#305 — The Bitcoin Group #305 - Fidelity 401K - Central Africa - Panama - Maxis Only

The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last ten seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Martine Wishmare, from General Bites. Howdy, how folks. And Ark from Ellen Bits. Dan Eave, the crypto raptor. Olal amigos. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one. Issue one, Fidelity will start offering Bitcoin as an investment offer in 401K accounts. Fidelity investments will allow you to invest potentially up to 20% of your retirement account in Bitcoin directly from their investment options without having to go to a separate exchange or brokerage. This is a major move for the company, which of course, it's called Bitcoin Rat poison, and other insults in the past. Now suddenly you can invest up to 20% of your retirement into Bitcoin directly with Fidelity. Martine, is this huge news for Bitcoin? Is it just going to turn the world upside down? Well, it is a few in the US because from what I understood, we have it on have a 401K in Europe. It's typically a US thing. And we have no saying in where our pension funds invest their, our money. So they invested in palm tree, palm oil, they invested in cluster bombs, they invested in all this stuff, which I would never, ever, ever even poke with a stick. So I think it's pretty cool that you can decide where your money goes. It also works two ways. So if you screw up, then you are the one that took the wrong decision. But being able to put some of that money, which is, you know, you have to keep in the pension fund to be able to steer that into crypto or in this case Bitcoin because the rest will probably not be around for long enough to actually last until your retirement. I think it's fantastic. I think many people will be able, will use this in the US and for them, you know, they were already paying into this pension fund anyway. So why not steer that a little bit into crypto? And up to 20% is quite high. I would have expected it to be up to 5% or something. So, you know, yeah, all go all in 20% that is and we'll see, nobody that bought Bitcoin has ever lost over a period of four or five years or longer. So I think if it's for your pension, yeah, why not do it? It's like do it, do it now. This is financial advice. In Arc, they're allowing all of their clients not just the extremely wealthy, this incredible Bitcoin option. I mean, we as people do, you know, I think my micro insurance for, I'm sorry, I think we've Bitcoin that's going to have a lot of things in the technology. But in even in saying that, there we go, even in saying that it's the hat, the hat is the only thing I never wear hats. So I don't want to do it when I'm wearing a hat or just throwing my game. Even in saying that, I'm not sure putting 20% in your pension as Bitcoin, unless you understand the technology is particularly a good idea. We obviously do and we have a lot of faith in it, but I always say to people that are going to put the money into it, then it could all go to zero. And if you're relying them up for your future pension in however many years, like 20, 30, 40, 50 years, then yes, personally, I would, I would make the bet and think, yeah, that's a fair bet, 20%, but I would prefer if they cap a little bit lower, you know, like 10%, maybe 5%, because I mean, if you've got a portfolio of assets, really your percentage in a volatile asset or risky asset, which Bitcoin still is, would be lower. So yeah, I can see why there are some concerns around it, but as Martin said in the US, you have like a much more, they have a great division of people actually taking more control over their pension schemes, whereas we go in the UK and in Europe. So maybe within the US, a lot of people are more informed when it comes to whether they're going to invest their money. So yeah, good, good luck to people, but as always, you know, as much as we don't like to say so much anymore, we used to say a lot more, you know, like five years ago, we'd always say, oh, it could all go to zero, it could all go to zero. And we don't seem to say that anymore. And I think it's important that we do because although it's proven itself to be a very strong technology and I personally think that it won't go to zero, there is always that small possibility that it might and people need to be prepared for that. Of course, today, Amazon stock of very risky asset is down 12 and a half percent. Amazing, unheard of, perhaps the third time that the S&P 500 has had a stock drop as much as 10% in a single day, almost Bitcoin, ask volatility. Dan, Eve, they say, not your keys, not your coins. No one on fidelity will hold their own keys. Is this the end of Bitcoin as we know it? Well, that's the downside, isn't it, to investing in a, it's not necessarily Bitcoin, you're buying your buying into something that's Bitcoin indexed. And with that comes either if they're going to hold the private keys, they could lose them or screw up or they could be, you know, if they could be an insider who wipes the accounts or whatever. But then, you know, you know, our defeat in the principle of actually holding Bitcoin, right, and you've got that third party risk. In the UK, we can, like, I think it was Hargreed's landstown. We're actually the first company that allowed us to invest in Bitcoin for our pensions. And I had the form and literally in January 2017 and Bitcoin was $600. And it was like, I mean, this close, I filled it in and I never sent it off and just got distracted. And which is very upsetting. I'm not sure if it's even even a, even possible now because they think they flip flopped on it. After the, you know, the 2018 sort of come down. But some of the critique is about the fact that Bitcoin is volatile and, you know, pensions, they're like, oh, you don't want to be, you know, Bitcoin to be, you don't want to be in something that's so volatile. And they said, you know, this specific article dropped like 10% in a day. But the whole point of Bitcoin is about changing your time preference, right? It's about long term and pensions are usually long term, like they're the longest term investments that you generally have. So your timeframe for that, for, for, for, for the, the, the maturing of, of your pension should, you know, make up for any of the lumps and bumps that you do get. Not to mention that I think I read today that a lot of California sort of, or there's a big chunk of California pensions for, for certain, a certain sector that invested in Netflix and they're down like, you know, hundreds of millions. So that's, you know, you've still got with traditional stocks. You've got the same issue, right? You've got the same issue that a stock can go to zero. And as well as, you know, Bitcoin, maybe, you know, people saying, oh, it could go to, go to zero unless there's something fundamentally wrong with the technology. And I don't ever see it going to zero. There's, it's text, so it can be, it can be fixed. You know, so I don't know. I think it's not, they're going to zero things, not a great argument compared to other stocks that have completely tanked, especially in my crazy, like when I thought I was a stock trader, days of, of just stuff that we're just literally, like I bought, I think Boohoo, they're, they're doing insane now, but I bought Boohoo in the day after they released their results and it tanked 50%. So, you know, it can happen in many, in many different markets and stocks. So I think Bitcoin, especially in the long term, is a safe hole ultimately. Exit question now that fidelity will allow you to invest in Bitcoin directly from your retirement account. Do we even need a Bitcoin spot ETF? Can't we just give that all up? Martin, which mayor? I don't know what the target audience for those ETFs is, but this is also for pension savings, right Thomas? So, you know, fidelity about the same audience I'd say, I'd say the people, but there's just one company in this case. So the more is more is better. I think more is better, but fidelity is a giant in, you know, so, so yeah, many people will just be happy with fidelity. But, you know, I think more is better. Those ETFs and those 401k thingies, they're not for me, but they do make it possible for a larger audience to hold or purchase Bitcoin or get invested in Bitcoin. And I think that's definitely good for Bitcoin. It means it will be here to stay. As Ben said, it might all go down to zero, but I don't think that will happen because by the time it's one cent, I will buy all 21 million of them. That sounds like a good plan. Ben, ARC, what about fidelity? Do we still need an ETF? I mean, an ETF is, it would be great for institutional investors, wouldn't it? So, big pension funds, which are making investments on behalf of their clients, they need to invest in accredited funds. So, they can't hold the Bitcoin themselves. And I think obviously an ETF is still useful for those types of funds. And like I say, like here in Europe, whatever we have, big pension funds, I have like a teaching pension, for example, that pension fund would then be able to then go and invest in this big institutionally, TF, and it would be kind of regulated. And hopefully the Bitcoin would be held in a secure way. And maybe that would be some insurance as well. So, if they use all the Bitcoin, then the pension fund won't miss out completely. And the real question is like, how these funds are storing their keys, how these funds are storing their Bitcoin is secure. The whole world of Bitcoin security is getting held a lot better. People are more accustomed to using things like multisig. And there's some great institutional solutions now, which have come out by some big companies. You do what we are in short. So, yeah, it's a good thing. It's a good thing. And the ETF, the Bitcoin ETF, is still something we should all cross, I think, this fall, because I mean, it would just lock up a hell of a lot of Bitcoin. And that inevitably will raise the price of Bitcoin. And then the people who are holding it will then have more capital to reinvest into Bitcoin. And then you have that feedback loop, which has made Bitcoin, the Bitcoin ecosystem progress so incredibly quickly. This loss far. So, yeah, we still want a Bitcoin ETF. Dan, if we already have HAL, do we need ETF? Yeah, the more Bitcoin locked up, the better, the more big institutions that recognize Bitcoin as a viable investment, the better. The more, I was the word, the more it becomes a household thing. People are investing in funds trying to have a fund manager, usually, who is meant to be taking care of risk and not throwing people's money away. So, if Bitcoin is considered good enough to be in portfolios of big funds, and you know, including ETFs, including, especially, you know, the spot, how would ETFs, rather than the future, you know, the more credence it gives to Bitcoin as a technology and as hardcore money, not just hardcore money. Yeah, absolutely like all this stuff legitimizes Bitcoin more, doesn't it, which is great. You know, these big investment funds and ETFs exist, and it just legitimizes Bitcoin as a technology. Just good. Absolutely. We used to be nowhere, now we're everywhere, even out of focus. What I said to Martin earlier that we need the ETF because the ETF is more than one company, Fidelity is one company. So if you have your funds in Fidelity, you can buy 20% of Bitcoin today. Otherwise, your SOS, we want to serve the whole market. We want the spot ETF. We don't just want the futures ETF. We want the whole thing. We just want Fidelity. We want Infidelity too. We want Infinite Fidelity. We want all the Fidelity's. But for now, we want everyone to push the thumbs up button. That was we move on to issue two. Issue two. Goldman Sachs offers the first Bitcoin back loan as Wall Street embraces crypto. Yes, it looks like it was just for one client, but Goldman allowed the person to put up Bitcoin as collateral for their loan so that they could take out dollars and buy something else. Bitcoin is everywhere. Ben Arck, what do you think about the Bitcoin back loan coming not from some weird Bitcoin company that gave you a free hat, but instead from Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest names in finance. Again, the legitimizing Bitcoin is all these naysayers who were talking down Bitcoin. They're now, it's just like free-difference software that came about with big proprietary companies, would talk it down and they would say it's useless, doesn't work properly, and then eventually they end up having to adopt it and incorporate into their business models. Then ultimately, that's what Bitcoin is doing now. It's legitimizing itself, it's being legitimized by being so stable, so good and working so well for so long. Now, these big institutions are starting to use the technology and make use of it, which is great because they're also dipping their hands just in that they're starting to realize the potential of the technology in multiple multitude of other ways as well by having specialists who they employ, who then have to go and learn more about the technology and they have to have special departments, which is the Bitcoin Department in Goldman Sachs, and that's going to have to understand the technology a little bit more. Again, it's that feedback loop. It's a good thing and we just have to let all those things, all these negative things, instead of what Bitcoin in the past, and we can be the big man in the room, we can say, okay, cool, using it, great, we don't have to rub it in their faces, and say, I told you so, well done, welcome aboard. A fun staple. But we can rub it in their faces and we do have time. As Ben was saying, we were right on open source, we're right on Bitcoin. The next thing you'll tell me is that we're right on the big Lebowski being a classic movie, which it was not accepted at the time. Dan Eve, what about Goldman Sachs and a Bitcoin backbone next time Martin wants to do a loan against his Bitcoin? No more shady companies. Goldman Sachs, you just walk right in the front door, right, right this way, Mr. Bitcoin. Straight to the vault, please. I think it makes perfect sense. One of the things that people used to use as an argument against Bitcoin, whenever it came up in a discussion, when