The Bitcoin Group, the American Original, for over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Martin Wishmer from General Bites. Hello, Bitcoin! Dan Eve, the crypto raptor. Good evening. Ben Arck from LN Bits. Evil. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World of Crypto Network, moving on to issue one. Issue one, Bitcoin's first major mining bankruptcy creates uncertainty for key partners, opportunity for others. Yes, that's right, compute North, the second largest Bitcoin mining hosting provider in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week. The company swiftly followed this filing with another court order requesting a 363 bankruptcy sale to liquidate assets to cover the roughly $140 million of debt that it has accumulated. Compute North provides back end services for Bitcoin mining companies. Now the Bitcoin mining companies themselves may be in trouble because compute North's contracts typically last three to five years and lock in a fixed power rate for the miner. The problem is compute North did not lock in its own power rate with providers and now owes more than the contracts are worth. Several Bitcoin mining companies will be affected by this, including marathon, among others. Marathon, digital holdings, foundry, digital currency group, and more. 14 wishware, what do you think about this Bitcoin mining service providers bankruptcy? Yes, this is very unfortunate. I had to read it twice because I don't understand if you have like 700 million worth of equipment and you sell fixed-price energy contracts. At the same time, you don't lock in your own energy contracts. It looks like it might have been easier at first but it has become very costly. As we all find out, prices of energy are on the rise and I don't think this will change anytime soon. This is really unfortunate. I think it could have been prevented. It's also very questionable how a business could enter into this. Thank you, same-art team. Everyone knows energy prices are rising to not lock in the rates to not assume that this would be a problem. It really makes me question the management of compute North. I think you're right there. How can you sell fixed-price energy for three to five years? I mean five years ago, and electricity was practically free and now we're paying a premiums. It's just like this bad business management in my opinion, but I don't have all the details. It's also an important lesson for Bitcoin miners. They thought they could just handle out the power and the back end of their services to someone else and then it turns out that was a bad plan. We've seen other cryptocurrencies handle their back ends with AWS and other rented services which we also think will come to a similar result. Dan, Eve, your thoughts on the Bitcoin mining bankruptcy? It seems like they were founded in 2017. So the end of the last half-ning, sorry, it's not the 2016 half-ning. So 2017 obviously reached pretty peaks. Maybe they sort of apetined them and managed to keep going through that bear market. They're surprising that they didn't, but they weren't aware that things get really bad. The things that you've got to lock in is not just your hardware costs, but the other biggest cost is energy. So it's not locked that in. The wholesale price of a boss is getting their customers do it. It seems like a real big mistake. Whether it's that, they actually did them and not how they held their Bitcoin or something else. Small scandalous that we don't know about now. They lost a bunch of Bitcoin or something. I'm sure we'll find out. But the CEO resigned alongside this sort of news, which is as crypto vinco on Twitter pointed out that literally the last six months or so you've had the computer or CEO resign, Voyager CEO, Celcio CEO, Kraken CEO, which talks about last week, the Terra CEO, obviously different scenario there altogether with Terra. And also MicroStrategy. So there's kind of a big sway of crypto slash Bitcoin based companies of CEOs leaving right now, you know, at the time right in the middle of the smack bang in the middle of the bear market. So there's a lot of opportunity for other CEOs to kind of come in and take the reins and then ride from the bear market to the bull market. There's some good opportunities out there for people buying up the cheap assets right from compute North. The hash power isn't just going to disappear. That's going to get bought out. It's going to go somewhere. There may be a brief period, brief blip where the hash rate drops. They were saying that the marathon compute's marital, the actual hash rate hasn't dropped in the last month. The actual global Bitcoin hash rate is still within about 10% of its all time high currently at 2.36 exa hash's, which is just immense again, you look over the last 13 years or so of how that growth has just been going exponentially. So I think as much as this is another bad bit of news for one company, there's a lot of opportunity for another or another group of companies, right? So at the end of the day, it's not going to impact on Bitcoin. That much is just one company and we all know about Honey Badger. It does seem like a perfect storm between the Bitcoin price to being down and energy prices being up. But then again, a lot of people predicted that. Ben, Arck, what do you think is Dan Wright? Is there no problem with the hash rate? Bitcoin security will be just fine. Yeah, I mean, Bitcoin is over secured at the moment. The energy thing is important. It is interesting, the CO Exodus. So imagine there was a lot of bad business in the bull market, a lot of expectations that their assets or company assets. I'm sure a lot of people would hold value in all their assets in Bitcoin and that would be there. If they had some sort of business issue with the cash turn over, then they would maybe rely upon the fact that Bitcoin is going to go up in price. So I can kind of imagine in that happening with a lot of these sketchy exchanges and these sketchy Bitcoin companies, which probably have crappy software and probably lost a bunch of money at some point. But it's interesting with these sorts of stories because you get to see behind the veil of mining and how it actually operates. And I had no idea that these sort of companies existed, which were instead out all this infrastructure for miners. So it's kind of an interesting part of the industry, which I didn't have any idea about. But I suppose for their business model as well, energy prices going up even if they uncapped the price, the lock ins, which they have for energy for their customers or they started charging for the actual amount of energy we've cost to run these miners, then maybe it's just they know they won't have any customers. Like they can't afford to pay the energy. We will make their mining operations not profitable. In the European UK, the energy prices are really on the hike and on the rise. What's it like in the US as bad? We don't have the energy price thing as much, but we do have inflation. General food prices and then naturally energy prices have gone up recently. Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of, you know, with in the European UK, I mean, we obviously have this energy crisis and you think the Russians, they got a lot of energy and the China needs a lot of miners. So it could be an interesting future mining environment, which we're heading towards. Well, the people with access to cheap energy and the people with access to the hardware are able to do a lot of Bitcoin. So I want you to write a ship of loads of miners over to where that gas is leaking and just like soak it all up and power some Bitcoin miners. Suck it up. Well, it's an ever too late to mine Bitcoin in space as Peter Todd predicted. It does seem like this company was a middleman for middlemen. So I don't think we're that sad about their problems and like Martins said, this is just a bunch of Bitcoin miners who didn't want to take care of their whole technical stack. They didn't want to manage the back end. They farmed it out to someone else and now we see how that worked out. We don't have another topic for this. So if you can't predict the price of the energy, you could predict the price of Bitcoin. Martín Wishmeyer will be higher or lower this time next week. Martín Wishmeyer competing against the greatest predictor in all of Bitcoin. This is not financial advice, but obviously many fortunes have been made on the wisdom of this ball. We're on the way up. We've been going down, down, down for such a long time. I think we'll see a little bit off of a bull run coming up. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but let's have to ball these sides. And as pessimism no more, huddle my bags. Dan Eve, are you going to let us down here? I'm going to switch now for the first time in ages, which probably means it will go down. I'm going to say, and it grew in my team, it's been kind of floating around this price for a long time. I think we're going to have a big pump, you know, probably up to even possibly up to even like 30k. And then there's going to be a bit of another downward spiral into negative territory. Everything else is down. Bitcoin separates from the stock market just a little bit and everyone goes bullish. Ben, are you continuing this trend? Yeah, there's blood in the streets. We're in there. We're at the bottom. We've been in the bottom for a while now. And we're with Martin. Anyways, up, baby. And now the Bitcoin predictor ball, source of all truth and knowledge. Here we go. We're going to shake the ball, which may cause bubbles. Will the price of Bitcoin be higher this time next week? Maybe, maybe. That's what I like about the predictor ball is you can always count on it for a clear answer. Maybe it'll go up next week. Moving on to issue two, issue two, California governor Newsom, veto's bill to regulate cryptocurrency calls for a more flexible approach. The bill, which would have created a system similar to BitLicens in New York, except for California, was stopped by the California governor in a rare show of foresight by a politician. Dan, Eve, your thoughts on California's decision to slow it down a bit and regulate later. Yeah, this was quite a surprising U-turn because California is a very agreeing, you know, a green cat. That's going to say county then. It's a green state, right? You know, they're very much environmentally conscious. Obviously, you've still got the contrast of all the biggest like Silicon Valley and, you know, tech giants in there who use mammoth amounts of computing power, which would be interesting actually to see how much like how much to Amazon and Google and how much computing power they use compared to the Bitcoin's power. Obviously, the service is a few more people around the world, but yeah, I was quite surprised to see Newsom, you know, veto this because they're, yeah, because of the greenness. But then you also think about the mining, the mining thing, right? So environmentally, it's still, there's a big attack vector on Bitcoin about it being unenvironmentally friendly. So I would have thought that would have more backing, right? From to be regulating it, and especially regulating the same mining of it and any businesses that are operating using it because of the fact that it's got a, you know, what is for seat, what is they see to be a, you know, an adverse effect on the environment because they do this, you know, seven trillion tons of carbon Bitcoin transaction and uses more than Ethiopia in a day and whatever crazy comparisons they come up with. At the same time, you know, again, going back to the Silicon Valley, you know, California, a lot of the wealth was built on technology, obviously, in the recent years, with, you know, Amazon, Google, Apple, all of those, the big names there. And so they definitely know how to let technology grow and thrive and regulating it. It adds additional obstacles, which will, which will cause, you know, barriers to people starting up businesses, but also to the businesses that are their thriving and growing even more. And bringing in more revenue for the, for the state. So overall, it's, it's good. But I do, I do think there's probably going to be a bit more fad around the, around the, the electricity consumption, you know, based on, especially the recent thing about them, the grid, there were some grid issues when they were, they, they, they, they, they, they knew some even said about not charging your electric car. And there's some videos, funny videos floating around of people with like, with Honda, like petrol motors on the back of their testlers to generate the electricity for when they can't charge it. But we'll see. It's, yeah, I think Kudos for, to Newsom for, for VSO, the bill. It is fascinating to see Newsom and California where he has a far more liberal legislator, as well as a liberal governor. But even then the liberal governor wants to put some breaks on what the legislators up to recently Vido Newsom has used the Vido a couple of times. He first vetoed kind of safe injection sites for heroin users. I disagree with that video. I think it was probably a political thing so that they couldn't say that he supported that. But I agree with this veto on the Bitcoin legislation, slowing down, having a more flexible approach. It's just a smarter idea. And it's surprising. Vido is a very harsh measure. It's one branch, the executive branch, usually one person making this decision against the legislator. But I think in this case it's a forthright and a positive Vido. Ben, Arck, what do you think about California looking for a more flexible approach? Yeah, the Trojan is one and they know it's here to stay. They know Bitcoin's here to stay and then all of it is related industries. And in California, it's something, it's always been had something of a frontier sentiment. And I still like to think that they still has that. And it wants to kind of embrace as much as it can this new technology. And I think Dan touched upon it with the talking about mining, with the fossil fuel industry, they'll argue that renewables are intermittent. That's why you can't use it for base load. And then the people, the renewable advocates will say, well, no, it's predictable. You know, it's going to be sunny in the day. I mean, no, it's going to be windy and blah, blah, blah. This is in times of year and blah, blah, blah. So it's predictable. And I think in California, you have a lot of predictable weather. So there's a lot of good mining infrastructure, which could be rolled out, harnessing some of these renewables in California. And I think it's a wise move not to stunt the growth of that industry because it could be a growth sector and an economy where there's a few and fewer growth sectors. So yeah, I think it's a wise move. It is an incredibly huge state as well, not just Silicon Valley with the technology and the coding, but like Ben saying, huge swaths of open desert land that could be used for solar mining and solar Bitcoin. Martin Wishmer, what do you think about California and their decision? Yeah. I usually think that like regulation usually stifles innovation and let just let the