The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest Satoshi, the best Bitcoin, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Ben Arck from BTC, IoT. Hello all. Welcome back from general bites. Good evening. Josh Cagalla from Voltoro. Good night. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the world crypto network moving on to issue one. Issue one Bitcoin 20,000. According to chart watchers, the path to Bitcoin 20k is now wide open. Under previous resistance breaks, the pledging cryptocurrency has continued to climb to over $18,800 in Friday trading less than $1,250 from its all time high in 2017. Martin, I ask you, will the price of Bitcoin break the all time high? Absolutely. Especially considering that the whole retail phomo hasn't even started yet. This is just institutional investors getting into the game. And I still have to hear my neighbors starting asking me about Bitcoin again. So yes, I think we'll definitely break that all time high. Ben Arck. Yeah, my staff and I mean, it's such a healthy price action. I see there'll be a slight reversal and then boom, it will just pop straight back up. A lot of people trying compare to 2017, but to me it's much more like 2016, particularly with the hardening stuff we had. It just feels like this is just the beginning. Bitcoin, we're doing what it does. So yeah, just hold on to the seat and just enjoy the ride. But we would always say, back in the day, we'd say, well, we're here before Ball Street. And big finance have gotten to Bitcoin. So inevitably we'll go up. But now, it's finance, big finances dipping their toes in these institutional investors are dipping their toes in, but we're still here before nation-states and more finance, big finance falls into Bitcoin. So yeah, plenty of room for the price to go up. We're less and less early all the time. Josh Gagala. I mean, much respect to you, but that's the dumbest question ever. Of course. Of course. I mean, it's just it. Of course it's going to go. I mean, once it passed 15, got to 16, 17, I thought, okay, it's heading to 20, it's going to head up there. And when it went, you know, when we waited years after the MapGox collapse to break 1000, because that was at the all-time high then. It finally got to 1000. It didn't even pause to come back down. It just went straight through when all the way up to 20. So if we're thinking 20 times from one grand, maybe it's 20 times from 20 grand, that means it's just, it could go silly. And that's of course the next question that's everyone's asking, where is the top last time when we were almost at 20 grand, everyone was saying, no, just wait a week, it'll be 32, 36, 40, even 50. Then on the way down, they said it'll be 6,000, 3,000, 1200 people kept saying, Martin, the price of Bitcoin this time next week, higher or lower. It will be higher, but I think it will be more difficult to go from say 20K to say 100K, so say for 20K to 40K, then from 10K to 20K, because it just needs more money flowing in, because the market cap is far bigger. So I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a little bit longer to reach this massive, elusive 100K or something, but it will definitely be higher than it's now. Ben, ARC, higher or lower. I mean, that's just not how magic Gold money works. So I don't know if you can get the memo, but it just goes up. Similar things, people said similar things, way back when there's a dollar, $10, a couple of hundred dollars. So I don't know, I think you can just go up to it and in a amount, we're just going to make all of our eyes water. So yeah, higher, maybe, no, higher, higher. I mean, it will probably go back a bit, but then it'll be back up even higher. So I'd be on 20K maybe by the end of the, by next week. Kagala, is it all bulls? It's all bulls. Yeah, I mean, you never really know it. You know, this is why you have prediction markets to try and determine a true price in the future, rather than just me. But I would expect that there'd be a little bit of a touch on 20 and maybe it will come back a bit, retrace some of those technical analysis terms. A little bit. But yeah, like what Martin said and that it gets harder and harder, it is true. And this is the hope that's been there since day one is that by the time it gets to silly moon levels, it becomes so hard to move the price significantly that that is what rides out volatility. And I mean, this is the whole reason the euro, the dollar, anything else, isn't super volatile like Bitcoin is because it's just, you just have to move far more money to be able to even touch the sides. So really, that's the goal is to get to a point where it's so damn high that it becomes not so volatile. And I hope that we can get more adoption of the Lightning Network before that happens because otherwise people just won't be able to open channels at that stage because they just won't have enough money to open a channel. When everyone says the price is going higher, it must go higher. And when everyone from your high school calls you and tells you about Bitcoin, it's time to sell. Wait a minute, those are the same things. Moving on to issue two, Black Rofx, chief investment officer says Bitcoin could replace gold to a large extent. It sounds just like what all the Bitcoiners have been saying for 10 years. But now it's being said by fancy finance guys. Are the fancy finance guys here to save Bitcoin? What could we ever do without them? Ben Ark. Yeah, no, of course it can. But I mean, we're still at the point of just finding gold lumps on the floor and then passing them between each other as a way of passing value between each other and storing some value in the mood. This is before the myriad of commodity uses for Bitcoin have really been explored. So yeah, it is so much easier to move gold and buy, sorry, so much easier to move Bitcoin and buy Bitcoin and get involved in Bitcoin than it is to buy gold. I suppose unless you use a wonderful services like Josh's. Kind of stepping back to a