 148. And if all of this reverses, go on. They still got a day or so. Like the deadline is they would die now. We should like if all mine are started to signal. That's not, yeah, but that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. So they already screwed up. Miners were given this golden opportunity to actually do something good for the community to push in software safely. And they screwed it up. They turned it into a political voting system. They will never get that chance again. So if the miners care about the price of Bitcoin, they will signal their support for VIP 148. If the miners signal their support for VIP 148, this whole thing reverses within a matter of 24 hours. It'll be back above this green line, taking us out of bearish territory. But for now we're going down. The good news is on the daily chart, the daily chart has, well, the bad news is that it's broken another point of support right here. It broke support here and here. So now your next level of support is down here by the green line in the 1900 area. If the price of Bitcoin falls below 1900, I will be falling for a $1200 Bitcoin, probably by August 1st. This is what the stupid miners are giving us by doing what they're doing. Now here's the good news. Bitcoin became a short trade on the daily chart right here on this too. And today is an 8 and tomorrow is going to be a 9. So tomorrow's candle on the daily chart does suggest a potential bounce in the price of Bitcoin. But like I said this morning on today in Bitcoin and this very network that you had this nice day, this number six right here, this nice bullish day off of the guy at the on the Fed video and then the trend went back on one good day, one good piece of news is not going to change the trend. This trend is ugly. We're about to close at the lowest daily close since the all time high. I am not bullish Bitcoin whatsoever. Tomorrow will we get a 9. There might be some bad cap bounce for one to four candles, one to four days and then we're probably going to resume the bearish trend. My perfect buy point is at $1200. Until we get to $1200, you will not hear me say the words perfect buy unless the miners actually get their shit together and start acting like they care about Bitcoin and just getting segred in there without a heart for it. It's terrifying to see us fall below the purple thanks, Tony. Let's go to Aaron von Weirdham. Do you have a story of the week or a prediction? Yeah, so I figured I was what I was going to say during Kyle's bit and then Tony's told my founder. I'll just go ahead and agree with Tony. I think I'm not a price guy. I'm not a prediction guy but as long as this uncertainty continues, as long as there's some search about August 1st, Segway had locking in or not in time or not, that's not going to be good for the price. I could see us dropping until until that source itself out. Again, I'm not a price guy. I'm not a prediction guy but you ask me to make a prediction. More bad news. Next time I want to hear a positive prediction out of you. And my story of the week is that I got a new microphone arm here so hopefully I have better sound. We're doing the whole Joe Rogan Howard Stern thing where the microphone keeps getting closer and closer to my mouth. I'm dealing with that. Something that's happening. And we also talk this week about trying to do more support for the show. As you can see on the World Crypto Network, we've been doing daily Bitcoin videos. If you like these videos and you want to subscribe with your credit card to our Patreon account, you can pay as little as $2 a month, it's $12 a year, or if you'd just like to send Bitcoin, we have a Bitcoin address so you can always just pause the video, send a little Bitcoin if you like the show. As you can also notice, the ads are turned off on this network. And if you want to keep the ads off, you've got to send some donations so you can keep the lights on. But enough of that nonsense, we have about 576 live viewers. Thanks to everyone, gave us a thumbs up and a like and subscribe to the World Crypto Network down below. And until next time, we're out of time. Bye bye.