The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best bitcoins, the hardest crypto currency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Martin from General Bites. Hi guys. Josh Gagala from Voltoro. Adihou folks. Kyle Torpie from the Crypto Feed. Hello everyone. I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one. Issue one, one billion dollars in Silk Road Bitcoin moves for the first time in five years. At first, the internet was very puzzled as to what was going on with over a billion dollars in Bitcoin seized from the Silk Road that suddenly became moving. Then we found out why. Justice Department seizes one billion dollars of Bitcoin tied to the Silk Road website. Agency says that a hacker stole the funds in 2012, 2013 and left them untouched for years. Martin, what's your thoughts on these new billion dollars in Bitcoin? Okay, it's quite a large amount. I don't know what the amount was in 2012, but from what I understood is that the Bitcoin, the site called Hekt, the Bitcoin called stolen. Ross at the time, the operator of the website found out who stole it and threatened him or told him to give it back on via social media. So what I think happened here is that once Ross got arrested, I believe it was in the library somewhere in San Francisco. I don't I can't remember really. It's been so, so long time ago. They also took his laptop and his laptop was home, so it wasn't encrypted at the time. So I think they went through the entire data on the laptop and found out the social media profile of the hacker in question. So I think they eventually just waited and the moment the Bitcoin's moved, they knew where to look because he probably had some large IP trails. So yeah, it shows, yeah, Bitcoin, not that anonymous and crime in many cases doesn't pay so yeah. I think it's the risk of the job if you're a hacker, you're in the risk of getting caught, right? It doesn't seem so uncomfascatable to me. Josh Kagala. Yeah, this is an amazing story. I was kind of hoping that Lin Olbrick had it, but nope. Um, actually one thing that I'm still confused about is did they catch this original hacker and sort of wrench attack the guy? Is that, is that what happened? I think he forfeited the funds because it was obvious that it was from hacking Silk Red. Okay. But I haven't read, I didn't read through like the entire report, so I don't know if he actually went to law enforcement and like turn himself in and then they just took the money or I don't know if it was law enforcement going after him or maybe Thomas. I couldn't find that any information on that, but I did find somewhere that Ross already knew his social media profile when he hacked him. So I assume that this one is laptop somewhere or had trails on his laptop somewhere. Either Ross talked or they just found out with the data on the laptop who that was and then they put a, I think a little bit of a flag on his name. So the moment those bits go and it's moved, they probably went out and just paid him a visit. You know, and the guy probably thought he was anonymous after all those years, but in the meantime, I wouldn't be surprised if his phone was stepped. There were like helicopters flying over his house all day. So yeah. I had the potential of a billion dollars. If you can't run away from a hack when you have a billion dollars, when can you ever run away from a hack? Yeah, really. You can obviously imagine. Let's go to Kyle Torpey, your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, to the point you just made, it makes me think about the relatively low amount of liquidity and coin mixers. So like even though he had the billion dollars, like he couldn't really move it because you can't really mix a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin easily. So I guess his options were limited in that regard. I mean, he could wait until Bitcoin privacy improves. But even if Bitcoin privacy improves, people have to like choose to switch over to the new system that will be more private and it needs to get the same sort of network effects that are built around Bitcoin itself today. So yeah, that's one interesting way to look at it there. I mean, if public Escobar can build his own prison and manipulate the entire system, I'm sure this guy could have just mixed a little bit to, I don't know, go to some sort of country that doesn't really look at you. And then I don't know. Yes. I think there's more to this story. Yeah, whenever there's, well, yeah, that's the other thing. Like for Silk Road, you never really know what's going on. Like even with Ross, he was interacting with law enforcement and didn't even know it. And then law enforcement is stealing money from the website. And those guys only went to jail four or five years, I think, and Ross is in jail for the rest of his life, at least for now. So yeah, that's another way to look at it where you have all these anonymous entities working together online behind Silk Road. But you don't really know who's behind this pseudonym. It's very strange. It's a large amount of money suddenly moving, moves well into the exit question. What should the US government do with their $1 billion, Martin? I think they'll auction it off. I don't know, I don't, yeah, I think personally, I think they should hold it because it will cover some of the, you know, money they printed in the last year. But they'll probably auction it off. And I don't think it will hit the exchanges. So it won't do that much for the price, but it'll probably be the Winkleforce Twins or you know, some bullish big time investor that will snap up bits of this order. So I think that's good. I don't, but I don't think they will get back into relation like, you know, they won't be back