#324 — The Bitcoin Group #324 - Regulate Crypto? - Wright Stomped - Black Swan - Environmental Attack

The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last ten seconds, the sharpest satosis, the best bitcoins, the hardest crypto currency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Dan Eave, the crypto raptor. Martin Wishmare from General Bites. Hello Bitcoin. Vlad Kosta from BTC KVR. Kawa Baka. Takeover. Excellent. Josh Shagalla from the standard.io. Hadiho. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the world crypto network. Moving on to issue one. Issue one. Biden White House just put out a framework on regulating crypto. Here's what's in it. The Biden White House came true on their prediction and asked every department in the government how they should react to cryptocurrency. And they've got quite a few ideas. They want to regulate Bitcoin and perhaps even create their own central bank digital currency. The digital dollar. Dan Eave, what do you think about the Biden administration's report on regulating crypto? It seems to range from to our yeah, to a slight extent. I think there's some parts that make people think that there are a lot of positives. Not to necessarily Bitcoin, but they think about creating their own CBDC. I think that the worst part is the CBDC part. Instead of using a digital currency that's already there, that's Bitcoin, creating your own digital currency so that you can link it into social systems and cut people's bank accounts off if they didn't get enough likes for being nice that week. All that crazy stuff that you think about or that you kind of see advertised like in tweets and memes that you can't pay for something because you've been mean to someone on Twitter or something like that. I think that's the kind of crazy part, the control part of it, which is the opposite of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the free and open market system, whereas the CBDC part using the technology, but in a controlling way, is like the opposite of Bitcoin. I think they understand that the power of Bitcoin, but in the negative sense, a bit more than in the positive sense. The control thing is especially around the world right now, there's every government is seeking to get a bit more power and a bit more control over their society. Whether that's from controlling people's assets and even I think the US amounts under $600 and how targeted or snooked on by the government in the EU, it's under $1,000, I think it's maybe less than that right now. There's definitely a grab for power and creating your own CBDC is the best way to gain control over the monetary system, whereas actually implementing Bitcoin in a meaningful way, it's something that's more tricky, or is more of a challenge for the government, but it creates this free and open market that is ultimately much better for society because it's controlled by the people than rather than the governments. And unfortunately, the government's one control. So I think that the more regulation, the worse it's going to be for Bitcoin and hopefully they don't go the way of banning mining, banning the usage of Bitcoin or like monitoring transactions and trying to censor them in some way. But at the same time, I think they're probably steering towards using a CBDC and realizing the control and the power they can have over the dollar, which is still quite untraceable in its kind of physical form. I agree, Dan. I think the CBDC was maybe not the worst part, but definitely the most interesting part. It showed that the government wants to control Bitcoin through regulation and copying it, but also that they respect Bitcoin. A years ago, when we were just drug money, they'd say, why would we make a government currency just so you could buy drugs when we were internet money, when we were all these things, the government paid us no attention now that we have their attention. And the real question is, does the government think that their CBDC would be better than Bitcoin, Martijn Wischmehr? No, they know that they're creating just another shit going. I think they're well aware of that. And the report or the report, I didn't find too interesting from what I read. It was just like a summer of existing stuff that they just pulled from elsewhere. I don't know whether it's digital dollar will totally revolutionize the crypto landscape, but if it's censored and all, then I don't see people using it. They'll just use Tether or one of the many other stable coins for the rest of us. We got Bitcoin that we don't need that. Yeah, I'm not sure what will happen in the future in the US. It does worry me that mining is getting more and more concentrated in the US. So this I would like to see a bit more decentralized so that should the US government decide that, oh, we're going to ban the proof of work mining, then Bitcoin is not really affected. On the other hand, even if they would shut down the miners in the US now, Bitcoin will continue to be Bitcoin. So that doesn't really change much. That would be impressive to see the vaunted US government join the likes of Tether and others making their own stable coins. You could compare them directly at that point. Vlad, your thoughts on the Biden regulations and the digital dollar. I don't think there's going to be a digital dollar. I think that they have all the mechanisms in place to take control over some stable coin like USDC or something. And I'm pretty sure that the control that they have over Ethereum right now with the fact that US companies that are super regulated and under the control of the administration legally at least are. Main block producers in the network that's going to play out an important role. It's going to be interesting to see if they're going to use the Ethereum for their CBC or Ethereum becomes the CBC to things that I don't know. But for as long as I have been around, there have been talks about regulations, not much has really changed. And I think most of it was due to the censorship resistance and the fact that they realize that you can use Bitcoin in ways that they cannot control. And that's what it comes down to and you can validate, you can generate blocks, you can participate in the network in ways that they cannot stop. The concentration of mining in the USA as Martin said before me, I think is a big concern. And it's kind of ironic that the United States of America is worst in terms of treating miners as opposed to China. And the Chinese government was a lot more relaxed until they came to out with the miners, but now they seem to be getting them back. But there's always this dynamic aspect of it. In proof of stake, it's about ownership and the fact that you lock your coins to generate blocks to provide security for the network. So you become a trusted validator. But in proof of work, you can switch anytime. You can take your A6 or whatever device you're using for mining to some other country. You can buy it somewhere else and keep on running yet. It's always changing and that's what's revolutionary about it. Because if you try to control it, it is going to react according to these dynamic forces. If we get more proof of stake with more coins, and I know that this is going to be another topic of the show. But if you get more proof of stake, it means that it's only going to be easier to control by governments. So it's going to be interesting from this point of view to see which proof of work coins end up. Remaining active and being used by the community. And I guess two or three of them will survive. And the rest of them will be proof of stake, which means that they're directly and easily influenced by the government. It would be very interesting if the government saw it a partner. When Apple launched their credit card, they didn't do it alone. They brought in Goldman Sachs. So it's very possible we see the US government partnering with a major bank to pull this off or a technology company like Coinbase. Josh Shigala, what about Martina? Do you have more on that? Yeah, or Crepe or the Ripple or what was this? This other stable coin that they are going to do really big things they've been telling themselves. Oh, yeah. Sorry for interrupting. I just ripple pop up. They are already friends with the bank. The banks love Ripple, famously the bank friendly cryptocurrency. Josh Shigala, does the US government really understand Bitcoin? We've seen their best possible report. It even ends in what I think is a flattering reflection on Bitcoin that they want to create their own CBDC, a central bank digital currency, a copy of Bitcoin. Do they really understand what's going on? Are they still years away? I think the big thing here is the technological problem that they have. If they want to build a decentralized stable coin, then it's not really a CBDC, because it's decentralized. They want to centralize it through the central bank. So what does it actually mean when they say this? What they mean is that we want to remove retail banking. We want everybody to have an account at the central bank. And we want to store a digital currency database at the central bank and issue it through there. Then most likely, there will also, because as much as a lot of the West goes at China's social credit score, in the background they're going, oh, that's a great idea. We can never be overtaken then because we have full bondage over the citizenry ship. Really, what will happen is the CBDC will also usher in a social credit score. Really see it as a real huge, massive, fat, big, fuck off danger that people need to be wary of, but they won't be wary of it. Just like they're not wary of the rise of AI right now. It'll be caught off guard. We don't really know how far AI is and all that in terms of normal people. And we also don't understand the dangers of these CBDCs. Luckily, I feel lucky that Satoshi released the white paper just in time because we're always heading towards full digitalization of currency, which means full control over where you are, where you've been, who you've done business with, how much you spent, everything, where you source your goods from, how much markup you put on them, everything. This happens, basically, the biggest issue that central banks have is that if they become a centralized database of who owns what, where, when, why, then they're an easy target for foreign governments to hack them and basically destroy the record, the books. So by having a centralized database that's not an