previous question or topic on Bitcoin price, I think that partly why you have such a strong price shift upwards is because you have all this built-in momentum. And we've known people who've been involved in Bitcoin, how much technology is being built around Bitcoin and how much it's undervalued. So to me, it just kind of feels like it's popping out to try and achieve it's closer to its true value, which is much higher than it is. And then partly why there's that pent up momentum is because we are starting to just explore all the other things, all the amazing things you can do with Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. So there's some fantastic innovation, great innovation, which is happening on the Lightning Network and on Bitcoin. It's used to progress, technology to continue to get to continue to get better. And hopefully now we'll start to see more exploration of its commodity uses beyond storing value and transferring value, which is a great use, transferring value between each other. Or exploring those use cases in more nuanced and interesting ways. So yeah, absolutely, it's better than gold. So I have a very good gold book friend who used to go surfing and I'd say buy Bitcoin by Bitcoin, I think when it was at like 500 quid or something or 600 quid and he was refused and then he was kicking himself when we had that last price to 20 grand or whatever. But he did tell me when we were close to sell at a decent time. So, you know, but now he is interested in Bitcoin because Bitcoin is popping up on his trading platform and he's starting to as a gold book relate to Bitcoin and how many ways it gets compliments. A lot of the ideas behind holding gold holds. So yeah, so more gold books are going to flood into Bitcoin. I imagine some Bitcoin is will flood into gold too, but yeah, it's far more useful and easier to use in gold. I think Ben's right that Bitcoin does have a secret inner value, but these people have no idea what that is. Josh, I hear that the new people to Bitcoin have just let us know that Bitcoin doesn't even need a payment system. What do you think about that? Yeah, exactly. You know, this is the thing is that gold is 3000 years old. The Bitcoin is 12 years old or whatever it is. It's very young. And it's like saying we have now 4K televisions, we don't need cinemas anymore. Let's remove the pandemic, the situation. But it's like you want to be diversified in multiple hard assets. And Bitcoin is the hardest of assets because there's only 21 million mathematical least secured. It's really, really important to understand that gold is something that lives in a DNA of humans through every culture around the world. And we as technocrats might think, wow, Bitcoin is the new gold. But it's foolish to think that the whole world is just going to shift off of gold, think that there's no value there and move across the Bitcoin. So why would you, if Bitcoin is at an all time high, put your money back into fear to hold the value of thinking it's going to crash, rather than put it back into another asset like gold or property or forest or something else than fear? Gold is a fantastic, it works so beautifully together with Bitcoin that I've never understood this ridiculous quarrel between gold bugs and Bitcoin bugs. I feel like we are against a single enemy and that is the printing of useless paper that has absolutely no value is apart from what people believe the value is and the network effect that you will believe that the deli down the road will take that euro because someone paid it to you only hours earlier. But to store that euro in a bank for years on end and expect that to hold value is so silly and so ludicrous that and people are waking up to this and people especially people living in South America are very, very quickly waking up to this and corporations that are holding large amounts of money are now going, Bitcoin might be a store of value and seeing other players. So they're jumping into Bitcoin but I can guarantee you they're also holding gold, they're also holding property, holding hard assets that are out of the reach of banks that are fractionally reserved and legally fractionally reserved and this is the sickness, this is the cancer in the financial system that we need to remove ourselves from and not this ridiculous quarrel between gold and Bitcoin. It is a stupid, stupid argument and anyone that goes on about it doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. Barry. Martin, they found an asteroid full of gold but they didn't find any Bitcoin or any finance guys on the asteroid. What do you think Martin? Yeah, we'll have to ask Elon Musk to mine it first so that will probably take a couple of decades. But I totally agree with Josh on this. Those companies now are saying well we've invested in Bitcoin, they also probably have invested in gold and it would make sense to diversify assets a bit. You know, personally I would not hold gold except maybe around my neck in some Bitcoin bling but that's not to store value. It's just, for me it's just impractical but if you have a way like, you know, to, I'm not naming any company but say have an easy way to get into gold and out of gold, you know, between crypto and gold that I see you know, there has a future. You know about prices. If you look at the price of a house or a car and you compare it, now there is price with that say 60, 70 years ago. If you look at the price in Fiat, you'll find that the prices went up dramatically but if you look at the price of a house in gold and compare it to the house price in gold 60 years ago, you'll find that they're almost similar. So people complaining about that the house market went through the moon and it's too expensive to purchase a house. No it's not. It's just that the Fiat money that's useless nowadays. So it's really important to realize that is that we, you know, being, they're stealing from us every, every minute. They constantly keep printing money. So you need these hard assets and