on cracker or coin base or any of those exchanges. They'll probably go into some Wales, Wannets and Stader, which is good because it makes the rest of the Arbitcoins Satoshi's go up a value because there's less to, you know, go hit the exchange. What do you think? Josh Kagala. I mean, the US mafia really, the ones that everyone thinks they're voting for really should be using it as a reserve currency. I mean, if they have a few brain cells, they would think, hey, let's hedge maybe our entire Federal Reserve system has not got that much of a future. And let's just keep this as a plan B, but they probably won't. They'll probably just auction it off to the highest bidder like fools. Kyle Torpy. Yeah, I think the auction is what will happen. If I recall correctly, Tim Draper got his first Bitcoin from a previous Silk Road auction back in the day. So it probably will be someone like that who just intends to hold it for a very long time. Or rather, probably more than one individual with this amount. But, you know, if everyone had just voted Kanye 2020, maybe he would have taken it and, you know, divvyed it out as universal basic income for everyone. And, you know, we'd be looking at a different situation, but, you know, fortunately that didn't happen. Well, I agree with everyone that saving the money would be a great idea for the US government, especially with the massive deficit that trade war with China, all of that. But forget about that. We're Americans and we're going to spend that money. So I think we should spend it on Smithsonian museums. I think there should be a Smithsonian museum in every single state, 50 states, 50 museums. And if it's not enough money now, they can hold it till later. I said the same exact thing when they offered, when they auctioned off the Silk Road bitcoins all those years ago. And very clearly, they could be building some incredible local Smithsonian museums right now, but they'll probably just wasted on a tank or something. Moving on, issue three. Let's see, change the windows, change all the windows. Issue three before that, check out World Crypto Network dot store where you can get the treasures don't float t-shirt. The World Crypto Network mug, the Bitcoin not bombs 2020 Bitcoin halving edition. That was so long ago. Can you imagine it was this year? And World Crypto Network the t-shirt. Be sure to give us a thumbs up and a share down below. Issue three Russian Hydro Power giant opens Bitcoin mining farm. A major hydro power miner in Russia. It's finally happened. We talked about it so many times about the importance and the value of Bitcoin to hydro power as a battery and as a potential positive for all the negative stories about Bitcoin using too much energy. Kyle Torpe your thoughts on this new Russian Hydro Power giant. Yeah, definitely agree that people say Bitcoin is horrible for the environment or whatever, it can also, as you said, make it act as sort of like a battery storage in some ways. But in terms of this specific story, I mean, I think it's what I read is like this, I don't really know much about like, because on Russia, but what I read is that this company accounts for 7% of all the electricity that is in Russia is powered by them. So if you look at it that way, it's just like more institutionalization of people having a reason to care about Bitcoin at all. Like this Bitcoin is helping this gigantic energy company increase their revenues by getting rid of wasted energy, which allows them to create more jobs, hire more people, all that kind of stuff and improve the economy overall. So if we see more instances of this of Bitcoin becoming like a part of the economy in each country, then that gives the governments of those local countries a reason to support Bitcoin and not ban it. And in some countries where you've been seeing like incentives for Bitcoin mining and I imagine we'll see a continuation of that trend over time. Bitcoin, good for the economy and good for the environment. Josh Gagala. Yeah, gas generally power is one of the biggest and closest industries to government. The government's got a war for power for energy. And so for an energy company like this, so you know, Russia's got gas prof. I'm not sure how close they're tired, but these are huge concerns. And so once now that Russia's starting, I'm pretty sure maybe that might swing the decision of what to do with the Silk Road coins. If the power structures, large governments are starting to head towards Hodling crypto. So I think this is a very interesting move on the side of the state, apparatus is around the world and I wouldn't surprise me if more do it, especially ones that have access to free energy that have hurt surplus. We're seeing already Adelaide South Australia has for the first time reached one hour of purely solar power coming from people's homes, totally decentralized. So all this has to do is now grow out and all of a sudden you have hours of surplus, kilowatt hours and that power can be stored in either hydrogen fuel cells, batteries or in crypto. Martin, your thoughts. Yeah, it's a bit too excited. On one hand, they're banning Bitcoin, Bitcoin wallets. They're making it impossible for the average man to own some Bitcoin because they need to be tied into their rubles scam and they don't allow free money. On the other hand, if you're a billionaire and you own an energy network, all of a sudden you're allowed to generate all the crypto, you can possibly generate. So this is, I always question their motives when I hear about news from Russia because there's always an agenda somewhere. But I agree with Josh, this is, it's very bullish if one of the largest energy companies in the world is going into crypto and for the environment, I