immutable database is extremely honey pot-ish. And so it's not an easy thing to do. So I think they're further away than they are, like Glad said, but I think it's something that we should be very, very wary of and we should embrace decentralized stablecoins. We should embrace decentralized unstablecoins, especially Bitcoin. And we should learn how to use it. We should learn what scams look like and educate each other and try to grow this network outside of government control, AASAP. Because if we can outrun them, then we're, then we've got free. Now, before I ask you guys to predict the future, I want to go ahead and predict the future here. Bitcoin and the US, CBDC are heading for a clash, right? They're both going to come at each other. And what this could possibly do is make Bitcoin harder to use. So right now we're in a relatively free period of Bitcoin. You can deposit it in your bank, you can use Coinbase, all these things. But if there was a US dollar coin, they would probably prefer that you'd use that. And they probably prefer that you don't use Bitcoin. And a lot of the businesses right now that just accept Bitcoin probably would turn that off. So we would see Bitcoin change into this underground economy digital currency. It would still have value, it would still be used, but probably for a lot less stuff, which probably bums out a lot of Bitcoiners. And now, as we swirl towards this dystopia, I ask you to predict the future. Dan Eve will be six months, six years, or never that the United States produces their own central bank digital currency copy of Bitcoin. I think it's going to be quite soon. I reckon going for the range series, the trees is raining in power around the world, especially with potentially a cascade of countries like El Salvador who were relying on the dollar now using Bitcoin. If we see other countries doing that and even some bigger economies also following suit or at least recognizing Bitcoin, then the dollar's grasp on the rest of the world is going to weigh in a little more. And so they'll need to regain power using some newfangled technology, which would be a central bank digital currency. Martinian Wishmeyer. I don't see it happening anytime soon. I mean, who is supposed to make this the the Fed or the US government or I mean, you know, the US dollar is not even issued by the US, US government. It's issued by the Fed. It's a separate company, company organization, I don't know. But yeah, I don't see them doing this, pulling this off anytime soon. Maybe a trial or something, but that's it. Vlad Kosta, six months, six years or never. I never. I don't think it's going to happen. And if you want to understand more, there was this presentation by Matt from Cryptovoices. I can't pronounce his last name just like you can pronounce mine. It's Polish and mine is Romanian. You can't pronounce it. But he made a very good presentation on the Baltic Honey Badger stage a couple of weeks ago about why the demand for cash is still high and we should not underestimate it. And the fact that they would have a CBDC doesn't fully fix any real problem. At least not in the United States. It's more exciting if you make the CBDC first, then eliminate cash much to everyone's surprise. Josh Shagalla, six months, six years or never. Channel team box for Josh. It's a pretty good argument to say never, but I feel like they look, their wet dream is to be able to track and trace everybody to have full control. Because if you can, like everyone's got every politician, generally a little bit of a megalomania inside that wants to keep control and doesn't like the other party so much that they'll do anything to protect the citizenry of the other party. So if we can start to control the money and start to control thought and start to control communications more and more, then that's the wet dream. And I think they're head towards that, whether it's a CBDC or some other mechanism, I think just more control, more control, more control and destroying things like tornado cash is a big step towards that or even going after some of the big coin mixes and things like this. So it may be a dystopia, but at least you'll have access to lots of streaming services. Moving on to issue two, Amazon, among the top five companies picked to build the digital euro prototype. The United States is just getting started on their regulation and considering the idea of a CBDC. Meanwhile, Europe seems to be going ahead with it. Really quick, Martín, what do you think about the different approaches of the United States and Europe? And can we say is Europe ahead? I don't think there is even a single thing called Europe. There's just lots of different flavors in a pie with the flavor that nobody really likes. I mean, all the politicians there, we didn't vote for them. They're just like there. I mean, they bring out their new laws and regulations, but nobody really cares. I think this is the difference between Europe and the US. In the US, everybody is proud of the flag. And even a flag day in Europe, we don't give a toss. We don't care. We don't care. We don't. So this euro, yeah, I don't see it's surviving for like 10 more years or so. I don't know. I think, you know, when that happens and euro, digital euro happens, everybody will start introducing their local currencies again. I don't see it happening. Maybe I'm missing something, but no, no, no, no. And Amazon building it, I mean, does it come with for free with like Prime Membership or how are you going to do this? I mean, it speaks no sense. Well, you definitely have to enter your email account first. Just like to remind everyone to push the thumbs up button down below. I forgot below before. Vlad, your thoughts on Europe and their plans to perhaps have Amazon build them a CBDC. It sounds silly. I don't think Amazon is going to end up getting the contract, even though there's this old saying, which I think can be dated back to the Bible and it's something John, but it says that nobody is a prophet in their own land. So this translates to the fact that usually we end up paying or contracting someone from another country because we think that they know better. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think Amazon has the expertise for this. What they do have the expertise on is to provide infrastructure for Ethereum nodes, but that's where it all ends. And I don't think there's anything else to add. There are so many talented developers work in Europe and have better expertise than Amazon as an entity in terms of creating a CBDC. I think it's pretty funny because MIT is one of the supporters of Bitcoin Core development. And there are at least a couple of Bitcoin Core developers who receive grants from MIT on a monthly basis. And at the same time, MIT is pushing for CBDCs in the United States. And these CBDCs are using snorkel signatures and all of these ideas that were created by Bitcoin Core developers. So it's going to be interesting to see how the technology that was meant to live a humanity also ends up being used in some sort of CBDC at some point. But for Europe Amazon, I don't think that's a major actor in anything related to virtual currencies or whatever, but they can give vouchers, I guess, for Amazon Prime. It is amazing how every new technology is eventually subordinate to capitalism or the state or wherever you want to go with that. It all stands out great. Josh, Shagall, your thoughts on Amazon, perhaps building a digital euro? Yeah, I mean, there's been a few companies that have been up for the tender. One of them even being Iota with their app. We'll see. What happens at the end of the day, it's all a nightmare. I don't want to support it. I don't even want to talk about it. It's just horrible. The best thing we can do is just ignore it and go and choose something else. But the main thing is for me is that there's an exit door. This was always the deal with Bitcoin. This was always the deal with gold. Is that, guys, you scrub our currency, there's an exit door and I can go through it pretty easily. That's all I care about. Is that that door stays open? If they make it harder and harder to jump to an alternative, that's when it gets worrisome because they'll trap you in just like they did in East Germany and force you to use their stuff because, hey, we educated you, you have to stay in our wall and that's what's scary for me. There's a paranoid bit, Klanah. But you could trust Amazon.com, according to my information, they only want to know absolutely everything about you. Yes, absolutely everything. Well, the thing about Amazon that I think they can do is they're very, very good at scale. That's one thing that would be needed. They're also fairly good at security. So, as Vlad mentioned, they have the servers. They're ready to go. AWS this thing. No problem. Dan, if your thoughts on Amazon and your future underneath the one digital euro for all. Well, I think Amazon have probably got a slim chance of getting it. They're a big name that everyone's kind of cleaning onto the moment. I think that the ECB and the euros more likely to introduce a CBDC than say the US is because they're trying to prove, it's a growing community, they're trying to prove itself right now. I think that they're probably with the euros waning a lot much more. It's almost parity now with the dollar. The US dollar used to be worth a bit more. And now it's pretty much parity in a bit under. So I think it's they've got the biggest case to kind of save their currency with this new thing called digital currency. But I don't see it being powered by Amazon. That just seems like a bit, I don't know, just that seems like a publicity stunt, right? That seems like a almost like a shielding thing, right? It's like, oh, we're going to build a CBDC and it's going to be powered by Amazon. It's like a ship at any normal ship coins approach would be like, we're working with Amazon like to build our ship coin as if it's going to sell it a bit more. Well, I'm turned tall that the European Union has made a decision and that they're going to be going with Facebook or meta, meta will be developing the CBDC. So you can you can trust Facebook. They only want to know everything about you as well. I'm afraid everything was the answer. But we're out of time, we're moving on to issue three issue three Craig Wright tells court that he stomped on the hard drive containing the Satoshi wallet keys. He said that he was in a depressed state and was