yes, I think for me, if I would have the option, I would diversify but you know, I'm a Bitcoiner so it's just Bitcoin for me and the house that you need got to live somewhere but you know, I totally understand larger corporations, they'll diversify in gold, crypto, then crypto meaning Bitcoin. And the rest is just ignore it, no store of value. And yeah, and that it, of course Bitcoin needs a payment layer. I think this whole lightning network makes it stand out from gold, I think in ways we didn't even imagine at first. So I know we don't listen to the newbie rich Bitcoiners, just take it from the OGs that we need payment layers. We need to diversify the assets and you know, don't listen to a dinosaur that runs a gold back bank that you should only buy gold, you know, like Peter Schiff. Is he already in jail or is he out of jail or is he still investigated? Anybody knows that was later some Peter Schiff? I didn't hear anything about it. Wow. No, I thought he was being investigated or something. Oh, I hope not. No, okay. If I'm doing that, that was I've frosty interview, wasn't there was wise stepped in? Because someone asked him about the investigation which is happening towards Peter Schiff here. Yeah. So yeah, he was being investigated for tax avoidance or something. Yeah, I think. But it's usually for the gold books. No, then those are the ones screaming that Bitcoin is just for criminals, you know. I usually don't get into the discussion, but so I am getting off topic to almost. I agree with maybe that's what we always say. Maybe that's what we call a top of the page. We're diversify, but with Bitcoin, it never seems to work out. I've always seem to diversify into less Bitcoin. Let's move on to the exit question. Bitcoiners are famously anti-authority, strong libertarians. Why are so many of them so excited that they're talking about Bitcoin on CNBC again, that these major hedge fund investors are suddenly saying the exact same thing that Bitcoiners have been saying for 10 years, only it feels like 20. Ben Arck, do you bend the knee just because they have a television channel? That is because it's the Trojan. So we're all happy that the Trojans affecting the systems and the finance. That's a good reason. Josh Arck. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely. It's a Trojan, but I always say if Bitcoin doesn't get you because of your philosophy of libertarianism, then it'll get you because you need to pay someone overseas. In that it doesn't get you because your friends are all in on it and you want to get up there. That doesn't get you, everyone's getting rich and you want to be rich. If that doesn't get you, then something else, the crazy maths behind it will get you. There's so many reasons. Basically, it's unavoidable that you will eventually buy some Bitcoin, even if you step into some weird shit coin first because you think, oh, Mr. in the first part, so I better try and speculate on the crap coin just buy Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin. Oh, I'm sorry, even buy, I'm sorry. You know, everyone says buy Bitcoin. I like to say earn Bitcoin. Go earn it. Not just in it for the money. Scruffy looking nerf herder. And Martin, why do they care so much about authority? I thought they were anti-authority. I think it's over the years Bitcoin has attracted different type of enthusiasts. Very early on, we were just there for the technology. I mean, we're all here for the technology. But then came the libertarians and anti-government nut cases. Sorry, you can't generalize. But then came the dark market traders. They were just drug dealers and then came the mom and pop, the retail investors. And now we see big institutions taking notice. So I think the more over the years Bitcoin has grown, but just face these different faces, it also attracted different crowds to Bitcoin. So I think this is, and as long as it's gross, everybody's happy. So this is why you still see the Bitcoin OG cheering when PayPal all of a sudden starts accepting and selling Bitcoin while we, as far as I remember, we didn't like pay using PayPal. That's the reason we got into Bitcoin. So while all of a sudden are we excited? Well, PayPal excites and we're excited. Okay, good. But it's like investment companies, I have to look them up. But apparently, there's all on the stock exchange. Now start taking notice, they start investing in Bitcoin. I think most of the dealers by now are in jail because all the dark markets have been taken out, but they'll probably be cheering from jail. Oh, look, Peter Schiff, finally mentioning Bitcoin again. So I don't, it's just, it's a growth phase, I think. This is, yeah, I don't know what's next really. Kind of. Yeah, but we were already there partly. I think we talked about it like last week, not two weeks ago, like fence, reweiler or Iran, you know, if you want to buy their oil, you have to pay some, some, some sets. So yeah. I'm, I'm just glad that we have so many pro government and pro authority cipher punks with us, the kind of people that want more backdoors in software. That's what we're looking for in Bitcoin because remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Unless, of course, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy. That's just like, what's it? Art of war or something? I think it was a dick Tracy. But everyone should check out the world crypto network store at shop. World crypto network.com. Save me some money. You could get world crypto network, the mug world crypto network, the t shirt or the trezzers don't float shirt and the Bitcoin not bombs, special Bitcoin, have it in 2020 edition at shop. World crypto network. calm. Less domain names. Issue three, Cynthia Lumis is bringing Bitcoin to the US Senate, apparently homeland or style. I don't know how that's going to work out. But Republicans, Cynthia Lumis of Wyoming has won a US Senate seat in Wyoming and apparently she's a bit corner going back to 2013 when she invested in the fledgling