I say it came up in a discussion, when I wouldn't stop talking about it to people, as you do, is that they're like, oh, but Bitcoin's completely, I mean, obviously it's changed now back in 2013 to, it definitely wasn't when I first started talking about it anyway. So it was really, it's quite people saw it as illiquid. You can never do anything or sell it when you need to, blah, blah, blah, there's all those arguments, even though that wasn't true. But my argument was, well, if a house, for example, can be used as collateral, then it takes months to sell a house, especially in the UK, so right, paying in the back side. So it's with the evolution of all the technologies around buying and selling Bitcoin, all the polythera of exchanges, there are, you know, Bitcoin is way more liquid than most assets. It's probably quicker to sell Bitcoin to sign up to an account and sell Bitcoin than it is to sell a stock that you are in or or something like that, right? It's so quick to sign up to an exchange and start buying and selling. So I think that argument for it not being good as a tool for collateral, I think, you know, is done away with now and it's good to see that there's a transition here, well, a transition, but the bridging of crypto into the real world, where we've seen it with DeFi and with Ethereum that you can use Ethereum and your link and whatever is collateral and you can get Ethereum or other stablecoins for it. But that's only from a DeFi perspective. But seeing that from a Bitcoin into real money, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, old, old real money, you know, that's something that's pretty special. People have got Bitcoin that they don't want to sell, especially when there's a kind of a bare market going on, they'd rather be like well over collateralized with Bitcoin, be able to use some of their use some of their Bitcoin to get fear, to pay for real-world stuff. And then when the next bull run happens and happy days, they can pay it off easily. So yeah, I think it's good. It's a good thing that bridging the Bitcoin bros to traditional finance homes. Next you'll be saying I can get an NFT backbone and people can buy cars with period cards. Yeah, right. You actually there are multiple companies doing NFT backbone. So actually that's not real. That can't be real. They're genuinely. Only with big ones like board apes and crypto punks, but they do your card. They should add curiosity. Yeah, we should do a petition. Our team, there's no more weird companies. You don't have to get your loan from someone weird Goldman Sachs is here. All the big boys are here to fix it. Bitcoin is solved. I didn't see at what rates they this loan was given. And that was, I was scanning for, you know, I wanted to know what rates because when I purchased the last apartments with crypto, crypto Bitcoin, Bitcoin, back loan, what I really liked about it is that within 24 hours, the money was in my bank account and I could immediately pay the lawyer, which is really cool because normally if the house you're purchasing is the collateral, you have to get the valuation, you have to get all these income details. You got to really file pile of documentation at least one centimeter thick printouts duplicates for your lawyer, everything. And now it's 24 hours and in a market where apartments are selling fast, it's important to be able to like, you know, just close the deal. Say, yes, I would like to have the apartment and then the agent says, but you're not the only one that wants this apartment. So I'm the only cash buyer. The resistor is just dreaming. I can have the money in 24 hours. And that's really beneficial. So yeah, I think there's a bright future for crypto or Bitcoin back loan loans. I know somebody else that used a whole bunch of shitcoins to pay for get a loan and of course the market changed and the value of the shitcoins plummeted and it got wrecked totally. I said, you know, but at least you still you got rid of all the shitcoins and you still have the apartment. So you know, you should be happy for you. But that's why it's important just use Bitcoin. It's more stable in general than all the other coins and you don't want it your home loan to turn into a roller coaster. But yes, great. But before I would step into Goldman Sachs, I would demand a cap because I'm the only one without a cap here at the moment. So yes, don't care how shady the company is giving me the loan as long as I get a cap and maybe a cup of coffee will be nice. The reasonable rates, I don't know what Goldman Sachs charged, but it looks expensive. So you know, probably not as expensive as the 13% they charged me on the home loan, which was like 13 times as much as a normal mortgage at that time. But you know, for me, it worked. I think the future is crypto and Bitcoin back loans. You know, that's so. Did I even answer your question, Thomas? It does seem like Goldman had a specialized service this time. They're not offering it as a broad service. Likely, why they didn't release the rate. Now, this was probably a special contract for one person. So, but we'll see, we are getting there. And if Goldman did give you a hat, I think they'd give you a white hat. So you still wouldn't fit in this group of black hats. All right, I don't have an exit question for this one. Moving on, still a chance to push thumbs up. If you didn't push it last time, you're like, I thought about it, but you know, it's really difficult. I have to exit full screen. You have to push. I want to I want to know. Can I have an exit question? Sure, Ben. What's the exit question? Goldman Sachs is a really nice company because they sponsor my Apple card. Okay. No, I wanted to say that not a nice company. So, Kastra, yeah, yeah, with all these with all these Bitcoin back loans and loans being done a Bitcoin, I think with the lightning network, liquidity pool is going to be a huge thing. So there's no hot wallets and you've got this money sloshing about. There's no reason where you can't stake some of that stuff into a pool of money. And then that pool of money is then used to loan out to people. And then the people who are then actually providing the liquidity to get some yield. So using Bitcoin for traditional finance is pretty interesting. But then when you talk about sort of future finance and actual users being the people who are getting just regular users, like not me on my lightning wallet, I could be getting yield from learning out some of my Bitcoin, which is just within my wallet. I think that's the kind of cool thing which I'm actually interested in. So hopefully maybe some of these companies will do some R&D into that. And if they don't, then we'll build it and they'll make them obsolete. Dan Eve Goldman back Bitcoin loans. Is this good for Bitcoin? Because you can loan out your Bitcoin, but still kind of hold your Bitcoin or bad for Bitcoin because you don't hold your private keys and you lose access. Is it better for people to be owning them out and kind of owning them or to just sell them for money? Well, I think it's loaning it's better than selling it. If you need the money, then there's if by using it as loan collateral, at least you're kind of, you have a hope of getting it back, whereas if you sell it, you sell it, it's gone and you've got to buy it back. And then you have the internal turmoil of like, oh, but I sold it, you know, 40,000, then I had to buy back at 70,000 because it's going there. Oh yeah, sometimes, but not this year. I'm not pretty good. Maybe this year, I don't know. But initially, you've got a chance of getting it back whereas selling it, selling it, right? And that and selling it's very hard. It's like, it's one of the hardest thing ever is selling bitcoins and it's gut wrenching. So yeah, so at least if it's if it's as a loan collateral, you've got a chance of getting it back. Obviously, you've got to watch out for being margin-cooled and like, you don't want it to liquidate it. But yeah, as long as you keep kind of keep on top of it, then at least you get to keep your Bitcoin to a certain extent, as long as you know, it doesn't get liquidated. So, Martín Goldman is just flattering my ego. They're now saying that Bitcoin's our thing of value and we will hold on to those, sir, and wait for your loan to come do. Is this good thing for Bitcoin? People being loaning out their Bitcoin, Goldman. You and then got a point there because I couldn't read that in the article. What happens with the Bitcoin I use as collateral? Are they being loans out via the back door? Because that would create a collateral risk, meaning that you pay all your interest in time and you stick to the rules and agreements of your Bitcoin back loan. But at the same time, the person day loaned it out might not be able to pay it back and who bears this collateral risk. Is it assured? Yes or no? Because with most parties online right now, if you loan out the Bitcoins, they charge you, sorry, if you take out a loan with your Bitcoin as collateral, they will charge you pretty hefty interest rate. But at the same time, they make money by loaning it out again. And if you look at the small print, it specifically says that they can do that. There's just one exception to the rule and this is something for our US viewers, Unchained Capital, which whom I spoke to at the Bitcoin 2022 conference. They have this slogan, friends don't let friends sell their Bitcoin. And what they do is they provide you with a loan Bitcoin back. But at the same time, they will give you the address of the multi-sick wallet that holds the collateral. So at any point in time, you can go have a look at the Bitcoins, you can't really touch unless something happens to Unchained Capital. But you can see your coins held in your collateral, basically. You can look it up on the blockchain and you can verify that it's still there. They're not doing any tricks on you in the background. And I think this should be the standard for any Bitcoin collateralized loan. It is a whole circus where they loan it out via the back door. Sorry to name them, but it's both Celsius, Nexo, U-Hobbler, all of them, they all do this. And this is, in my opinion, is really bad because similar situation caused the 2008 financial crisis because it's just not good. The collateral should be held in a multi-sick wallet that the person who put the collateral there, the person taking out the loan should be able to, at any time, verify that his collateral is still there and it's safe. You still got the, you still got, even if they swear, you know, Cubscaught on a, I won't re-hypothicate your Bitcoin, you still got the third party risk that, you know, even though it's in a multi-sick that it could go, you know, it could something could happen, right? They could be an internal sort of thing, which is a problem. So maybe this is a question for Ben, but we'll tap enable kind of more smart contracty based, I dare I say it, more like Ethereum, where it's locked, and without third party risk of managing a multi-sick, will tap route help enable kind of smart contracts at that level, where you know that only if the code goes wrong, that the funds can be removed, you know, you don't have the reliance of a third party person saying, I swear I won't move the Bitcoin. Yeah, 100%. And that's why it's important that these companies, hopefully, that they invest in some R&D, and then they actually use these tools properly to mitigate the risk stuff, because yeah, the technology's being built out for exactly two server services. The companies are going to re-hypothicate the Bitcoin, especially if you give it to them in a normal way, like you send them Bitcoin to some address, they're going to re-hypothicate. The goldman thing, it sounds like he might have been giving them a treasurer or physical item, treating it more like a diamond or a bar of gold. It's interesting to note, Bitcoin's aren't really serialized. If you say I'm giving you 0.1 Bitcoin, you don't get the same 0.1 Bitcoin back in a year from now, you're going to get some other random Bitcoin. If you had a crypto punk or something, you would expect crypto punk number 1, 8, 8 back. So it might be harder for them to loan out against it, but even then, I can see these guys clever as they are thinking already. We just run up a bunch of ICO tokens or whatever you want to call them and say those represent crypto punk number 1, 8, 8, which we're holding, and you can hold a piece of it. And then they re-hypothicated that way. I think generally, they're going to try to like loan out whatever you give them out the back door. So if it's like Marilyn Monroe's dress or JFK's convertible or something, I mean, I guess it stays in one piece technically. But once you leave it out of your hands, you have no idea what's happening to that dress who is putting on who's wearing it. And that's the same for your Bitcoin. Obviously, with Goldman, they're going to they're going to pay you back. You'll get your money back. But like we said, it's not going to be the same Bitcoin. It won't have that history. It won't be your Bitcoin. It'll be someone's Bitcoin. But that's all for the people that have to decide to loan out their Bitcoin. So it goes for them. Check out WCN clips. We've got 101 subscribers now thanks to our new subscriber. We're also going to wear it hopefully on a less hashtags and more words in the titles. You can share clips about this show. It's really neat so that they'll be the show and they'll be clips. And you can send these to people that don't want to watch the whole show. WCN clips. Google it on Google or anywhere else that you Google things. If you duck duck go things or what have you. Issue three, Central African Republic becomes the central second company to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Yes, we all knew they would start coming one after the other. Just the huge names really packing them in there. We also have a second report here that Panama is poised to approve the use of Bitcoin and eight other cryptos without limitation. Yes, where big time we're grows up, we grow up and we grow up Bitcoin has grows up. Dan Eve, we've got El Salvador, a brand new one, Central African Republic. I don't know very much about them. And Panama coming in are these the new Bitcoin countries? Will