free market decide. And same goes for Bitcoin mining. And as Ben said, yes, there's plenty of space. There's plenty of skills and technology in California. So it will be like, it will be waste if they would regulate it and kill the industry before it even becomes big. So yeah, I think this is a good one to, it's good to feed out this bill. We've seen in New York that the bit license was really like really damaging the industry and by featuring this bill, California still has a bit of a chance. So yeah, good. Just to remind everyone to push the thumbs up button for the YouTube algorithm it loves that. I see all the other YouTubers ask you guys and I know it's annoying, but it's how the algorithm works. So thanks for your support. Exit question is, will governor Newsom's veto work? Will he get a weaker version of this bill or a weight and see approach? Or as Dan said, will the environmental threat of Bitcoin force California to come back with either overriding the veto or perhaps an even more draconian California bit license, Dan Eve? Sorry for the question again. I was totally distracted. I'm sorry. Will the veto work or will the bill come back stronger than before because of the environmental crisis? No, I think it's going to, I think it's going to work. There's a lot of tech lobbying in Silicon Valley and I'm sure that a lot of those, a lot of the money floating around is probably, you know, dipping its toes into crypto wouldn't want to, you know, wouldn't want to shit on their bags, right? Ben Arck, the tech lobby wins out or environmentalism overall? Well, he was. There was someone we had we were talking about in the show about months ago, I think, and they were complaining about Bitcoin lobbying powers becoming making it too hard to then stifle Bitcoin's growth like it was out of their controller. I can't remember who it was, but it was some US sanitary or something. Anyway, but I think that's it. I mean, even the, I think there's a lot of good environmentalists lobbying now for renewables and Bitcoin in those sorts of environments because it can be a way to make renewables more profitable if you can take the excess energy and harness it somehow in Bitcoin mining. So, yeah, certainly in the area of innovation and technology, we shouldn't be stifled. And I think it has also a lot of plenty of lots of lobbying groups and tech lobbying groups, which will stop if you've been stifled. So, no, yeah, it will get vetoed. I think it was Senator Brad Sherman and he's kind of going through the Bitcoin stages of grief. He's getting close to acceptance. Martin Wischmair, what do you think? Will the veto be successful? Yes, I think it will be. I think many people will realize that you don't just save the environment by regulating Bitcoin. I think this, and it's important. The tech industry is really important for California. So, yeah, thanks. No sense to ban it really. Meanwhile, Amsterdam continues to look into banning the weed industry. We'll see how that goes. There's an update on that. It's going to be shot. All tourists can still come to Amsterdam, you know, be high as a kite during your stay. No problems. They will not ban you from smoking weed. So, come on over to Amsterdam and show some tegrity. I can hear the BTC Ampures and Conference breathing a huge sigh of relief. Everything will be fine. Moving on, check out worldcryptonetwork.com. We've got links to the podcast, old episodes, and more than three thousand and eight videos. That's a lot. You could watch the world crypto network for three months, 13 days, and 11 hours. Straight without sleeping. And let me know if you try that out. Worldcryptonetwork.com. It's got links. Moving on to issue three. L. Salvador's Bitcoin law. One year on with the world's coolest dictator. How's Bitcoin going in L. Salvador? Well, there's almost no use of Bitcoin as a currency. The Chivo wallet is hardly used and they never did get it working properly. Businesses have taken down there. We accept Bitcoin sign. There's no use of Bitcoin for ever. Remittances. Hundreds of million dollars of public funds have gone up in smoke, which is as if the US spent hundreds of billions with nothing to show for it. Crypto crashed. L. Salvador camp bar internationally. The volcano bonds had interest lined up before Russia invaded Ukraine. That it's over. Ground has not broken for Bitcoin city and he's not sure to ever will. But a bunch of so-called American libertarians got flown around the country in military helicopters. Military escorts are the true meaning of liberty for a few people. Ben Arck, what about the Bitcoin L. Salvador disaster, which we've of course predicted live on this show, irregardless of the price of Bitcoin. It just wasn't a good fit. What do you think Ben? I think it's important to be skeptical. And with Kelly, there's a lot to be skeptical of, obviously. For the people living that country, they do have much safer country with all those criminals locked up. And I think some of the statistics in that article will allow, I mean, I don't want to defend too much, but they were a little bit skewered. So I think the amount of remittances, I think is like a hundred and eight million or something to Chivo into our Salvador. I think that was quoted, but I'm not really sure how many people in our Salvador still use Chivo because it is really quite terrible. And how's being terrible and it does mention that then in the article as well. So there's no real way of knowing how much money is being sent from the US by people working in the US down to our Salvador. And then being spent internally in our Salvador, there's no way of knowing that that's the point of Bitcoin. Now, I always been skeptical of of the Kelly, just because of the impact he's had on democracy in the country. I watched his UN speech and I thought it was pretty good. So that came to give me a different outlook on the guy. I spoke to someone in our Salvador and I said, you know, what is Bitcoin adoption like in our Salvador? And they said, well, it's kind of like the elephant in the room. Like it's then, everyone knows about it, but nobody talks about this thing. But I think the main point is that it's a currency option. So yes, everyone can just continue to use the USA, which they used to and they used to use cash and it's stable. And it doesn't go down drastically in value. But they do have that option if they want to to use and play around with Bitcoin and use it as currency. And I think we all agree that there's going to be something of a bull cycle coming up and just like everyone else around the world when bull cycles happen, everyone gets interested in Bitcoin. And there'll be in a very good place to start using it and playing around with the technology. So I wouldn't, I think it's too early to say that the experiment has ended. And it has been catastrophic. I think for people in the country, they're pretty happy. It's safer than it ever has been. They've got this thing which is kind of a bit awkward. And they've probably still feel a little bit pessimistic about, but it's theirs an option. So let's hope people play around with the technology and explore it. And let's hope that on board some developers and they create something of an industry down there. And then let's hope they learn from their lessons, such as the Bitcoin city, Fiasco and the Bitcoin bond nonsense as well. And yeah, it's, I'm going there in November. So I'll check it out and see how people are using it. Martin Wishmer, what do you think about El Salvador and the trouble? Do you think this was all about the price of