cryptocurrency. Lumis says she doesn't have as many Bitcoin as she wishes she has, but she wants to support the cryptocurrency in Congress. Josh Gagala, I ask you Bitcoin in Congress. Is this a good thing for Bitcoin? Bitcoin doesn't care about your Congress or your weird magic box of votes. Doesn't care about your guns and your ammo and your politicians. It just wants a private key to send it somewhere else. Nah, politicians. I'm glad that she got into Bitcoin and she likes it and that's great, but I'm not a big fan of politicians. I think things can be done better than politicians. It's just politicians with politicians. The whole reason you want to become a politician is because you think you can control someone's life, know how people should live better than they do and know this. The whole point of Bitcoin is math is the rule, no rulers, but the rules. Lots of rules, no rulers. There's so many progressive ideas that have come out of Wyoming, so many computers and scientific breakthroughs come out of that prairie state. I'm sure that the Senator has an impressive background studied all the necessary philosophy to understand what she's talking about. Martin, your thoughts on Bitcoin and the Senate? I don't think Bitcoin cares. It's good for her that she's got some knowledge about Bitcoin and I hope that the investment does well for her. I just hope she doesn't start giving us advice on what to do with crypto. Like some of the other new big shot Bitcoiners tend to do. I think she just to store them safely somewhere in the private case. Private key somewhere in the safe on the hardware wallet and then just do what she does and not bother us with it. I don't care really. I don't care about Wyoming. I don't care about the politicians. I just focus on Bitcoin. I don't care who owns their money. Good for her. Then Ark, Bitcoin goes to Washington? I'm going to tell you the other side from these nihilist maniacs. I think she did say that she was going to be a Bitcoiner. She was going to encourage her hands off approach when it came to things like regulation which will be useful for people trying to set up Bitcoin businesses. I say if I go to a conference sometimes you'll bump into someone and you'll say, why are you here? What do you work as? What do you do? Then I'll say quite, quite passionately they'll be like, I work for a bank. I'm like, cool. We've got you behind the enemy line infecting them with Bitcoin. Cool. There's this chicken, the Wyoming, working with the Wyoming is the same net. She's the first female. We can grasp for that. She's a Bitcoiner. Of course she's a politician, a politician politics. She's got to relatively high up. She's clearly must be missing something of a soul to be able to get to where she's got to. But not, I mean, congratulations to her. I think it's very positive that there's a Bitcoiner. Some of the things she said in the podcast they quite like. So he asked her how she was going to help educate people on the hill about Bitcoin. She said, well, we'll try and target the staffers who work for different leads and try and communicate what Bitcoin is to them because they're the people who the lead will turn around to and say, why is this Bitcoin nonsense? What is it? Having someone as well, she did sign like she knew what she was talking about in the podcast. Then the topic of Bitcoin pops up and then you have some stuffy old conservative who says, all right, it's just a drug deal, isn't blah, blah, blah. Then she'll blast them out of the water with her, you know, maybe medium level knowledge on Bitcoin, but she just knows enough to argue a good case for Bitcoin. And that's a positive thing too. So I think it's positive. And yeah, it's, you know, in the perfect, you know, anarchist world, then we wouldn't need government on any sort of, you know, architecture of state, but it exists currently in the world we live in. So to have people there who understand Bitcoin somewhat and can fight its case and can help educate people behind the line. That is good. I thought the podcast was very positive. And while doing Bitcoin magazine as well, they produce some excellent content, you know, for reaching out to her. And because obviously I imagine she's very busy, but to get her on the Bitcoin magazine podcast, that was quite an achievement. So well done to them. I just think this is a great topic because I get to the side on the same side as the libertarians and the crypto anarchists. And I get to say that Bitcoin is code doesn't need your permission. Bitcoin doesn't need permission from Congress. Bitcoin is code doesn't care. Yes, Congress could try to influence the Bitcoin. They can influence people taking their money in and out of it where you can use it. They can try to block it through the internet and we'll route around it and we'll have a fun game. But yes, Bitcoin is code doesn't care. But she's the best thing. Go ahead, Ben. Sorry. You know, hopefully there to take out some of that friction instant. And she's like, yeah, OK, Bitcoin doesn't care. And you know, we can all build Bitcoin businesses. And without we could do it in a way which is kind of an ominous and we won't have like government oversight, whatever. But it does help if there's people behind the line who are helping remove friction, which we might come across if we were trying to sell something which involves Bitcoin. I just think the best part about being a Congress person or even a senator in the United States is that you get free healthcare and then you get free healthcare for life. It's an incredible program where all we need to do is make every American citizen a member of Congress for just one day will qualify for the healthcare plan and then boom, every American citizen has healthcare for life. And we can just call ourselves representatives. I think it's a great idea. I don't have an exit question on this one. Well, I've got a big deal for Bitcoin. OK, go ahead. Where do you go? So my exit question is she said that towards the