there be more? Are these the only countries interested in Bitcoin? This is this is the snowball. So let's think in 20, it was 20, 31 wasn't it? So 2021 was when when El Salvador made it legal and that's one one country. Now in 2022, it's April, May tomorrow or something like that to a few days. And then there's already two countries. So even if even if it's only Panama and Central African Republic, that's it's a 100% increase on last year's number of country countries that have accepted Bitcoin as legal tender. So I think that's statistics. So yeah, so I think it's going to be a snowball effect. And I think you're going to see all that the countries that have maybe not as strong currencies as others or with Panama's case, they rely on the dollar, right? So Panama, their situation is the US is printing for the but not for me. So the dollar they're not getting any benefit from the dollar being printed because it's not going into their infrastructure, whereas the US is printing, who owns the dollar is printing it and sort of it's helping to that ecosystem. They're just getting the raw side of the inflation, which is the the worst part of money printing. So all good, printing money is fine if you get given some money, right? But if you're not being given any money, then it makes it makes the situation worse for you. So maybe we'll see that's an actual pattern. So another thing, two out two of three of the countries that have accepted Bitcoin as legal tender relied on the dollar and didn't have their own currency. So maybe that's going to be a theme is that we'll see those companies slide the country slide first, the ones that that rely on the dollar. Ultimately, again, every every new country that comes on board it again, then more credence, the idea of it being used as a currency. These are kind of smaller experiments in smaller economies and Panama's an interesting one because it's very much a tax haven as well. More so than say, more so than say El Salvador and Central African Republic obviously. So there's probably going to be quite a huge amount of money swaying into into into Panama based on the traditional connections with the fight traditional finance world. So ultimately, I think it's a good thing. It's another it's another notch on the Bitcoin price. Well, you know, Dan, as Mark Twain said, the only thing better than printing your own money is having another country print your money. So yes, they were in a tight situation there in Panama. Martin, we've got El Salvador, Central African Republic and Panama, some really hot countries anywhere that you'd want to live yet. Yeah, I really started looking at Panama beach front real estate, but it's pretty pricey really. Dan said it's all offshore countries, tax haven. I wouldn't want to call it that way because it has his negative negative sound to it. It's more like international business friendly. That sounds just better. And Heyman is a good word. Heyman's a positive word. It's like an awaited sort of tax freedom. It did it of course, this is fantastic. And as Dan stated, like any country that uses a foreign currency, like most likely US dollar, as their national currency, they will they will seriously consider Bitcoin at this point because Bitcoin is 21 million. It's fixed. It's a better solution in the long run than adopting a currency that has been inflating. Well, the currency itself has been like expanding with 80% over the past few years. So I think this is this is this is a really positive development. We'll see this more of this. I believe Najip Bukhale, the great big leader from El Salvador, predexed four countries or so in total or two countries. I don't know how many countries he predexed would adopt Bitcoin in the next year. And we're still in the next year. So we're only halfway and there's already the Africa Central African country. There will be more there that will adopt Bitcoin. And Panama, Panama excites me. I know as if you run a business in Panama, you can select any currency you want to keep your books in. So if you're like a European based company, but you open a branch in Panama, you can opt to say, well, you know, we do our books in euros or you can say you we do our books in dollars, but it was already possible to do your books for your Panama based company in Bitcoin. So if you are a purely a Bitcoin company that doesn't use any bank accounts and is purely focused on Bitcoin, then it's already possible. It was already possible to to say, we will do our books in Bitcoin. You just have to find a counting software that allows you to calculate all those sets. But when if you wait once you do, you want to have that, this is ideal because a Panama company makes it harder to confiscate your assets. And at the same time, if you don't require any international bank for your Panamanian company, and you can do everything in Bitcoin, it also makes it harder to confiscate your assets from the company. So I think fantastic. Yes, I'm so excited about this. I will after the show, I will continue to look at beachfront real estate in Panama because you know, if Portugal ever changes their minds, I'm off to Panama. A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. Ben, Arc, India and China famously skipped landlines going straight to cell phones. Are these countries skipping over all kinds of things going straight to Bitcoin? Or is this a huge education problem as they barely have the infrastructure for normal computing, let alone Bitcoin computing? Yeah, I mean, that's a very interesting point. And it has been a pain point in our Salvador is access to, you know, high speed internet and and then some of the electronics and things she needs to, which, you know, which people we use for governing things like Bitcoin nodes. But I mean, all these poor countries, they complex themselves into the most evolved digital native currency on the planet while all these, you know, big countries with their own central banks are building out very slowly the CVDCs, like you have Bitcoin and it works and the fewer a country which is experienced of volatile currency, then actually Bitcoin's volatility isn't that bad. And you know, you can live with it. I think as long as there's a couple of options, they have like a stable medium of account and then they then have Bitcoin there as a sort of savings technology, which anyone could just onboard into if they want to and they can screw, you know, screw away some funds into them and watch them grow over time. So obviously it takes one for it to grow. Then that's great. I'm seeing more and more exploration. I mean, obviously, when anyone who went to our Salvador, they're like, okay, it's all great, but it needs to be state. We need something which is more stable and there's been some great work which has been done by people like Alex Gladstein's kind of got an idea on using contracting to have some sort of stable medium exchange, which could be on Bitcoin. And then, you know, with lightning labs, they've had the tarot release, which we should allow that kind of things on lightning and stable coins. And so I'm noticing that the more of the players within Bitcoin is seeing that as a pain point for these countries to try to adopt it and they do need it would be great if they had like a stable medium exchange, which wasn't the fear currency like the USD. And so that's something we hope to see kind of evolve and be worked on. But yeah, it's banking and banking. I mean, that's why we're in Bitcoin isn't it? And there was a period for a while where the banking on banked ideology kind of fell to the white side and it was all about just, making fat stacks. But now we seem to be going to the back full circle and it's like, yeah, actually, this tool is super useful for poor countries which don't have central banks, don't have infrastructure and they can just leap forward and adopt the most advanced digital native currency on the planet. And I tracked all this investment. So I was speaking to my friend, Jada Lux, who's out there on the ground in our Salvador, I was just speaking to earlier before the show. And he was saying it's amazing how many VCs and how much investment is happening in our Salvador at the moment. Actually on the ground, there's lots of VCs just knocking around trying to invest and stuff, trying to build up the experiment and make it work. And that's very reassuring that these people have realized there's an opportunity there and it's attracting investment because that's ultimately what's great about these first movers who are starting to explore Bitcoin in their countries is they're just going to attract all these investors. And most couldn't even point to where our Salvador was on a map before last year. And now we all know where it is and quite a lot about that country. And similarly, with the central public, it's the same. Most people don't really know where that is. It's like, well, it's one of these random African countries you'd never heard of before. And now suddenly we're all googling it. People are going to go out there and they're going to invest in the country, their tourism sector is going to go up because of it maybe if you've said, but it will go up. So yeah, it's a very smart move. If you've got a country which isn't that wealthy, which is reliant upon another country's sovereign currency to use this free and open source money. And then hopefully, hopefully, hopefully people will build some recipes for some of these countries can build their own sovereign stablecoins on top of Bitcoin. So you can have another Salvador dollar, you can have a Panama dollar which is stable and they don't have to use things other currencies for that functionality. Hopefully that'll be built on top of it as well. I was going to ask you actually, Martin, because obviously you said that about Portugal, what do you think about the material and uses? Is that exciting? Yeah, nice. But for me, I don't want to live on an island. You know, Madeira is nice, but you know, I've lived in Cyprus for a while and it just made me closer to phobic. It's like, let me out, let me out. And I'd rather be able to drive for days. But what do you think about the Bitcoin stuff we started doing? Because I think it's actually very good. But if you look at the rest of Portugal, Madeira is an autonomous region. So they can decide for themselves. But the rest of Portugal is pretty pretty cool too. They don't consider there's no capital gains. Texts on Bitcoin, the taxman doesn't want to know about your Bitcoin. If you cash out a large amount, all of a sudden to your bank account, they will ask you, hey, where's this million coming from? They will ask you. And then you just have to show them that you didn't magically pour it out of your black hat which you found or you have to explain where it's from. And if that's enough, and I think it should be like that, they state that Bitcoin is like foreign currency. You don't get any interest on it or you know, they assume you don't get any interest on it. Therefore, you shouldn't have to pay any capital gains on it. It's like, you know, if you keep dollars under your mattress, it's your dollars, you know. So I think, yes, I like this approach. It helps get a lot of Bitcoiners into the country. There's lots of people migrating to Portugal. And so there's not that much of a crypto Bitcoin community, but they're definitely here and they're just low profile and enjoying life. And Madeira, I think, can use the extra investments. It's a look there for real estate too because at first I thought, oh, I'm in a wrong place. I should move to Madeira, but no, no, no, but it's nice. It's good. I think over time more and more countries will realize that it's it's okay to be positive about Bitcoin. You know, there's no need to try and kill it because that won't work anyway. And money flows where it's well treated. So that's a big point as well. Actually, a lot of countries were scared. Wouldn't they to be a first mover in the basket first move? In case they suddenly get economic pressures from countries which don't want Bitcoin to succeed, but by that not happening to the countries in which they have sort of accepted more, then more country will be like, oh, okay, cool. We'll might as well accept it as well. And it's all they are the better because it slowly builds up until it's too big to do anything about. And no one would want to be the big country that kills the economies of loads of small countries who accepted Bitcoin, you know, because then they'd be assholes, right? And it's another who wrote a report? Was it a world economic forum that said something or was it the Bank of International Settlements? They had a report where this just, yeah, we were an affiliate, but the report that said it's Bitcoin, it's not accepted and not legal tender in any country. But now it needs a little little asterix, and a footnote that says, well, it is legal tender in El Salvador, Panama, Central African Republic. So there will be more and more. So yes, it's definitely not we've outgrown the dark markets, the geek money phase, the dark market phase, risky investor investment phase. And now, you know, I remember when we were in Miami, what few weeks ago, for Bitcoin 2022, and Thomas pointed that he fell more theater, which is next to the massive Miami convention center, and he says, a few years ago, this is where the conference was, and we were talking about the night, the night, the liquor store at the corner accepting Bitcoin, which was a big deal. But now, there's 30,000 people and we're talking about countries adopting Bitcoin. And this is in the matter of years, this is just amazing. How far we've come. So, yeah, I'm like, you know, I get like goose bumps talking about it, but then you can't see it on the camera. Reffent's the, the, the stables on, on lightning though, isn't that like putting a steam train on mag left rails? Like, yeah, or is it because, you know, they'd still be creating their own currency that could be manipulated, right? Or are you referring to like a Libra sort of solution, which is a bucket of me? Yes. Oh, sorry. Oh, I mean, this is, this is, this is, this is out for question. I just think that needs to be recipes because it's these big countries are central banks, then they can build their own