The Bitcoin Group, the American original, for over the last ten seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Dan Eave, the crypto-raptor, and I'm Thomas Hunt from the world of crypto network, moving on to issue one, issue one Bitcoin protests in El Salvador against cryptocurrency as legal tender. Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in El Salvador, angry at the introduction of Bitcoin as its legal tender. President Naive Bukali says the cryptocurrency will help. Salvadorians working abroad to send money home, but demonstrators fear it could bring instability and inflation to the impoverished, Latin American country. Some protesters even set fire to a brand new Bitcoin machine while others held signs reading Bukali dictator. At the same time, El Salvador's credit rating could take a hit amongst Bitcoin adoption, Warren's S&P global. Dan Eave, what do you think about El Salvador, the protests, and the potential for bad credit for the whole country? You're muted. It seems that it's intermingled with then protesting what they feel is a dictatorship. Although even though I think it's the eye, there was an 85.7% approval rating, which is pretty high. Considering most people in the UK certainly hate Boris Johnson, so if he had an 85% approval rating, that would be pretty ninja. Whether that's part of the dictatorship, whether that's part of the manipulation of the people, nobody knows. But I think also, they said he was having his second successful term, but via maybe work around to the constitution, as it were. But the thing about them fearing the instability and inflation is that I don't mean any offense to any dollar lovers, but obviously, El Salvador uses the dollar at the moment. They don't have their own native currency. What does bring inflation? Actually, it isn't definitely Bitcoin. It's definitely printing trillions of dollars. That's one thing. It's also definitely having an infinite amount of money can bring inflation. Those are two things that definitely do bring inflation. I think it obviously is a bit of a risk. The S&P, obviously, they're the opposite of the S&P. The Unique and Rich, which sounds a bit coiny in a way, without going down that to have fun staying poor route. But the S&P, they've said it's high risk for El Salvador. One of the things they were worried about is adoption due to the low rates of crypto literacy. But if you've used lightning, you get given a QR code, you scan the QR code, you receive the Bitcoin or send the Bitcoin, and that's it you're done, or you receive Bitcoin. And then you just choose whether you sell it using the government, the Chivo wallet, the auto sell, what feature or whatever it is, or you keep it. Now, obviously, there is speculation on whether the Bitcoin goes up or down. But in terms of being crypto literate, it's hardly like the old days of Bitcoin where you had to download a Qt wallet, wait for it to sync, and then it was empty, right? You don't get Bitcoin straight away. So then you had to go to Verwax and then buy Lyndon dollars with euros, and then with your Lyndon dollars, then you buy Bitcoin, and then you send it to your Bitcoin wallet. And all of that. So it's definitely, I think the levels of crypto literacy that you need to get involved now, the standard is a lot lower, and it's being made extremely accessible. Now, what's interesting is the pushback, they say it like with an authoritarian authoritative stamp. There's pushback from two incredibly respected entities, the World Bank, and the IMF, incredibly respected. And the World Bank said, oh, you know what is dire? The consequences of adopting Bitcoin, that could be dire. But you know what really is dire? Printing money, fractional reserve lending, credit culture, and yeah, going back to a double dire, infinite amounts of money in a treasury, because that just deflates the currency, obviously, and then it makes people's money worth less. If imagine a system where you and I just create our own currency, but you can just make more money. It's like if you're to play monopoly, and the banker just keeps on giving them the banker is also a player and they give themselves some more money. And you're like, hey, but hang on a sec, but you've just made more money. That's unfair. These are not fair rules of engagement. They obviously did cover the environmental and transparency shortcomings of Bitcoin, not realizing that perhaps that it's a public ledger. So it's kind of definitely transparent. So saying that it's got transparency shortcomings is a bit silly because it's way more transparent than all the other banking methods that we currently use. So I think in all, obviously, it's a big ground experiment with El Salvador. And there is risk. But for starters, you know, who doesn't care about bad credit ratings, people who have money. And if this does work out for El Salvador, you know, hoarding Bitcoin, and being able to hoard Bitcoin, then there'll be people who don't care about a bad credit rate. It'll literally be like, go, the S&P, like going, oh, they've got a bad rating. And they're like, oh, I've got thousands of Bitcoins. Pace off. Oh, you know, so yeah. I just think there's a big difference between a dictatorship and a democracy. So this is pretty clearly a dictatorship. And the whole time that we here on the Bitcoin group have been talking about this issue and talking about El Salvador, we've been talking about how the law is just being put into action. The president, his economic counsel think it's a good idea. So they're putting it into action. And that's what we see now in the streets. The people haven't been educated about this law. They haven't been given a fair chance to decide whether they like it or not. So in a kind of knee jerk reaction, they're saying no to Bitcoin. But what I really think they're saying no to is this paternal attitude by the government that you should do what we say because. And I think the people would prefer a democratic system where they have a government that they can elect that would maybe move more slowly when you have a unilateral system with one person in charge can make decisions like this. But you also have that problem where no one will respect it. The people will be mad even if it is a good decision. This could be a good thing for El Salvador that the people hate for a bad reason. Or it could just be the people are tired of dictatorial government and they want some stay in their vote. So as for the World Bank and all of that, I do agree with Dan. I think they're kind of being reactionary as well. They're worried about this experiment succeeding if Bitcoin took off in El Salvador. It could take off in other places. They wouldn't want that now. Would they? So it's a bit interesting to watch. But once again, we don't get to choose who adopts Bitcoin. Anyone can any government can any country. And we can't say yes or no. So this is a test for us as well. A test for the Bitcoin community and example to see what happens. So moving on to the exit question, Dan, do you think El Salvador will continue with their Bitcoin plan or will some small protests and the burning of a Bitcoin machine lead them to completely change their mind and cancel? Well, going back to that apparent approval rating of 85%. That's pretty high. It's 85%. Eight and a half people out of 10. And so 1.5 people isn't really enough to think to make that much of a fuss over something. Obviously, you