end that she imagines about accumulation, you know, about people being asked diversified the portfolios very easily into something like Bitcoin, like regular normal people. And the courses or yeah, yeah, or that she shits prairie devices. She imagines, she imagines that, you know, Wyoming will start buying Bitcoin and diversifying the portfolio to have big. So which state will be the first state to accumulate Bitcoin? Well, I mean, Wyoming was already accumulating horse, shoes and blacksmiths and Annville's. They have a lot of Annville. Because of logical staff then. It's right there. They're very heavy. They have a cobbler. Ben, they still have cobblers. Faria. Why would you state? Why would the state like Wyoming have to diverse their portfolio? They're not investing. Are they they're spending tax money? Yeah, but just printing money. They're just getting from the federal reserve. We've got teachers, teachers unions that have massive portfolios in this country. So we have all kinds of things. There's a great line in the Simpsons where they said a town with money is a bit like a mule with a spinning wheel. He don't know how he got it and he don't know what it's for. I think I think she said in the podcast about store of value that her job before she became Senator was around oil and gas. I don't know a paraphrase, but I think she said that her job was to ensure that the value they extracted and converted from oil and gas to revenue could be secured in a way which would keep its value. And that's why Bitcoin is beautiful. So yes, I agree. I think you would support my plan to use the Bitcoin and confiscated from the Silk Road to build 50 Smithsonian museums in each of the 50 states, one museum, one state. Yes. It'll take off. It'll take off. We've got lots of money. We've got lots of money. You just have to keep talking about this. All right. Moving on to issue four issue four poker players are enhancing their winnings by cashing out in Bitcoin. Finally, a real life use case for Bitcoin online poker business is buying millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin as the winners want to cash out their winnings and to continue to gamble by then buying Bitcoin. We've finally found a use case for Bitcoin, Ben Arck, your thoughts on poker players and Bitcoin's killer app. Well, I don't really like gambling just because I know if I engaged in it then properly then I would just become a ferocious gambler because I'm someone who kind of drifts towards vice. I don't know. I would have no control. I think there's 43% of the gambling sites have had an uptake of 43% over the whole COVID stuff. Maybe that's just people just at home being bored, but I don't know. I think it can kind of pull in quite desperate people who you're trying to want to get some money and it can be quite a dangerous vice. I don't know how you get around that to be honest. Bitcoin makes gambling really fun and easy to engage with. Go on LNTX and do a coin flip and you'll spend the next hour flipping coins for first the Toshis on your WhatsApp group which is a load of fun. That's about as far as I go with gambling. I think the problem with gambling is the bank always wins, but I suppose with Bitcoin you are your own bank so I don't know what that means. The story is that the gambling sites give you the option to exit out into Bitcoin and they've had more people exiting out into Bitcoin. 90% of their customers exit into Bitcoin because Bitcoin's prices are going up. That's a good thing for the gamblers to, however they get that, however people get to Bitcoin. As I said before, my palies got a traditional trading application, suddenly the Bitcoin logo pops up there and you can buy Bitcoin. On that gambling website, suddenly the Bitcoin logo pops up and you can start engaging with Bitcoin. On PayPal, Bitcoin pops, all about impressions. There's just Bitcoin, Bitcoin everywhere and I think that's why we're having our crazy uptick in price. However people get there, whatever, that's cool. Gambling just kind of scare me a little bit, but in that same regard, I understand that Bitcoin is very, very useful for gambling and particularly when you start playing around with micro transactions on the Lightning Network. I have to stop myself from wanting to try and develop gambling stuff on Bitcoin because it's so much fun, particularly when you've got multi-signature things and all sorts of technological functions for being able to provide and I get a fun gambling experience. I'm also a more honest gambling experience where you don't have to trust just the website you're pumping your money into. Obviously we should stop everything we're doing and you should start working on that then. We should make a version of Satoshi's dies, provably fair with the Lightning Network. But this Bitcoin withdrawal option is so popular on this gambling website for the poker players. They'll pay 1.5% cut of their money to get it in Bitcoin. That just shows you how popular it is and their expected return. I agree with Ben, we need to continue to try to adapt and to get more desperate people like gamblers, stock market traders, conservatives, libertarians. People like this, we need to draw into Bitcoin with all of their hopes and dreams so that they can experience these incredible underground swings, leaving them wrecked. Yes. I did like it at the end of the article and it was like, oh, you know, inevitably when the Bitcoin price starts to go down and people start dumping their Bitcoin on us and that's just something we're stuck with. And I like that. It was sort of like, you know, like we've opened the door. We've let the trojan in and I was stuck with that. We can't get rid of it. Well, the company is definitely going to have to buy a lot of Bitcoin in advance with the idea that poker's player was going to want it. And if they suddenly changed their mind like people did with Mastercoin all those years ago, suddenly you're stuck with a whole bag. Josh Kegala, is this the killer