legislative currencies. And some of them will work quite well when people will adopt them and use them. And then countries who don't have central banks, then it makes sense to use all this free and upper source technology, which exists. And then if we can do it, probably do it better than the countries who are doing a centralized way, then maybe some of these bigger countries will just end up using that currency anyway. I, I, I, person, I think there's a whole bunch of ways you can do it. My personal favorite way would, it's, it's a federated model, kind of like liquid. And then you have like different regions of a country. They have like, they sign the, the transactions. And they have lots of flash block times. And then you have lightning on top of it. So everyone's still using lightning. And you can do swapping in and out of Bitcoin lightning to, you know, whatever currency lightning. And you have like it, so if you want to go full run. But I want to make a Dow type vault, which you put Bitcoin in, it spits out our Salvador dollars. So I put 100 quit a Bitcoin, I get our Salvador dollars out. And then the peg is kept via arbitrage. And it's pegged to like a whole bunch of different currencies. I've used Oracle's, but it's enough Oracle's that it's pretty stable. And then, and then you're locking up Bitcoin, the vault is then controlled by the federation. And then it's kind of a corruption resistant in the whole, although the whole geographical country would have to collude together in order to be able to like manipulate and take advantage of that vault. Or something, that's my personal, like I'm looking at whales as an example. Like if we rolled this out in whales, and it could be a tool of liberation for Wales, because then we're so many out of the Welsh pound. And we're like, you know, when it comes to independence, then we'll be like, well, we've got our own currency, and we can use our own currency. Why do we want the British pound? It might be a tool of liberation. But in other countries, maybe in some of like our Salvador, I don't know, maybe, maybe it's some sort of more financial mechanism using markets and stuff. I know Ibex, the bank, they've been exploring that kind of concept. And I think Alex Gladstein concept is a bit like that as well. It's kind of using financial tools to try and make some stable medium of exchange, which you could also have then lightning network on top of. So then a wild back, I read about the federated e-cash. Basically they used David Choms, DGCash e-cash project, but then they bolted it on top of Bitcoin. So what you would get is a central bank, a sort of digital central bank, which would create the e-coins or e-cash tokens or coins, like digital cash that can be like anonymously spent and used, just like e-cash was at the time. But it's backed by Bitcoin. So you don't have to trust that central bank, but it was like a, it was basically a very old system from the 90s. But then on steroids, because back by Bitcoin, and I looked at it, but it was still very, very command line stuff and no going up. Oh, good friend, Obi, he's been pushing that idea of using Choms e-cash on Bitcoin more and more for currencies in these low commutators. There's a stable medium of exchange, and that's very exciting and interesting as well. So I have to try and dig out. I think you did a talk in, these are talking, I mean, he's done a talk. There's a talk, there's a YouTube video of him doing a talk on it, and it's quite fascinating, but also very confusing. I don't know if the Choms e-cash stuff, but it's great that, you know, I mean, I know, I just know, there's a lot of people who I respect, and they say that yeah, that that is a very good solution, and it would work if done properly. It sounds like Ben might hurt the feelings of Bitcoiners, but a stable coin might be better for governments and people less stressed, but there is that possible third party counter risk of who's going to what stable coin, what do you peg it at, what market do you use, what system views, what if that, what if that coin goes to zero? Also, as Ben had mentioned, there were many VCs in El Salvador everywhere, perhaps, which reminded me of the ancient Chinese proverb. It is a great time to go swimming. There are many sharks in the water. So it should be fine there. And now back to the exit question. Let's go to Dan first. Dan name a country big or small. What country or style of country will be next to accept Bitcoin? And this is no longer just like a goofy question we ask where it's like, I wonder if a country will accept Bitcoin. Multiple countries now accept Bitcoin. So this is more and more real the more times that we ask it. Go ahead. I'm still hoping for Malta because they were meant to be the blockchain country and blah, blah, and I've got multi roots. So it would be good. I think Malta would be a good country because it's not one that's like it's tiny, but it's not tiny tiny. So yeah, I think that would kind of be a good candidate. It's also in the, it's also in the EU. So it, you know, it infiltrates Europe and it's probably one of the smallest, if not least, certainly by physical size. So yeah, I think more to be a great country candidate for adopting Bitcoin. I'd like to see Malta in there somehow. My random chance I've been there twice, but it does sound very obscure. It's much smaller than Sicily. However, it's in the EU, which is going to be difficult to get that Bitcoin through maybe they could do a stable coin. Martine, Wismer or Ben, do you want to go next? What country will accept Bitcoin? What am I sorry? What's OBS? What's OBS? The British government? Yeah, yeah, just message it in the chat. It's literally twitter.com slash OBI. Oh, massive flex. Yeah, three left. I want to, I want to find, I want to find his talk because it's great. And, all right, well, OBS, not a country. And I'm not sure that Bitcoin 2022 live streamed their talks. I'm hearing that they didn't. Martine, Wismer. Next country. I think it might be, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a country that currently has hyperinflation, something like Lebanon. I wouldn't be surprised where, because people already are Turkey. I'm not sure there are so many countries in the chances of winning this one or slim, because if you would have asked me last week, I would have never guessed that it was the central African Republic, because I did have to Google it, where it's death. Where's the beach? There's no beach. AR. Everyone's heard of CAR. We all call it car. Central African Republic. All right. We've got Libya, Malta, Turkey. What do we got? Ben? I think I will stop anyway. I think I'll be doing federated custodian stuff. All right. We're using the Bitcoin next. Wales, of course, obviously. Where's the country? Sorry to disaffirm. Yes it is. Is it country? Thank you very much. Wales is most definitely a country. Savage. We've got the word sandwich. We've got our own language. Can you say Ben? Can you say the longest words in the... No, I can't speak German. It's very embarrassing. My kids can speak Welsh. It's huge. When you go on the train, the train pulls up alongside. I need to see the name go. Crazy name. It keeps going. We've been looking for countries and towns with very long names and hoping that they would join Bitcoin. I'm sticking with Japan. I think a technological society, a place where we don't have to explain to them what a QR code is and how it works. I think that the kids in Japan are ready for Bitcoin. They like technology. They like video games. They like staying inside. It sounds like they're Bitcoiners already. We're moving on to issue four. This is going to be a hot issue. Issue four. Crypto is winning and Bitcoin diehards are furious about it. Yes. We've gotten to that point where the Bitcoiners are the settlers and everyone else is the Native Americans and it's time to eat the settlers and to destroy everything they believed in. All of the Bitcoin philosophy ideas have been wiped free from the Miami conference replaced by finance guys and gals and they're all here for the money. As this journalist said who went to the Miami 2022 conference, they went to a panel called the war on Bitcoin. They hope that it would be about using Bitcoin in Ukraine and Russia and the larger context of war instead. It was about the war against Bitcoin. As the journalist said, the enemies of Bitcoin are journalists not counting Bitcoin magazine governments not counting El Salvador traditional finance, environmental, social and governance investing generally and environmentalists specifically popularity, which causes Bitcoin to get a bunch of losers and fun. Fun is one of the enemies of Bitcoin. As the author says Bitcoin is truly mainstream, but if Bitcoin wasn't about revolution, what is it actually about anymore? Dan Eve, what about Bitcoin and Bitcoiners? Is the revolution over? Did crypto win? Bitcoin is winning massively. No one is adopting Ethereum as a national currency and ever likely to. No one is likely to fordoze, for example. Although that would be really, really quite cool and even better if someone adopts doves for their currency over Ethereum. That would really wind a lot of people up. But Bitcoin is winning. I think what's not winning is maximalism. That's because a lot of maximalists say Ethereum is a failed project. This is probably quite a controversial but it's not really a failed project. It's got many users. The users are growing a lot and there's lots of services and things that can be done using. We talked about earlier about smart contracts that don't require a trusted third party like Nexon or other services to look after your Bitcoin and swear they won't be high-bathcates because it's in a smart contract which is which is verifiable on a blockchain which isn't as secure as Bitcoin, blah, blah, blah. But it's still work utility. The fact is that if people are using something, it gives the network value. Although I know that Bitcoin is king or queen or both, it's 2022. All the other currencies, sorry, other tokens and whatever, they may have some usage to some people and whilst they do, they'll have value. To me, it's never been a battle between, I don't think, oh, it's Dogecoin better than obviously not Dogecoin. It's a bad example like Ripple, XRP or any one of those. The fact is that Bitcoin is the hard money. All these other things, they're kind of side-chose and they still have their use cases. But yeah, I don't know. I just never believe the argument that there should be Bitcoin and only Bitcoin. It kind of is especially when people moan about it, like, oh, giving Ethereum airtime or whatever. To me, it's literally completely analogous to traditional finance going, oh, Bitcoin, this is really technology. No one's got to use for it. No one, blah, blah, blah. It's the same argument, but just passed on. It's like censorship for the, but not for me. It's people are happy with the censorship and about saying, well, we need to ignore this completely because I have a solution that's best and don't consider these things as useful, only Bitcoin is useful. Only my thing is useful. And I think as long as something has got merit and people use it, then it's got an underlying value because people value it. You can't turn around and say, even now people are doing it now, they're just chool-ip, crazy people. They're like the people that say that Ethereum's a failed experiment. Are the same crazy people that say Bitcoin's a failed experiment? They're the same people that say Bitcoin's a chool-ip experiment or it's a Ponzi scheme. It's obviously not. And I think actually it's a discredit to their intelligence when they do, you know, say that say Ethereum's a failed. I'm not picking Ethereum because it's quite a lot of infrastructure is sparring off of it, right? And quite a lot of people use it for defying stuff like that. So yeah, I don't. I think it's all a bit silly when the main goal is fear and central banks. Those are the things that are stupid. Those are the things that should be redundant. Those are the things that Bitcoin is fighting against. And by saying that everything else is a failed experiment, I think it just makes you look a bit silly. And it definitely makes it hard for Bitcoiners to make friends. I want to take a moment. I want to stand up for NFTs. Bitcoin, everyone are always down on NFTs or as we called them in 2017, blockchain collectibles. But NFTs are a great way for people to learn about Bitcoin before they get into Bitcoin. They think that they're sending around or collecting JPEGs, but really we all know that they're actually collecting tokens or strings of numbers and letters in an encrypted system similar to Bitcoin. And they're going to learn this too. They're going to learn how to use wallets. They're going to learn how to send around tokens. They're going to get ripped off a couple of times when someone doesn't send them the NFT or if the NFT is less valuable and all those things. They're going to even learn about rug pulls and scams. And eventually once they lose perhaps all of their money on the collectibles or make a lot of money collectibles are worth what you buy them for, what you sell them for. It's always up to the timing of the thing. I think that they're going to come to Bitcoin and they're going to come back and they're going to take that knowledge that they've learned in NFTs and they're going to become Bitcoiners or cryptocurrency people as it will be by then. But I think a lot of people are negative about it and they're not seeing the positives where people are getting wallets. They are sending them around. They are understanding digital scarcity through blockchain collectibles as an example as a level to enter. And yes, right now they're all like, I only do NFTs. I never touch a theorem. I never touch Bitcoin or Polygon or any of the things that actually hold my NFTs. But they actually do, right? They all end up learning about Bitcoin. They all learn about Ethereum. They all learn a little bit more, which is what it's really about. So maybe we shouldn't be so mad at these kids and their JPEGs and their tokens. Maybe we should see that as another entry level, a little, what do they call that thing a gateway drug? Maybe NFTs are a gateway drug to Bitcoin. Maybe