The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest crypto currency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Dan Eve, the crypto raptor. Reporting live from the rainy UK. And Ark from LN Bits. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the world crypto network moving on to issue one customers battle to regain billions in Bitcoin, the DOJ recovered after its largest seizure of stolen crypto. Yes, that's right. BitFinex is back in the news again. And this time the feds found the money. The people now want their money back. But of course, as you all recall, they were provided BitFinex debt tokens. Many of them selling at 20% 20 cents on the dollar for their troubles. They were never given an option to just wait and see if the Bitcoin was recovered. They were never even thought of giving their value in Bitcoin. They were immediately given their value in Fiat debt tokens. And now they want their money back. Dan Eve, what do you think about the BitFinex hack? The fascinating debt token story that will no doubt be studied in business schools till the end of time. And now of course, the fascinating turn of story where the feds found the money. Who should get the money? Well, it's ultimately astigate to the users who lost their money. You've got to give it to BitFinex for at least trying. I know that they created a shit coin token to, but at least they tried to give some value back to the customers. But ultimately, how could you say no to returning money that was stolen for you or platform because someone hacked it or got their hands on it in some way, which is down to your own security issues. So, yeah, I'll be interested to see how this plays out in court because ultimately, people didn't have a choice with this token. They, if they didn't hit it at the right time, I think one of the reports was like, in fact, one of the guys said he sold it as soon as possible and only got 25% of the value of the token. So the argument that BitFinex is saying that you could have, well, you could have sold our shit coin representative token straight away and then bought Bitcoin with it and you know, you would have been happy days. But ultimately, they didn't get a choice in the matter. So yeah, whilst it kind of seemed like a good thing at the time that they got some value back now that they know that that value was taken away with Bitcoin was $1,000 and it's floating around 20 now. That's a huge loss and a life changing amount of money if they can get that back today. And there's not really been much, much reports of the crocodile of Wall Street and a hubby and whether they're actually going to be prosecuted, right? This still seems like it's still really going to be successful. That prosecution is going to be. Is there only going to be done for money laundering and not the original theft? So I'd like to see who stole the money in the first place and how it ended up with them because the whole things are crazy story in itself, right? Who would give a couple of people billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to look, you know, to basically hold on to, right? Who puts that trust in someone? And even when it was stolen, it would still be in the tens hundreds of millions, right? So, so yeah, it seems a bit far fetched that they were just looking after the money, but if they can't prove that they stole it, I mean, yeah. It seems like they're initial plan was to launder the money through Walmart. I think they bought some PlayStation 5s or something somehow got tracked and it just doesn't seem like you could launder billions of dollars through gift cards, maybe a few thousand. It's a lot of PlayStation's. Welcome to Josh Shagalla. Welcome to the show. Josh, why are these customers complaining? After all, as Dan said, they got their shit coin token. What more do they want? Yeah, it's super interesting. I actually like how Bitfinex handled it. I thought it was interesting. I don't like or dislike it. What I find is interesting. I find it interesting like the Mount Gox collapse, which I suffered through has, you know, didn't have that option. And then they found like 200,000 Bitcoin underneath the mattress somewhere and said, oh, look, we came across some and we can pay this much back. But I kind of found it interesting that Bitfinex went, okay, we'll tokenize this. And the thing was that they played it kind of really well where everyone got the token. Then the price tanked like crazy. And then they bought all their debt back at a tanked price, which was also like a total baller move on their part. I don't see how any of this is legal. It's like, I think it's going to be studying in business schools forever. But I agree, Josh, I don't think it's legal. No, I don't see how any of it's legal. I'm like, oh, by here. I know you had money, but we'll give you this coin and then we'll buy it back up to you for half the price. And well, yeah, so it's very, very interesting to see what happens now. Yeah, it's an ongoing saga. Well, and remember the first rule of hacking, the company can never prove that they didn't hack themselves. It's always the most likely option and inside job of some kind. Ben, Ark, what do you think? They got Walmart gift cards. The other people got shit coin tokens. Who should the feds give the money to the company or the people? I think I think what's interesting is by bit for next issuing this BFX token. And by the users, it's like a compromise, you know, classic compromise, where it was not satisfied. But they've kicked this can down the road. And now that the coins have reappeared, people have like a real vested interest to take it for next to court and say, you know, these are our coins. There was a quote in the article. He said, this was my property and these coins were my property. I had X amount of Bitcoin on that, of course, you know, not your keys, not your Bitcoin. It's a very good lesson in that. But the users certainly have a good argument. And before when the coins had just disappeared, there was kind of no point like taking bit for next to court. It's like, okay, okay, we'll put up with this BFX token. It's going to be worth a fraction of the actual Bitcoin and how to be exchanged at the time, but at least you can continue to operate it as better than the empty guts blah, blah, blah. I think it's going to open a kind of worms because now the legality of the insurance of that debt token is going to be, is going to come into scrutiny. And we'll be tried and tested in the court of law, I imagine, because there's people have, there's, I think there's someone in the, in the article, I think they had like 91 Bitcoin on that. I know people lost a lot of money on BitFinex. And then it's like like Dan South as well. It's when they got this coin, it's supposed to be paid to the dollar. But because they've just issued them and then people dump them, they ended up dropping to 25%. And then they could then sell those coins later on for like actual collateral in BitFinex's Cogni or something. But I don't think they were ever made whole through their tokenry. And now, now the coins available theoretically, if they can get them, I mean, this was the also in the article, it's like, well, who ends up with the coins? Is it the criminal investigation, who actually, you know, fight get the coins from the hackers? Or is it BitFinex? Are we going to get the coins? Are we going to get the Bitcoins? Or will it be the users who get the Bitcoins? And everyone's going to be fighting for, you know, they're all incentivized to fight for their case. But I think the users do have a good solid case. And I think by them having a good solid case, it will bring BitFinex