app for Bitcoin with drawing your poker winnings? You know, the thing is that it's actually not a very new idea. Poker players were some of the first, very first early adopters because it was one of the ways to get your winnings and put them somewhere where the state couldn't get hold of them and stuff. I know personally a bunch of poker players and I don't, one of the reasons was because because there's so many laws around poker online poker that a lot of these sites are pretty sketchy. And so they, it's very hard to pay out into a bank if your bank would just freeze your account if you've come from a poker site. So it's always been, but back in the day it was about like getting linden dollars first and selling that for like, do I love thing and then getting do I love to pass over to Mark Gox where you can get some crypto it like there was, poker players have always been the backbone along with drug dealer. No, but no, I'm just saying that it's been a long time and if you go to some of these crypto events, there's always like poker tournaments and stuff on the sidelines. You know, it's a big part of this industry that no one's really talked about that much before, but it's definitely poker has been one of these funny card games that really is sort of part of the ethos of Bitcoin, yeah. Drug dealers, poker players, prostitutes, bitcoins, oh my, Martin, your thoughts on poker and bitcoins. I personally, I don't gamble. I don't like gambling. I don't like the gambling industry. It's bordering mafia in most cases. Even the poker is technically not gambling, you know, you can counter cards, so you're not taking a complete gamble. There's lots of full play where many people on the table, especially online, can communicate with each other and share their hands and then the unsrespecting party on the table doesn't know that everybody is working against them. So there's a huge chance for fraud. You know, people gamble. I think it creates lots of problems. People get addicted to gambling. Families get into problems. You know, we're building like Bitcoin and blockchain applications where we want to make it better world and then getting the cockroaches of the online commerce in. I don't think that's good for Bitcoin or for anyone really, except maybe the guy that owns the poker table. So I'd rather not see gambling and Bitcoin combined or poker for that matter. But you know, from what I understood, the article was more about poker players want to get paid out in Bitcoin because they're willing to pay premium for it because they're effectively hiding it from the tax man. So you know, this is a dodgy as fuck really. I don't want to be part of it. You know, this is also one of the reasons you will not find a general buy sati in a casino. We don't sell to casinos. We don't want to deal with the business. We don't want to be even close to them. You know, I think we have our ethics. You know, if you want to make a better world, make a better world. But don't try and say you want to make a better world and turn around in place. Your machines and casinos, you know, that's not making a better world. So I'm a bit on this, but I know several of the guys within our company have the same attitude towards gambling and crypto. It's like, you know, start your own shit coin chain and use that. You know, I believe Atari is now doing it. So they'll start some some crappy ERC 20 token where they'll do their gambling on. Okay, good for them, but no, I am not welcoming them, but you know, Bitcoin doesn't care. Bitcoin will go wherever it's treated well. So you know, they'll be there, but I won't be cheering on the sideline myself. Sorry, that was like my two cents on it. I agree with Martin that gambling is horribly unfair, except for Ben's brand new lightning gambling, which is going to be totally provably fair. We'll all get a cut off the casino and we can retire exit question. When will Amazon accept Bitcoin? Ben Ark. But don't they accept PayPal? That's pretty close. Do they? I mean, I remember eBay accepts PayPal on Amazon. Didn't Amazon try and do some shit coin? I think I I remember. Do I think I think I think I'm I haven't had an Amazon. Amazon. A very long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I was trying to shield Bitcoin. Years ago, Amazon 20% of all Amazon US orders was already paid with Amazon points, just like most or many coffees in the US at Starbucks are paid for with Starbucks pre-paid coffee credit. So in a way, they are already they're already doing something very similar. So they have no intention. They have no, no, they're nothing to gain by accepting Bitcoin. They'd rather have people spend their own points because once they lose the points, they automatically become part of the, you know, never to be reclaimed coins in the Amazon empire and it will pay for for Jeff Bezos again, you know. So yeah, I don't know when, but I don't think they need to accept it. Yeah. Anyway, because we got plenty of those credit cards that you can store your crypto on and then spend it anywhere. Massacarter Visa is accepted. That's what's your agreement. I agree with Martin. It seems like Amazon does already have their own currency. They even offered me like $110 if I bought a $100 card once. And of course, I did it because it was the extra $10 and I can't stop spending money there. So they can do that anytime they want anytime they want to sell a gift card. What's that? Remember, purse to IO? Do you have a word for purse to IO, didn't you? You can shitter a little bit. So like, what was the business model there? Like how did, because you, you, you would, with the Amazon vouchers, do they pay people in Amazon vouchers as like a tax fiddle or something and then the main thing that I'll understand is the Amazon vouchers for the gift card market is very complicated and very fluid. And sometimes people will pay you $9 for a $10 gift card and sometimes people will pay you $7 for a $10 gift card. And that from that margin, people are