considering suicide and did not want under any situation to be forced to prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. But then a few years later, he changed his mind went around to prove everyone that he was Satoshi Nakamoto more details on Gavin and Jason and John Matonis being shown the Satoshi keys and the signing ceremony. Apparently Satoshi said that he could convince Gavin by talking to him. And that's what he did. Sounds like a con man to me allegedly, but we'll see how this goes. All this is happening in the hot all not trial where Craig Wright all powerful is suing hot all not the Twitter user with 4,000 followers at the time. Vlad, what do you think about the Satoshi story? There's a lot of great stuff there, including the fact that you can't destroy a hard drive with only your feet. What's your most interesting and favorite part of the Craig Wright story? My favorite part about the whole story is the fact that the people from Norway who are dealing with the case have done their homework and they are questioning all sorts of details in regards to, for example, the version of Bitcoin core that is being presented by Craig Wright as his own invention which in fact has some contributions by Hal Finney. So it's pretty ironic that he was able to forge a version of Bitcoin core which he claims to be the original one that he launched. But he was super incompetent and unable to even get the original one because it has one line of code that was added by Hal Finney which means that it's post release. There are so many small details about forgeries and claims that are debunked. There's even the the funniest one was about a font which was not invented until 2012 on the document that claims to be from 2008. Like how the hell does anyone work? And there was something else about Craig Wright claiming that he was pitched to work for Bing which is the search engine of Microsoft and at the time it was not even cold Bing. It took another ear until they rebranded the Microsoft live search as Bing. So there are so many small bits in his story that don't add up. When you listen to them, they seem believable but once you start fact checking and backing on every claim to see if it makes sense and if it's true, you're going to find lots of holes. And the fact that he appeals to emotion and needs to talk about his grandfather who is like a father figure to him and he needs to get all of these people who previously worked for him and his own cousin and it's all like a social attempt to convince the judge and the judge at some point said so if it's simple to prove it cryptographically, why do you need to go to court? And that's what it comes down to really. If you can't prove it cryptographically and you did and you claim that you did in the past and Gavin got what he called bamboozled by this attempt, then why don't you do it again? Why did it have to be a closed doors event? Why did he have to come with his own version of the Electrum because he claims that Gavin was using his own custom made version of the Electrum. I mean by here I mean Craig Wright but Gavin says the otherwise that at the time they used the laptop with which Craig Wright came and was using a different version of the Electrum to sign the keys. It's all very messed up. It's truly disappointing that Gavin does not do anything because he could help a lot. He was one of the people who could actually put an end to this charade but he doesn't for some reason. But it's all very interesting and the whole hard drive story is just convenient because it provides that sort of mad genius deniability and by the way he's also trying to prove that he's autistic with some sort of psychiatrist who came to court. It just adds up to the story that he's trying to present, right? He's supposedly a mad genius who created this and now wants to repair his reputation for whatever and he stepped on the hard drive and broke it. Don't try that at home but I'm pretty sure that hard drives are a lot more resilient than something you can stomp on. I sure hope he still has the hard drive because the platters are probably fine inside there. I agree with Vlad. I think the best part and the most exciting part was the document forgeries. It was just like that classic case. I think it was Dan Rather versus George W. Bush and they had a document that was claimed to have been put on a typewriter but it had a little subscript that said TH in it for like 18th and that wasn't done on a typewriter. That's Microsoft Word. The font stuff was hilarious. The header document information was hilarious. The wrong template and having dot, you know, dot doc or dot dot or dot dot m hilarious and then to hear Craig's rights expensive and probably fantastic lawyers act like they have no idea what forensic document review is. They're like you probably opened the document in word and it changed it. You idiots and they're like no we've never touched the hard drive. We never would touch the hard drive. We forensically examined it which is a fancy word for they made a copy of it without touching it. Very fancy. Then they touched the copy. So it's just absurd for him to be thinking oh they were on Craig's actual laptop and they opened it or they edited it. But once again when you're making forgeries why are you making forgeries? These are easy to prove things. It should be easy to prove you shouldn't need all this fake data and fake information and then like Vlad said the amazingly dramatic story of the attempted suicide and destruction of the hard drive. It's just going to be the best made for TV movie ever. Josh Legala what do you think about the latest information from the Craig Wright hot or not trial? It's it's just tragic that people are still believing this fraudulent guy. I just don't get it. There's so much there's so much data to show that it's just a fraud and I don't understand like for one why is he fraudulent? Why would someone do this? Well do this so that your coin will be worth a hell of a lot because you've bought it up cheap and you go into this sort of guys of art. His coin must go off because he's the original Shatoshi. Now how is he proving that by taking the week to court people that won't even show up to court by doing weird things in weird court cases in America is quite a stoop with court with law. So doing that that case in the states where even if he won or he lost it heads towards him being Satoshi in that case. So that then pushes the scam. And I just don't get it. I don't understand why it's still going. I know people personally who are still totally sold on this weird guy. I don't even know how because they're smart people. But it's it's really upsetting to think that people are falling for this fraud and it's upsetting that he's still taking to people to court and doing all this. I just find it crazy. I find it crazy. But I find it also fascinating that someone is so audacious to want to do this at scale over a long period of time. It's unbelievable. And you know from everything I see sign the keys. Like honestly he keeps saying no one will even believe me even if I sign the keys and he'll like quote James and Lopp or something like that saying he won't. But I'm telling you right now I will go okay you're Satoshi if you sign the Genesis block. That's that's the end of story for me. If you can sign that you can sign it because Satoshi wouldn't let the Genesis block leak. Like you would have a lot of things. Now also what was with the the signed career, the bonded career and all this stuff. What hard drive? Well I thought it was a bonded career that was rocking up dude. And then so Satoshi really trusted some random career to maybe bring back millions. All of it is just so nuts and bull. Like what the hell man? Why? Why is it still a thing? I don't get it. I mean it's still a thing because he keeps suing people. That's why it's still a thing. And and bringing people to court. So I'm really glad that that people have backed Hottlnought and allowed into fight this. I'm really glad that they're doing this in Norway where there's you know the system is quite kind of interesting watching it. And I'm really kind of amazed that the judge is wanting to accept really deep dive cryptographic evidence and talking about what he what the actual technology is. And I know that they're struggling a bit because for instance just trying to explain what a hash function is. The judge was like I don't quite get it yet but I'm going to look into it more. And that to me is really great. But but yeah it's it's I just want I just want to judge to finally just say look this is ridiculous. And because there has been other judges who are like oh god there's so much fraud here. And I don't know why it just doesn't get put to bed. And I hopefully this will put him to bed. Well with your friend Josh remember the difference between a cult and a bad investment. If you're in a bad investment and I say hey you should get out of that bad investment. You thank me because you don't want to lose your money. But with a cult and we have a similar situation here in the United States as anyone can see. Once you've joined the group you join with your whole soul. It's you that's now a part of the cult. So if I tell you you're in a cult you get angry at me because I'm attacking you that is part of the cult. So it's much harder for people to leave these things even when you have someone stealing classified documents. And like that's not okay. But if you're in a cult it must be a conspiracy. It must be a trap. Dan Eve do you think Satoshi walks around wearing steel toad boots? Because that's the only way I can see him destroying a hard drive. He seems more like a loafer kind of guy especially those pointed toe loafers. Give us a thumbs up and let us know in the comments in the chat. What kind of shoes do you think Satoshi not her? You think Craig writes, all right. Craig writes wears allegedly Satoshi. Go ahead. Craig right is a princess in the pee. He's like that. He doesn't even wear any shoes. He's lying on this fluffy pillow and like floating in the clouds of absurdity. The evidence of the evidence basis that he's going on is equivalent to like Joseph Smith and the magical tablets that he had to destroy them to not know that he is the the probe, you know, the person who actually said the words. It's crazy. I mean, he's been call forging so many things from the 2015 BBC thing when he used the dollar signature variable instead of the private