Bitcoin? If the price hadn't gone down, would everything had gone smoothly? Absolutely. Just imagine if the price would have gone up like dramatically, like 200K or something, the whole situation would be different. El Salvador wouldn't have to like loan so much. Money. It would have been a great investment. I don't know about this whole Bitcoin city thing. I thought that was a bit flawed. I mean, who wants to live near a volcano anyways? But yeah, I think it's just a matter of time. And now that the price is down, they use it to bash, you know, the whole idea. And it was definitely written by a Bitcoin hater. So yeah, yeah, it wasn't. I think if it's some time, give it like four or five years, and it'll be okay. I just hope that they'll last that long, you know, like not getting any money from the IMF or it's like difficult. And it's already, you know, this is a country that had a lot of setbacks over the years. So you can't expect just to announce Bitcoin as legal tender and everything will automatically fall in place. No, this will take years. And I think it's good to have an optional, like a plan B, not plan B, but like an option. If your currency in a country is based on, especially using somebody else's currency, you have no control over inflation or anything. So it makes still make sense. You know, nothing changed in the fundamentals there. And personally, you know, if I would be like the president with my cap on, I would have probably not forced it upon people, because force usually doesn't give the right results. It's better to educate people about it and let them decide for themselves. And this was, you know, a bit missing in the whole El Salvador story. As Ben said, you know, the whole Shiva wallet, you come measure success of the project in terms of Shiva wallets. I found that many people are using it. A lot of people like the Dutch Bitcoin community, they were like all over El Salvador and many of them already visited and paid for their fast food and their momposa or something like regular food, like it with Bitcoin. And they said it works fine. You know, there's no real need to use dollars. And that I think bit succeed. You know, it's still still working. You know, unless you go to a market, you can still use Bitcoin at most places. So yeah, I don't see it as a failure. I think this reporter wrote the article with a bit of an agenda. I agree. I agree. Others might value Martian's education approach. I think Bukele's brand is force. But the president says that he's holding. So Dan, Eve, what about this? Can Bukele hoddle through this disaster? Is there a chance that El Salvador comes out on the other side and we rewrite all of these articles and we say, hey, they have lots of money in their treasury. Everybody made money. It's all happy. There was just that down period. What about that possibility? Well, you know, with the Bitcoin price the way it is and the, the, the, the loan, you know, you're seaming like it may default because of all the, the, the, the, expectations of what the Bitcoin bond would have sold and what it actually has and how they're going to get that money together, you know, from a certain perspective. It isn't because as smoothly as it was planned. But, you know, most experiments don't go off to an absolutely flying start. And the, you know, the experiment itself isn't over, isn't over yet. Now, ultimately El Salvador is, as Martin said, they don't have their own currency. They're using someone else's printed currency, which, what, most of it didn't even exist before two, three years ago. So they had to take a risk. They were cornered into a position where they couldn't just print new money to go to war and do all these other cool things and, and throw money down the drain on crazy, crazy schemes like the, you know, like the, the bank of England, the Fed and the ECB do. They've got to take a risk and get away from this, this chokehold that's on them from another currency being printed by a third party who's, who's devaluing their own purchasing power. And without any of the benefits of being able to kind of have some of that printed money, additional printed money for themselves. They said, you know, the guy wrote it, they've generally wrote, I haven't read it yet, but I do want to read the, the tack of the 50-foot blockchain because it's just because it sounds really funny. But you've got to take, you know, the, the thing with, with, with people that are negative about Bitcoin, you can't just be, you can completely dismissive about them because often, you know, you've got to take what they say with a pinch of salt and that they are going to have out of all the just general, waffly criticisms. They're going to have very pertinent points that they're going to be raising that as a community and as a, if you want the, the, the technology to thrive, you know, these are certain things that you should be taking on board and actually listening to and thinking, how can we address these issues, rather than just taking the arrogant approach of, it's the best things in sliced bread and nothing anyone can do can, can improve it ever or the roll out of it, it should just work at anyone who doesn't do, you know, all those kind of blase sort of attitudes to critic criticism, I think just, you know, they're not very constructive, you know, there's going to be bad parts of the roll out, there's going to be good parts of the roll out, there's going to be people who find it useful and people who don't find it useful. And, and the comment in the article about it being, it's, you know, it was rolled out and no one really talks about it now. Well, that's really analogous to Bitcoin in general. So, you know, after, after the 2013, 2012, hardening, you know, everyone talked about it and then Mt. God's thing happened, everyone talked about it and then no one really talked about it for a few years and then 2016 happened and everyone talked about 2017, everyone talked about it and then and then 2017, 2018 happened and started going down and then everyone started talking about it for a while. And then 2020, when it happened, you know, Rinse repeat, the fact is that it kept on, you know, all the infrastructure kept on being built in the background, more people learn about it, more people used it, more, you know, diverse applications are happening over the top, more wallets came out, more different ways of using it that people didn't think of initially or the last during the last cycle of when everything was being talked about. So, yeah, I think it does make some good some good points. I think particularly the thing about libertarians like riding around in helicopter, military helicopters was quite funny, you know, because the being non-libertarian is good, you know, when you're riding around a helicopter, a military helicopter and looking at a volcano. But I would actually like to live near a volcano as long as I don't become like what's his name, the Suvius and, you know, which obviously, which was a terrible thing to happen, living near a volcano would be quite good. Fun. It's an unbelievable tragedy. No one saw it coming, living next to that smoking mountain would never be a problem. But yes, as we've been talking about here, we didn't really support this idea from the beginning, but that doesn't matter. We don't own Bitcoin, any country, any person, any company has the right to try and to adopt Bitcoin and do whatever they want with and we have the right to critique them on the side. But let's be positive, let's be constructive, like Dan said, exit question, what lessons can