we don't have to shit on them all the time. Our team, Wishmeyer, what about these crazy Bitcoiners? Are they being replaced by crypto? Well, I don't consider myself a Bitcoin maximalist, but I do consider myself a shitcoin minimalist. So what you see is that all those different blockchain and crypto tokens are being presented to unsuspecting investors as being the next Bitcoin. And that I don't like because Bitcoin has found this use case. It's digital gold or payment system if you use lightning. And it's working. And it has proven itself. Many of the other blockchains, for example, let's name something crazy, helium. It is the internet of things combined with blockchain technology. And it basically just adds a payment layer to this this long range protocol, which is like Wi-Fi, but then long range, very low bandwidth. And that has been free for years now. So there's no reason to bolt helium blockchain onto it. Yet they are selling hotspots, basically low-ragate ways that have internet of things, blockchain stuff on it. So it's bordering the scammy and they're lowering unsuspecting investors and trying to sell it. That is their use case. No, that's not the use case. They want that to be the use case, but it will never materialize. It will never work. And all those people will be thrown away their money. And therefore, I think many of the Bitcoin maximalists, as we call them, they respond in a very many often unpleasant way. It's a scammy or a waste agreement. They're scamming you, but it's not just a scam. We've got pyramid schemes, old-fashioned pong sees. We've got rug pulls. You know, there's like all these different ways to lose your money. It's not necessarily a scam. So it could also be just bad idea. But that's why I always say just especially for beginners, if you like an NFT, just go and buy it. But if you want something like to invest in, then buy some Bitcoin. And then often they say, oh no, yeah, listen to your story, but I bought XRP or whatever, because Bitcoin doesn't go up fast enough. You know, this is quite often people tell me that I heard it today at the bagel store when I got my lunch. It's like, oh, I invested in, I forgot the name. It was something I never heard of. I said, why did you purchase it? Yes, because Bitcoin doesn't go up fast enough. So well, then if you wanted to go up fast and go to a casino and put everything on red, because you'll probably have more chance than your shit coin, you know, uping in value. So, okay, to a long story short, I can be pretty harsh to people investing in any cryptocurrency because they think it will go up just like Bitcoin and it will never do. And then it's just that I lost patience with all these like, well, 100,000 of Bitcoin clones that will probably never see any profits. And they're just there to enrich the founders. And in that case, you know, if people don't understand the technology, just stick with Bitcoin. If you like your board, or you like your Qrio card, definitely buy one, you know, if you got the money to burn, but don't buy them because you think you'll be able to sell them for more. That's not, you know, if you buy them because you like them and then you could put them on a digital photo frame, you can use them on your TV. So you have a nice digital artwork in your living room instead of a big black square. But if you want to like, you know, have some digital gold, then just go for Bitcoin, you know, for it is my two cents. I'm as a shit coin minimalist. Man, it's almost like the worlds of casino, but the Bitcoiners are like, only play this slot machine, not that slot machine. And then they get really upset if you play the roulette wheel. What are we going to do? I thought the art course more about, obviously those contoms serve this community, whatever mentioning the word crypto too much. And then a few other mentions from like Peter Teele of Ethereum. And now that was for payments and Bitcoin is gold. And you're like, you know, Peter, you don't know what you're talking about. That was such an awful presentation, by the way. Like it was as if they stood on the stage and they said, right, you, you've got 30 minutes to your presentation, just around a person from the audience go, it was just such a poor presentation. Anyway, I don't like the guy anyways, not, but this presentation, at least for the people in that room, hopefully, you know, concluded the same thing as I did. This whole, but I mean, a large part of the article was this and Bitcoin magazine, like, oh, yeah, we're not bad before. But actually, they're capturing this myth of this, this, this, ideal Bitcoiner, which existed, who only eats meat and has these like certain political affiliations. And it's a myth. Like that's never existed. It's something which was created online in Twitter through these weird like bubbles of influence, which popped up out, you know, filled void when other influences moved out or whatever else. And it's something which is, which is, we're trying to be frustrating for me when I was trying to explain Bitcoin to people and they would look at the Bitcoin over community. And then they would assume it's just a bunch of like far right people who are generally knobs. And it's all based on this noteworthic I'm the truest Bitcoin in the room because I only eat meat and I do this and I do that. And it's it's it's complete in utter nonsense. And thank God. Now the the the words moving on from it and there's plenty of environmentalists in Bitcoin. Look at Bitcoin Core. Look at the diverse political ideologies that the people who are actually working Bitcoin Core, there's lefties, there's righties, there's people who are environmentalists, there's people who are vegan. Like, it's another people working on Bitcoin is very most fundamental level that we were all interesting to help build out the software and the the very base layer. And there's no no truest got some in Bitcoin at there. So I'm glad that we're getting away from this concept of this Bitcoin supremacist. There was, I mean, there's plenty of examples now in history. We had it with the the general sheet coinry and then we had it with the ICOs and had it with that, yes, most of these things are don't do very well. And a lot of them are just just full of hot air a lot of these projects. And then the ones which are full of hot air, the technology in which they're built on is isn't isn't that trustworthy. I've always quite amazed actually when you have people who have like a wide knowledge of all these sheet coins and what they do. And I struggle just to keep up on Bitcoin and lightning and I think how do they how can they possibly so I'm like, okay, there may be value in some of these other projects and projects and Ethereum, yeah, I mean, still not broken. It's still kind of working. So they keep having to like add all these bandages on it to keep the thing moving and it didn't live up to his original promise. They have to have like these like extra blockchains is on top of it. And then they do these like these state chain things where they have to like take us take us a shot of the blockchain and then hash it into Ethereum and I don't worry because we could roll back that blockchain. And it all just looks a bit hacky to me. So whatever if they want to build things on top of that, it's easy. That's fine. What I'm very excited about is I've meet a lot of developers who are coming back to Bitcoin because of lightning. So they they they had a project they wanted to do and originally they were going to build on Bitcoin because they you know they thought they could do zero cost stuff and they would have like immediate settlement. And then they couldn't have that. So then they moved onto this shit coinery thing and different blockchains which are faster or whatever else so they could have these fast transactions. And I'm seeing a lot of projects coming back into Bitcoin now. A lot of developers coming back into Bitcoin because there's all this functionality within the lightning network. And if you're going to build on something say if you've got an actual decent project which is going to use a legislative currency for transactions then it just makes perfect sense just build on Bitcoin because it's all there. The infrastructure is there. I do think that a lot of the NFTs and other stuff that all that's going to start pouring back pouring onto Bitcoin as well as time wears on. And that's very reassuring that there's a bunch of what's just talking to someone before. There's a project called Scar City and they were proper shit coinery and they did there are no C.O. and all Southern nonsense. But now they're back on Bitcoin and they're building some pretty cool things on lightning network and props to them. I'm looking forward to some of the stuff they make. So it's a good thing. It's all a good thing and Bitcoin magazine are also evil for perpetuating this utter myth of this Bitcoin supremacist, No Truth, got some in gone. And I tried to read the hard copy version of Bitcoin magazine and it's very much still there. It's interesting how writing a Bitcoin book with a powerful yet generic title like the all-important Bitcoin or the Bitcoin standard. Suddenly your politics are Bitcoin's politics and they had not only a large interview with Safety and where he fought against the vaccine and he fought in favor of the virus but they also had like a four-page photo spread of safety and standing in front of things so that you knew that he's a cool guy. It was like Tiger Beat for Bitcoin. I was like, look at the lack of support from nobody within the court. So nobody working within Bitcoin. The fundamental level has shown any support for that book. Why? Because it's completely and utterly fundamentally wrong because Bitcoin says, because Safety and Says, this is Bitcoin. This is what Bitcoin does. It's perfect. It works perfectly well now and it's like all the people actually working on Bitcoin like, no, it needs to be improved. That's things used to be improved. It doesn't work perfectly well now. Things will change. There's nothing, there's no darkening Bitcoin. Anything can change in Bitcoin. Sometimes we have, if there's enough consensus for something to change. So the ideology is it's not supported by the people actually working on Bitcoin. It's supported by this mob of angry young men or whatever who just want to eat meat and fucking hate women. I don't know whatever else. I prefer. I prefer the, sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm done. So I prefer the first edition of the Bitcoin standard, which was actually called the Future of Money by Dominic Frisbee. Yeah, everyone go read that. Actually, if you read the future of Bitcoin, the Future of Money by Dominic Frisbee, there's an excellent order book that's got wonderful voice. Go listen to it. All the good bits of the Bitcoin standard of that book and then all the bad bits are exactly the instrival. I also think there's something where Bitcoiners want. They want one book or one video that you could just send to people that would instantly use the modern phrase to orangepill them. I think a lot of people thought that this Bitcoin standard is the book. I found it hard to read. I found it hard to listen to. The pages are Bible thin. It reads like an economics textbook way too much detail. And again, even the, the religious people, the Christians have this problem. The guy handed me a Bible recently, a little word book and I was like, this isn't really what you want to say. Like the first thing you want to say to me is not Genesis and who begot who you really want to say what the religions about. You want to say what the currency is about. You want a short book. Want something that's direct like Bitcoin for dummies. Instead, we get this Bitcoin standard. I hear people they just buy it and they buy 10 copies of it and they give it to their friends and all this. I'm not sure it's the solution to all our problems, but it is easy to write about. They all eat steak. They all don't believe in vaccines or viruses or anything. There's all kind of right wing politics in it. And I guess that's what Bitcoin is now. I tell you what I did like. And I defined. You got to define your politics for someone else. I was watching. I was watching because I go to the conference. I do my open source stuff. I do my workshops. And then the evening then I sit back with the Germans on the same way. We drink a few beers and we watched the some of the talks. And then I saw Peter Jordan get Peter Jordan on now. I'm going to hang on this guy. And then I put the Peter Jordan talk on. And I was like, all the five. Jordan Peterson. Sorry. Jordan Peterson. The Jordan Peterson talk on. And I was like, yeah, it's guys good. Like because he was he said, we don't know. Like there's he was he was basically like he wasn't playing to the crowd. He was just saying, maybe moving off the gold standard was a good thing. There was a lot of economic positive positive things which happened after moving off the gold standard. And that maybe was moving to a Bitcoin standard could be a bad. And it was just good for us to think about those things and not to just assume that this crazy panacea, which is going to cure all the world's hills, like there may be some negative side side effects to it. And I just thought it was cool that he stood on stage with all these Bitcoiners, all these like say, for Dean Worshping Bitcoiners. And they just put out there this just just just to be a little bit more skeptical, a little bit more subjective over your own ideology. I wish I wish I came. I certainly found myself at Jordan Peterson fund. I wish he was playing devil's advocate there. I wish he was exploring the other side just to explore it. But he likely actually believes that because I know for him, you know, this communism thing, this anti communism, he's 100% on that. He won't explore for the second, the other side of that issue. So it's interesting to hear him take a different side on the gold standard. And I do agree, Ben, I don't think we're going to see art deco buildings under the Bitcoin standard. I don't think we're going to see a little, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's have like bring back consonants full of wealth, which we can go rape and pillage and then pull all