under a lot of scrutiny for that token in which they issued, which, like you say, I'm not sure, isn't I legal? Exit question, forced protection, who gets the money and do they keep it? Dan Eve. I reckon it's going to be, they've got a rule in favor of the users. I mean, the token situation is already, the tokenizing situation is already a bit kind of sketchy and the SEC goes after tokens they deem as securities or think there's any even a fairious going on when they've gone after celebrities who have endorsed tokens, et cetera. So I think they're going to try and they're going to clutch for it, you know, and try and give it back to the, maybe fine, they might even be a fine, right? They either go to the end users who lost the coins or they'll find the whole lot and be like, party! Now we can sue loads more people and then fund loads more parties, SEC parties. As long as someone somewhere is having a party, Ben Ark, who gets the money and do they keep it? Yeah, I think it's going to be complicated, but yeah, it's going to be kind of, I think it's going to be a bit of an excellent sum of it and then they probably won't do it to the users and then the users will have to take into court and then we'll see what we go. Future predictions from Ben, Josh Shigala, who gets the money and who keeps it? Yeah, I'd like to see the people get it, of course. I think they should, it was their funds, they got this bonus, the FX token, they should get their Bitcoin back. Now the correct answer, the company will get the money, but they won't be able to keep it. The users will sue in court saying that they never signed a contract saying that instead of Bitcoin, they would be given magic beans and they're right. They never signed that contract. Moving on to issue two, Craig Wright loses lawsuit against Hoddle not in Norway over Satoshi Nakamoto claims. Hoddle not says, I expected to win since truth is so clearly on my side in this case. However, the UK case still waves out there. Ben, Arck, what do you think about this brief victory for Hoddle not? I mean, it helps his case in the UK and this was kind of why he preemptively took Craig Wright to court against defamation in Norway, which was a good move on his part. It was a good legal counsel, but there would also then be this UK legal battle over whether it was defamation or not. I think goes so well for Craig Wright with Pima Kormack. So hopefully, with the added clout from the Norwegian courts, it won't go off so well for him over the case with Hoddle not. I out here perversion. I couldn't help myself, but I went on calling Geek and read the write up on the court proceedings. Obviously, that's Calvin S. awful, awful website where they just produce all this BSV nonsense. And it was quite funny, so seeing that they get parallel to the fact that the courts in Norway basically said that I was kind of cool. The judge basically said that Hoddle not had a point. So it wasn't defamation because there's a general sentiment on the internet at that time, but then also, he is a satar sheet. So it's ridiculous. They caused kind of a greed with him, but then the coingy clout went in their write up. They were kind of skipping around that point. But big congratulations to Hoddle not. He was defending Bitcoin, and personally, he was being very scary because coffee can be very expensive. He had quite a lot of support. And I know some of the people like Roger Burt support has been supporting these cases against Great Bright as well, which is thank you, Roger. Come back to Bitcoin one day. But yeah, no, it's not yet over, but it's certainly at all won. And then that ships away at Croix Wright's tangility to win the war. Which of course he went because it's ridiculous human being. But yeah, go and read the coin geek article. It's quite funny. Joshua, should go a Bitcoin Twitter celebrated like the trial was over and like we didn't know this was going to happen? What will Hoddle not do about the UK case, even though he's won a temporary victory in Norway? You know, I was really looking forward to seeing this verdict. I think it's about time that Craig Sponsors has been put before a court and actually listen to it. Let's see what happens in the UK. I'm not sure. I just like just sign the keys to it. If you really asked, so you just sign them, what the hell? That's all you need to do. Stop with this scam. It's just insane. Yeah. Just sign the key. But he stopped on the hard drives. He stopped on the hard drives. He stopped on with his foot and then there's no keys. It's a so I'm so I was so angry. I stopped on my foot. Yeah, good on you. Okay. Nice excuse. And we all know that if Satoshi came back, he would use the courts to prove his provenance. He wouldn't have like evidence like early drafts of Bitcoin or keys that could prove his provenance. He would go straight to the courts because that's what all of his writing seems to suggest. I tell you what's interesting is that this is a very well funded stress test on the Bitcoin network and their attacking Bitcoin in a load of weird ways where we wouldn't assault people trying to attack Bitcoin through the course and things. And it's always a good thing that is this very like billionaire, you know, back to India who's attacking Bitcoin, no, these weird and interesting ways because we're getting to stress test Bitcoin and so far, you know, Bitcoin is winning out. But I so one example where they they they have made some ground is I was I was doing a talk and I googled an image of the Bitcoin white paper. Just an image of the Bitcoin white paper and then on Google, I had like all these images of the Bitcoin white paper where it said like Satoshi Nakamoto, AKA Craig Wright where they'd like doctored a picture of the white paper and put AKA Craig Wright underneath that. And because so many people have been scared to take into taking, you know, pictures and copies of the Bitcoin white paper off their websites, that attack has kind of worked like if you Google the Bitcoin white paper, it pops off on Google images and it's quite so on and setting if you didn't know what you were, you know, you don't know the history, you didn't actually know the Craig Wright's, you know, what he is. So yeah, but anyway, that's talking Bitcoin to least way to wonderful, interesting ways and he's actually probably good for Bitcoin, that doing that, that's trusting it. Well, that's why it's a good thing we store the Bitcoin transaction data in the blockchain, not in a PDF on the internet. As Ben says, if you get the Google authoritative PDF, suddenly you could be the author of the Bitcoin white paper. If only it was that easy to cash in the money. If only that kind of attacked work for the keys, you could just see Craig Wright out there at home, I'd have all that money. Dan, Eve, what do you think about, are we lucky to have this dress test by this billionaire and his friend, the idiot allegedly? Well, first of all, I'd like to say, because it's just, this is just crazy, right? This litigation sort of trial, continue as this case keeps on happening. And surely this, we said this before, but I don't know if there's an answer to this, but surely there's a point where the courts just stop accepting, it's like the point where any company, for example, where someone just complains continuously, and there's got to be a point where they have to just ignore that person, because you're obviously just making it up, right? There's so much evidence that shows that he's not Satoshi. There's so much fraud that he's actually done. Of course, there's got to be a point where he's literally in contempt of court in some way for forfortging documents, and there's