we learn from this for next time? What would we recommend? What kind of things didn't work this time? Ben Arck, positive ideas for the next country to adopt Bitcoin. One thing I think a hell of a lot of lessons, I mean, this is really well of the value has been made is, you know, people talked about Bitcoin as a store value, but they didn't really, weren't really thinking of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, even though they had the lightning network and now more and more people are and more and more people have hit the obvious conclusion that volatility is an issue. So more and more people are looking into it. There's tarot and there's stable sats and there's standards sats and there's all these stable coin projects as well, which are trying to solve these problems. And then there's OB with Feddy men and Justin Moon, they're making Feddy men. We got Callie with Alan Bits is doing cashews to try and do some sort of troll meany cash stuff as well, which might be useful for smaller communities, which are trying to use Bitcoin in a way which can be used with a little less volatility. So I think as an industry, we've learned a lot of lessons and I think, you know, they pioneered those lessons, those issues in Bitcoin wouldn't have been addressed, had it not been for an entire country, deciding to try and use Bitcoin as a currency. But I mean, I think you've got to look at like aggregate growth of the country, like it was once the murder, one of the murder capitals of the world, if not the murder capitals, I think I saw it was the murder capitol of the world and now it's one of the safer countries in that part of the world. And that just allows people to do day-to-day growth exercises, run businesses and crave value and all these other things. So the Kelly for all his flaws, you know, he has made the country a lot safer for for normal people. And Dan was entirely correct in saying that, you know, the US right now they're inflating the hell out of their currency and I'll solve it all using that currency but they're not getting any of these fiscal values. So lessons learned would be that we need to apart game and have better solutions for these countries. You just want to make use of this amazing free and open source technology stack which can create, you know, value transfer without a country or a bank or businesses being in the middle of those those transactions. So yeah, that's yeah, not words but yeah, they're the lessons we can all learn I think. Martín, wish mayor, lessons learned, things to do better next time. I think looking at like the infrastructure, they more or less like reinvented hot water like, you know, they went for a custodial wallet which they wanted to build their own. Well, I think there's plenty of options already out there. So this is this is something that could have like saved a lot of resources by going for something that's already there. Same counts goes for their Shiva ATMs. People complained that they're like offline like all the time. This shouldn't be happening. There's definitely something wrong with that. So, you know, they could have opted for maybe another brand, you know, hand-hint. You know, I'm not saying I'm not using it to promote anything but you know, there's there's other options. Why build everything yourself if that's, you know, they're not into building infrastructure. No, they're there to make it, you know, work in a country then use whatever is available, you know, like point of sale terminals like they could confuse that on bits for that. There's like so many different options that that I think they just went for the oh, we'll do everything ourselves approach and that's that's proof so we costly and it's buggy because it needs years of work to iron out all the bugs and make it stable. And yeah, I think that that's one thing they could have like improved. So if another country adopts that, go for some stuff that's like there off the shelves, just get it just get it instead of like design it yourself. And at the same time, I think the whole pressure thing like you will accept Bitcoin or Bukali will come after you. That's that's that's just brief. It's like that will get people angry regardless. Whatever whatever the subject is, if you tell people to do, they must do something usually that backfires. People don't want to do anything that they're forced to do. So I think it's better to present it as an option. Don't present it as the option or the only option or just just give people a choice. People like to make their own decisions, but you can still them in the right direction. Yeah, that's number one on my list to off the shelf tools. It's fine to make a language pack for an existing ATM or an existing wallet, but when they tried to create their own wallet, it created uncertainty. Many people thought they were going to run off with the money. There was code problems and just potential for code problems. And I understand the idea they want to build up their local economy. They want to build up their coders, build some industry. I get that, but it's too risky. It's unnecessary. And as Martín said, especially with a computer-sized perspective, there's so many already tested already iterated tools that they could have used. And this pumps up into my second point, which is no false giveaways. One of the reasons they were using their own wallet is so they could claim that they gave everyone $30. In my book, if you're going to give everybody $30, put the money in their wallets. Bite the bullet, lose the $30 if the donation, if it's too much to give that away, give them $10. The idea that it's a false $30 that they don't expect everyone to pick it up, it just rubs me wrong from the beginning. And that's also an excuse to roll your own tool in which you don't have to give people $30. Of course, my third point is pretty simple and easy. And we've been covering from the beginning, but no dictators. Obviously, we don't get to choose who adopts Bitcoin. Iran is using Bitcoin to evade sanctions. Nothing we can do about it. But if we had the choice, if we were going to put our full force behind it, maybe send block stream down there, have them dance on a stage, announce volcano bonds, say we're all going to live in a Bitcoin city of the future, maybe we should wait for a better time, a better opportunity. I'm not saying we should say no to El Salvador or the people, but sometimes the government is not compatible with what we want to do as Bitcoiners. Dan, Eve, your thoughts about El Salvador and Lessons learned. Good ideas for next time. Well, I think what didn't didn't achieve a kind of contract like go to to his brother or something like that. So, yeah, we've seen in government's time and time again, where one of the biggest problems with the implementation of something is that a contract goes to the nepotist style of going to someone you know or going to a friend or whatever. You don't leverage the existing infrastructure that's already been there that's been done and signed, sealed, delivered by either the open source community or even just using some commercial off the shelf and having to pay some of the commission. Because you've got one chance of one chance, but when you're rolling it out on a bit of a budget as El Salvador kind of where you'd want to make sure that you roll it out in a ninja way and building your own software may not have just been the best option from the start. They could have used software that had been that evolved over time and done the tried and tested method. And they would have had less issues with that