think it makes perfect sense. It's the reason why all the miners are in China during the rainy season. They operate on practically free hydro energy, which is cool too because if your energy costs are low, you can even continue to mine using those old, old, written off miners that are not profitable elsewhere. So you want to constantly replace all your mining equipment, which is less wasteful. The source of energy is green. So yes, I'd take, go for it. We have Russian Bitcoins very soon. Exit question following up on what Martin said, if this project is successful and they are able to mine Bitcoin for hydroelectric power, will the success of this project encourage Russia to open Bitcoin up to its citizens? Kyle Torpey. I mean, that's like a really big question. I mean, the way I see it is playing out generally is that we're going to have, you know, there's like all these altcoins. And right now, those seem like, you know, the competition for Bitcoin. But I mean, those are all just kind of noise. And eventually the real challenge is going to be Bitcoin versus the central big digital currencies, which will be completely controlled by the state. And then Bitcoin is like this bashed of freedom that exists as like an alternative. So I mean, as we see even governments being incentivized to adopt Bitcoin, it's going to be, I mean, it's really hard to predict how that plays out over the long term. I mean, I assume we'll see what we've kind of seen already in places like North Korea and Venezuela, Iran, Russia. It's Bitcoin for the oligarchs and people in power, but not for the, not for the plubs. So I think that's the general trend right now. And then, you know, we'll have to see how things play out once these central bank digital currencies start to introduce. Maybe they try to permit those more because they definitely don't want to lose the control that they have. That's a bad trend. That trend is not your friend. Josh Gagala, freedom for Russian Bitcoiners? No, they will exactly what Carl said. Like it's all about seeing if this technology is interesting, getting finally onto the train of like, oh, yes, this is interesting. I must admit. And then finally buying some and then going, let's print some of this paper and buy the fake, buy the Bitcoin. You know, so they'll go off print and I'm sorry for all the Russian friends out there. I'm not, this is a terrible accent, but, but what I, you know, it could be any country really. It could be any country what they will do if they print their own money. They will print their own money by Bitcoin with it while it still has value and and and and collate. And then once their whole system explodes in the say, well, we're going to build our own altcoin. But meanwhile, they'll all have their own Bitcoin, the oligarchs. Martin, Russian Bitcoin freedom? I'm afraid not. I think it will be double standards. If you're a billionaire and more millionaire, sure, you can have your far away bank accounts and you're a Bitcoin, if you're just a common man on the street, forget it. No, they want to allow it. It would break their financial system and they want to know it. So unfortunate, but I have to agree with the panel here. They're probably not going to be allowing this freedom. The double standard is going to continue. And I just hope that everybody managed to get a little bit of Bitcoin before these guys come in and buy it all. That's always been my hope that the normal people could also benefit from Bitcoin as well as these giant corporations and so on and so forth. I think I think one thing to add there too is like the central bank digital currencies are going to be tied to universal basic income, probably. So that creates like another dynamic when it comes to, you know, the average person choosing between a central bank's digital currency and Bitcoin, they can take the central bank's digital currency and also get free money along with it too, which makes the Bitcoin sales pitch a bit harder. I think that's a great idea. They should have tried it with Venezuela and the Petro and some of these other ones. It's a great way to force local adoption because you pay the people in it, then they have to spend it. So sounds like a good plan. Moving on to issue four is Iran becoming a Bitcoin nation. Last month, Iran daily, the official newspaper of the Iranian government reported that the administration had amended its cryptocurrency legislation to make digital assets exclusively used for funding imports at a time of increased pressure on the country's normal use of hard currencies. In practice, this means that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are mind officially under government oversight that the coins will have to be supplied directly to the central bank of Iran. We talked about before about Iran, perhaps using Bitcoin to overcome sanctions specifically from the United States. But are they going even farther? Are they going to bring Bitcoin to the people of Iran? Josh Kagala, let's go Martin first. I think we'll have a similar case as with Russia and their hydra power. It's not for the common man, any Bitcoin you make. I believe they first required every minor to register and get a license. And they even had a sort of like a finders fee or a fee if you would snitch on your neighbor who was secretly mining in his basement. So this way they rounded up all the illegal miners first. Now they get a special license to mine and then they have to sell them to the government. So I don't think the Bitcoin's mind or the men's to be distributed among the people. It's just the government here. I think we're at a time where the government realized the value of Bitcoin and the hopelessness of their own fiat currency and