able to make money on both sides and it's very complicated and fishy. I think fold app still exists and you can get kind of like a reasonable discount, like 3% or 5%. I know that at purse, sometimes they were offering 10 or 20%. I just don't know if we know where that's coming from. Gift cards are just very complicated. People are paid in gift cards because we've had like a whole lot of gift card traffic coming through Ellen bits. And I know other like, you know, custodially type things, whether if I'd gift card traffic coming through. I think the Amazon people are paying gift cards. Amazon pays their mechanical Turks and gift cards, but at smaller amounts though, I mean, we're not to really make a lot of money on the Amazon Turk, you really have to make it. I've heard some casinos might pay their employees in gift cards. I don't know what's going on, you know, in other countries and things. But the gift card market is just much bigger than we think it is. And it's much more fluid. I am sedan. I've seen drug dealers accepting Apple store credit. So it is like you said, an alternative currency. And this is why it's also bound under this new AMLD 5, directivity anti money laundering directive in Europe that maximum amount you can use per payment is limited, very limited now. And it's only one gift card per purchase. So you can't purchase an expensive ticket item with several gift cards. You can no longer combine them. And it's only for small amounts. And I think this is the reason. And it's not to do money laundering. Of course, they say it is. But the fact of the matter is money is very, very fluid. If you look through the continent of Africa, a lot of the reasons why they have now got M-Pacer is not because it's sorry, it's because they basically people were like, I can't pay you for this watermelon, but I've got some SMS credits. I'll just send you the SMS credits, which is effectively a credit. It's effectively a gift card. And eventually people just start sending SMS credits because everyone's got a phone, everyone SMSes. And at the same time, SMS was sort of getting more and more useless as WhatsApp. But the SMS credits were becoming useful in as a currency. So now the whole continent of Africa, it's very, very, very common to use SMS credits still as a form of payment. You can pay pretty much everywhere in most countries in Africa. And that is the reason why they don't want you to buy too many gift cards because gift cards can very, very quickly take over from euros if they get enough network effect. And they start becoming fungible and all this sort of thing. So this nonsense that I keep talking about with money laundering is maybe a small thing. Maybe it is a small reason. But the large reason is they don't want to lose use cases for the euro, for the dollar, for the yen. When you lose use cases, you lose value. Just like when we hear PayPal is now got Bitcoin, everyone's like, yeah, because it's a use case. So we're all wanting more and more use cases. And if people start taking away use cases from the euro, of course, it's going to be made illegal. But I just want to quickly go back to the purse thing. Ben how purse, as far as I can remember, correct me if I'm wrong, Thomas, is that you put something in your wish list. And because you couldn't buy a Bitcoin with a credit card because you can reverse credit card transactions, what people did was you said you would pay in big, coin and you'd pay above a sorry cheaper, you pay cheaper in Bitcoin and someone else would go and buy your thing that you had in your wish list, your book. And the Bitcoin would be released to them and you would receive the book. So because they got it cheaper, purse got a cut, the person got it at a premium above and everyone's happy. You definitely have to be a gambler if you're if you're buying a Bitcoin on a 10% hit already and you think it's going to go up more and you're buying it on a credit card with a 20% of APR. I don't know, it just sounds like a lot of a lot of risk for the people using the service on that side. But yeah, I agree with what Josh was saying about a use case and PayPal and but real money laundering isn't done $5 at a time. It's not done with these M pace of people. It's done by large corporations moving millions of dollars in and out of companies. Excellent. I'm not even thinking it's not my back. It's like a show, advertising. Allegedly, allegedly we're reconnected but I think we match to go an hour or something so Jitsi cuts us off. It's part of the new cruelty. But yeah, I was going to say that large corporations, a laundered money through double Irish bookkeeping and all this nonsense. That's over there. They laundered money through HSBC. HSBC does all the money laundering. Actually a big bank steal the money off. I and G as well and ABN, MRO, they're all into that. I think it's their core business, right? They take money and they do it. To be honest, I have one billion in the slats where they sized the slot for the briefcase. The briefcase in the slot. The entire art industry is actually money laundering. Why does some paintings go for millions of dollars when it's like some wacky thing? It's because traditionally what you do is you get an unknown artist, you buy a bunch of their paintings and artwork and then you make them famous. All of a sudden you can sell their paintings. You just pour money into these people and then you turn around and say, no, I've just got a really expensive painting. Sounds like you're describing the entire crypto art scene. No spoilers now. No spoilers. Don't tell people before it happens. But we better move on to predictions or story of the week. We're almost heading to the end of the show. Ben, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? Go ahead. Is the end of the show? Not really. No, I've not really got anything. Apart from, I always am Rusty Russell tweeted about his bulk 12 thing for lightning which will be reusable invoices. So we get an invoice you can send