rollout process and then they would have had slightly more happy people. The fact is that, you know, we said there's been experiments not over yet. So, it is evolving as it goes along anyway. They've opened it up to, you know, there's more people using the lightning that just used in the Chivo wallet. So, you know, there's definitely some positives out of the whole operation that other countries are thinking of adopting Bitcoin can take note of. So, yeah, I think it's definitely it's not it's not over yet. It's not over yet. And it seems like, yeah, just that the standard things that go wrong with the government rolling stuff out happened in this instance, just the same as it did others. And there's, you know, there's the classic lessons that should be learned by governments rolling out like initiatives, but then never get learned regardless of whether it's Bitcoin or the people in charge or Bukelia, whatever, it's just the standard ways government does stuff. That's the wrong way. And following up on Martins Point, I do think that the government could have created their own educational materials while we're saying they shouldn't do something complicated like CodeRone, Bitcoin, Walleter, make your own Bitcoin ATM. There's nothing wrong with the government paying people to make videos, articles, outreach, personal going to businesses, flyers, signs, posters, all these kinds of things. Money could have been spent. A local industry could have been built. And not just education, but also lifestyle. If they want to show someone shopping at McDonald's with Bitcoin every morning, that would have been a positive thing that could have helped this project. So, I agree with Dan, it might not be over. We don't know. As well as this show, it's not over yet. You still have a chance to push the like button or to subscribe down below. Do you know that only 64% of the people watching subscribe to this show? I know it's shocking. But you still have a chance. Every time you watch a video on YouTube and you don't click that like to button, God kills the kittens. So definitely click this like button. You have to save the kittens. Moving on to issue four, Bitcoin is as bad for the planet as beef and it's getting worse. As predicted, the environmental argument is back and with a force. Dan now say that Bitcoin mining is as bad for the planet as beef, almost as bad as chicken, raising and other options that are just bad, bad, bad. They also mentioned that Bitcoin is bad because it uses dirty proof of work while other projects such as Ethereum use proof of stake. It looks like it's from Newsweek, but really Newsweek got bought a few years ago by a tabloid called The Daily Beast out of England. And since their last story on Bitcoin, where they falsely claimed that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto was the creator of Bitcoin, this one's about the same. Not a lot of sourcing, but a lot of really clever writing based on a new study that compares Bitcoin to beef. This article has been replicated in every single mainstream media publication, including popular science and others. Martin Wishmare, what do you think about the new attack on Bitcoin? It's bad for the environment. Yeah, you know, you read it. I'm like, you know, and then at the end of the article, it's like, but it could be like Ethereum that's which to prove of stake. And it shows that the author has no idea. There's this like fucking clueless, sorry, they're just clueless. They're just, I mean, I don't understand why they even publish this stuff. It's like, is there no editorial quality for writing articles? It almost reads like a parody. But then you know, I search for Bitcoin news to do the show. And when I'm looking for Bitcoin, every article is Bitcoin and beef this week. They all found the study. They all wrote up the study. And they all think the same thing about the study that they'd rather have beef than Bitcoin. I like beef Bitcoin and I like beef, you know, that doesn't make me a bad person. I dislike proof of stake though, because it just shows that proof of stake is, it's how our existing finance system works. There is nothing democratic about it. Proof of work is much better in that respect. And okay, yes, it uses a lot of electricity. And yes, we could do with a lot less usage. But at the same time, we've got a currency that cannot be controlled by third parties. It's just it's bullet proof and it has been bullet proof even after what 12 years of hammering on it. So I think it's this article articles like that may make my heart beat. It's like not good for my heart rate and blood pressure. No, no, no, no. I'll continue to use Bitcoin and I'll continue to eat beef. And neither is all that proof of stake. Dan Eave like Martín says, Bitcoin has hasn't been hacked in 12 years instead of focusing on that and the monumental success of proof of work in the computer science industry. They're worried that it uses some power and influences some beef. Yeah, it's just another like article that the third one of the first thing that I do is say that, you know, they bring in the entire, it uses more than entire countries again. And they bring cows into it as well. They compare, what's going on with cows? Cows are cool. They're kind of cute and they taste nice. But of course, there does seem to be a bit of a thing going on like you're it's a bug since a clear your blockchain with proof of stake. Ironically, because they don't like cows and therefore there's this stake rather than stake. But yeah, they do the whole tons of each each each Bitcoin mind is, you know, X tons of carbon bringing out all these silly things. But one of the things that comments in there it says it's like we can use information on the electricity mix in those countries. And that seems like a bit of a blanket approach to their methodology, right? Because there's a lot of miners that you know that do use off their off grid. And partly because of the thing that we've seen this happen to to we were talking about earlier in compute north, right? If someone else is controlling your electricity price, then that's a big a big risk to your business. So miners as much as they use use, but you know, data centers that provide a lot of other people, they also like to have their own source of electricity. And so because they're in control of that, aside from things like, you know, if it's a high down, then you know, the fact that if there's not enough water, water for that year in terms of from precipitation, then you know, that can affect what, you know, supplies of the actual data and the bit, but largely it's better to be in control of your own energy than it is to use someone else's. So that seems a bit odd just to say we looked at the the general mix of energy in the country and then extrapolated out of that, that it would be bad for the environment. Because we all know that the some of the cheapest electricity is by excess excess by waterfalls and stuff because we don't have a good method of storing electricity. So the best way to store electricity if you can't use it on the fly is to pump it into into Bitcoin mining and then at least generate some economic value out of that. But there's a, you know, as Martin said, the fact that he's he's signed if he does kind of mention proof of stake, it seems like he's gravitating towards Ethereum specifically and jumping on that bandwagon, whether there's a lot of paid stuff or not, what would be really cool is if legislation passed to say, you know, how you couldn't shield something without saying this is paid for, you know, this