legal, what's the, he's been court so many times, but why aren't any legal repercussions for forging documentation, right? In any normal situation, when you're doing fraudulent activities, or by faking something, surely there's a response to it, which is that you and yourself should be prosecuted over forging something. That doesn't seem to happen. As long as you can provide lawyers some money, you can apply to the courts and maybe he's just going to hop around from country to country, he'll find someone to pick on for an all-way to Nicoracua and just keep on going until he's used his toy boy's money, or sugar daddy's money. It's just so funny. And then I'll be reading a tweet about Bitcoin, and then you'll see something from Calvin Air, who's like, yeah, but BSV is better. And it's just such a nonsensical tweet. And you just kind of almost feel sorry for the guy. You know, he's been railroaded by Craig Wright, like pretty much everyone who thought they said that they thought that Craig Wright was actually Satoshi has gone back on that. They've reneged and said, oh, well, you know, it wasn't so clear at the time, or he pulled the wool over my eyes or whatever. There's the famous BBC incident in 2015 where he faked the signature using a variable, instead of the actual signature. And you know, it's just how long is it going to go on for? But this is a big step for Hondonaut. The sad thing is that in the UK, the live will lose absolutely suck. So his Craig Wright's probably got their edge in that regard. Whether they take into account all the evidence that's been brought out in previous cases around the world and even against against a piece of McCormack, because in theory, you know, technically on a technicality, he won the court case, even though he had to, you know, Pete McCormack only had to pay a pound of fees or whatever. So yeah, it's difficult because hands down, he should, he should lose the case, right? But English live will lose absolutely suck. So he's got the edge there. It is an interesting question about how long you're fooled. If Calvin Erick was only fooled for a month or if Gavin was only fooled for a month, it would be a different story. The longer that he's fooled, the more money he puts into this, the more sunk cost he establishes, the more that sunk cost fallacy in his head rises up. And he's like, well, I've stuck with my Satoshi and I'm sticking with him. But if you go back to the beginning when people thought he was Satoshi, it's not a bad idea to get behind a potential Satoshi, right? Like if this had turned out for Calvin Erick, he would have billions and billions of dollars from the Bitcoin. It clearly hasn't turned out. The only question now is when and if he will cut this guy loose and stop supporting this nonsense, which may never happen. I mean, the do stop right, Brian. This is a geek of ex-guy. And I have a full of question about how does one get so rich if one is not so bright? You get into the gambling scene. The gambling software is fun and there's not enough solutions catered for for people. It's huge industry. Worth cazillions. Calvin Erick was there for a year. But yeah, he's finally the plurable character. I would say. And also about being a ruthless and shrewd businessman. There's people that like, there's plenty of people I've worked with that they just go to lengths that you wouldn't go to, right? And they're the people that are extremely determined. And then they make huge amounts of money. But then they do all sorts of crazy stuff. And yeah, Calvin Erick seems like that sort of guy. And the stuff that comes out of Coingy is just literally insane. It's like La La Land. It's getting to the stage where it's flat earth theory. It's getting to the stage where it's considered as flat earth theory. If you believe in B.S.V., if you believe in Craig Wright, he's a satoshi, whatever, in the same reason. You're essentially a flat earther in Bitcoin. You're like, as a journalist, some of the writings go. You know, it's not bad writing. It's just the content is absolutely ridiculous. And I always imagine this poor journalist just sat there thinking, how can I spin this now? The boss wants me to spin. And then it's just like, and it's the the directs of the barrel when it comes to journalists. I'm really is. Let's move on to the exit question. Predict the future. Will Hottle not win the UK case? Yes or no? Ben Arck. Yeah, I mean, I think the courts are probably going to get tired of Craig Wright. They're going to, you know, oh, you again, is it? Okay. All right, here we go again. Someone else is sitting. I think you will. Yeah, basically with the Norwegian verdict. Find it. Positivity. Josh Egolla, do you follow up this positive trend? Yeah, I actually do think you'll win. Yep, I'll not win the UK as well. Dan, if somebody comes to your senses, protect the bad ending? No, no, no, I think he's going to, as much as UK live all laws are awful and stupid and protect people, the wrong people who have money to litigate, I think, I think Hottle and Hottle's going to win. But just as an aside thing, as anyone read a recently about the amount of, there's like one minute, one Bitcoin minor, BsV minor, who's like just producing empty blocks and trolling BsV continuously. It's pretty brilliant. I saw an article on that. I was looking at that. When I was looking at the, for this article on the terrible website, I saw some article about it and I was like, what's this? Empty block BsV thing? Great. Yeah, it's continuous. Like someone's, some minor is just continuously producing empty or very nearly empty blocks. There's people protesting in ways other than general support and handshaking online, handshaking, whist-fist-waving online about Craig Wright. They're actually producing empty blocks and doing something more constructive to moch the Gigamax network. I suppose as the only American here, I have to represent the revolution and distrust the British and their old curly white wigs. I think that Hottle Not will lose the UK defamation trial. The internet will get very upset about this. However, that will change nothing about the UK liable laws, which favor the accuser. Stay tuned. Check out worldcryptonetwork.com. It's got podcasts and 3,000 and 11 videos. You could watch worldcryptonetwork videos for three months, 13 days and 14 hours straight. And if you didn't sleep that long, you'd also go crazy. It's been eight years and 10 months and three days since our first video at worldcryptonetwork.com. Moving on to issue three. Bitcoin now less volatile than the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ for the first time since 2020 has Bitcoin decoupled from stocks. Of course, it happens when stocks are going up and now Bitcoin is going down. Ben Arck, tell us about has Bitcoin decoupled from stocks and it's less volatile than the NASDAQ. This is interesting because that's where we were at three ground, wasn't it? We were at three ground for such a long time during the COVID stuff. And yeah, it was there wasn't much going on. I remember it's like traditionally in Bitcoin, bull and bear markets when you had a bear market. It was just like tumbleweeds. And I feel like that's where we are now. However, I went to the Alps Sub Bitcoin conference last week and I went to Peter McCormack's football club as well and did a workshop there. And I have to say, man, like there's so many enthusiastic, very talented, nice people working on Bitcoin things and they just weren't there during 2020. So yes, we are in tumbleweed territory where we have this study price action. But the bad rock is firm and it gets me very bullish on Bitcoin thinking that that's where we