can go and protest. But if it's largely consensus, right? Way more than a 51% attack than maybe it has got a chance to go through. And that what we're seeing is more of a reaction reaction reaction reaction of the the kind of dictatorship moves. Mentionally about the constitution kind of being tweaked in order to be able to get a successive term. So maybe the Bitcoin thing is just a side a side, a side issue. And really, the main reason why people are right, right, right, and protesting. And but I say, right, because they burnt something and obviously, you know, damaged properties. Is that right? But yeah, the end of the day is 85% enough to be, you know, to keep a solid ground and keep the protesters in the minority. Perhaps so. The project will continue, but it's a bad look for Bitcoiners. It's a bad look for El Salvador. And it makes our heart. It makes us harder for us to say things like Bitcoin is voluntarily. And anyone can have Bitcoin or not have it when they're forcing you to have it in El Salvador. So once again, we can't decide who uses Bitcoin moving on to issue two. From one dictator to another dictator, Hungary debuts statue in honor of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Hungary becomes the first country to honor Bitcoin creators Satoshi Nakamoto with a public statue. Today, a statue of Bitcoin creator was revealed in Budapest, Hungary in front of a large and passionate crowd. The bronze statue located in Grafisov Park was sculpted by Gregor Lerica and Tamis Gile. When sculpting the statue, the pair wanted to capture the mantra of we are all Satoshi, making Satoshi's face reflective so that when you look at the statue, you remind yourself that you play just as an important role in Bitcoin and Satoshi as everyone else does. This is also because the gender, height, weight and age of Satoshi Nakamoto are unknown, making it impossible to sculpt a descriptive face of the creator of Bitcoin. Meanwhile, in Hungary, democracy has died. There's been a takeover by the dictator. There's a new kind of authoritarianism. And even the EU is checking it out, saying that Hungary's democracy crisis demands a European response, more trouble for Hungary, but at the same time a very nice statue. Tamis, your thoughts on Hungary and their very nice statue. Well, obviously it's an incredible statue, and I like that part about the reflective face. We are all Satoshi. What a nice message. I've been to Budapest. It's a beautiful city. Been there a couple of times, actually, pretty amazing. But yes, it's very unfortunate what's happened to Hungary's government. The authoritarian Orban has risen just as Trump is attempting and still attempting to rise in the United States on the idea of fear of foreigners. They have refugees in Hungary. People worry about the refugees taking too much and not giving back to society. This fear is amplified by a dictator who goes out there and makes speeches and fires them up. And sadly, I fear that's what's happened to Hungary. I hope they can change directions. It's a beautiful, wonderful country with a horrifyingly sad history, especially if you go to the terror museum in Budapest and really understand that this country right in between Nazi Germany and Soviet Europe was conquered by both, like one after the other. So they've had all this authoritarianism. It's sad to see them having it creeping again, but very nice statue. I remember when mad bitcoins used to report on small issues like this all the time. We've been, you know, some little shop somewhere except Bitcoin would be like, it's amazing. They take Bitcoin and now we have statues in the public square, even though it's Hungary, which is an awesome place, unfortunate government, but great job, cool statue. Dan, if your thoughts on Hungary's just miraculous, mirror-clad statue. It's cool that they've always created a statue, but I always remember that saying don't worship Eric Eidl or false idols. What is interesting is that I was hoping for it to be. I like the fact that it's kind of a bland human as it were, a generic human, but I must admit there was a small part of me that was hoping it was Dorian Nakamoto and is like really confused shoulder shrug face like that. That would have been really cool, right? I mean, they did say about the fact that it, you know, because we don't know Nakamoto as a Toshis gender, but I mean, technically, he did declare it as male on a forum. So whether we take that as, you know, kind of, whether he maybe he wasn't clever enough to identify himself. So we had to re-identify him as, and I say him because it kind of did say on the profile he created as a him, but we won't go down there. The Elizabeth Warren's shadowy faceless of group of super coders quote unquote. That's kind of, I think that's very admirable because really she could have said like a shadowy faceless group of shit coders. So at least they're super coders, bit coinders. So that's the, that's the main thing I'm taking that as a positive. Hungary, I mean, obviously, you know, I think it kind of stands on whichever political side of the fence you're honest to whether it's a, it's a crazy dictatorship or not, but and Vox, you know, there may be perhaps a bit one sided. But we were honest, I do that. And once and and my, one of my mates, he got the lady and decided in a club in the court. I think it was the cool club of like 20 odd rooms. It was either that one, where it was on the one on the roof of the the spa. Anyway, so decided to take her on a date. Where else, but like the war museum. And so building up all this time to make his move. And and you know, they were going around. He said there was just really sad. They were really sad parts of the museum, obviously, because it's a, it's a war museum. And there was one bit. There was actually quite like it was, you know, it was the shoes. And it was really sad the way he described it, like this, the shoes at the, the riverside and they were all empty. That was the point he tried to make his move. What an idiot. Yeah, it didn't go down well. Don't, don't make, don't make it move because apparently she was crying. I was like, you know, step one. Don't, don't make a move when she's crying. So, so yeah, if you ever go into the museum, don't, don't try and make out of a date with the empty shoes next to the river because it's both disrespectful and unsuccessful, likely to be unsuccessful. But yeah, good, good, I'm hungry for, for creating the Hungarian, the two people that create a statue. I think it's, I think it's cool. It's, you know, it's, and it's also, it's another thing where Bitcoin is in your face, right? People will see it. They'll walk past the statue. They'll be intrigued by it and they'll do a bit of research. And once you do a bit of research, you go down the rabbit hole. And here we are. A very sad museum trip, indeed. Exit question, what do you think about the hoodie down the statue seems to be wearing a powerful hoodie? It was, oh, I think it's, you know, it's like a, I suppose a hoodie is, it's kind of a symbol of, it's seen sometimes negatively. I know that like, you know, in the stores around Southampton, like where I live, that, you know, there was a time where there was a time back in the day when, you know, people like had signs in the shops saying, like, no hoodie wearers, you literally couldn't, you know, you couldn't wear a hoodie in a shop, especially the sort