providing the actual signature. He's going on this appeal to emotion saying that original Bitcoin is only there because of dark net porn and drugs, you know, and he's saying like they're the bad people, you know, that they mean while while he's saying he's done for the hard drive and he's saying he was able to break these up and definitely you've got a guy in Wales that's that's raising millions to get a hard drive under a heap of trash compressed over many years now that's still probably alive. Way more weight in compression ratio than Craig writes and is prancing around having a having a drunk tantrum apparently on a hard drive. You know, this guy can get his keys from an hard drive. Tell the recipient there. I've met a few people from N Chain, a few doctors that worked there and two of them and both of them said that they didn't know they didn't believe that Craig right was actually sto sheet. They just worked there. They thought it was more of a joke than anything that was paying their bills. The fact that is the hard drive as well like you could write down the private key, right? That's the main thing is that it's not just about having a hard drive. You could literally write down the private key on a piece of paper and have it on multiple places. So there's redundancy there that goes further than having a hard drive. Like the Bondi-Kurria interception thing that Josh brought up the fact that this Bondi-Kurria could have just opened the whatever the male it was. Did you have the hard drive? Craig didn't specify this. He just said that their keys would be given to him. How did he encrypt them? He has never gone into detail. It's just a brand in a lie that comes out of one of the many forgeries that he actually had. But it's easy to bamboozle people from a technical perspective if you're not bamboozle. I've met him and I've sat down with him and he comes across this very intelligent and his arrogance, his sheer arrogance that he knows everything makes you think this guy actually knows something. People that are technical, way more technical than me, will ask questions and he'll bamboozle them with stuff that is pulled out of thin air that sounds like it's technical but it's actually not. It's easy to do that. But his defense against Locke, that James Locke, that James Locke's got financial gain because he's got a financial gain from defending Bitcoin. Yeah, James Locke has probably some Bitcoin and some gain from defending Bitcoin, whereas Craig Wright literally forked Bitcoin and has most of the forked crap, forked Bitcoin and has the biggest financial gain way, way bigger than James Locke's percentage of the network, the he owns of Bitcoin compared to Craig Wright. So I think it's just crazy that we're still listening to this and the fact that there's no point where you go, the boy who cried wolf, right? That's what we're all talking about. There's no point in the court system where someone goes shut up, Craig, like we're not even entertaining this application. Just shut up. You've applied too many times, you've forged too many times, we literally can't believe anything you say. Go cry wolf in a field. That's it and just leave them alone. But because he's got money to back him, he's got the sugar daddy, he's got that sort of thing to just keep on paying for these court cases in different jurisdictions around the world. He can just keep on banging them out. Unfortunately, all that happens is that there's more evidence of the forgeries as he goes along each time. So he may have small wins in certain court cases that are against small applications of the accusations against him. But at the end of the day, he can't actually prove that he's Satoshi. The whole thing rides on him proving that he is Satoshi and he literally can't do it. So it's an insane game that's never ending, it seems. It does seem disappointing that Craig never learned the immortal words of Socrates who said the truth is that you know nothing. So Martin, help me understand this Craig Wright, in vents Bitcoin, then he's sad by it almost depressed, almost suicidal, destroys it with his steel toad boots. Then later, he learns that Bitcoin that he invented can suddenly be used for drug money or to buy anything you want on the internet. And he returns to stop Bitcoin. Does this make any sense? No, sorry. I think Greg Wright is just an attention whore. I hope he's listening because maybe it will finally sink in. We don't care. We don't care about his shit coin currency. I do know that it's the one currency we will never, ever support on our network of ATM. So that's one thing that's for sure. For the rest, I think we already spent way too much time on this subject because the guys are worth it. It is a lot like the narcissist here that we have in the United States. The more you try to not talk about him, the more you end up talking about him every day. And as Howard Stern said, just the other day, that was his goal the whole time. He's a supreme narcissist. He loves it when he talks about when we talk about him. And I'm sure Craig Wright is much the same exit question. Pick, tell me the future. Give me the results of the Hottelknot trial. Will Hottelknot be held responsible for allegedly claiming that Craig Wright is not Satoshi. Vlad, yes or no? Well, it's a double edged sword. I think Hottelknot is going to win in Norway, but it's going to be very difficult for him to win in the UK where the roles are reversed. The burden of proof is on him to prove that he is not Satoshi. And that's a lot more difficult than making Craig Wright prove that he is Satoshi. So unfortunately, I think it's going to be a tough battle in the UK. And this is only the beginning. Josh Egaala, tough times ahead for Hottelknot? I think I get a feeling Hottelknot is going to win this actually. I really hope so. There was one just to bring it up quickly before we move on, but there's one quote of them saying, do you know this document and Craig looks at it all confident. He goes, oh, yeah, I was absolutely drunk to hell when I wrote that. I was so, I remember it so clearly I was really drunk that night. And as fans is terribly written document. And then someone says, well, actually, how wrote this? You know, because it's signed by him or something. I think it was how something like that. No, it was Daniel Climent or whatever. I was Daniel Climent. Yeah, sorry, it was Daniel Climent. Right. So that's something a great moment in this sort of busted aha moment. Got you. It was just drowning in his own ball dust. But it's this confidence man. You know, it's this con man trick being so confident. I just going on about it. Plus the bamboozling. Plus what you said before, Thomas about trying to win the hearts and minds by sort of saying, oh, you know, we want, you know, I really want to help you the judge to stop people, learn to read money, so try and get across it. Oh, okay. Well, I better side with Craig, because he's going to help the justice system. And it's just it's kind of a weird strategy on his part. But anyway, we have the same thing here. That's a hell of a nice country. You've got there. Be ashamed if anything happened to it. It's super bad. Dan, if your thoughts will hollow not win the trial. I'd like to think he's going to win it in Norway, especially because it seems like a more evolved court system, right? And it's flag pointed out the burden of proof is on Craig to prove that he's more of the burden proof is on Craig to prove that he's he's actually Satoshi. And that's what's the insane thing about this is that calling, you know, if suing someone for calling me a fraud for claiming you're something you're not surely that that the first point of call in any court case is for you to prove your that person that someone saying you're not otherwise the court case is is BS. Now that in England, the the liable system is is complete. It's just crazy. I think they know one one one of the biggest cases that comes in my mind is that or at least from from a and I'll skeptics kind of perspective is Ben Goldaker when he was sued by I think it was the chiropractic association and eventually they dropped the course but they dropped dropped the court case. But the fact is the burden of proof should be on the person to prove that they're saying what they're saying is true rather than the other person who's saying you're not telling the truth. That's what just, you know, confuses me about the British case and I know that liable system in the UK needs to really update their laws. So I hope he wins in Norway. I hope he wins like hands down and in the UK, I you know, I just it would sadden me. It would sadden me if if if it actually got anywhere in the UK because to me, it's just insane and and it doesn't even deserve hearing. Surely King Charles would never let a thing like that happen and this reminds me a lot of what's been happening on the recent episodes of She Hulk on the Marvel Network. Someone tried to steal She Hulk's name but then she fought for it in court. Maybe the real Satoshi will stand up and sue Craig Wright, Martin Wishmare, what do you think about Hottelknot and his trial? I think I side with George on this one. I think he will win in in Norway and if he wins in Norway, we all win because we are all Hottelknot. And we're all Norway. No, we're not. Tansignor, okay. Well, unfortunately, I think I agree with Vlad. He's going to win in Norway but the UK is much harder. I'm disappointed we have to do these trials twice. I'm not sure why that is. It must be because Mr. Wright has too much legal money allegedly and all that. So we'll see how that turns out. Legal fees are quite expensive. Moving on to issue four. Bitcoin is a tumor. It says black swan author Nassim Talib. Once a fan of cryptocurrencies, even asking an entire country to go buy them. Nassim Talib, author of the book The Black Swan, so often quoted as a reason behind Bitcoin. This unintended, this unexpected turn of financial economy. Suddenly, hates Bitcoin. Josh Shagalla, what do you think about Nassim Talib turning on Bitcoin what she wants enjoyed? I think it's important to have Nassai as it's important to have people shitting on it. It's important to have them saying their point of view. But actually, the reason why Bitcoin is the honey badger of money is because it doesn't give a shit what you think. It just keeps producing blocks and it keeps moving forward. It doesn't care what the state thinks. It doesn't care. I mean, the price cares sometimes. That's why it's not only the honey badger, but the fainting goat of money because it'll fall down and then it'll just get back up. China bans and it'll just get back up. It doesn't care. It's good to have Nassaiers. I actually applauded the Nassaiers and was upset when Brickelli threw a anti-bick coin in prison for demonstrating against Bitcoin. I think that's not in nature of Bitcoin. Bitcoin should always have Nassaiers. It should always have people's for it and against it and total a constant open dialogue. Whether they're right, I probably could probably read through his arguments and take him apart. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that blocks keep moving and people can without permission create launch some software for a wallet and without asking anybody to partake in a global network, the financial freedom and that's what's important. Dan, Eve is Josh Raich. Should we welcome our critics even when they're used to be our friends? Yeah, I think any industry void of critics and unable to counter what the critics are saying with something that's logical is destined to fail because they're too arrogant to address the issues that face the industry. I think that it's a good thing having people giving you feedback. No one wants to have a product and not have feedback on it. Products thrive on marketing. I'm not saying that Bitcoin in terms of marketing, in terms of how learning how the product actually works and how it fits in with the market and being able to react on that and build technologies around that, but we'll evolve the technology around that's going to help it. In terms of him saying it's a tumor in the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's neither tumor and it will never go to zero because Andrea Santinopoulos would have always buy it before it goes to zero. So that's the one reassuring thing he said that multiple times. But ultimately, there's been a lot of prize winning economists and no more prize winning economists that have said that Bitcoin's going to go to zero and they've done it all along the timeline up until now and it's 2022. So we're 11, 12, 13 years of Bitcoin and it's still not dead. You said hundreds of obituraries and it's still around, it's still working. It's not only is it still around, but it's the most solid network on earth and most secure network on earth ever. So if that's not a testament to how solid Bitcoin is, then I mean, I don't know what is. And as much as there are very skilled intelligent people that have that are critics of Bitcoin and that would say that, you know, or any industry, there's always people that could be really intelligent but also wrong, right? You're not right on everything. And so as much as the author of the Black Swan and he's obviously a very renowned prize winning economist, etc, he could also be wrong. And it seems like he's kind of wrong. Like, let's face it, he's wrong. Like, it's the evidence is in the network and it's usage and how it's proliferating around the world, the impact it's having. And therefore, unfortunately, he at the moment, he's incorrect. Like, and Bitcoin is proving him wrong. It's a living proof of his incorrectness right now. So lovely guy, love to go out for a point with him, but incorrect. And it's a bit of a nightmare that he just it is a black Swan. No one saw this coming. I mean, there's a reason they call him the clown of quantitative finance. I mean, this is this is this is this is being like, this is how we know it. I mean, he writes these books and he coins all these terms like black swanny fendt and fragile and stuff and sprinkles it around in every discussion. So it makes him look very smart to average people, but it's just bullshit. I mean, okay, maybe maybe not, but don't take advice from somebody who would rather invest in olive trees than in Bitcoin. So no, I would like totally ignore him. Let me check really quick with the mainstream media. They say that to leave has written a book and it's a famous book. So he must know more about Bitcoin than you guys. Sorry, better luck next time. Moving on, check out the world crypto network at worldcryptoneatwork.com. We've got the latest videos and a link to our podcast, which has recently been updated with last week's Bitcoin group show. You could even give us a rating. We have 67 ratings. Some of them are three or five years old. Maybe we could get just two more ratings and we would reach 69. Thanks so much for your support. Push thumbs up below as well. Moving on to issue five environmental groups to spend another one million dollars on ads for Bitcoin code change after the Ethereum merge. Yes, that's right. Greenpeace has entered the Bitcoin and Ethereum arena and is using Ethereum switch to proof of stake to claim that Bitcoin and proof of work are not good for the environment. We predicted this on this show many weeks ago. Let's see. We'll go straight to see, Martin, we're going to let's go to Dan Eave. Dan Eave, what do you think about greenpeace lobbying Bitcoin as if Bitcoin was the thing that could be lobbied asking them to switch to proof of stake? Well, I think there's this thing right that already millions of dollars of advertising revenues been spent by green companies. They've already got a huge user base to try and get people to lobby against Bitcoin because the Ethereum is now proof of stake. There's things like the merge will reduce worldwide electricity consumption by 0.2% and that Ethereum is now 90. Users 99.5% less energy. These are the kind of, let's face it, they're paid shields because lots of people who earned Bitcoin, sorry, Ethereum, very small rate, maybe even ICO buyers, have got lots of its spare and they can now just donate loads to Greenpeace and use that millions of subscribers and millions of marketing power in order to be able to buy Greenpeace and say, hey, we're so much better than Bitcoin now. I think this is a time, I'm 40s, I think you're just getting started. There's like saying, you can build steel costs like $1 to build a kettle, but you can build one with chocolate for 50 cents. But the chocolate melts as soon as you put it on the fucking service, useless. That's the difference between proof of work and proof of stake. They achieve different things. They have the same ultimate goal of consensus mechanism, but they do it in different ways. By proof of work, it's by being so much more secure because of proof of work. Whereas proof of stake is, we were already seeing their centralization. I mean, granted, there's the argument that the two biggest mining pools, what 40, I think, is 42% of Bitcoin's mining in a close through two pools, specifically. So there are tip for tap, but ultimately, it's just going to be a giant, great big stick that Ethereum proof of stake is can now be Bitcoin with. Whether it's warranted or not, in our eyes as proof of work fans is a completely different story to the outside world who's trying to go for this green electric kind of model. They just see the baseline numbers of seeing 99.5% more efficient now. Blah, blah, blah. They don't realize the actual trade offs that are happening in terms of the security level. Unfortunately, it seems like it's gone quite smoothly for Ethereum, but it is a big tradeoff in terms of security. Now they've got a bigger stick to Bitcoin in terms of not just the ICO funds, but also the environmental aspect. Martin Wishmare has predicted on this show the merge worked. Now they're attacking Bitcoin for being environmentally unfriendly. What do you think about the environmental groups attack on Bitcoin? Yeah, I find it amazing that the green piece has money to actually spend on lobbying instead of saving the seals. So naturally, we cancel tired donations here at home. So yeah, now I think it's despicable. Zero seals were saved by green pieces angry tweets at Bitcoin. Vlad, what do you think about green pieces strategy? Will attacking Bitcoin publicly be successful in changing the code? Well, it will not be successful, but we have to put this into the right context and we need to understand what's really going on. In the case of Ethereum, they switched to proof of stake about 48 hours ago. And while they claim that they eliminated the energy consumption, the hash rate has gone to two different chains. One of them is ETC, Ethereum Classic, which is the original Ethereum and the project that has been waiting for this moment. It was kept alive specifically for this moment when ETH was going to move to proof of stake. But there's also ETHW, which is Ethereum Proof of Work. And that's the continuation of the proof of work chain, which did not want to move to what they called the merge, which was actually hard for. So they did not solve anything. They just migrated somewhere else. It's the same situation that you find in, for example, Western European countries that are going to say, yes, we are carbon neutral. We are not polluting in our country. We are saving the planet. But at the same time, they have outsourced all manufacturing to India and China. And what they did was to move the pollution somewhere else. But it doesn't mean that it's gone and the problem has been solved. It's not only a matter of not in my backyard or something like that. It's just virtually signaling. No problem was actually solved. And we're going to have a proof of work version of Ethereum whether they like it or not. So if they want to lobby, they should try to figure out why there is a proof of work version of Ethereum before they turn their attention to Bitcoin. But that's not really their agenda. They're just trying to discourage Bitcoin adoption. That's why this exists. Excellent points, Vlad, on the multiple versions of Ethereum. Although sadly, we have some multiple versions of Bitcoin kicking around as well. Josh, you got your thoughts on green versus Bitcoin. Yeah, I think they're really astute points that Vlad made. And while I still, my mind is open to proof of stake. I'm interested to see this is what I love about the space is that it's all experiments. And we don't know. There is an argument that there's a lot of exchanges. And that's always the the argument that exchanges of the centralization for proof of stake. But there's now so many exchanges. And so let's see, let's see what happens. And it's quite easy to move funds even exchange starts becoming a bad actor. I don't know. Like I'm totally keen to see what happens. And wait, Josh, Josh, Josh, just, just, just