are. I mean, the more stable the NASDAQ has to be worth 2020. And we have all this great talent which we're working on on Bitcoin projects. It's very encouraging indeed. And I just think that when it goes up, it's going to go pretty hard pretty fast. It's interesting when it goes sideways like this, but it's also unnerving and terrifying because either it goes sideways and everything's fine. You're like, well, this is kind of boring. And either it goes straight down or straight up after that and you can never really tell. You've got to remind yourself of 2020 2017 Thomas where you're at 20 grand. You're at 20 grand. Oh my god, because so much value just ridiculous. And I know what I got is so boring, so flat, I'm going to back up more. I'm going to go to the press. It is funny. The last time I think we were stuck at 4 grand for a long time and 20 grand, that's five times for a grant. That's a great deal. Like anybody would take that. Let's go to Josh, Josh Egoller, what do you think about Bitcoin? Not so volatile anymore. Yeah, no, you guys have hit the nail on the head when it starts to go sideways or it doesn't start to, but it's going sideways. For me, that's a sign that it's consolidating now over time. It's stopped consolidating over price and it's kind of heading towards the end of that boring time. And now what generally happens is a project like ours at the standard, we've just been building, projects like Ben's, just been building. People are just building in these times. And then they start to release that stuff. And then as stuff gets released, people start getting excited, that's cool. That's cool. And then you start getting more VCs excited and things start moving up again, saying that there's also a lot of variables in play here with the general global economic outlay and what's happening, what's playing out, not only geopolitically with Russia, but also financially across the globe with countries and people actually really starting to feel the pain. And because they're feeling the pain at the petrol pump, that is a massive sign, that food and everything else because petrol is the underlying price discovery, almost the price leveler, the thing that actually causes food to be at a certain price because it costs petrol to get there or gas, gas as you Americans call it. So yeah, I think if you mix that along with money printing, along with more QE, less QE, all these things play a part. So it's not just Bitcoin, or this is what it did last time. So it's going to do it again. I think that definitely should be taken into account as someone that's looking into using these guesstimates to try to buy or sell. But realize that it's part of a wider thing that's happening in the world and we're really in strange times at the moment. Dan Eave, the price of Snapchat went down 25%, but the price of Bitcoin stays the same. How is that possible? It's really cool, isn't it? The decoupling is like the that pinnacle moment where Bitcoin isn't just going to be trailing the stock market. And maybe there will be a point in the future where Bitcoin is the leader, where things like where they say, oh, the stock market's trailing Bitcoin again, or Bitcoin will be the front runner over fear. And it's probably going to happen quite soon. Now, as much as the price has been very much sideways, again, whilst we hear all these horror stories of miners that are either going out of business or or that having suffering from issues because of the fact that Bitcoin price is dropped and therefore they've had to lay out all these costs. So it was the one where the company had frozen the prices for their users, but they're not frozen the energy prices for themselves. But meanwhile, the hash rates continued. So the core indicator is the Bitcoin hash rate overall is 264 extra hash as of the last 24 hours, which is within like a couple of percent of all time high. So that really and the difficulty, I think, pretty much is near as damn it on spot on all time higher, like 35.6 trillion. So in terms of those indicators of how how the infrastructure is supporting Bitcoin, those are still continuing to grow despite this sideways motion. And the fact is that anyone, anyone that puts a mining business up needs to think of these costs upfront. And if they don't, there's always going to be someone who's going to be buying your hardware and running it themselves because they have cheaper electricity. They have some sort of deal where they can actually house the hardware. So that side of it never really seems to suffer that much even when we get the most devastating news of a country banning mining, you know, it drops very briefly. And then soon that the mining hash rate reaches another all time high thus proving the resilience. The brilliance, Bitcoin's brilliance is resilience. And that's the main thing is that whenever you, whenever you poke a stick at Bitcoin, that, you know, it fires back and it stands guard and holds its ground. And as the, you know, the most secure network on the planet. So ultimately, it will be one day Bitcoin leading the rest of the markets and really, you know, truly decoupling from from all these other assets and being in a complete class of its own and the leader against fear. A future we can all look forward to. And now it's your chance to predict against the original Bitcoin predictor ball. It's bigger. It's boulder and it's better. It's the Bitcoin predictor ball. Dan Eve will the price of Bitcoin be higher or lower this time next week. And after all that positive stuff about hash rate, I'm still saying it's going to go a little bit lower because, uh, because I'm a neg-negginancy. Oh, well, we've got a bird type you. Yeah, I'm going to go slightly lower. Again. Man, arc higher or lower. Man, I mean, like, I remember once and I was freaking out about Bitcoin. It's one of the, the stuff was happening with the Bitcoin cash stuff and I had a moment where I was freaking out and I had them back popped into it, a Twitter thread. I need to say, look at where the talent is. That's where the value will have to end up being, uh, look at Bitcoin, look at Bitcoin cash, boomer. And, um, there's such talent and people are building such great things. And, uh, honestly, just, just, you know, they're not, they're not like, you know, um, uh, it's like, freaky, uh, like a non-ADHD, super coders, but tricky to which coffee and freaking out and being okay after it. These are like legitimate, well-established professionals working in, you know, computer science and all these other, you know, IT infrastructure dev ops who are building great Bitcoin things, uh, because they believe in the, the hard way and they believe in the software they believe in the project, they believe in the Bitcoin project. And, um, it's interesting to them. And I just can't see how it can fail. And I think the price is going to go up. Look, look why the talent is. And there's this great people building things. Very, very bullish. Give them twitchy because of it. Josh, Shagala, all this positivity, what do you say? Yeah, I'm going up. All right, can we head, we're going to slightly go uphill from here on. All right. And now the ball will the price of Bitcoin be higher this time next week. And it says, outlook good, outlook good. There it is. It's kind of upside down. Let's see. There's a lot of complications here. Outlook good. Oh well, it changed its way again. So there it is. Positivity from the Bitcoin eight ball. Hard to believe. Moving on to issue four. Global recession may last until the 2024 Bitcoin happening. Says Elon Musk. At least that's what coin telegraph says. It actually seems like Elon Musk says the recession may