of smaller shops where they didn't have security measures or they didn't have the cameras and stuff like that. But I think it is kind of symbolic, isn't it? Because with a hoodie, it's, it's just easy to kind of, you know, to just put the zip up and be, you know, I was the word pseudononymous, right? You end up being just, you just like, not zip, sorry, you know, do the cord up, you can just see through a little eye hole and then suddenly you, you've, you've, you've, you know, shaded your identity. So yeah, I think it's, it's kind of synonymous, isn't it with, with Bitcoin and being pseudononymous and, anonymous and, yes, yes. I, I agree, Dan, it's interesting how the hoodies become an international simple of anonimity, where, you know, yes, if you have the hoodie down, you're walking around like normal, but if it's night time, it's cold, it's bad neighborhood, you don't want anyone to bother you, you put that hoodie up and it's almost like you're a knight and you put on your armor with a little face guard and little thing, you can only see your eyes out. Maybe it's a bit like the Islamic Berkha as well, covering up the wearer almost completely to the eyes, but very clearly, a symbol of anonimity, a symbol of genericness. Anyone can be satoshi, anyone can be the guy in the hoodie, anyone can be in the hijab or another similar covering wear. So much of your identity is covered by the outfit that you wear. So I think it was a good choice. It kind of felt like an American choice to me, like the hoodie, but I guess it's become such an international symbol that it works in hungry too. Moving on, check out the World Crypto Network YouTube at WCN Clips. We're up to 70 subscribers, thanks to your help. Almost more, 70, almost more. You could just subscribe right now, check out all the clips from this show and other WCN shows on WCN Clips on YouTube. Issue 3. Bitcoin Slides on Environmental Concerns, but Backers Hope for 100K high. The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies was down on Friday. After a volatile week amidst rising concerns over Bitcoin's environmental impact, Bitcoin was down 0.4% struggling to cross the $50,000 mark. However, many supporters on Twitter are hopeful that it will hit $100,000 by the end of the year. Dan Eave, the price of Bitcoin, will it hit $100,000 by the end of the year? I'm ever the optimist and I kind of hope so. We're in that range. It's like 47k at the moment. The sad thing for Ethereum is it looks like it could be a double top. I'm not really a trader, but whenever I see a double top, I'm always like, that could be bad. But at the end of the day, if Bitcoin pumps to 100K, then Ethereum and Co, everyone rides in the co-tales of Bitcoin and jumps on that success train. Whether it's down to the environmentalism, though, it seems like this could be one of those things where they just try and they see something that happens and then just try and attribute it as a consequence of something else. There was nothing that I saw in particular, big article that said, there was shared around and got those popularity and said, Bitcoin's really bad because the environment, Bitcoin's the devil and all of that. It just kind of seems like they just do the post event, Nostradamus, like, oh, yeah, I know it's because of that. It's easy to give a bit of backing and find a general current theme and just put it on that. Whether it is down to the environmental concerns, I'm not really sure, but I am still hopeful that we do ride the wave of destiny to 100K plus. I don't think there's anything to be concerned about. Bitcoin just did another one of those little wiggles on the chart that it keeps doing. If you look behind you, you don't even see it anymore. No, I agree with Dan. It's nothing to do with the environmental news. The media just spins a wheel and they're like, oh, this is the biggest story this week. Bitcoin must have went down because of this. When really, it's just buyers and sellers. We had that large seller a couple of weeks ago who was like, I'm done and he sold and that scared a lot of other people and they ran away and then everyone else came in, bought that up, probably driving the price back up. I'm not stock to flow model. I can tell you that there's less Bitcoin's all the time. They seem pretty rare. They seem pretty valuable. I would think about it. We'll see how it goes. Exit question, Dan, the price of Bitcoin this time next week, higher or lower. I will go, I'm going to go lower because I'm usually wrong and I've been going high pretty much all the time and it seems to go lower. If I say lower, the never one can enjoy it when it goes higher. I'm going to stick with higher. I usually say higher. That's where I am on Bitcoin for a long time back going to like 300 or $1000 or whatever. Didn't think it was a big deal. Thought it was a valuable thing, something worth holding. We just have to wait and see. As for Dan's comments on Ethereum and the other coins, I agree if Bitcoin goes to 100K, who knows where the other coins will go, especially with stories like issue four. AMC will let customers pay an Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin by the end of the year. Is this it, Dan? Bitcoin is hitting the retails and everyone will soon be paying in Bitcoin even in the United States or is this another one of those stories where we all get excited about it but nothing really happens. Well, I think it's anywhere that accepts Bitcoin is a good thing. When I first started reading about Bitcoin and learning, the push was for people to accept it in places. It was always more about, yeah, that's kind of become a shit coin thing, hasn't it? It's like, everyone's like, oh, this place now accepts our shit coin. But back in the day, it was more about Bitcoin being accepted in places. That was like the key thing. So I think it's good. I think it's good that Bitcoin is accepted, the more places it's seen. It's kind of like American Express. When I was growing up, American Express wasn't really accepted many places. Now it's accepted a lot more places. The more people see it, the more familiar they are with it. Loads of people end up getting amics. That's going to be the same for Bitcoin, I think. Obviously, there's Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Why Bitcoin Cash? I'm not too sure. Obviously, someone's saying that. I think it's pronounced Bitcoin. It's a bit. It's a bit. Yeah. It's a bit. It's a bit. It's a bit. It's a bit. Cash. That's what all the hipcats call it. At the end of the day, business is going to business. I think what's bigger news than AMC adding Ethereum, Litecoin and B Cash is, oh, God, right now I've had a mind blank here. But I think it's name cheap that said that they are going to use or they're using BTC pay server. That's pretty cool. Name cheap, big company, or name cheap or name bright, something with a name in it, not name coin, obviously. They're using BTC pay server. I think Nicholas Dorie also offered to even give them a BTC pay server name cheap makeover in their own branding for free. I think that's a pretty cool bit of news. But at the end of the day, adding shit coins, if people want to pay in them, then why not? If it opens it up, they know full well that lots of people have made money from altcoins. Why not accept the altcoin and get more customers? I think it just makes business sense. Whether you agree with shit coins or not, you