money to more than once, which is very useful. Very. I mean, it's still a draft. It's still a draft. So, and in it, in the draft he does give props to Alan URL. So that's great. I don't know if we need it to be honest. I think maybe it should just be kept off second-learn, just be an Alan URL thing. But yeah, he, he, he, and then by thinking about his tweets, I ended up going to some of the blockchain commons work on the sink called UR which is universal reference, which is a way of encoding QR codes to make them kind of animated and things so you can communicate like partially signed transactions, Bitcoin transactions, which are very big lumps of data and hard to communicate over a QR code. So you could use like an animated QR code and stand that's pretty cool. And because one of the new features of a bulk 12 invoice is that you can split it with a plus. So you could have like a couple of invoices, which is great for, sorry, it's great for me when I'm filling my little hardware devices and I'm trying to get a bloody QR code on one of these tiny, tiny little screens. It makes that a little bit more useful. So yeah, I'm excited just by the progression, which is happening. Also, I don't know if I can talk about it, but FHF sent me, I think I can because it's like a public repo, but FHF, I'd get it up, but I can't. So, sent me a link to a repo is working on, which is a Twitter, like a decentralized Twitter called Nost, NOS, T-R, and it's like with all of his work, it kind of like, it's taking me a while to try and get my head around, but I was very excited about it, very excited about Bitcoiners, thinking outside of the world of just Bitcoin and thinking of all these other things we could turn into protocols and decentralize. And yeah, obviously he's done some great work and he's working on other bits and doing some great working elements bits as well. So, big props to FHF and looking forward to seeing NOSTA progress. And then big props to Rusty Russell on his bolt 12 seems to be getting traction. And hopefully we will have, well, I mean, we've got a lot of new URL, but yeah, maybe we'll have these reusable invoices and that could be a pretty cool thing to have on Lightning, very useful. We could print out a QR code and stick it on something as opposed to having to have a little screen to display the QR code. Again, when you see the price going up and you're like, wow, it's Bitcoin really worth this much. And then you go and look at the work which people are putting into Bitcoin and then the wider environment. And you think, yeah, hell yeah, it's heavily undervalued. Its value is a million dollars of Bitcoin, but the rest of society just needs to reach it, understanding. So, yeah, excited about that. But yeah, that didn't really have a story of the weeks or so. Yeah, made it up. Josh Kugala, prediction or story of the week? Well, towards the end of 2017, Boltoi was one of the largest gold sellers in Europe. And I think it's going to get the same way again. We're going to become one of the biggest gold retailers. Because people just will start hedging these massive prices and cross averaging out of Bitcoin. And yeah, I think that's my prediction. Martin, prediction or story of the week? Well, we've been so busy. I didn't even notice the price going up at first. So, we were like, we're recently we launched the every trade, the IO app, but it's a bit of work to manually download all your transactions from the exchange and then import them into the accounting app. So what we did is we launched the connectors, API connectors for Binance, BitStamp, BitFinex, BitMax, BitRex, Coinbase, CoinMade. We will be Kraken, OKX and the GeneralBytes, ATM. So those are all life now. So it's like all automated bookkeeping for those. And we're still working on BitFly, CoinSquare, local Bitcoins, ShakePay, Poloniacs, Bexful, out of my head. I think HitBTC. So it will be the extremely comprehensive connector. So it will basically connect all your trades from everywhere. So we were so busy debugging that and getting that tested that I didn't even notice the price was going up. And Thomas, all of a sudden people were all time high, question mark, on telegram and stuff. So I was distracted and I looked and I thought, oh, yeah, we're almost at the all time high. Well, I think we're not even near the new all time high. It will go up a lot more. And as Josh said, it will just keep growing. And I think people will diversify into Gold again too, because instead of the old coin season, what they called it, I don't think there will be one. I mean, have you ever heard any of those large companies that now invested in Bitcoins say, well, we just bought a hundred million dollars of repo. We just bought a hundred million dollars of, I don't know, whatever dogecoin. No, you don't hear that. It's just Bitcoin. It's lightning and it's gold. I think those are the three big winners in the next bull run. What do you think, Thomas? Well, we're having a coup here in the United States. So that's my story of the week. These two lawmakers from Michigan have just traveled from Michigan to meet with the president of the United States in the Oval Office. And he's going to make them an offer that they can't refuse. And they'll go home and maybe just figure out how to reject the will of their state and to choose their own president on their own. So exciting stuff here in the United States. We'll have to see. I don't see any of these banks or anything buying ripple or Ethereum or anything, but Bitcoin. So that's been pretty good. But I think we're heading towards the end of the show. Anything else you guys want to add for the end of the show? I think we're back on, we're reconnected on the Jetsy thing. It cut off after maybe an exactly an hour, not sure. So maybe there's some reason to it. But we're running out of time until next time. Yeah, like and subscribe. Buy t-shirts at shop.wereocryptoneetwork.com. And until next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.