that wealth into Europe, which is basically the backbone of that period in time where we had like all the economic growth. We need that, we need that continent to rape and pillage. We can get all that money to have the heart. In the Netherlands, we call it trade international trade. Sorry, international trade. It lifts all boats, a rising tide that lifts all boats. But yes, it's interesting to see this Bitcoin. Also, the girl had incredibly good access to the parties. She was describing party after party that I hadn't even heard of, let alone been invited to. It's great to see that the rich and the financial guys are having their own fancy parties. Martin, I guess we missed out on these parties. They said one of them had sushi, free drinks, serena Williams. Yes, a lavish pool with half naked girls in there. I went to the well party on the first, not only fancy party, I went to. It was, they were just all, there's just different, they had all these old doors, they were all octopus based. They had like octopus and then they had like liquidized octopus. And I felt like I was with the lizard people that we only octopus. But they are, Ben, they are. They are. They are. We didn't. We didn't. We didn't. We were all alone. We were all alone. And then what did I do the whole time? I sat and I spoke to Marco Pays, who used to the one who used to do all that great work on renewables and Bitcoin mining, actual academic, doing a PhD in that field. Did some great panels at the Bitcoin conference. And then this is the thing which this, this, this, this Bitcoin magazine reporter is trying to sort of rally people against. I don't know. Like, that's great that there's people actually doing work in that field. Because it's very interesting, very inspiring. And she's a great person as well. And I got to chat to her and we chat and like, away away from all the music and all the noise. And all the people I've never seen in my whole life, all these rich people, all the socialites of Miami, have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Bitcoin. Yeah, so yeah. There's a positive story for the whale pass. You found the other math person at the party. Otherwise, they did a great job with the whale pass as they gave him to kind of the top open source people like Ben and the artists and some other people so that the rich people would have a chance to mingle with these elite crypto people just like Satoshi wanted it to be. We thought, he's like, well, build a new society with a new level of elites. And that's going to solve all our problems. I didn't actually see any party on, you know, according to my Chinese Fitbit, I walked 25 kilometers at least every day. And just on the Expo, I didn't see any of the talks. I just, you know, just visited other stands and networked. And at the end of the day, how was tired, man? I was really tired for somebody that doesn't like walk all day during the day. This was this was a large expo and the expo alone. I don't regret it. You know, next year probably goes on to maybe some parties, but you know, I wanted to be fresh the next day. You know, be able to network talk to people, find about out about their products, see how we can integrate with our company. And for me, that was the most valuable bit. So I totally missed out on the octopuses. No, liquefied octopuses. I don't eat octopuses. I think they're like very intelligent beings. Exactly. I mean, I'm with the vegan, like renewable mining girl who's working on the renewable mining academic stuff. And then I'm with Rootsle as well. And he's like, you know, he's also thinks that an octopus is a sentient being. So we were like the only ones who didn't want to wait the octopus, but the rest of them were like, slurping it down like, oh, yeah. You know, they're completely sentient intelligent beings. Lizard people. Yeah. That's like a metaphor for all of Bitcoin. They're slurping down the intelligent beings eating them up. Yeah, I didn't go to any parties. And I don't know how they I agree with martina. I don't know how they can fit them in their schedule. I was tired after each day of the expo. I do wonder though about some of these Bitcoin parties. I guess it's harder now than it used to be in the old days. If you had a company like BitPair, whatever, you just want Bitcoin people to come to your Bitcoin party. You wouldn't be all like elite. We only want the financial best of the best at our party. You'd be like, maybe we could learn something. Maybe we could recruit a new program. We can meet the new guys, you know, from this party. So there'd be more of an open atmosphere where like I remember getting invited to lots of crypto parties. But at this one, I guess that the caviar was, you know, pretty expensive. They want to keep it up tight and hoard that stuff. Even though it's ben shows, you know, the nerds aren't going to eat your caviar except baby by mistake. But yeah, they didn't invite the nerds to the parties. No, I was like, when I went out of the Fed, because that's the only party I went to. I didn't get invited to any other parties. No, I heard about all these great parties which are happening around me. And I was like, I'm kind of like, I've got the speak thing. I've got the whelting. I feel like you should be invited to this cabal party. But I think we're kind of downers. They don't want us there. And I kept bumping into random insanely cool Bitcoiners. I bumped into like Jonas Nick and a couple of other core devs and they're just having dinner with them just in some restaurant. And I'm like, why aren't you being invited to some crazy, you know, party? Because that's not what they they they they wonder they it's the socialite thing isn't it's kind of like say it's a different scene. Even if you were a core developer and you actually helped build Bitcoin from the ground up, we still don't want you at this party. No, I think that was very clear. And I know why it's like Ben says because we are downers and look at this downers again with our exit question. Is the Bitcoin revolution over or are there still some Bitcoiners hiding out inside the Trojan horse which is being slowly moved into the financial system? Martine Wishmare is your revolution over? Did the bombs lose? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I promise. I'm not that negative about it, you know, we we improve on Bitcoin one line of code at a time and it doesn't really matter what we're building or you know, we're or whether we spreading the word via social media. It's just that many others are attracted to the scene and they they don't want to know how Bitcoin works. They don't care about lightning. They don't care about transaction fees because you know, they'll just pay it or their bank will pay it. They just want they're just there for the money. And that's that's this is a group of Bitcoiners that has always been there but it's it's just a little bit more visible nowadays and you know, I don't I don't really care about it too much. For me, I still focus on on building things. I think this is this is what makes Bitcoin exciting. You know, I you know, I would never ever ever have considered becoming an accountant or doing some financial job and just juggling numbers all day. It just sounds utterly boring. It's not my thing. So no, you know, next year we'll have our own party with Blackjack and Hookers. Well, accountancy can do that to you. Ben Arck the 300. They fought at the hot gates of Thermopoly. They defeated the Persians but later on the Persians killed every single one of the 300 Spartans. Is that similar to the Bitcoiners? No, we were so we I kept bumping into people and like and you bump into someone who's building great stuff, three-up and sauce, Bitcoin. Everyone's using it. Everyone in Bitcoin knows what it is and they'd look a little bit sad and downtrodden. And then they'd like come into our three-in-up resource area and suddenly people started to per-cup and we were talking about, you know, then we're doing workshops and stuff and for me personally, like, it was part of the first day or day and a half after the conference. I was like, man, I'm going to get a different hobby because I was like, this isn't this is what I didn't think I was like working on this thing like making all these people rich and I thought I was working on some cool stuff and then I actually sat down and started doing some workshops and then started to say and then we had all these cool people coming in and wanting to engage in the workshops and then actually participating as tutors and actually teaching people, other people had to make points of Salamore ever us and that was incredibly inspiring and it's all there. It's just there's just this thick layer of shit and people and sick of fans and people who you want to sort of associate to Bitcoin and then make money off of it. That's fine, they exist but they're still a great, huge section of revolutionary dissidents you want to make Bitcoin. This new free and open source money which anyone can have access to and it's the revolution is just beginning, baby. The snow at Lake Tahoe was as high as 12 feet. The Donner party had to eat the other members of the party to survive. Dan Eve is this the Bitcoiners resorting to cannibalism, nothing else left to survive? It's just the general array that you'll get within a group, right? With football, you've got the diehard football fans, you've got the people that I'm picking for, I don't really like football but you've got the people that know it inside out, the people that watch a game or two and they're interested in they even support multiple teams. There's the people who don't support any team and they just go for a fight. You just have a difference of people and in like, when I was growing up, I was growing up in my life, it was all about like skaters, right? So it was like the skaters was the big thing and you had the hardcore skaters that were like, I'm so unique because I'm the most skater looking person, you're like, you look like all the other skaters, you've got the people in the group that want to be the biggest of the group, the most skater of the skate is the most Bitcoin-y of the Bitcoiners. And so yeah, I just think this is more the, it maybe is the end of the beginning but it's definitely not the end, like it's, you know, this is the pie just getting started. We've only got three countries on board yet. So I think it's going to be years if at all before any country adopts another currency because largely they're not considered currencies, Bitcoin is the currency. A lot of people that I think I know that like Bitcoin, Ethereum more than Bitcoin, for example, they still don't view Ethereum as a currency. They view it as like a tool for doing stuff. So Bitcoin is the currency, it's the replacement of money. The other stuff is just fluff. And so you're going to have the hard defenders of anyone that, you know, I don't want people buying into, into so-and-so because it's taking money out of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Whereas I don't really care about that. I'm like, you know, some people, some people have, have find value. One man's trash, one person's trash is another person's treasure. So, you know, as long as people find value in it, I'm not going to laugh at, you know, have a go at stamp collectors for collecting stamps when I collect something else, you know, you collect stamps, I collect so-and-so. Let's all just be happy and live together. All right. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, but all the Bitcoiners are dead. All the Bitcoiners are dead, but the thought virus is still out there. And Michael, Sailor and all these other finance guys have come in and they pick up the Bitcoin flag and they're like, I'm going to make a lot of money with this. And then secretly, really quietly, Jiminy Crickets on their shoulder and he's like, you could unbank, you could bank the unbanked, you could, you know, anyone could send money anywhere they want. And all these little ideas are still out there and they're like, don't talk about that. Talk about how I'm going to make lots of money. You can donate money anywhere in the world. There are almost nothing. And, you know, they don't want that. But this is that's what's so great about Bitcoin and about these ideas is that they're embedded in their code. They're embedded in the way that Bitcoin works and runs. And the ideas will always be there. So even as there may not be any bitcoins on the stage anymore and you just have to wait. This is our big quiet time where everyone's like, just be quiet. Let the finance guys carry it around. And the finance guys are carrying around there like, this is a great arc of the covenant. We're going to go really far with this arc. And one day's the finance guys open it all up and they're like, oh, it's full of cypherpunk libertarian ideas and their faces all melt off. So we have that to look forward to, which is nice. And in a finally our last story today, this one's a homedinger issue five Roger Ver is back. Yes, we always said we'd welcome Roger back with open arms after he left Bitcoin for Bitcoin cash. But unfortunately Roger Ver is back and he's promoting Dogecoin. I'm not sure if it's a joke. I'm not sure if he's being held hostage or it's some kind of a, you know, kidnapping situation. But here's Roger Ver saying Dogecoin is cheaper and more reliable than Bitcoin, which is just hilarious. It's almost like he knows nothing or knew nothing. Martin, you always said you'd welcome Roger back. What about now? He's back with Dogecoin. Yeah, well, we need a clown, but it looks like the clown went to Dogecoin. But no, I, you know, Roger, I think he was very vocal. Promoter for Bitcoin at the time. You know, never mind that these sort of fireworks of eBay or, you know, try to hijack the Bitcoin logo for his own fork or, you know, have underaged girls hand out Bitcoin cash stickers to others. I don't know. It's like, you know, I'm like, I don't judge on any of that. But I think he's secretly wearing a clown's nose when he said, how am I nobody's watching? So no, Roger, we said, we'd welcome you back. But first come to your senses, then we welcome you back. So not just the logo. They tried to steal the whole name. Remember, they were the real Bitcoin and