last until May of 2024, which would also be about the same time as the Bitcoin happening. Josh, Shagala, what do you think is the recession and the happening linked? Is it now up to Bitcoin to lift all boats? I think they're not linked at all. I think there's, uh, you know, how can it be? The global recession is built by the whims of a bunch of old men behind closed doors, deciding what interest rates are at central banks. So I don't think they're linked. I think Bitcoin does it so in thing and people can see patterns where they may. But at the end of the day, the halvings programmed in. It's always going to be there. I can tell you how many Bitcoin there will be in about 100 years. I can tell you how much there's going to be in 200 years. I can't tell you anything about the fiat system where that will be at all. So it doesn't seem very difficult to predict that in the future, the Bitcoin halving will be celebrated by the entire world because it's a creation of value by this regular structure of reducing the number of Bitcoins made every year. It enriches everyone who holds Bitcoin, which eventually would be the whole world. And everyone will be like, yay, number go update. Dan, Eve, what do you think about the halving? Should we be so positive? Is Elon Musk right? Will Bitcoin save the world? Well, that's historically when, you know, the kind of there is a pattern of, um, shortly after the hardening is when things start to pump. But wouldn't it be also called that the point when, when people who may not be in necessarily even being Bitcoin, but start to get excited because they're stocks pump at the halvinging as well, because Bitcoins leave you the market of the anti-fiat sentiment and saying, right, get out of fear and put your money into something else. So even though these stockheads aren't in Bitcoin yet, they're still riding the Bitcoin wave because when the Bitcoin pumps, it ends up bringing all the other markets with it because there's the hype and the education around how bad keeping your money in fear is. You might as well take a risk that a stock is going to go up rather than that the government is actually going to control your money. The central bank is going to control your money in such a way that it will increase the value because that's never been right. That's never been true. I mean, inflation's crazy at the moment. People in charge of of monetary policy and fear money are obviously not doing a great job because your fear value is being devalued each year. So you might as well take a pump on Bitcoin and if you can't do that and you're still stuck in the traditional world then you'll pump, you'll take a pump on stocks. And yeah, so ultimately the four-year cycle is the kind of one of the, you've got all these rainbow method and the stock to flow which obviously turned out to be not really very accurate and keeps on being adjusted of course because it's being fine-tuned as all good models are that don't really work that much. But the fact is that after a halving, that's what historically has worked. There has always been a pump after halving so it's a fairly logical thing to be thinking that that's going to be when the next big Bitcoin pump happens. Then I don't remember if it was Archimedes or Ein Rand that said Bitcoin is the engine that runs the world. But is it true now? Yeah, that's a fact prediction that we're sliding into recession. Ove production, lack of demand, instability, war. We've got lots of depressing things which you know, tend towards recession. We've got the 2008 financial crisis which is kind of kicked down the road. We've got like poorly, you know, applied benzene economics which is quite dangerous. But I don't think the Bitcoin is a panacea and I think that Bitcoin's I don't know, it's economics just they're not going to make the world, it's not going to make the world a more stable place and keep growth stable. I think that's quite complicated and in fact that's why we have central banks and that's why we have money production, fiscal stimulus and fair weather, surplus recycling to buffer up the peaks and troughs of the capital markets. But yeah, we I think we will have a recession and I think it does make sense that 2024 is quite golden. A few years of recession and then we'll dig our way out and we'll all be a little bit poorer or we'll dig our way out of it and then we'll have growth and then at that same time, you know, they've got a bit of hardening thing happening as well. It's kind of time quite nicely, but I think it's a fair prediction but I steer away from this idea that Bitcoin is some panacea. I tell you what it is, it's a free-knife sauce money which can keep fear of currency and chat, which is a very good thing, but I don't think Bitcoin itself is a panacea for stability of growth and world economic markets and I always say we'll get economics for them, you've got to make a last comment. But yeah, unfortunately the mainstream media has interpreted your remarks as Bitcoin is a panacea and it will cure all of your problems. Fixes everything. Fixes everything. And of course, everyone with the Google knows that a recession is a significant widespread and prolonged downturn in economic activity. A popular rule of thumb is two consecutive quarters of decline, but it's getting even worse then because they're also talking about a possible depression which is defined as a steep and sustained drop in economic activity featuring high unemployment which we don't have and negative GDP growth which we also don't have. No, no, no. In the UK, we're getting like our growth was at rock bottom post-Brexit stuff. In fact, when I went to the Amsterdam Bitcoin conference, I had sort of some electronics for my workshops and I ordered them because Martin has a place in Amsterdam. I ordered them to his place and it reminded me how good Amazon used to be. I could go on there and there was a vast array of lipo lithium-ion batteries I could choose from. And now in the UK, we have one provider in Amazon of these lipo batteries and the polarities are all around so you plug them into your micro control and they blow up. So it's a dire state of affairs in the UK where we haven't got access to the single market to the European top, you know, the biggest market on the planet. And we're leading the way when it comes to recession and depression. So things might be rosy for you but take a look at us in our weird little rock. How are your unemployment numbers? Because I know in the US as shocking as it may sound where near total employment which as an economist you're like, let's unemploy some of those people. Let's lighten up the load like nobody likes 100% of anything. We've got a lack of, because we know we don't have access to Europeans' labor market. We some people may say is because they will have to increase wages but like we can't compete with the Europeans for production. Even if we like to devalue our currency, we seem to be having a moment and we just haven't got access to the labor market as we need in order to also run a lot of industries. So it's with a recession it's like compounding factors. The factory can't order the part to continue production. They can't get the labor into to be able to produce. And we have all these compounding factors and that's what we have in the UK at the moment. It's just slowing growth. And in fact the UK was the only country I think to have no growth in 2021, apart from Russia which was obviously backwards because of all the sanctions. But yeah, of all the progress economies, I think UK was to perform the worst. Although, according to the FT, the unemployment is the lowest it's been since 1974. Zero contracts, my