interrupting. You say it's easy to move funds once an exchange is a bad actor. I don't think that's the case right now. Yeah, like fish, you're right. If the, you know, it was hard to move funds out of my box. No, it's hard or impossible to move funds out of your stake pool right now, isn't it? Well, that's different. Yeah, that's different. So that's that's that's locking in for for a reason in the stake pool. That won't be the case later on. Just like the scalability where it will be addressed in a future update, which might take another 10 years or so. Yeah, well, I mean, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah, that is a good point. I mean, the end goal is that you can stake 30 to if whenever you want and unsteak them whenever you want. But, but yeah, it's just interesting to see, right? I don't want to be dogmatic. I think it's just, I don't want to be to Bitcoin or to crypto what Peter Schiff's shift is to crypto from the gold side, right? I don't want to pretend I know better. I feel like proof of work has proved itself. I feel in my mind that proof of work is better. I honestly feel that. I think it is, but I'm open to understanding, hey, wow, now there's a major chain with major money trying this out, which is pretty incredible. For green piece to lobby is the most sickening, the demented waste of money and it seems to me like more of a money laundering exercise than anything else. Just try to hide or embezzle a million dollars somehow. That wouldn't be the first time either, I think. With green piece, they have a history on that. From what I remember. Yeah, I mean, it'd be so easy to say, you know, to your brother's animation studio, we're going to spend a million dollars on an animation to try to like, do do do do do Bitcoin 30. When really, the facts of the matter is, why are they lobbying the PlayStation network because the PlayStation network uses up just as much power than Bitcoin? Let's turn off all PlayStation's because that's even on standby mode. It's terrible. So, hey, what about all the fridges? We can go back to fermented foods. Why do we need fridges for? It's nonsense. It's weird to lobby a decentralized, that just goes to show how stupid these people are to think that they can lobby some some decentralized network, but that's the whole point. And as if we don't already know the arguments, as if there's not arguments at nauseant about proof of stake, I mean, it's been going on forever since Dan Laramers days back in, back on Bitcoin talk with Satoshi. It's just weird and it definitely smells like a money laundering or investment sort of scheme. Sorry, I said that after history of that, but I have to correct myself. It was mismanagement of friends. That was the official thing. Well, that's proven. Your microphone's gone fuzzy. Oh, again, sorry. Got to check that microphone. There is, it's an interesting and unique opportunity that I get to quote a famous or perhaps infamous Twitter personality Dan the dark pill, who reminded us on Twitter that this is similar to the Segwit 2x disaster, where these companies thought that they controlled Bitcoin. In the same way, Greenpeace thinks that if you want to get a change in Bitcoin, you kind of lobby these companies or you lobby Bitcoin publicly and you use this environmental argument. When really, as we've discussed here, there's already been a debate and it's ongoing about proof of work versus proof of state in computer science. So Greenpeace would have to enter that debate with some evidence if they want to be respected in computer science. The environmental, that's a side issue. The real issue is which provides more security. And as Josh said, the belief of our belief in many people on the show is that proof of work provides more security without becoming centralized. The centralization, as Martín said, it popped up on the first day. Pretty much three exchanges control more than 51% of Ethereum proof of stake. Now, right now, they're not voting with their staking, right? They're just staking and making the money. But if we look at this from a larger perspective, zoom out a bit, Coinbase, Crackin, these other companies are now supporting the Ethereum network. If there's naughty stuff, child porn, Nazis, hate images, whatever it's going to be, on the Ethereum network, they are now supporting it and profiting off of it. So I don't know what the worst piece of information or the worst content out there, something like Infinite Just, where they have to block it from everyone. But I could see a situation where they change their minds and they change their strategy. And they say, we need to vote with this Ethereum now to protect the US government to protect you from Infinite Just, whatever it may be. So it is a very exciting future for what seems to be largely centralized proof of stake versus decentralized, at least for now, proof of work, Bitcoin. Exit question, is the environmental attack on Bitcoin the new cause of the day? Are we giving up on drug money? Are we giving up on you? Lose all your bank money? You're going to be a loser. Dan Eve, tell us the future. Is the environmental attack the new best attack on Bitcoin? Yes, it's the new, it's the new fashionable child, but there's always evidence against it, right? And even we're seeing with electric cars now, like, they sound like a good thing. And they are a good thing. But there's still a lot of environmental impact from getting the cobalt, the cobalt mining, the lithium mining and all those sorts of side things that comes with having an electric car. Let alone the fact that it's like a hose pipe band, right? If if you're using too much water, they'll cut off the hoses. If you're using too much electricity, they'll say stay at home because you can't power your electric car. So I think we're going to see more reasons or more different industries impacted by their own electricity usage other than just Bitcoin mining. Martin Wishmeyer. I think this is, it's not new. It's my phone still correctly or is it okay now? Okay, that's good. I think it's not new. We've been seeing this for over the past two years almost. I mean, before that, just the drugs money, but now all the dealers are in jail because Bitcoin not so anonymous. And then then came the tree hugging hippies trying to kill our beloved cryptocurrency. So no, we will fight. Vlad is the environmental argument, the new argument against Bitcoin. Well, the environmental argument has always been there. But it seems like they ran out of narratives to explain why it's a bad idea. And now this is the last resort. They're going to try to explain that this should not exist and this has no purpose. PlayStation consoles, they serve a purpose, right? They push an agenda, they indoctrinate your ideas, they can be censored, they can be shut off, they can be controlled. But they don't like something that cannot be controlled. So they're going to basically say, why is this needed anymore? Ethereum will be used as an attack on Bitcoin. As an example, it will always be presented as the virtue signaling network, the one that got it right. And why can't Bitcoin do this? And it's one of these situations where ideology is going to prevail over science in narratives. Because scientifically speaking, you cannot have proof of state being more secure than proof of work because it has various trade-offs that lead to its centralization. But just because you want to believe that it's the better system, it's going to get a lot of media attention, it's going to get all of the stuff on websites like Buzzfeed and Vice and whatever, the ones that are usually very pro-state, even if they claim to be rebellious. And that's how it's going to play out in the next few years. And we can only win this if we are resilient and we follow the science behind it. Proof of work was created as a response to proof of stake. There's no innovation in proof of stake in the sense that systems like this have existed for decades. And we can even argue that the current banking system is proof of stake. I think this is a great time to remind everyone that Kerio cards are not only the first art on NFT, on Ethereum, they're also the first art NFT on environmentally friendly proof of stake Ethereum. Yes, you can get your NFTs, they're clean now, even the old ones. How cool is that? Josh Shagallan, what do you think about Bitcoin and Ethereum and proof of stake? Well, like I said, I think it's cool to see them trying. Let's see. One thing that's interesting is when China banned mining, mining is a very easy thing to spot because it's very energy and intensive. And staking some coins on your little computer can look like any old data. So it could potentially be more decentralized if you can stop pooling funds, but that's almost impossible. It's just fascinating to watch this experiment of mine's building cool stuff. I think we'll be all right. What I don't like is delegated proof of stake. I think that's been flawed. We've seen experiment with it. It's horrible. We saw it really go down the drain with EOS. So finally, that one's been put to bed. And no one's really tried it apart from private blockchains, which is obviously a delegated proof of stake, but what the hell's the point of private blockchains? No one knows, apart from maybe CBDCs. But it's an interesting experiment. Look, that's the whole point of Bitcoin was to compete, to have competition keeps the boss that's honest. And the real enemy for me, the real enemy, the thing that we're fighting is the fiat system. It's not each other. It's like I say, good on Ethereum people, keep going. Try it. We're building our thing on an EVM, probably on Ethereum base layer, because I can't build it on Bitcoin base layer. I wish I could. But also, I'm glad I can't because Bitcoin has a very, very slim attack surface and I'm glad it hasn't changed. I'm glad it does what it does and it does a bloody well. And with its conservative and it's solid, it's a solid workhorse that does its thing. Ethereum is wider, more open for hacks. It's because it's just a crazy, crazy world of constant hard forks. But that's cool too. It's an experiment. Let's not be dogmatic. Let's not shut down things. Let's not have internal fighting. Remember who the real enemy is. Real enemy is central banking, in my mind. Maybe that's your friend, but for me, it's the thing I'm fighting against. Well, and remember, we have seen proof of stake projects before, Peercoin in 2012 and Mintcoin