the other one with Bitcoin core or whatever it was. And they were going to get it relisted on all the exchanges, cause all this confusion of people trying to buy a Bitcoin, getting Bitcoin core, sending it to their Bitcoin cash account, losing all their money, vice versa, so on and so forth. It is interesting. The thing about as my team saying, either, either Roger never knew anything about Bitcoin and just kind of supported it randomly and never read about it. Never had any of the details, especially the technical details that would help understand the difference between a popular destination like Bitcoin and something that no one uses like Dogecoin, where there isn't a scaling problem, where there isn't a scaling solution, whereas Bitcoin's so popular, so popular, they had to build a scaling solution to complicate it for Roger to understand. Or maybe he's just faking and laughing the whole time. Ben, Ark is Roger serious. Does he like Dogecoin? Remember, we could say, you know, Roger's a rich guy, Elon Musk's a rich guy, Elon Musk's a technical guy, Roger, early Bitcoiner. Does he know anything? Is he joking? Making with the funny stuff? Well, I mean, Elon buys Twitter. Roger Virk comes back. I was like, when are they going to announce B Cash on Twitter? And then suddenly, he's supporting Dogecoin and I'm thinking, oh, maybe he got a contact with Elon and he's like, when Elon Gold upset about the mining stuff, which was amazing that this hyper-intelligent, supposedly hyper-intelligent guy accepts Bitcoin for Tesla. And then a suddenly shot that has got a heavy carbon footprint and then has to stop accepting. So it just shows that he actually doesn't know what he's talking about. So, Mirage. But yeah, maybe Roger got in contact with him and was like, Elon, like, what about B Cash and then Elon was like, and then Roger's like, okay, anything, what about Doge? And I was pushing Doge to try and take on Bitcoin. I don't know. Hopefully he'll just Roger will just come back to Bitcoin. Maybe he'll have a left, maybe Ellen big on Lightning, that big fat node. Maybe that's Roger Burr. Could be. I don't like hold on anything against Roger Burr. He thought that Bitcoin cared about him and his rich rates, and it clearly didn't. And the network showed that it didn't and it just cares actually about the people who use Bitcoin as a whole. And hopefully he'll come back to Bitcoin. I see that sentiment more and more in Bitcoin. People would be happy to have it back. But yeah, it just kind of scare me a little bit like Elon buys Twitter and then suddenly Roger Burr turns up again. It was a bit. Well, we didn't mention that. But Ben just mentioned this Elon buying Twitter. Last week we were talking talking about this. But I think this Elon buying Twitter with money that he didn't have, but he just got it from the bank is exactly my point against proof of stake. You know, you do a flesh loan with money you don't have. Get this whole bunch of cash then buy something then change the rules and then you either don't have to pay it back or you can pay it back because it changed the rules. This is just like it felt like a proof of stake type of takeover. You know, so this is why proof of stake bad proof of work. Good. Totally unrelated, but you mentioned Elon. So I thought mentioned it. Well, as Ben was saying with Elon in the PayPal book, they talked about how Elon was not the technical person at PayPal. They had this guy Max Levchin, something like that. I probably said his name wrong, but he did all the technical problems, all the complexity of PayPal. Additionally, he tried to fight the spam and the scams and so forth, built out the whole PayPal system. Peter Teal was more of the political or the idea guy at PayPal. And I remember Elon Musk didn't originally start with PayPal. He had his own company called x.com that offered a pretty pedestrian banking services for the online. He then merged into PayPal. So it's a pretty curious to see him at the top of PayPal space X Tesla now Twitter all the time. Maybe a little bit. It's huge. Man, he's a stage. But in the imposter syndrome, right? Like we don't really know, like there's this it's been built up that he's the one, but maybe it's like Vitalik and Ethereum. It's it's one of the guys. He's he's he's he's like, oh, he's our, oh, oh, oh, you know, most favored private sector free market entrepreneur. He's a stage stooge. Like he's building tracking quote unquote space rocket. So you know, you can't use those for obging other countries. Can you like their space rockets like PayPal. They're news and PayPal is allowed to exist. He was famously against government sanctions now, but he loved government handouts and government money when he was building Tesla. It's so nonsense. Like so like with PayPal, like they were they weren't able to survive because you know, he cashed it and did she cast it? They they they did about to to go with regulation where's PayPal did and they just bend the whole business model. So they would do whatever the government wants the government like that recruits it and probably P.O. T.L. as well. Because then he went off and made this horrible like invasive software, which invades privacy. Like they're both stage doges and why anyone why any Bitcoin would give them the time. I don't know. Remember that PayPal had the big idea. They had the big idea when they were designing the you know, internet currency idea. They're like, well, if we allowed PayPal to like exist off of PayPal servers and you could send from one PayPal wallet to the other PayPal wallet, you could buy all kinds of crazy stuff and we could never stop you. And they saw that and they didn't get all libertarian cypherpunk excited about that. They got commercially afraid and said, this could ruin our startup. We need to design our startup in a centralized fashion so that we can always control what you buy. And that's PayPal. So again, that's what if what if what if you don't most gives a stage to you, what if I mean the US government can't buy Twitter, can they? But then if they have the guy who's in their pocket, what if he buys Twitter then great. Anyway, at the same time though, like, you say about PayPal, about bang down to regulators, in order for exchanges to survive, they have to like Bitcoin, even Bitcoin only exchanges, they've got about down to the regulators. It's just kind of the thing you do if you you have a business model that's using a technology that the government doesn't favor. You kind of have to go that way. Otherwise, you're not going to you're not going to survive, but they did have a chance to build something more like Bitcoin. And yeah, they did go very much down that kind of the government the government route. But I'm going full-cure and conspiratorial now because Elon Musk is like he's trying to show that Bitcoin was bad and didn't work. He's like, yeah, I'll accept Bitcoin and then he's like, oh, no, I can't because it's horrible mining problem. And then he's trying to push that out into the into the public realm. And that was like an attack on Bitcoin. It's like a call from the attack on Bitcoin from the CIA or something that's through Elon Musk. I've got that. I can also add Elon's support of Dogecoin, which makes no sense if you have any technical background as well as we're talking about here Rogers' support of Dogecoin. It's almost as if the the first attack where you're just like use Ethereum, which has a founder can be rolled back is a little centralized and maybe getting more centralized. Now they're like use Dogecoin. It's a big joke. We think it's funny technically it's a little soft, especially if everyone starts using Dogecoin, which is the same scaling problem we went through before. Isn't Bitcoin cash mine still? We said about Roger Verne, maybe attacking Bitcoin for the mining perspective, but isn't Bitcoin cash is still mine? Right. It's not proof of stake. No, it's still mine. Yeah. Still got the same energy issue. And they're not using it. You've got a mining more. There's a fork of Bitcoin cash, which was like this crack writes for BBSV. They are down to eight nodes right now. So there are eight nodes left. So it's decentralized. Yes. Because there are eight nodes and all of them run different versions. It's sometimes when I'm bored, instead of watching soap series on TV, I just go look at their shitcoins because it's like all entertainment, you know, currency with eight nodes. All of them running different versions. Bitcoin cash, compared to hash rates, both B cash and BBSV, the hash rates never really went anywhere. And all the hash rate power is in Bitcoin. And they're you still using the same, same, you know, the hashing algorithm like this as Bitcoin. So it's it's easy to attack. And this is why you need a billion, resilient confirmations if you ever want to sell any of that stuff. So I'm really happy. I dumped it the moment I could split it out of my wallet. It felt like the free cash department, you're called it was the best rate I got for B cash ever. And it it uncluttered my portfolio. And I think back then I got like something like 20% X-Rime in extracts, expensive Bitcoin. Because and this other coin, well, you know, it was a gamble at the time, but it just made no sense. And I I do think it was good for the reason because all the big egos in Bitcoin, they all went to B cash. And then they started their infighting and then they split up again. And you know, it's so it's good. It's helped Bitcoin be stronger, you know, it ripped a lot of like the negative elements out of Bitcoin. Sorry Roger, I didn't specifically mean you, but you know, we still welcome you back. We still welcome you back to stop talking about those coin. I still like the TX TX Highway.cash, which has got like the it's like the two names. There's one there's one. There's one which is like Bitcoin, it's got Bitcoin, it's got lightning as well on there and there's tracks continuously and there's the lightning express. And then there's like the Bitcoin cash like road and it's got like loads of bumpy like like like like like like what they call pop holes and forks ahead signs and the cars are going really slow. It's it's practically no cars. Practically no cars. Yeah, it's like it's it's unused. All right, go ahead. Go ahead. Back to the topic. So we can do the exit question. Do we really believe that Roger supports Dogecoin or is he still mad at Bitcoin and trying to take it out on everyone controlled by a government agency, been kidnapped perhaps by alien, something like that? Or is it just for the Lowles? Why is Roger supporting Dogecoin? Read his mind Dan Eve. He wants to he wants to see the world burn because he really made a big mistake with Bitcoin cash and B cash and you know how we upset he got with people saying B cash instead of instead of Bitcoin cash and whatever. You know, unfortunately, it seems like he probably went too too heavy into into that idea. And so all he's got left is to try and he's like, well, B cash, no one's going to take B cash seriously against Bitcoin, but they might take Dogecoin seriously against Bitcoin. So that's his like his last resort is to pretend the Bitcoin the Dogecoin is better than Bitcoin because he knows that he knows that B cash has just got no chance and our snowballs chance in hell of usurping Bitcoin and Dogecoin doesn't, but in in his unfortunate, you know, miss the boat mind where he sold off all his Bitcoin for for B cash. Yeah, unfortunately, he's picked the wrong horse or the wrong dog. So our team do you agree as Roger still fighting the fight still angry about his losses? I don't think he ever sold his Bitcoin because he was saying that he sold all his Bitcoin for Bitcoin cash, but from from my understanding he didn't sell, but yeah, he's definitely probably angry and but you know, back then he thought lightning wouldn't work and this is something, maybe he realized that lightning does work and actually it's working pretty well and now you can actually you can even deposit fire lightning to exchanges or withdraw without fees from say an exchange like Kraken. So I think we're we're you know the whole lightning network was basically a RURK pool under many of the altcoins that claimed better, faster, well more scalable, is doubtful, but they they claim to be better than Bitcoin, but that's like just the layer one Bitcoin on chain Bitcoin. If you look at at lightning, many of those altcoins have no reason to exist and I think if he is not completely dumb, which I don't think he is, he's you know, he will know his stuff. I hope for him at least, but he will come to realize that Bitcoin isn't that bad. And yeah, maybe maybe it's just angry with the world, and he thinks you know, if I can't have it, it must die, you know, start promoting do dogecoin. So yeah, I don't know, actually if he would be if he would be at a Bitcoin conference, nobody would be talking to him, he would be all alone in a corner, I'd still buy him a beer and say I brought you know Art Felix Bro. I don't know, paid with lightning, cheers. No, Art Felix Bro. Oh, Martins just giving him ideas. It's only a matter of time before Roger comes out with dogecoin lightning labs and then defense developing the dogecoin lightning network. They might call it Blitzkrieg. Ben Arck, what about Roger? Does he really believe all this stuff about dogecoin? He did actually say early on that he he loved lightning and then he retracted when he realized that it would like damage his argument against Bitcoin and then moved to say that he didn't like lightning. I know it sounds paranoid, I don't know, it sounds conspiratorial, but the cipher punks when they were fighting so regular people could have just cryptography in their lives in their communications, they were infiltrated by alpha agencies. Bitcoin has this distant technology which you know can have like quite a dramatic impact on the way the future world will be. There has been to interest of some agencies and there have been people who try to infiltrate the ecosystem in the industry and there's probably people we know and there's probably people we're friends with, we do have some relationships with some of these agencies. I think it's fine, I think just carry on building and then hope for the best that's my personal