want to maximize profit. So, well, first I think we want to talk about AMC and how it's a meme stock and then we'll get to the shit coins. The meme stocks made lots of money last year for no good reason. GameStop, AMC, other brands that people were psychologically attached to. They were like, when this pandemic ends, I want to go back to GameStop. I want to go back to AMC and therefore we will together defy the stock market, defy the analysts who are all saying less people going to movies, less people renting and buying video games as they just download them on their consoles directly. These are bad buys. They went against that. They drove the price up and perhaps won a lot of money if they exited at the right point. On the other side of that, the companies, the real companies that actually underlie these stocks now have a lot of money. And like Conan O'Brien wrote in the monorail episode of The Simpsons, a town with monies like a mule with a spinning wheel. He don't know how he got it and he don't know what it's for. So, they now have to spend that money and it looks like Dan said they're upgrading their cash registers to take Bitcoin. They're probably partnered with BitPay or some kind of service and for that service to turn on Litecoin or B Trash or Lite or Ethereum or whatever is another button push. So, hooray to AMC for pushing the extra buttons on their remote control that will get you other currencies as an option. I don't think that really matters. What I think matters is what they do with this meme stock money and with this meme stock power. A lot of people have said GameStop itself, a dying business similar to Blockbuster video should immediately put Bitcoin ATMs in all of its locations. They should have someone at the counter explained to you what Bitcoin is, help you buy it, all that kind of stuff. It's way more important than video games and it could transform their same store. Same thing for AMC, Bitcoin ATMs in all the lobbies, higher and extra person have them explain what Bitcoin is, get people using this thing because we all want total Bitcoin adoption. But the problem is like Dan's saying it's a chicken and an egg like the business wants it but the consumer doesn't have it. The consumer has it but the business doesn't want it and the suppliers for businesses that have supplies, they don't want it at all. So what we need is we need everyone to be interested at the same time. The suppliers are interested, the business is interested, the customers interested and they all accepted at the same time. Everyone's like, but that's impossible. How will we do that? It's just going to light a fire. Just little itty-bitty fires all over the place, little ideas where people get their Bitcoin ATM and they get their money and they get the lightning network and they're like, yeah, I could do this. I could pay in this. I could accept it for guitar lessons. I could accept it at my shop. I could pay for it at someone else's shop rather than that one of those Bitcoin ideas we have to watch out for is that I'm never going to buy anything idea. I'm never going to buy anything. Well, we're all going to buy things. Why don't we use Bitcoin or lightning network to buy things instead of using the old system? Because you have to buy something anyway. You can re-buy your Bitcoin. You can transfer your money around if you still have Fiat Omai. So now I don't think it's a big deal, but it is a big deal that AMC is going this way with their meme stock money. We got to hope that GameStop and some of the others go this way as well. Dan Eve, have you seen a movie in the theaters this year? Do you think you'll see one next year? Are movie theaters over? I haven't. No, but what I did see was when we were looking for like family sort of trip, camping sites that have done what they call driving, right? A driving movie. What they call it is a driving. Yeah. So I think that might come back in popularity, right? It's kind of a cool thing. Giant screens and all the cars parked up. That's one thing. But I don't know. There's a part of me that thinks that people, you know, what I did think there's people would flock back. The pub will always be busy. I thought to myself, right? I thought when we get back out of lockdowns, the pub is just going to be rammed all the time because people are going to be like, oh my word, I'm so happy. I'm out of this box that I'm living in. But actually, our drive past multiple pubs quite a lot and they don't seem very busy. I think, maybe a lot of the country is still scared, right? They're still living in that kind of their current dystopian fear of like an evil virus that's completely going to wipe us all out. So they're afraid to go out and they're afraid to mingle and mix. So I did expect kind of everywhere to be a lot more busy. Well, that's that's why it was so interesting over here. A lot of people wanted to reopen quickly and they were like, it doesn't matter what's going on. We have to save the businesses, right? We have to rush to reopen. And the reality is many of the states tried it. They did reopen. People didn't go back. Like you can reopen all the movie theaters you want. If people think they're not safe, they're not going to go there. No one is life or death. Go to a movie theater, life or death, go to a restaurant. If that's the decision, the decisions to stay home. So that really shows again why we need to eliminate the virus and then reopen, right? We need to do a bunch of very difficult things. Then everything goes back to normal. As has happened with every other pandemic ever go back to the 1914 flu pandemic, the Spanish flu. Same thing. People wore masks. They social distances. They got a vaccine. They took care of it. The virus died off. Everything went back to normal. There was no lasting tyranny. So last year goes. As for myself, no, I've not been to a movie in a, it seems like a couple of years now. But I hardly miss it, right? You can get a pretty good size TV for not that much money. You can get a projector. You can put that on your wall. You can get various sizes of speakers for your home now. Surround sound is pretty standard. You can get those sound bars. There seems like there's a lot of options to watch movies at home. In the safety of your home, you can pause it. You can have your own beverage, whatever you want. It's very troubling for movie theaters. I don't think that the ability to spend Bitcoin and Litecoin is going to have me going back to the movie theaters. Maybe Avatar 2. Matrix 4, they say they're putting on both systems already. That's already just an HBO max account away from watching at home. So we'll see. Maybe Avatar 2 and the iMacs 3D might be the next one. Have you been to any Vegas shows? They're right. Not really. I think we might have went to one where it was all masked. I don't know. I think I wanted to, but it's still not there. They've started to reopen some. We went to a baseball game that was outdoors and a soccer game that was outdoors. But even now, they've started to say that the Delta virus is very efficient at spreading. That it's just a completely different ballgame from the, I don't know, alpha virus or whatever we're calling the original strain. But yes, it just spread so well. Now, I've just been land low, try not to go to things. And it's difficult because you don't want to fall into that trap of like, I'm never going to go to things again. Things are