friend. But regardless, the main thing that we can say is that a lettuce outperforms the British Prime Minister. So maybe a lesser amount of criticism. No one even wants to job a being Prime Minister. Like they have it, they give up after six weeks and then everyone's like, no, I don't want to job. It's all right. Thanks. Well, not bad. But also it's a salary of 139K for life after being the Prime Minister for 44 days. So it's a pretty sweet resignation deal, right? And that is a lady that is against welfare, right? She's a consumer. Never beyond the goal for the rest of her life, right? Yeah. No, they're screwing 44 days and competing against a lettuce. Oh, that four lettuce. But yeah, it's so bad. It's so bad. It's so bad. That sounds like all the worst parts of Atlas showed. But fortunately, I know there's a fuzzy gentleman waiting in the wings and he's the same one that brought you Brexit. So it'll be perfect for Boris to clean up the mess. Bring back Boris. That's what the media is telling me. They're telling me. It's what it's definitely going to the the douchebag versus turt sandwich level of the South Park level of politics again, isn't it? At least you guys get to have so many elections. We only get the one every four years. You guys just seem to seem to have. Oh, thank God. Could you imagine having to deal with American politics more than every once every four years? You guys know how to take over the other version of global media for like months. You won't believe that Josh from a television perspective, the choices that you have in America and commercials is either these horrible attack ads. There are pretty much untrue on both sides. Like, sagging Australia. I could attack. And then on the other side, all we have is horrible prescription drug ads where most of the ad is the description of the side effects. And you hear horrible words like diarrhea and incontinence and all these things like in the middle of your football game, in the middle of your political show, in the middle of every show you're watching, it's either prescription drugs or politics. And I think really they should just ban them both. But that's cool. What's crazy is that if you watch, if you look at the parliament, like live parliament videos and live debate video, especially the UK, like it is, it's seen a few of those, but it's all the arguments, they're all constructed in the way that you're told not to debate in any other normal way. You know, you avoid that hominemes or all these kind of argumentive authorities to eat all these kind of fun, what they call it, you know, I can't remember the term is, but like a straw. All they do, straw man, yeah, all of those logical policies, that's it. Whereas, whereas in politics, it's all about logical policies, it's not about building a good argument about problems and solutions. It's just about dising your opponent and getting a laugh, which is an insane way of, if like if that was how it worked in a company, it like the company would, I don't know, they get sued or something, but in parliament in politics, it's totally allowed to just be like, oh, you can spend 90 minutes, like if you get two hours, you get talk time, 90 minutes, insulting the other people, and then half an hour of actual stuff that you talk about. And that's why it's a way of going around it. That's why in idiocracy, it's a wrestler that is the the president of that, you know, because at the end of the day, it's just all big WWF style bulldoast. I do quite like some of my institutions in the UK when it comes to politics, though, because we have quite a lot of checks. And then also if you look at parliamentary debate, it's pretty brutal, like the brutal tweet. And I imagine maybe as an American looking in and watching some parliamentary debate thinking, what the hell is going on in this room? I love it though. I'll stay up late at night watching on PBS or Seize Fan and they do Prime Minister's questions, like they're all yelling at each other, but they're always like the fine gentleman knows and then they tear into the good sir Lord, then they tear into him. It's always this. I love that. And it's also a good time to remind everyone to check out that old show, yes, Prime Minister and yes, minister. It's truly the greatest British program ever made. Well, that's not influenced House of Karls, wasn't it? They basically wanted to make that again, but they became House of Karls. It's so funny because in the old days, it was a comedy and it was all light. And now it's been saying it becomes House of Cards with the violence and the murder and the true power. But it's all about bureaucracy and just how ridiculous the government is. It's all just kind of clever turn of phrase. Check out yes, Prime Minister. Also, I've been rewatching part of the boys on Amazon and it seems like at first it's just this big superhero thing. It's kind of superheroes gone bad, especially the core idea of what if Superman was bad. But as you continue to watch around season two, it starts to turn a little political season three. It's very political. And I definitely think people should check out the boys if you haven't already for what we're looking for here is kind of that breakdown of civility to where it's just power for power's sake. And if someone's more powerful than you, they can do anything they want to you because power justifies it. And we see the results of that in this, you know, television show. But let's move on to the exit question. Speaking of Elon Musk, is this Twitter thing still happening? Do we still think it's a good thing? There's still a chance to change your mind. Dan, Eve, what about Elon Musk and the Twitter really quick? Yes, I think it's still happening. But I did see that he said, or he's supposedly, or allegedly said, whatever the word is for that, but I prefix it that he's going to get rid of 75% of the staff, which in a way, it could mean that it's moving that's more of a move to the open source in the community, sort of managing it rather than which, you know, laying people off is always bad. But yeah, it seems like it's going to go ahead otherwise he's fucked, basically. That reminds me of what Shakespeare said. He said, if you want to create tyranny, first thing you do is you get rid of all the lawyers. And in the same way, I think if Elon wanted to create chaos in this company and maybe destroy it and maybe just create some kind of a new bizarre, more like a lovecraftian Twitter, kind of a Ketulu type Twitter, I think firing 75% of the people would be a good start towards something like that. Let's go to Josh Shagalla. What do you think about Elon Musk? Is it still happening? Is it still a good thing? I know you're more positive on this than I am probably. But yeah, I think it's great thing. I mean, Twitter's just a shithole. It really is a terrible platform with a lot of great potential. There's a lot of absolute toxic nonsense. It's so, it's so nonsensical in terms of its community guidelines. You just go on there. There's countless, like, just you get like, I raped with some awful porn, all of a sudden, on your feed for no reason. And you're like, what the heck? Like, I mean, yet that's somehow allowed yet, you know, saying something that might be of interest in terms of, you know, an alternative health perspective, not banned, blocked. If you, you know, like more conservative values, not you're out. I just find it's just a shithole really. And I'm only using it because of crypto Twitter. But generally, I think it, you know, apart from all that, apart from its weird way of censoring people that doesn't really make much sense. The other thing is, where's the technological