in 2014. You guys can look those up and see how they turned out. Moving on to issue six, Bitcoin and Ether tumble. Even a successful merge can't outweigh the macro pressures. The price of Bitcoin and Ethereum are down. Martine, I know this is your most favorite issues. We're going to you first. What do you think about the price? Why couldn't the successful merge raise the prices of all cryptocurrencies? It's what everyone wanted to happen. We were so close. I'm so sick and tired of the whole Ethereum discussion. I'm sorry, I can't find a normal answer anymore. I'm just like, I wish the merge would have been the perch and that we would have been released from it all. That would have been better. Glad you agree with Martin, are you tired of the Ethereum thing? Why couldn't it save the price? No, man, I bought a huge bag of popcorn and so far I had no reason to eat it and I'm disappointed. Like, I want popcorn. So I want more Ethereum stuff. I want something like 2016. I want it hard for it to happen. I want them to freak out for some reason with a bug. I don't know. I'm disappointed. But in regards to the price, I tweeted today something along the lines of, there's a high demand for government intervention and government money and low demand for Bitcoin. It's not that Bitcoin is in the bear market. It's just that individual freedom and the demand for non-governmental money is in a bear market. It's just that people haven't figured out that Bitcoin is their exit, is their protection against government and they still treated as some sort of high risk stock or whatever, something in which they only invest. And that's why we find ourselves in this situation. In the past, we have had bear markets that were generated by a crisis in self-custody as well as the case of Mount Docks. Then we had a bear market that was generated by crisis in scaling, which meant that we could not accommodate all the users that we wanted. In this bull market, we had no scaling issue. We had no self-custody issue. It was just an over, I guess, financialization issue. It's just that Bitcoin has become so entwined in this fiat financial system that we're not even sure that there are only 21 million Bitcoin's being sold if you do it institutionally and you can verify on the public ledger. It's just that maybe we need to figure out where we go from here and whether Bitcoin remains cipherpunk or it's going to be Michael Sailor's little toy to borrow more fiat to buy more Bitcoin, which by the way, we have no idea how he is cussing it. I don't think Microsoft has advantages to their own keys. But I guess to summarize, I guess this bear market is a consequence of an identity crisis in regards to what this is and why we are here. If we are here, then obviously we got it right and we understood the reasons. A lot of people left and panicked specifically because there is stuff going on in the world for what's Bitcoin was invented to overcome, but they just don't connect the dots yet. Josh, all your thoughts on why the price didn't recover after the merge? It was a typical sale of the news moment, right? The whole, actually, Bitcoin was trying to go down the whole week and leading up to the merge, I feel this might be it. Bitcoin was kind of holding the market up a little bit because people were like, I want to, every time I dipped, people were like, I want to get the hard fought coins. They all constantly had this buying pressure whenever it started dropping and it was sort of holding the market up, even though it wanted to drop. Now that the mergers happen, it's like, okay, now everything started to go down. Obviously, Ethereum is way more than Bitcoin because it's a sell the news moment. Now there's no news for a long time as they head into the next thing, which is the sharding stuff. It's just normal. It's natural that sell the news, by the rumour sell the news. There's always the have-a-have-a-have-a-have-a-have-a-d-eve your thoughts on the price. The price is, well, what's crazy is that the hash rate at the moment is according to Bit Info Charts 229x, which is pretty much within about 10% of its all-time high on Bitcoin. Even though the price is still hovering around this 1920K, it's still the security of the network. It's still maintaining that level and even growing within the all-time high of when the price was actually a lot higher. The difficulty is, I think, again, again, going into Bit Info Charts, we're at an all-time high. It's over 32 trillion difficulty, which is a big number. It would take you a long time to count to it. Ultimately, I grew up just about it being a sell the news moment. A lot of shit coins previously have relied on the buy-the-room sell the news, whereas Bitcoin during the 2020 harvony, it sort of float around the sort of 9K region and it didn't really dip after that. It kind of held that level briefly after and then it started to generally move up. Personally, I think that I'm still a bit negative on the markets. I think that we're still just over halfway through to the next harvony. We're going to see a lot of turbulence, especially there's still a war going on. There's still lots of worry about regulation and stuff. Even though the general things like the China Fud have got less of an impact overall on Bitcoin's price, I think the general world mood, which is a lot bigger than just a single country saying, we're not too sure about Bitcoin. I think that's going to have an impact on things. I'm thinking we're still going to go a bit negative over the next few months. And yeah, very Ethereum, who knows? No idea. No idea. Moving on to the exit question, predict the future against the Magic Bitcoin 8-ball. Will the market go up or down this time next week? Martine Wishmeyer? Yeah, I'm so going for sideways because I know the ball can't handle that, but a little bit up, a little bit down, but don't expect anything spectacular. Sideways is the ball's least favorite answer. Vlad will Bitcoin go up or down? I'll be the bear here. I'll just say it will go down next week. Vlad starts off the bearishness. Josh, do you agree? Bearish for Bitcoin? Yeah, bear. It's going to go bad. It's going to be a little bit bearish for a little while. Unfortunately, because everyone says the Bitcoin is a constantly price, doesn't matter, price doesn't matter, but actually if you're running a business in the space, price matters. Because things move, things happen. And so it's unfortunately bad, I do think price is going to go down for a little while longer. Dan, Eve, your chance to join the pessimism? Oh, yeah, I think it's going down for a little bit until we're teetering around this price and probably a bit lower for a while. Oh, I hate it when it goes down. I only wanted to go up, up, up, but we'll ask the Magic 8-ball. Here we go. Will the price of Bitcoin be higher this time next week? Ball says, most likely, most likely, the ball isn't optimist. Moving on to issue seven, we're running out of time really quick issue. Jay Z is selling Bitcoin in the projects, not everyone's buying. We talked about this issue before, Jay Z attempting to go as well as Jack Dorsey from Twitter to go back to his previously home in Brooklyn and to sell Bitcoin to the people to teach them about Bitcoin. There were complaints at the time, whether this would be useful to these people. Then, as it turns out, Jack and Jay Z gave the people a thousand dollars each for attending the Bitcoin class. They could then invest or do whatever they want. I assume with the money. Vlad, what do you think about Jay Z and Jack from Twitter attempting to sell Bitcoin to the projects? I think that the blueprint was a decent album and definitely his first one was also good. I think maybe the best. But in regards to trying to sell Bitcoin, I'm pretty sure that they're using cash shop. As far as I know, that's a studio. I don't think that counts as selling Bitcoin. It's selling the BTC token on somebody else's balance sheet. I don't know about that. Maybe that these people need to really understand why this matters to them outside of the speculation area. But then again, Jack Dorsey and Jay Z are invested in cash shop title and all of these ventures. It's their business. Josh Legala, was it all just advertising? Probably. I don't know. Obviously, there's two ways. One is they want to try and emancipate people in the projects to learn how to save and put a little bit away into a speculative asset. The other side is we have a whole team and we've decided that the target audience, we have one group here and it's the projects. We think that'll be a great target audience for the app. Go for and market. The cynicism is overwhelming. Dan Eave, what about this plan to sell to the projects? Well, when you've got a lot of way behind you, like Jay Z has got a big, big audience. Right? I think it's good when celebrities, as much as we shouldn't idolize people in Bitcoin, they try and put their way behind something because it lends legitimacy to it, doesn't it? If there's a lot of people respect Jay Z, they respect his financial decisions. He's one of the first billionaires rappers. To listen to Jay Z, not just his music but his advice on the monetary solution, which is Bitcoin. I think it's good. It's positive ultimately. We can disagree with how he implements that plan. But at the end of the day, he's got a huge network to spread that to you. I think it's a good thing. And why else when you think about it, it's a big pimping on the yacht. On a yacht, you can lose your keys at sea because treasures don't float. So it all makes sense in the long run. Martin Wishman here, it sounds like Jay Z has a plan. I thought there was really a noble idea. Oh, your microphone's gone again. It's going to change back. It's amazing how it's either a good microphone or a complete static one. Like, oh, no, it's just a static one. No, it's a zoom app that's doing it because I only have this on zoom on Android. But I thought it was a great idea to bring, you know, to educate people on decentralized currency. But I think that just really didn't get their point across. And they just stopped at speculating. And here's free money. Everybody gets free money. And that was it. And people don't see the point. And this is, this is, I find this is often the case with educating people about Bitcoin. It's that you tell them how it works. You try to get them in tools. Yes, they can. And at the end of the entire evening of educating people, they'll