unsafe. But at the same time, it's a pandemic. It's a once in a hundred year event. It's unfortunate that we're going through it, right? But we're in it. We're in the middle of it. We're not at the end of it. So I'm content to wait it out. And it's unfortunate. I'd like to be on a lot of things going to some trips. The other side of the country, the Kerio cards auction in New York City would be quite a nice thing to go to. It's unfortunate to miss that and miss my friends in Europe. But now we've got a lay low for now. See how it goes. And the same thing for AMC with the exception of the meme stock thing. I don't think the stock for going to movie theaters is that great either. I did rise in it from $2 to $48. I think peak to like 78. So it's on the way back down, maybe. So the power, the power of marketing, incredible work by the meme stock and the reddit stock crew. Moving on to issue five, a single Bitcoin transaction creates as much waste as throwing out two iPhones. Economists find there it is. The energy fund is back again saying that it takes the weight of two iPhone minis. Oh, that seems unfair. Why not just one iPhone? How? Why two minis? And they say because Bitcoin miners cycle through a growing amount of short-lived hardware. So now it's the hardware from Bitcoin mining. That's the problem. We talk about this all the time on this show because we think it's an important issue that the media is going to keep bringing up. Dan is this the reason the price is down to iPhone minis. So for each transaction. So that means I'm just sitting on like a pile of iPhones over here. Like you can't see. But behind me, nothing, but iPhone minis all the way down. But it's just another kind of fork of the general environmental concern, isn't it? So now they're they're obviously the electricity consumption is the main one. And now they're like, oh, what else can we moan about? And now they're picking and now they're picking the e-waste, right? Now obviously e-waste is pretty bad. We use a lot of rare earth metals and we churn through stuff. But why not then say, well, Apple, do you really need to bring out a new type of MacBook every year? In fact, you need to bring out three types of MacBook every year. Do you need to bring out four types of iPhone? You know, the 13, what is it? The 13, the 13 mini, the 13 pro and the 13 pro max. And I actually go through it to very much an environment, environment to just to say probably about three iPhones a year just through incompetence and dropping them. So they must they're probably really, really hate me as well as the Bitcoin transactions. But waste is like again, it's it's all down to what you think is waste, right? And and if ultimately anything where you're not using the absolute necessity, you know, the bare minimum necessity is waste. You could say that humans can survive on, you know, can actually survive on 1000 calories a day. So anything above that is waste and therefore we're killing the planet. You can say that, you know, anything like I saw art when amazing when I saw was there was like a whole article on this because people have a lot of moan about and during a pandemic and lockdowns, they've got a lot of time to moan about stuff and research how to moan. But for example, the where was it? Okay, opening the fridge to keeping the browsing in the fridge. That was it fridge browsing. Did you know that when you're fridge browsing for more than it? You know, that's that's a waste like if you have a if you have a a mo pad instead of a car and you don't you don't like cart stuff about with you a lot that you need a car for that's a waste like everything's a waste. If you live in a house where there's more than one room, you could say that's a waste. Why do you need more than one room? You could live quite capable in in less than a room. So I think you know, you can you can you can say that anything is a waste really if you if you look at it and break it down and anything that you have or consume it is a waste. If you know, I don't know, I just it just seems like it's moaning for moaning sake and we're definitely in a moany society right now. You know, people it's very much a victim based, you know, like mentality that we have, you know, rather than like when I was growing up, it's about being a hero and doing something good blah blah blah and now it's about like being a victim and and clicking on it on a on a on a on a you know, what's it called on a petition online and that makes what that makes you a hero now. They're like, oh, I signed 10 petitions a day. I'm a hero because I signed petitions on the lab. You know, that's a waste, right? Because when you're browsing petitions that you don't agree with, you're wasting time, you're wasting energy. And so yeah, I don't know, you could you could we live in in a disposable society and it's really bad. But whether you can, you know, moan about hard computer hardware that's used for a reason, it's it's got a purpose, it's securing a network, it's not even leisure, you know, everyone, everyone needs money, like every society needs money to function. What you don't technically need to function, let's be honest, is is like, say, for example, I'm not picking on the theater, but something like theater, right? Where you've got, you can for arguments, say, you've got a massive place with loads of spare room that's only used for certain periods during the during the day, right? That's a waste, right? And not everyone likes the theater. So not everyone likes Bitcoin. So we can moan about that. We can moan about theater. You can find anything to moan about, rant over. Sorry, but yeah, I think it's just moaning for moaning, sake. And we should all go back to like mudhuts and living underground and not consuming anything if that's the case. Well, I agree with Dan here very much depends on what your priorities are. Back when the internet was just starting up, people were like, why are they wasting all their time building this internet? Look at all these computers and all the electricity and people are looking at screens all the time and they're getting dumber and the radio and rock music and all these things are going to destroy society. So it's another one of those. It's fun to see the way it shifted from too much electricity usage and they're trying to scare people. They're like Bitcoin uses and much electricity is this country as that country as this country combined with that country. But it's not working. No one knows anything about these countries. Nobody's ever been to them. So now they're trying iPhones. But even then they can't be generous. They can't be just saying it's as good as one iPhone. They have to say no, it's as bad as two iPhone minis. I've never even seen an iPhone mini. They had terrible sales figures. I can't believe they brought the product back. And I can't believe that the best example these scientists have is two iPhone minis. Why not just say one iPhone? Because it's scarier if you say two iPhone minis. Go ahead Dan. And also I just that you know to do such lazy analysis really and to just say two iPhones. What about the components in them? How about how they were sourced? What materials they came from? What the impact of those materials was? It's a really lazy analysis. So like shameful, more shameful journalism that just goes that picks something based on weight, right? Because not all weighted things are equal. Like you