tougher, oh, you know, before you just be able to go, oh, I just need to tie my shoelaces and you show trainers and you wouldn't know that that influencer was being paid by Nike or whatever. And now they have to say, oh, I'm being paid by Nike. Imagine if these news, these people writing articles had to say who they're paid by like this article sponsored by Ethereum. That's why I'm I'm bashing Bitcoin in and and I bought you know, bogging on about proof of stake. But ultimately, he said in one of the last comments is according to Jones, a different art process called proof of stake could be used instead of instead to mine Bitcoin, which could drastically cut its climate impact. And I say to that, according to the first little piggy straw can be used to build your house since you're a house out of straw. Watch out for huffing and puffing. I agree with Dan that there's a same old study, the same old article they don't include the possibility for tech updates like a new chip or a new electrical mining process. They don't compare it with the lightning network and the number of transactions that we can do now versus what we had before. And additionally, we keep seeing this false comparison. It's always Bitcoin uses as much energy as a country or Bitcoin uses as much energy as beef compare Bitcoin with banks not beef. How much energy is the current banking system use? And yes, it'll take a while. You'll have to do a longer study. But once you have that number, then you can start to compare what value and what do we get out of the current banking system, which doesn't even cover all of the people on the earth. Not everyone has a bank account. This is a huge fail. You're not a good banking system. You steal from people. Everyone knows you look into their accounts, money laundering. You can take from their accounts. No one likes the banking system. The Bitcoin system is better. And yes, we're going to have to use energy to get a better system. But by comparing it to beef, we're just back at this Christmas lights play stations, countries like Portugal and Ireland. Compare it with the banking system. Do a real study. Ben, Arqu, what do you think about Bitcoin and beef? There was a study. It wasn't on the banking system. It was far worse. The Roodle Goldberg machine, which is the legacy banking system. Bitcoin's far more efficient than that. But I mean, you talk about cows. All the methane these eitheds produce, I'm sure, has a detrimental effect on climate change. Maybe that should be addressed. And we could use the methane from the cows to mine the Bitcoin. And then I don't know if that's the thing. I was mining with the poo. I'm sure that someone should experiment in that world. But Bitcoin mining with renewables is a growth sector. There's a lot of money being pumped into it. And I think the point is that if they're so impassioned by Bitcoin's carbon footprint, which is fair, I think it's got a heavy carbon footprint. We get a lot of value out of it, but we do have, we are over secured. And we do use a lot of carbon in that process. Or produce a lot of carbon, sorry, in that process. Then call out these miners. Go find the miners who are mining on coal or whatever, these big mining operations. They're not hidden. They're not like crypto anarchists piding some dark corners. They're big operations, which you can go and you can call out and you can lobby. You can say, look, these miners, but you saw this horrible filthy carbon from mining Bitcoin attack. People will attack them. So, you know, you're article to good use, actually, give us someone to vent our anger at. But, you know, it's, miners can be lobbied. And by, you know, they're these big operations. And I think there'll be more of that, which happens. These sorts of stories, they kind of remind me of the, I remember I was a year ago, but those, Bitcoin has the same valuation as Twitter and everyone was like, oh my god, and it's like, you got these milestones. So now we have this new milestone. It's like Bitcoin uses more, produces more detrimental effect on the environment than cows. And it's like, okay, we've hit this new milestone. Now the cow thing does need to be addressed. People are addressing it. They commit themselves useful and give us some names to target these big, horrible carbon producing miners. Exit question, where do we go from here? Do they just continue to attack Bitcoin based on environmentalism? Martin, what's worse than using all the energy as beef and or cars? Where will the attack on Bitcoin's environmental footprint go from here? We'll have more complaining, three hugging hippies. I'm afraid for the near future. But, you know, honey, badger, don't care. We'll keep mining, we'll keep mining coins. So now I'm not to worry. Ethereum, the whole proof of stake, merge, they turn out to be a big nothing burger. And I believe the price is even down. We can't switch Bitcoin to proof of stake. I mean, if people say that, I think they haven't understood Bitcoin correctly. But there will always be countries that will be mining Bitcoin. And they're just attacking us now on the whole energy usage. Because energy is something we don't have enough of. Well, thank you, Mr Putin. But, yeah, so this will continue. But on the other hand, I don't see it having a big effect or impact on the industry itself or on the price. I think the price is not really related to mining. Many people say it's related to the hash power, which I don't really know for sure either. I think price is just, I'm not too worried about it. We'll just continue building. Dan Eve, doesn't the environmental attack continue? It will definitely continue. And I think it's only going to get stronger with more people sort of harping on the proof of stake thing with Ethereum and saying, see, a blockchain can function with proof of stake even though it's missing the principle of security and the game theory behind the energy consumption of proof and proof of work methodology over proof of stake. So, you know, again, my little piggy's analogy, you can have a house that's built a straw or a house that's built a steel and titanium and stuff. So that's just your choice of how you want your money secured ultimately. And we've already seen issues with the state trying to overreach on trying to, you know, influence Ethereum more than because it can do so more than it can. It can do with Bitcoin because Bitcoin's more decentralized and doesn't have a leader at the top of it like Vitalik. So, which, you know, you can argue that, you know, at the end of the day, he is seen as a leader, but ultimately like they hail him as a leader. It's almost just a false idol sort of thing. So we're going to see this argument over and over again. But just like the Doomsday prophecies where, you know, 100% of Doomsday prophecies that have passed have been false. 