their scrambling to get some one way or the other. Not exactly a Bitcoin utopia. Josh Kagala. Not totally agree there. I think it's again one of these situations where the state has all the power, has all the fiat and wants to control that money. And it's still such a funny concept to me that governments can basically make maths illegal. I mean that's really what we're talking about. Software, certain software, if you hold certain software that's illegal, it's quite stunning in its stupidity. But nevertheless I think there's other countries that are allowing, of course, will allow more and more their citizens to use and pay even taxes with that. These countries will be the showcase in which case the countries that are doing this silly stuff and making software illegal will eventually have to curl over and say look what are we doing. This is idiotic. We're getting left behind. And give to Caesar that which is Caesar's. For all else use Bitcoin. Kyle Torpy, your thoughts. Yeah, I think Josh really hit it on the head there. I agree with you guys. It's basically the Russia situation as well. And what Josh was saying actually made me think back to late 2013 when the big story was China banning Bitcoin. And it was like, that was what pretty much was controlling the price. Crash and go way back up depending on real or fake news coming out of China. And during that same time Fred Wilson was talking to senators and other people in Congress. He was basically, there was one they were trying to figure out how we're going to regulate Bitcoin. One of the things that he said was this is about freedom. And he was making the same kind of point that Josh was just making where this is free software. This is speech. And Fred Wilson was saying, I hope in a place like America we still respect these values. And that's kind of what, I mean, even in the West, like I'm not convinced that Bitcoin is going to be allowed so easily. So I mean, we're talking about Iran and Russia right now, but eventually we're going to be talking about the UK, the US and Canada and the Western nation. So I think that's where we're going to have to see where do we fall on this issue of freedom versus complete control. And I think Bitcoin is sort of an obvious example where you really just have to come down on one side or the other and it's not much of a gray area anymore. Moving on to the exit question, if it's not in Iran and it's probably not in Russia, where will the Bitcoin utopia be? Where will the country that allows its citizens and even encourages its citizens to use Bitcoin? Your guess, Martin. I think right now that's probably Panama because if you start a company there, you can do your bookkeeping in any currency you want. So if you select Bitcoin as your cryptocurrency, you can do all the books of your company, even in Bitcoin. And I think this is one of the first countries that allows something like that. They already had that before Bitcoin. You would like instead of having their local dollars, you could do it in say, euros or in yen, whatever you wanted. But I think this is bullish. I believe ocean builders is now putting a cruise ship out of in the waters in front of Panama full of bit corners. You had a timing for a cruise ship. It's a bit odd during COVID, but I like the initiative. I think maybe, yeah, maybe it's there. It's definitely not in Europe. That's one thing I know for sure. A man, a plan, a canal, Josh Kagala. Where will the Bitcoin utopia be? It's a neta-stand. Basically, it will be online because all it is is the biggest part of Bitcoin is online. Is people that want to do something, programmers that want to do something for a project that's somewhere else, people that move around the place. You're just getting paid in something and I think this is the biggest place. This is the biggest chance that Bitcoin has, first of all, is to be used as a payment method for citizens of the internet and that aren't really caring about their governments. Perpetual travels used to be the thing, but I guess with COVID, traveling slowed down a lot. But definitely, yeah, interneta-stand is the place. That sounds like a good pick. Let's move on to predictions or a story of the week. Martin, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? I've just been focused on the price. It's been so bullish. I wouldn't be surprised if it hit 16,000 somewhere next week. But there are stories of the week. I think many people are currently watching the price. It's really, I think that the price bill will explode very soon. I think we're hitting that sweet spot where Bitcoin isn't oversold and everybody is watching it. We're not yet all over the mainstream media. So I think yes, there is. We should all get our seat belts and we're going to the moon again. Josh Kegala. Yeah, there's some really good conferences online. I'm not a biggest fan of online conferences, virtual conferences, but there's really important ones coming up. Really good ones. Two of them. BitGive is giving a great conference about philanthropy and Bitcoin and different speakers from different, I guess that word is hard to speak out for. But from two different systems that they've got, they've got BitTrack which tracks your donation through the internet and they've got BitGive which is all part of the same thing. But they're having this amazing conference. It's free. Go check it out. It'll be really, really good. There's some amazing projects out there that are working with Bitcoin to make giving something. The other one is, is LabidConf has is literally one of the best conferences in the world. Every year it's amazing. Of course, this year they can't do it. But what they're doing is an online one. A lot of the speakers will be in