know, I was going to say to a ton of feathers and a ton of bricks, but they have obviously completely different, right? One had loads of chickens and one's loads of quarry. I don't know. But the fact is, but they're two different things like there could be way more corrosive or bad materials or whatever in the iPhones. You've got no idea that could have been they could did the process and the manufacturing process of refining those materials could be a thousand times worse than the same the equivalent weight in mining. So lazy lazy journalism. And if you've got so much bloody time on your hands during this lockdown pandemicy type thing, then do a bit more research and give us a breakdown of the bill of materials, please. And then I will heed your advice. The other problem there is that the people mining the Bitcoin network are doing their best to reduce costs. If they could find a way to do it without these machines, they would. And in many cases, they have moved to hydroelectric dams and other locations to get the power. Whereas Apple and everyone that's making as much as I like these phones and everything, they're the fast fashion of technology, right? I got the new phone last year, the new phone this year, it's no good, right? There's no little modules I can pull out. I can't even upgrade the battery anymore. This leads to a cycle where people are turning over their phones every year and maybe they're refurbished and maybe they go to someone else and hopefully that works. But the idea you're saying is true, we're filling up the landfills with these phones. That's probably why they used it as an example. Unfortunately, that example betrays itself because it goes back to this idea of, well, why do we have so many iPhone minis? And why do we have so many iPads and so many other competing iPads and other companies? And it's because we can make anything we want. And people value Bitcoin mining, shock. I know they make lots of money. So there's a reason for them to value it. And it's going to keep happening. So I don't think the media is going to make it with these articles. But they do like to scare people and they might have depressed the price this week. Exit question, Dan, did this article depress the price of Bitcoin? Are people so scared that we're throwing away? So many iPad minis, so many iPhone minis in exchange for these transactions. Yeah, well, sadly, it did have a wide impact. All I could see on Twitter was people that were crying and they literally gave away their Bitcoin. They said, oh, I can't believe that this is even in fact, they didn't even give they threw away their private keys and they were like, oh, I can't even spend my Bitcoin in donated because it's like throwing away two iPhones. It had such a huge impact. It's a real, it's a real shame that it had to end this way. But yeah, thanks for your amazing article on your two iPhone minis. Also at the Apple event where they announced the new iPhone, the new iPhone mini, the new iPad, the new iPad mini and all the other products, they did not mention this at all. They did the same person who wrote that article was in that watching the freaking keynote. Again, of course, I'm going to type this article on my old iPhone and then I've got my old magic keyboard because then there's a new version of the magic keyboard that's coming. They have all those people, they have these frivolous requirements of upgrading and stuff and yet they sit there in their ivory towers, their Apple White towers, moaning about stuff in a preck cafe, consuming their pumpkin spice latte and moaning about overconsumption. Well, where do you think they got the idea for having two iPhone minis except they look down at their own table and they're like, wow, look at all these iPhones I have. Like no one almost has two phones. Like I have one phone. I'm normal person, you know, but these guys, they're like, man, two phones, every transaction, like even lightning network transactions, what about batch transactions where they put a bunch together? Are those still two iPhones? Like again, it's just bad article, bad media, bad. And again, we're going through these phases where like just like when we were, you know, young bitcointers and we didn't know anything and we're like, oh, this is going to happen. Oh, that's going to happen. Oh, no, this. The media is doing the same thing and they have the same complete lack of understanding. They're like a child. They're just like lashing out. They're like, oh, this new thing. He uses a lot of power. I don't know. It smashes up a lot of iPhone minis. Like there's just piles of them everywhere at these Bitcoin conventions. So I don't know. I'm enjoying the visual of like walking over these piles of iPhone minis and they just crunch as you walk and they're just everywhere, especially if you've sent too many transactions. So, but let's move on. Let's not smash any more iPhone minis. Moving on to issue six, I think bonus issue. Department of Justice, United States. Ohio resident pleads guilty to laundering and operating dark net based Bitcoin mixer that laundered over $300 million. And Ohio man pled guilty today to money laundering conspiracy arising from his operation of helix, a dark net based cryptocurrency laundering device. Helix was used and associated with grams. A dark net search engine also run by Harman. It seems like the bitcoins were mixed and then used in dark net markets where dealers sold opiums and opioids and other illegal drugs, a growing scourge. Dan, if your thoughts on the incredible capture of this gentleman by the United States government and that he is now pleading guilty. It's another one of those gotchas, right? Didn't they didn't they get them because they sent the admin a message again saying something like, I want to buy some ecstasy. No, no, no, that's it selling proceeds of ecstasy. And then the admin didn't answer back but then they processed the payment. And so that was enough. They just seemed so I'm sure I read one the other day where it was like 13 out of 14 people in a sting operation where FBI like undercover FBI. And you're like, wait a second, at what point is there a ratio that's like that's like for that the article should actually read 13 like evil government like people coerced one single person like if I had 14 13 people trying to convince me to do something, I'm probably going to do it like you know that's the way things work. And when you set people up in these situations, yeah, obviously they've they've they've you know, I don't know the whole case but you know, the person's pleaded guilty. Whether that's a plea basis or I don't know but that's sketchy enough as it is, I hate the idea of like, you know, if you break a plea deal because of the the threat of of worse, right? There's I've been watching loads of those confession tape type stuff and they're like basically you're going to go down for murder even though they didn't do it. And they're like, you're going down for murder. But if you just if you just confess right now, we can get you 10 years or whatever and you'll be out, but you have the chance of being in the electric chair, you know, like you're going to go, oh shit, you're going to you're going to you're going to you're going to think to yourself well, I might have to just admit to it. But yeah, the danger is that they caught them based on I think the set up transactions, right? So the in 2011 as well. So