advancement? Like every time I open up telegram, there's an update where it's like, now we've got this. Now we've got that. Now if, you know, I got the ability to do this and that, the only thing Twitter's done is added Twitter spaces really badly might I add, where it's only available on the phone. And you can't actually tweet live while you're in there. Like you can't have a conversation and you can't like in terms of a text conversation within there. There's just so much stuff you can't edit a post yet and have the history of the edits, all of this stuff. How many, what are all these people do there? What do they all do with Twitter? I say Elon. It's not right. Get it in a bunch of people in. Get some proper engineers that actually innovate. Open the API back up so people can actually build on top of the platform. But most of all, make it open source. Open source, check out Noster. And yeah, make it open source, mate. Well, the best part of this Twitter experiment is that we get to see what happens. Ben, Arck, what do you think about Elon Musk and Twitter? The blue sky lot, they start following a bunch of Noster projects. And Noster, those you don't know, Jack Dorsey years ago, was like, I'm going to make it open source Twitter. But then obviously that's a theoretical for profit motives that you would have with the company if you don't buy it through software. So the blue sky, he basically employed a bunch of pretty clever people actually to try and build something like a decentralized version of Twitter. And they didn't do much. And they just went to Silicon Valley, Austin, parties, and instead of having told everybody, you know, the beers that they were going to make the new decentralized Twitter did do anything. But then in the background, then there's this great Noster protocol, which is, it is fantastic. And like, when you, the problem is with Twitter is, you know, it's a proprietary company and you're giving them your data. So you should really be shocked when they do things which they're incentivized to do, such as keeping their government happy by only, you know, allowing certain flavors of content on their platform. And then it goes back to that thing, not your keys, you know, not your keys, not your, not your Bitcoin, it's the same with Noster, it's just raw public key crypto, you know, you have public key private key, sign messages with private key and then people can subscribe to the public key that the Twitter implementation, which is, I started Twitter implementation, but FiatJaps fought it now, it's called Brannel. It's very good, it's very sophisticated. And now they have light handles, it's opposed to actually just following a public key. But it's kind of nice to see public key crypto in the raw, because it solves a lot of the world's problems. And, and, yeah, no, I, that's what I hope Elon does. I think originally, like he said, he was going to try to resource a lot of it. And that is the answer, just a way of like skirting around the censorship issue, because if you're a private company and you're controllable with stacer, then you have to censor it or also you're going to get in trouble with the local government or whatever. But if it's open source, it's just a way where they don't have that control, then it can be a little bit more free as a platform. But, you know, I think Twitter is kind of great in a way, because, you know, look at Facebook and how much has changed over the years. And I think that Jack Dawes, who kind of now Twitter got locked out pretty early on as a platform, which the wall seems to have needed, because people use things and we'll use it. So, but yeah, if that can be sort of decentralized to make free-knock and source, then I'm all up for that. And if it's not start, then absolutely. It is still surprisingly simple at its core. It's that message box and then you post it. And that's about it. I definitely check out Noster and Ellen Bitts. If you're a coder or if you want to work on it, you know, there's lots of projects out there you can get involved. Dan, did you have more on this? So you can't be mid-Journal. Propagal was just checking out of them in the chat. Yeah, they probably got this on Dan from now on. He's the owner now. I was signaling. But the only thing is, Ben mentioned about their open source making it more able to evade state restrictions around content is that a lot of the times when people have been de-platformed, they haven't broken any laws. They've not actually broken any laws. They've just literally been de-platformed. So there's, I don't think there's a state requirement that they're able to evade by, you know, the censorship is largely down to their own choices and whatever is pulling their twisting their arm ultimately. So yeah, I think open source would make it more state, definitely more state resilient and have less crying hands. But I don't think that's been a driver in a lot of the censorship that we've seen today. I think it's not this corruption resistance, isn't it? So like, okay, maybe it's not state, maybe it's the CEO in their political affiliations, whatever, but it can't be corrupted from forces within and without, you know, like from outside forces as well. I think that I suppose that should be involved in like, in a something which we always use as kind of a commons, like perhaps that's how it should operate. Well, that's it. It makes an equilibrium of the users rather than whoever is in control of it, which is like Bitcoin, right? Because ultimately, whoever, you know, you have your chance to vote. And so the voters have the power rather than external people who don't, you know, who just say we want you to change it, the platform in this specifically. Running out of time, moving on to bonus issue issue five coin base and industry leaders file Amicus brief in support of the Gracevale spot, grayscale spot Bitcoin ETF. As we all know, from law and order, Amicus brief means friend of the court and coin base is a friend of the court. They say that the SEC has categorically denied every proposal for spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US, while at the same time putting their thumb on the scale and allowing similar riskier products, such as Bitcoin futures ETFs to enter the market. Dan, Eve, what do you think about Coinbase supporting this proposal and the SEC for continuously not allowing Bitcoin ETFs at spot while allowing them as futures? Well, if one of the main arguments used to be about the worry about volatility about Bitcoin, we've now got this latest article that is less volatile of the S and P and the Nasdaq. And the other argument about it being externally interfered with by market manipulation, well, what are the biggest finds in history was in the UK, it was live or rates that there's plenty about JP Morgan and the gold and it was the sort of silver silver manipulation. So I think those arguments just don't stand any, there's still some weakening on those arguments, essentially. There's plenty of other markets where this thing has been happening all along and yet those companies aren't just still around, but they're thriving. They're extremely successful given all the other market conditions. So to say that Bitcoin specifically, which is the most resilient and the most defiant amongst all external actors, to say that that can't be converted. And you've also, if you've already got a futures market, it's a why not make it spot, why not be allowed. The only thing I can think of, which is never talked about, is actually that the risk I think that lies with Greyscale owning the Bitcoin on behalf of the users, that the only risk I see external market factors to forget