policy, but it appeals like Roger Verne. He carries himself like he's some sort of secret agent, you know he's into his kung fu and he's like a cool guy and he's just shooting things and he's like he thinks he's in some sort of film. So it would appeal to see his ego and if I were something like the CIA whatever I would get someone like Roger Verne, pull him to one side and say yeah you're so cool Roger Verne, with your kung fu and what not can you work for us as a spy and try and infiltrate the Bitcoin ecosystem and then you've got Elon Musk as well and it sounds crazy and it sounds paranoid and I'm not usually someone to go into these conspiracy theories but there are attacks on Bitcoin from some of these agencies and he is like someone who if I was an eight one of these agencies because just because of his ego and the way he works who I would try and approach and yeah so there could be some greater thing at play here and it is worth reading between the lines and not just thinking that the dude's a goofball because he's not a goofball and that maybe yeah there may be some greater motive to all of this so yeah he's a spy. A lot of the organizations of the 1960s were infiltrated there were a lot of double agents and Roger is quite a character when you know. And we've got countries except in Bitcoin man like it's it's seriously and it's attacking us, the economy and all these countries if you're using their their currency and international power relations like of course like this industry is going to be right with with spies and people trying to you know assert control for different countries so yeah yeah. The one time I did get to meet Roger in person he had a strange metal brief case handcuffed to his hand which I thought was the most obvious rob me signaled ever seen I couldn't believe he didn't have a I mean obviously the natural thing if you have something like that you should have either military guys or like huge dudes with you and he didn't have any huge dudes or any military dudes he was a thin little dude like you say he's going to kick your ass for the Kung Foo thing Ben I'm sure he was Brazilian jujitsu and I'm sure it's very different but I guess he's quite I'll carry the thing because he's a karate master I'd forgotten but I yeah it's like Steven Segal he's ready to go. He just had a pack lunch and his karate suit and they're ready to to do his thing you know they you know you come up and I'm locked down the way you busted open it it's a peanut butter jelly sandwich look at look about karate. This pack lunch is just bombated yeah. Oh yeah really lunchables. The sprite making fun of him and Ben thinking that he's a spy will welcome you back to Bitcoin. I'll welcome you back bring all the spies into Bitcoin now. I'll buy it again more track. They can do so bring him in. I'm sure they're I'm sure they're working on the the better spies they're going to get us some better spies but it's nearly the end of the show it's time for prediction I don't know where the magic eight ball is I have to find it but it's up to you Dan to lead us forward with a prediction predict something that will happen in the future. I predict that there will be I'm gonna go I'm gonna go pretty hard I'm gonna go I'm gonna go I'm gonna go for four countries in total by the end of the year that except Bitcoin so there's another two I think we yet to see. Two more countries Martian Wishmare a prediction. Yes well I look at the prices over the week and I think we'll be seeing a bit of a dip so I noticed the Bitcoin interest accounts you know that the several various exchanges are really dropping their interest rates there's no money to be made there so I think we'll be seeing a bit of a dip and Dan will see a huge bull run but I don't know whether this will be now or within a few months I think it will take a few months at least but it wouldn't surprise me if we are going to see this like you know elusive 100k Bitcoin before the end of the year and I think somewhere in in and after the summer so it's weird I don't know I can't explain why but it's something we will definitely see this year. Even though the price of Bitcoin's going down the price of Bitcoin will go up the price of Bitcoin will go down at first and then we'll shoot up because there will be short squeezes and everything and price will just go up very fast. I hate it when it does that it's so confusing you never know the right thing to do it it makes it so difficult. Oh just HODL it's very easy really you know when the price dips by a bit extra but just HODL don't try to time the markets. Ben Ark a prediction can you tell us about the future? No more on the price. Anything in the world. There's the the Human Rights Foundation in Oslo they're doing the Freedom Forum which is a conference for freedom loving people and freedom fighters and this year because I'll just let's get to the image in the before. He's quite heavily involved with the Human Rights Foundation so there's a big Bitcoin part of the conference so if you're in Oslo in Norway this is on the 23rd of May so it's not an enemy media future but you know if you need to prepare travel or whatever else then and I think there's still some tickets available. That should be really exciting and fun and we're going to be doing some workshops we're going to be there some great talks the BTC pay server guys are going to be there they're going to be doing a talk and more generally and widely in the Oslo Freedom Forum they have I think there's like a talk by like an X-Lave and is there some really interesting people there and they're not you know probably your usual you know a lot like the sort of Bitcoin Miami or the overt Bitcoin in my army crowd so if anyone is in that lack of the woods then Google it come along build some cool things do some workshops and yeah should be good looking forward to that that's that's my prediction for not the media future but the nearest future. A calendar based prediction very cowardly Dan Eve do you have a story of the week what's going on? No nice story here no Arteen certainly you have a story of the week looks like you there. Absolutely Absolutely general by ATM. Yeah that's like just like 10 years ago almost 10 years ago when we started in a garage well I didn't start Karel found it and then now you know it's uh we've never thought we'd be like you know we'd have a picture like this but we had a new model just before we brought it to the Bitcoin 2022 and it wasn't a garage so we took a picture we didn't want to publish it first because people might think we're like a garage company but you know embrace it we started in a garage 10 years ago and we're still there so my story of the week is bit different last week we were at LibertyCon the Liberty conference in Prague and were nice podcast uh Bitcoin is there that was like Stephen Lefierre Lefierre was there and several several others and this week general bites so not general bites but more the every trade the accounting package is at crypto by 2022 and in the Czech Republic as well so it's a bit busy I'm not sure if it will be in Oslo but that'd be cool definitely for next year so yeah I won't be there I'm like here on the podcast but if you're at crypto by 2022 say hi to the guys at every trade and just you know you can have a look at the ATM our new model the BATM2 ultra is there and it's the best one we made so far so this was my shameless pump for the week thank you Thomas for these 30 seconds advertising space but yeah returning the bike to you well happy anniversary to general bites 10 years and also celebrate an anniversary today it's the ninth anniversary of the mad bitcoins twitter account which must mean it's about the ninth anniversary of mad bitcoins so that's very cool and arc we still have a chance do you have a story of the week maybe similar to your prediction? Not really it's been pretty it's the warm at the moment and been going down the beach a lot not doing much work and congrats Martin amazing and 10 years long time and Thomas saw nine years incredible isn't other years fly by no nothing really well that that was there was and then on the network on the twitter I saw the the guy that made the Bitcoin point of sale systems you know with the red PCBs that work on LNBids right? Oh no no they don't they don't I mean they that crypto POS thing was it? Yes wasn't it built on LNBids? No I think it's integrating with LNBids but he's he's basically got an ESP32 and a screen and put them together and then put Bitcoin logo on them and it's cool I hope he sells them because they're nice little units but I'm yeah I hope I mean I think he's going to make a point of sale I do they are touch screen and I was going to buy a touch screen because it would make a really nice unit to have an ESP32 and just the touch screen then not get rid of the key panel together. Solar powered maybe that you know you can just leave an on the desk with the solar panel facing towards the line. Yeah the LNBIR us people are pretty cool now that there's there's someone's made like I plugged in the solar panel to it and you can do that like you say just leave it on the desk and it just charges and it releases so much little power particularly if it's offline you use the solar power anyway yeah it's it just charges it's great but now actually because I made a bunch of those putting themselves in my I'm in the conference and I'm seeing more and more on Twitter like these these points of sales popping up in places and then people just like tagging me in the photo or something and then suddenly I just hit this picture of this put a sound of some random but that's really cool to see. Thomas I see a lot of stories off the week coming in regarding this subject in the near future. I do think it's cool also maybe Ben can work with David Bailey in the Bitcoin 2023 conference maybe they can fund those things and instead of like I don't know 20 or 30 POS you could build a hundred or a thousand. Well well well well well lots of them. I chat to that guy on the last day we bumped into each other and he was like very candid and honest about the conference like he could see that it was quite corporate and that for for for some of the people in the big I mean that's fine if you're bringing a company whatever you want that but for some of the people working on the free and upper source stuff like they had the free and upper source stage which is amazing and might have a good job there with the panels but the the workshop space wasn't as as as big as we'd want it to be really and we thought it was going to be kind of bigger so I I asked him to be getting contact with Jeff Fulmo who organizes the the lightning conference and adopting Bitcoin and all the lightning hack days and these Germans are so good at this unconferencing thing which is where you literally just get a big fat room loads of desks and then people like because the amount of people who came up to me when I was doing my workshop and said oh yeah I do workshops back home in wherever I'm going to use this for my workshop and I was like oh wow like if if you knew you could do a workshop here would you bring materials and then build a workshop space and they're like yeah honestly matter of about a dozen people who said they would do that so there would be people who could do seed signer workshops if people do rust people it's workshops as people we could do the POS thing if people do software stuff like mempool.space workshops or btpaces workshops so we're hoping that there will be a dedicated space to that in 2023 and I spoke to David Bay it's quite funny because they're American so everything's like money so he's like yeah this conference costs 30 million and we're going to put 10% towards this fucking workshop space and I'm like the point is you don't need to put 10% of about three million dollars so we just literally just give us a big fat conference hall bunch of tables and we'll bring the ruckus so hopefully and it works like they were complaining who's complaining on Twitter about how the bottom line wasn't so great this year and that's because they just threw some money at the conference like if you go to like the Chaos Communication Congress or the Chaos Computer Club in Germany or or to the EMF the electromagnetic fields are settling in UK soon it's these big hacker conferences like people build a space up and it's actually very beautiful like what they build there's a least crazy LEDs it's very R.T. and so I want to see more on-conferencing in Bitcoin 2023 and I think it will happen and I've been emailing the dude and hopefully hopefully you'll take it on board I've actually I think they're sending someone to CCC because I told I asked them to sending someone to CCC to see to see it so they can understand it then understand where we're coming from and as well actually there's adopting Bitcoin in our Salvador hopefully in November another adopting Bitcoin conference they can go start to and see the unconferencing because that was done very well in the last our Salvador conference so yes hopefully there will be more space for for freaks and geeks you don't want to be out in those big crowds with all the cool kids they want somewhere dark sitting hack away on their computers and build some cool shit that would be great to see and hopefully it works out as you guys know we're big fans of Bitcoin magazine here in the nine years have been doing mad bitcoins and the world crypto network they've never written about us not even once so great stuff over there and we're just not very corporate we don't have a bottom line and we don't make any money so we're not that important but maybe maybe next time now I'm going to get that safety and photo spread got to save page pages for that don't want to put another article in but we're running out of time thanks to everybody for joining us be sure to give us a thumbs up down below send us one of those comments we got two comments last week I read both of them it took a lot of time but still a chance get your comment and there's been slapping machine tell us if you would welcome back Roger tell us what country you think will be next for Bitcoin maybe it's your country maybe you own it like the CEO and the head be Kelly anyway we're running out of time until next time