it's way back way back in 2011 and the records, the public, I say public records, but the records in certain companies go back that far. But obviously Bitcoin records go back to 2009. So it's that pseudo is pseudo anonymity pseudo anonymity, but but but at the same time, you know, it's a very transparent ledger. So you've got if you are doing something dodgy, you've got to be very careful otherwise you may get caught. So yeah, it's sad that you know that the more people are going down for, you know, having free market type stuff going down, you know, I mean, obviously, you know, ecstasy is illegal and so technically it's illegal and so it's money laundering, but you know, ecstasy is also lots of fun apparently. So you know, there's that part. But yeah, hopefully hopefully he doesn't get sentenced or they don't get sentenced to too hard to eat. See, it doesn't get sentenced to hardcore. Ecstasy is also thought to be my many as a potential cure for PTSD. But yes, going back to this, again, it reads like a press release from a different time now that marijuana has been legalized in so many of these United States, so many other countries have legalized it. CBD is everywhere and the example of Portugal is available to anyone. They decriminalized everything. They assist their addicts. They try to help them get on to methadone and other things like that help the meth people, all that kind of thing. And that's a better way to deal with this. It's a treatment issue. It's not a crime issue. So yes, this person was allegedly running an anonymous mixer service so that people then could get the drug that they wanted. And as it's been shown once again over and over again with economic issues, if there's a demand, there will be a supply, whether it comes from this country, whether it comes from another country, another state, under the, you know, under the garage, wherever it's going to be, some kind of hidden room, whatever it is, people are going to make the things they want to make and they're going to distribute them. So it does seem like a backwards press release from a backwards country who's still debating this war on drugs when we have the example of Portugal. Decriminalize, offer treatment, offer treatment options, try to get people off the stuff, but it doesn't do it any good to have this illegal, you know, mirror around it and everyone's like, oh, it's so cool. It's illegal. And then the same thing with the cannabis, when they allowed the drug dealers to have cannabis as an entry level drug, people could try cannabis, say it's not so bad, and then get on heroin or meth or something that's much, much worse, much more addictive. And we have to separate those up, make it a treatment issue, people should go to hospitals. So not impressed with this one. Exactly. Prohibition didn't work, temperance didn't work, all these other movements where the government or other people tried to say what you can and can't do and sure there are things that are very bad. We need to try to keep them out of society, but we need to be more reasonable overall and not just follow things because it's a tradition. You know, it's a tradition in the United States to be racist towards Black people in Mexicans and to bust them for marijuana. Well, that's a bad tradition. Let's get rid of that. Let's turn that one back. What's crazy as well is if you think about the the amount of infrastructure and the costs of that infrastructure, like the ongoing maintenance costs, the operating costs of trying to kill the drug trade, but imagine if you just took that money, I bet it would cost a fraction of it to legalize everything. Let alone not just take it costing a fraction of the amount into medical services to help people, but like you would make money off it. So not only do you make stacks of money, but then you also save stacks of money because instead of loads of police officers going out, loads of all this massive infrastructure, all these crazy, this crazy ass plans and oh, that was it. I read a hilarious article the other day and I've got 10 to 26, but anyway to get it up, but it's just it's just insane right in a situation where you could be making money. They're actually they're actually burning money. And the thing I read the other day was that was that the I think it was the CIA, but it was like or something like that. It was like the CIA, oh, that's it. The CIA says that it has found no link between itself and the crack trade. The fact that they even have to investigate that like someone had to go right, there seems to be a bit of a bit of a case between the CIA and crack, you know, and they had to do an investigation which they they came to the conclusion whether you trust that conclusion or not that the the the the the CIA isn't instrumental in the crack trade, but I reckon it probably is, you know, of that 30 out of 14 principle. What if what if you know what if half of the half of the people that decide on these cases after judges are from the CIA? Oh, I don't know. Then they'll never get they'll never get done for anything. We live in crazy times. It's a crazy world. Take care of your crazy self. It's also a lot like the war in Afghanistan. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars a day. I forget the right figure, but we spent millions every day. We didn't help those people. We didn't help our people the whole time right after 9, 11 during the period of Cray of Chaos and everyone waving the flags. I thought once again, we should bomb them with hospitals. We should oh, we should thrill them with kindness. You know, we don't need what was it? Shocking awe. We don't need that. We need kindness. We need to kindness and surprise. And five years, 10 years from now, they'd be like, you know, those Americans are pretty good jerks, but they set up that free hospital over there. You know, they got that free food shop down the corner. Like, I eat there sometimes, not so bad. And that's how you win a war. If you look at Hamas, not an example, anyone wants to use, but over here in reality land, they give out services to their people. They do provide hospitals. They do provide safer neighborhoods than there would be without them. Sure, it's like the mafia, which also provided services. But once again, America could offer people services instead of bombing them, use the same money, but we can't because of tradition and the military industrial complex. And that's always how we've done it. And even though the Soviet spent a disastrous 20 years in Afghanistan, the US was like, me too, me too. And loss of lives on both sides, a horrible disaster, just awful for the Afghans, civilians. And oh well, we're leaving. It's over. Let's move on to the next issue issue seven. We're running out of time. Why Bitcoin will thrive during a recession? For surprising reasons why cryptocurrency could be a great way to outlast an economic downturn. According to the article in the Motley Fool, Bitcoin was created in response to the US financial crisis. It's inherently diversified because its value isn't tied to a particular country and its allies. Other cryptocurrencies may have more upside than Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is a safer investment. Well, he hasn't said anything I disagree with so far, which is a surprise for the Motley Fool. Dan Eve, what do you think about this idea that Bitcoin will thrive during a recession? Well, it definitely was born