100% like the one, you know, one that said, oh, the world's going to end. And we've passed that date. It hasn't ended. And remember, there was that article in, I think it was like 2017. And it was like, so Bitcoin's going to use more energy than the world could produce by X. And it didn't, like it didn't work like that, you know, they've understood, you know, misunderstanding the fundamentals of, of, of, of, of, of, of everything. And I'm not professing to understand it. But, you know, there's certain things that are horseshit as soon as you hear them. And that was one of those things. And so we're going to see this stick being used to be Bitcoin for a long while. But it's honey badgering. And the benefits will far outweigh the, the fad that's been dragged through the mud. Ben Arck will the environmental attack continue. And will they be discouraged when it doesn't work and the price of Bitcoin goes up anyway? I think that general people are being, are more well informed on Bitcoin than they were before. I think they are getting more informed on the nuances of proof of work and mining. And there's lots of conversations just being had by general book yet that the analogy of a house built on sand is perfect, you know, with the Ethereum stuff, it's, it's got all this great stuff. But it's built on sand, like it works fine until you have some UASF, like Swan event. And suddenly you realize who has the power of the protocol. They're just great quote by Vitalik. And he was saying that the, I retweeted it, but I can't remember the exact quote, but he was saying that the, the changes gives them less hurdles, which they need to overcome if they want to make changes to Ethereum, which is good. And it's like, well, no, it's not. Like, that's the point. Like the reason Bitcoin's hard to change is because it's decentralized and we have consensus and it's really complicated. And the very fact that it's hard to change is what gives it immense value. And yeah, it's so it's, it's, it's, they will continue to be fud, but thanks to the great work of people like Margot Payes and Troy Cross and some of the scientists who are working to try and encourage the renewable mining industry to grow, who are being very pivotal in educating or people, you know, these big influential people behind closed doors and lobbying groups and whatever else. Bitcoin will become better when it comes to mining and people will get more nuance in the standing of why proof of work is important, proof of work works. And proof of stake is, it's the same thing, same shit, you know, we've already had just the stakeholders have control and whatever that's, that's what we have. So why? Yeah, it works. It's easy to build stuff on, it's easiest to make changes too, but it's, that's because it's not decentralized. So, no. We're running out of time. Martin Wishmare, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? Go ahead. We are going to Bitcoin Amsterdam. So we just finished a booth. We got everything, like sorting out everything. We'll bring an ATM. We'll be presenting our well books, a crypto accounting package. If you don't know why you need it, then maybe you're not the target audience, but it's going to be a really, really good event. I know it's like the news just in tourists can still smoke marijuana. There will be lots of big coiners. We'll be floating on a boat. There will be boating accidents. There will be parties. There will be drunk people, but there are most of all, there will be Bitcoin everywhere. So if you're here in what two weeks, I think it's like 12, 13, 14 or something like that, of October, then do come over, come over to the Vessel House Fabrik, which is like the old venue where we used to be like crazy out of our minds, on bouncing around on house music. But now it's a legit conference hall and we're having a conference. So it's going to be really nice, really cool. And I hope to see you all out there. Very cool. Bitcoin and Amsterdam also has shout out to the HCPP convention that's going on this week in Prague. Sorry, we couldn't be there. Maybe next year. Dan Eave, prediction or a story of the week. Go ahead. I predict that that Newsom is not going to be a new sense to Bitcoin. And he will he will kick off plans for a huge solar powered Bitcoin mining farm in the Mahalve desert somewhere. There's already like a 392 kilowatt, sorry, so megawatt. I don't like to do jigger watts. I don't know. Jigger, it's megawatts, not jigger watts. I couldn't remember. But 392 megawatts of solar power that's coming at the base of Clark Mountain in California. So why not why not use that to build solar power that can also be used for mining Bitcoin? Seems pretty yeah, seems like a legit idea. So I predict it will happen. Sounds like an exciting future for California. They're also going to put some kind of a solar shield on top of the aqueduct to both protect the water and generate solar power. Ben, arc prediction or a story of the week. Go ahead. Giga megs. I'm also going to be going to the Bitcoin Amsterdam looking forward to it. Going to do a bunch of workshops. Going to take those point of sales, little hardware wallets as well. Amazing hardware wallet project by Vlad Stan in LNBits. He's recently this week actually. He's done like a new version where you can use an SD card and you can air gap it as well. So before, I mean, we can also use over web syrup, but people complained about that, which is fair. So we've also got like an SD card air gap version, which is very cool. So we'll be doing some workshops on that. We'll also just be knocking around Amsterdam. Cracking. I can't remember this. Some great Netherlands podcasters. There's going to be some great like side events as well in and around Amsterdam. So use your time wisely. Don't get too stoned out of your minds because there's going to be a lot going on. A lot of learning to do. I don't want you coming to my workshop stone. So, please, because I've got soldering iron. So just yeah. But it'll be a lot of fun looking forward to it. And then after that, I'm going to go to Bedford to see Peter McCormack and then drop off a couple of pointless sales from using the football club. So that'd be really cool. And yeah, fast times looking forward to meeting up with Martin in Amsterdam will be great. Oh, and also big shout out to the HCCP. Got to the couldn't go. It was just the best conference, best fan, new parallelie, polis, but can make it. So yeah, big shout out to them. That's very cool. You're going to Bedford Ben and be neat to see the football club. I've been watching the Welcome to Rexham series. So I know all about this small team in Northern Wales because Deadpool and Ryan from a Rob from Always Sunny bought it. So it's been fun fun story. Fun fun TV show. We got a story of the week this week. It was a year ago, almost today, that Christie's Auction House sold an entire set of Curio cards, a full set of 30 cards, including the midsprint 17B. The estimate for the auction was 250 to 350 Ethereum. The auction closed at 393 Ethereum, which was around $1.2 million for a full set of Curio cards, an incredible event in Curio cards and FT history. And check out the Mad Bittcoins channel on YouTube. It's the first time in almost a year that I've uploaded some new videos to Mad Bittcoins. So check those out. We've got an interview with Oliver Morris, originally on this channel for a long time, who made a rare Pepe. Very cool to see Oliver doing good. We've got an interview coming up with Buttercup Roberts about Ross Olbright and the Silk Road. That's a good one. And this weekend, I'm releasing my Hugh Grant parody video of Curio cards being listed in Christie's Auction House. It's kind of fun. And I just saw it sitting there. So check those out on Mad Bittcoins YouTube channel. Also, I did an interview with Jake Gallen. Check out Jake's channel at JakeGALEN or the links on Mad Bittcoins Twitter. Mainly, we talked about Curio cards. And as it says, Bitcoin and here tokenizes history on Ethereum. But you guys might want to check that out. It's about an hour long interview with me. But thanks so much to everybody for joining us. Be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe down below. It really does help the YouTube algorithm, which controls the views to the show. And until next time, bye.