say, yeah, what of the, which coin do I have to buy to get a 10 times return? So they're not really getting it. They don't want to know. They don't know. They don't interest it. So even giving them a $1,000 will not change it. So this is, yeah, it's a society reality. Some people just want to stay poor. And even if the $1,000 who turn into $2,000 next week, they'd rather have $1,000 now. So yeah, rest my case here. I think Mark T makes an excellent point that the truth of Bitcoin is that it helps you even if you don't own any, even if you didn't get Bitcoin early and become mega rich or whatever, even if you didn't double up or whatever the thing is, having Bitcoin, having non-inflationary money that doesn't steal your house away from you that maybe would allow your ancestors to pass something on to you in the future instead of having it being eaten up by inflation helps you. So I don't think that was the main point of their seminar. It might have been a little cash app heavy as Vlad said. Obviously, I'd prefer if they work directly with the BBB, the Black Bitcoin billionaires. They're a great group. They've done fantastic work from Bitcoin. They're all about holding your own keys, getting $100, getting $300, not that much money in Bitcoin and holding it, but mainly about teaching people about this revolutionary change. How Bitcoin helps you even if you're not filthy rich. And I think that should have been a good message. As we talked about this before, the people were bummed. They weren't getting any money. Now they gave them $1,000. That seems like a lot of money. If you went to this class and you got a little education and you get a grand to invest or to whatever you want with, it seems like a good program. I celebrate them for it, even if maybe it was an advertisement like Vlad said and a feel good, feel good story. But we need some feel good stories. Why not? Let's have some positive stuff here. We're running out of time. We're moving on to predictions or story of the week. Dan Eve, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? Go ahead. Dan is not ready. Unmute yourself. You ready, Dan? No, you. I don't know what's going on. Have we lost all communication? Let's go, Martin Wishmer prediction or story of the week. Is my microphone still working or is not working? You're sound fine, but I feel like we've lost all kind of technology here. Oh, yeah, the technology is ahead for the end. Yeah. It's not spoiling. I the story of the week, I think I mentioned it last week, but we're working on the L.A. big com in South America, but we're also going to the big coin Amsterdam. I think it's really cool because in 2013 or 2014 or 2013, we were at the Bitcoin conference in Amsterdam and Carrell, the founder of General Bites, introduced the Bitcoin ATM on that show. So now we're introducing the new wellbooks.com crypto accounting, accounting package. So it's nice to be able to launch something new on the Bitcoin show in Amsterdam. So I'm really looking forward to that. I hope to see all there. It's going to be really good event. There's music too. So even if you bought a terium, you can still have a good fun at the music festival. Very cool, Martin. Glad to see General Bites going home in almost 10 years, almost 10 years since the launch of the first ATM. Very cool. Nine years. Glad, a story of the week or a prediction. Go ahead. Thanks also to Vlad for being on the show. Yeah, thank you for having me. Martin mentioned Labbit Comf, which is the conference, which takes place in November in Argentina. And that's a huge one. I think this is the seventh edition. And for that one, I'm going to have a surprise because for the past year and I think it has been since July of 2021. So how much is that 14 months? Anyway, I have been working on this magazine project, which I created thanks to Josh, mostly because he supported me. He was the first podcast sponsor to believe in my work. And at one point, I decided that I also want to branch out and do a magazine. And this year, I launched this edition. This is the first edition of this series Bitcoin Takeover magazine. You can find it open and sourced, but it's available under different editions with different covers. This one is made by J Scrylola. And is the most expensive of the mall. It's like $350 right now. And only 41 were made. And this one was made in Prague. And this one was made in Mallorca. And most of you except for Martin, I guess, already have this. And this is the French edition. And this is where I was going with it. Because this is a French translation. It's basically a compilation of last years and this series magazines. Best articles translated in French and presented in this compact format. And for Argentina and El Salvador, I'm going to have a Spanish edition, which has a different cover, different articles that were picked by the translator, who is also Argentinian. And basically, Spanish, I think, has more people speaking it worldwide. And there's a very huge market. And I think that South America, Central America, have a lot of need for this kind of content. And the magazine itself is open source, which means that anyone can download it, can modify it, can print their own copy, and can even sell it. And if this one gets traction, it's going to be huge. And it's going to provide free education, freeing in the sense that, you know, there's still the cost of printing it, but they can still share the PDF to each other. But it's going to provide education about how to use Bitcoin to a lot of people. And I'm very proud of this project. And happy that I could make it happen. It's a great project. Flato is glad to get one of the magazines at Mallorca. And the nice thing you say about a magazine, it doesn't run out of batteries. You can share it to multiple people. You can even split it up into parts. There's all kinds of options. But it's a great magazine. Glad to see you doing it and spreading it. Also, I think Law BicConf was where I got to see one of the very first Andreas Antonopoulos videos. He had the big letters that said Bitcoin in the background. And he was pacing across the stage feverishly. And pretty much blew my mind on Bitcoin. I couldn't believe what had happened in the few years since I'd been away from the project since it started in 2010. Josh Shagalla, your thoughts? Go ahead. A prediction story of the week. Yeah, the story of the week has been Berlin blockchain week here. And there's been lots of great conferences. I gave a couple of talks. One today at Region United, which was interesting. It was all about regenerative stuff. It was interesting because a lot of talks of a abolishing capitalism. And I went in there and said, well, I gave my talk of extreme capitalist almost. But sort of tried to figure out a middle ground. That was very fascinating. That was fun. And also, yeah, gave a talk yesterday as well at Birdchain, which is the Berlin blockchain group that do a lot of little events here and there. So that's been really fun. And yeah, I'm looking forward to all sorts of stuff happening with the standard. It's crazy. It's been really good. We had a really, really great Twitter spaces with Patrick Friedman, Milton Friedman's grandson, David D Friedman's son, and also the founder of C-steading and such. And he's just such a wealth of knowledge and such a lovely guy as well. It was really great to talk to him and his contributions to the standard and the project is really fascinating. And one of the start up countries that he's starting is called Prospera, which I'll be visiting as well. It's absolutely fascinating in Honduras. You're on mute there, Dan. Dan's on mute, I don't know. But anyway, that's been really cool. And yeah, lots of things. Please join us on Discord to chat more. That's great stuff, Josh. There's a fantastic crypto and Bitcoin community in Berlin. It's been too long since I've been there, but it would be great to go back. Unfortunately, room 77 no longer around, but I'm sure they have a good replacement or something. Dan, Eve, are you with us this time? You've had all this time to prepare your prediction or story of the week. So we know it's going to be fantastic. Here we go. Dan, Eve. I have, I've been thinking about a lot, obviously, because that's what I do prepare like a good voice count. And so, okay, so what's going to happen is that there's going to be another Craig Wright Blunder moment where he does like his, his like famous or infamous. I remember this white paper. I remember reading it when I wrote it a moment in court where he says something that's really stupid and the proof that he's not Satoshi. And that's my picture. I did love to see in the right trial and the hotline trial. They had this coffee covered version of the white paper where someone spilled coffee on it and they're like, this is the real one. You can tell it's real. It's all dirty and everything. And just like with the fonts and everything, they looked at the document and they're like, now this is all too, even though it's stained in coffee and it's scanned in still old. Oh, well, we did that in junior school. We're like, we got a cop, we like literally in junior school, like at 10 years old, we got an old piece of paper. And we're like, I remember specifically, I remember reading it when I wrote it and I we pulled this coffee on, and then we got lighter or we didn't have the light. But the teacher like burned the edges. And it was like, it was like an old, a year old document. And that's literally like Craig writes sat there and he's going, I'm a creating an old, a document. And he's like, here's me doing the Satoshi of grade 22 and five. And like, he's like, when the future guy came and he redistributed the document to me from the future because I gave it to him. And he's got the coins. And he, you know, it's all just absolute insanity. And we just, yeah, I just can't wait to see waffle over and like trip over himself and say more insane stuff. There's just ridiculous. It should have been a tip off that it was an obvious fraud when it sat on the top. Ye old white paper. Ye old white paper. All right. Well, thanks to everybody for joining us. Give us a thumbs up down below. Push subscribe if you haven't already. You can even add a comment. We had three comments last week. Thanks to everybody in the chat for chatting it up. We'll read that later. Find out about how our microphones don't work and all that. But thanks so much for joining us until next time. Bye. Bye.