VR and it's going to be a lot of fun and you should definitely check that out. Check out labidconf.com. Good stuff, Josh. Glad to see the conferences are still trying to do something even though we can't really do anything. Kyle, Torpy. Yeah, I don't know if you guys talked about the finance thing last week. We did last week but if you have any updates or you just want to say what's going on, yeah? Yeah, well, I guess it was like more earlier last week but the only thing I'd say about that is it's definitely part of a greater trend to watch if you combine that with BitMex what happened there and just any exchange that is operating without KYC and giving business to Americans is probably going to be targeted by the US government at some point. I mean, it's similar to like Liberty Reserve back in the day where they were based in Costa Rica but at the end of the day the US government can show up in another country with guns and tell them to get in line. So I think that's a pretty big trend to watch generally. So hopefully, I mean, I can add more there, but I'll just end it there. I'd like to see people voting for something like that. Like, do the American people want as a vote to be saved by some organization like the SEC or whatever do the American people actually want this? I'm pretty sure they'd say no. Well, after you don't get a vote, you get a dog and pony show that the whole world needs to suffer through for months on end. Actually, if you guys really need a president, I've got to say what the hell is your president doing for four months going around, you know, just not working, basically trying to save his job for four months. I mean, do you really need the guy if he can take four months off trying to save his job? I mean, you know, this election's been going for two years, Josh, but that's a two-year election. So I mean, that's ridiculous. Millions of millions of years. But for real things, like the fact that you don't want your government to go around the world, canning Bitcoin entrepreneurs for trying to make a better world. Well, as more Americans hold Bitcoin, maybe they'll become more politically active as well. Kyle, just one question. What's your opinion on those decentralized exchanges? I know they're not ideal for connecting to say ATMs because it takes some time for the exchange to actually happen, but it doesn't that, you know, it doesn't force more people to those decentralized exchanges because I think this is what's happening slowly here in Europe is that people are fed up with all the excessive regulation and they're just, you know, taking the risk and going to a decentralized exchange instead. Yeah, I think the problem that Bitcoiners have had with decentralized exchanges for so long is really on the USD side or the Fiat side. Like even the stuff on Ethereum now, they call it a decentralized exchange, but you're trading Bitcoin for this highly regulated stablecoin from Coinbase in circle. So it's like, what is the real deficiency there in the long run? Like eventually they'll just shut down USD coin. So it's the on ramp and off ramp for the Fiat that's the issue there. I mean, there's been so many proposals over the years, but you can't really get past, it's kind of related to like the Oracle problem. Like at the end of the day for decentralized exchange from Bitcoin to Fiat, you basically just have to meet someone in exchange cash. Like there isn't, there isn't really another way to do it. I mean, you can send cash in the mail too, but then you introduce another can of worms. So in front of... Yeah, everybody trusts the mail these days, especially in the United States. But I think we're going to head towards the end of the show. My story of the week, just like everyone else here and probably everyone watching at home, I've been glued to the TV watching the election returns. It's been very exciting. It does look like Vice President Biden is leading in most of the remaining swing states. That seems very unlikely that President Trump is going to find the votes to win the election legitimately. However, we are entering into the coup d'etat phase, the interregnum. And it'll be very exciting to see how this turns out with all of the court cases, the alleged, but no evidence at all vote fraud, which isn't going to work in court. And then the horrifying possibility of making the state legislators overturn the vote to keep the autocrat in power. So very exciting stuff, lots of news going to be with you guys again today. How about that billion dollars from the government? I share hope they spend it on Smithsonian's Smithsonian museums in every state. In Washington, DC, they have a bunch of Smithsonian museums and in a copy, they're copying Paris and they're all free. You can anyone could just go in, but not every citizen lives near DC, not every citizen gets to visit DC. We have lots of cool stuff, Archie Bunker's chair, the flag from the Star Spangled Banner, all kinds of cool stuff that could easily tour if we had more Smithsonian museums. So a billion dollars Smithsonian museums, I said it last time and go look it up five years ago. I said, spend the money on museums. Instead they gave it to Tim Draper and now he's richer. So that is great. Good job, government. Thanks so much to everybody for joining us. Be sure to give us a thumbs up and a share. If you haven't already, subscribe down below, hit that bell. YouTube will send you notifications. If you don't click on the notifications, they'll stop sending them. So I also follow us on Twitter at Mad Bicquins at World CryptoNet. And we've got some tweets out about this show, but that's going to be it for today. So until next time, bye. Bye. Are you sure you want to end? They added a new...