about those is getting hacked, is the private keys being compromised in some way, even if it's a multi-seed compromise in some way, and the Bitcoin making its way to other people and then not being able to recover it. That's the only thing that I can see and that's never actually brought up in the arguments. Apart from that, all the other arguments fall down compared to the industries that we have nowadays and these huge companies that have been fined yet are still around and still funded by the government even more so than ever. Not just that, but when they do fail, they're funded by the government not to fail because they're in too big of a position to fail. So, yeah, Bitcoin isn't any of that and yet it's still being held back by these reasons which are really quite unjust. Josh Agala, why won't the SEC allow a spot ETF? We know that we're all thinking it rhymes with CON Spiracy. Yeah, it's basically because the crypto space removes a whole lot of inefficiencies from the legacy market. The SEC regulates the legacy market. Once people start figuring out how much better the crypto space is, or Web 3, DeFi, Bitcoin, all of this has massive advantages and it only serves to start sucking in vast amounts of liquidity into the space and I think the SEC's hellbent on stopping that as much as they can. This is why they're also angry at Coinbase for daring to offer like 3% interest on their Bitcoin holdings or something like that because basically Coinbase was putting that in AMM, automated market makers. But the SEC was like, this must be a scam. How are you doing this? No, because there's not a thousand middlemen taking a cut before it reaches a market maker where allowing people to directly market makes. But yeah, the SEC is such a boring association of regulator. It's so corrupt. I'm just going to go there and say it. I just think it's okay, let's not say corrupt, but I think it works in the interest of the legacy system and not really in the way that it should. Well, and Josh, we've been talking about this issue. It seems like almost 10 years now. What should we say to someone who joined Bitcoin yesterday, like Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank, who says, we need regulation. Bitcoin hasn't been open to regulation. As Dan said, we're not even volatile anymore. As long as they can handle the private keys, it should all be fine. Why can't we get this regulation? I mean, this is easy. Like, oh, just regulate it. It's a new product. They have the gold ETF and they have the diamond ETF. Why can't we get this ETF? Well, it's funny because there's this idea of regulation. But what does that even mean? No one even knows what that means. And then I've been to conferences where people ask the questions to the audience, should Bitcoin be more regulated? And everyone holds up their hand and it's like, hang on a minute. The biggest bank in the world just got fined billions of dollars for money laundering for some cartels. And they're regulated to help to help banks lose. They're so overly regulated. It made no difference. And the word regulation is kind of it's just sort of this blanket statement, like the word vaccine. It just sort of means something that everyone goes, oh, that's what it means. Okay, it's all good. But actually, you need to look in what sort of regulation do you want? What sort of regulation? What does that even mean? That's what I wanted to. I really thought Leo Wald was going to bring us this ETF with the valkary company and they had the Bitcoin and all that stuff. But from what I hear now, they're working on a Tron ETF instead. So oh, well, so much for that. Tron, a Tron ETF. Tron. Why not? If you get told down for one, why not ask for something even bigger? That's great. Well, we were going to ask Ben, but it looks like Ben has dropped off. So we're going to head towards the end of the show. Dan Eve prediction or story of the week. Go ahead. Oh, she rose in the stock. Spotlights. Oh, come on. Just say the price is going up. That's what everyone wants to hear. You have triangles. You have tried my prediction. Okay, based on the stories, okay, my prediction. Okay, I predict, I predict that Bitcoin, I think Grace Galenco, I think they're going to be successful this time. I like this idea of the ability to bring in external experts and this this abacus, abacus, abacus thing. That's that sounds like a constructive way of dealing with it, right? If you've got the SEC that's or whoever it is that's rejecting the CTF, slapping down their own analysis, but then you've got industry experts that are saying here are the reasons why you should actually approve this, this ETF. I think that's going to be constructive. And I haven't heard that in any of the previous arguments before. I'm sure it probably could have happened, but it's not been brought up. So maybe this is a pivotal moment where there are industry experts, not just crypto focused ones that are saying that we, you know, there's no reason not to have a Bitcoin ETF now. How close to it? I think positive. Six months, a year, three months, three months. All right, three months. We've got it. Put it on the calendar. Joshua should call a prediction or story of the week. Go ahead. I still don't understand really like maybe someone in the notes can help me understand, but what really is the the major difference between micro strategies and an ETF? I mean, you're effectively buying Bitcoin when you buy micro strategies. They don't do anything else. They have Bitcoin and they balance sheet. That's their business has been for a while. The only problem is like micro strategies at any point they could say we're quitting Bitcoin and we're collecting beanie babies. Nobody saw this coming. We're ahead of the market. We're thinking outside the box. Whereas I would think the ETF would be just a little tighter on what it can buy and I think it's a lot like because for whatever reason, the diamond ETF ETF can't buy gold. The gold ETF can't buy diamonds even though everyone thinks they're both great. Bitcoin ETF would stay out of the beanie babies market. Yeah, come on. Get out of there, sailor. But story of the week is that we finally launched our referral program. If you want to go on the wait list, we're very, very close to launching the standard, which will be the standard in stablecoins, decentralized stablecoins. It's been a year in the making. We launched the the referral program giving away $1.45 million worth of TST as well as in adrops and things to people referring and then people doing different tasks. Also, check out the the D work now. We've really opened up the DAO so people can come and help out if you're a writer, if you're a graphic designer, if you're a coder, if you're whatever you're into, you can come help the DAO out and it'll be really great to have you on board. Check out thestandard.io and sign up to the wait list there and invite your friends and get a cut of the pie. That sounds great. Thanks to Ben for joining us. I know Ben's going to be going to the Edinburgh Bitcoin conference or whatever they're calling at these days tomorrow. So if you're there, check them out in Scotland. Of course, Ben and Martín both went to the Amsterdam Bitcoin conference. Very cool. Shout out to Martín and General Bites and their new accounting software, whale books. I think they did very well. The convention. I saw a lot of great pictures of Martín and Corel and the whole general bites team there. So shout out to them, everybody that's still traveling around doing conferences. Thanks so much to everybody for watching the show. Be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe down below. Until next time.