from one right. You know, that's the again, Chancellor on Brink of Second bailout for banks. That was like, you know, certainly the worst recession in my lifetime, or at least one I actually, the only one the main one I experienced, I suppose. But so yeah. But the fact is that the fact is that the Motley Fool have turned change their tune. Obviously, this is only a kind of one of the articles, but certainly like I've been reading the Motley Fool years and they hate it on Bitcoin initially. So now at least they haven't gone down the road of like that I've missed the boatism and they're just all they do is moan about it. Like they've actually tried to look at the real points, right? You know, they've recognized the fact that the fed prince infinite amounts of money and that with Bitcoin, the total supply cat is capped and the emissions are decreasing as you know, as the years go on with the halvings. So I think that's a very strong, you know, one of the strongest characteristics of Bitcoin that we know so well now with all the printing of money, which arguably has helped Bitcoin quite a lot, right? The, you know, there was a big spike in Bitcoin's price when the first Stimme checks were printed. And everyone got their Stimme's, right? And everyone was raving about it. The fact that they got their like, you know, they're, you know, $1,200 Stimme or whatever it was. And then within a few months, it was worth double and blah, blah, blah. So I think that definitely the pandemic helped to help, you know, help the spread of Bitcoin, the printing of money and it helped people kind of realize that it's not a good thing to just print money limitlessly like that. So yeah, I think it's a good thing that the Motley Fool have changed their tune and they're looking at not just like, not just the fact they haven't just turned around and said, you know, in this article, you know, the pump factor, right? Because a lot of their, a lot of their, someone, a lot of their, some of their articles are a bit kind of, you know, they get, they get, even with traditional stocks, they get me excited. And they're like, oh, you know, they might as well just say, oh, it's going to pump soon. But with this, they're actually breaking it down, they're saying it was built for recessions. It's inherently diversified. It's secure and globally transferable store of wealth. The supplies kept and added supply is decreasing and it's built to last. So spot on Motley Fool, good article. Well, I agree with Dan here that Motley Fool has not always liked Bitcoin. And while it is only one guy at Motley Fool writing this still, he seems to like Bitcoin and understand it. It's great to see these things said by someone other than me, someone other than the libertarian Bitcoiners from years ago. All these things have always been true about Bitcoin. But it's great that they're coming to see them now. And that now again, they have this ability to make up for their mistakes. They weren't with us in the beginning, but they could be with us now. So that's the thing with Bitcoin, whether it's El Salvador or the Motley Fool, we take our friends where we can get them. We don't get to choose them. Sometimes they might not be the best friends and they might not have done the best things in the past, but we have to see how that goes. And again, anyone can use Bitcoin, even this guy at the Motley Fool. I think we're heading towards the end of the show. Everyone should check out worldcryptonenetwork.com. We've got statistics about this channel. They're over 2,915 videos. That's three months, eight days and 22 hours of straight content if you watched it back to back. It's been seven years, eight months and 24 days since our first video. And if you check out right here, we've been replaying some of the original first Bitcoin group episodes. These have never been played on the world crypto network before. At that time, the Bitcoin group had its own separate channel. Eventually, we moved the show over here around episode 33. I was uploading them to both channels. And I think around episode 60 or so, I stopped uploading them to the Bitcoin group channel and only put them here. The Bitcoin group has been supporting other shows here on the world crypto network, giving people a chance to get their opinions out on Bitcoin for it seems like seven or eight years now. So it's been a long time and check out worldcryptonenetwork.com to learn more about that. Dan, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? Go ahead. I'm never ready with a prediction or story of the week. But I predict that that the Curio cards auction in Christie is going to go really well for Matt Binkquins. Dan is stealing my story of the week there too. I was going to say it's all about Curio cards. In just a couple of weeks, October 1st, we're going to be auctioned off by Christie's auction house in New York City. Gary Vee was already on the CNN and he mentioned Curio cards on CNN. So check out the clip on Matt Binkquins Twitter. I did some remixes of that as well. I cut up the Hugh Grant movie. Mickey Blue Eyes got some cool auction scenes in there. I'm going to be releasing this week and one that I released last week. But yeah, it's all about Curio cards. It's all about 2017. Ethereum based NFTs that people had forgotten about. And for a long time, I thought that NFTs weren't real. And it was just rich people trading back and forth amongst themselves or insider deals. But eventually they got down to Curio cards and they're buying those too and they're very excited to see them. So there is some reality that is whether it's a FAD or a mega FAD or whether it lasts forever or it's a mega FAD that lasts forever. I don't know what it is. But people love NFTs. They love Curio cards. I'm super excited that they're going to be auctioned. Thanks to Christie's. They had the announcement this week. It was really neat to see your friends like Fennep and Crypto Graffiti and Crypto Pop, Marisol Vengus, Daniel Friedman, Robex World, all the artists, Thoros of Mirror, everybody from Curio cards all listed in this very serious catalog. Like it says, berries, comma, Fennep, a digital artwork, Jay Pegg, and it has the address, like the cryptocurrency address for the piece. So it was really neat to see that converted into Christie's fancy auction speak. And I hope it goes well. I hope somebody buys it and it sells for lots of money and that they're happy with their collection because they're very hard to collect a full set. It's very hard to do. So I think that's going to be about it for the show. Dan, anything that we missed, anything else to say? I think we've wrapped up quite well. We're still having technical difficulties. We don't know what's going on. Originally, we would stream this show from Zoom to restream it that would go out to everybody. Then that didn't stream to YouTube. So then we connected it directly to YouTube. That didn't work last week and that didn't work this week either. So we're recording onto Zoom. We're live on tape. You can still give us a thumbs up. That would still help us out and give us a comment down below. Let us know what you thought of the show. If you disagreed with us or if you agreed with us. And thanks to anybody in the chat that's watching the premiere. We can see those messages afterwards too thanks to YouTube. So give us a thumbs up. Subscribe down below. Thanks for watching. Until next time. Bye. Bye.