#336 — The Bitcoin Group #336 - SBF Lawyers Up - Jack in Africa - 8% - Metallica Scam

The Bitcoin Group, the American Original, for over the last ten seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Dan Eave, the crypto-raptor. Red 5 standing by. Michael Dupree from EasyBit. Got an unmute. Ben Arck from LNBIT. Hello, good evening. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one. Bostin.com is covering the Caroline Ellison story and saying she was a math whiz and Newton native bound for success. Then she got into crypto. CZ is pushing back against SPF, saying that he's one of the greatest fraudsters in history and accuses the media and thought leaders of being manipulated. Sandbankman Freed has hired the same lawyer that defended Giselaan Maxwell and Spanish drug dealer El Chapo. Ryan Armstrong slams the media for treating Sandbankman Freed with kid gloves. Meanwhile, we've found out what's inside the Alameda portfolio. It was knock-off lotions, weight loss drugs, Chinese news sites. Sounds like a winner. And FTX Founder Sandbankman Freed has agreed to testify at the United States House on Tuesday. So this story is still continuing. Shout out to Coffee Zilla, who also got SPF to admit to fraud i.e. the co-mingling of funds. If you deposit a Bitcoin onto FTX, he was supposed to keep it in a separate account than the margin trading account. During his interview with Coffee Zilla, Sandbankman Freed definitely admits to mixing the money thus when the withdrawals came in, the withdrawals came in from the entire pool because they had been mixing the money the whole time. So Alameda completely to the side, there is fraud inside of FTX where Sandbankman Freed allowed the customer funds to be mixed with the margin funds. And that's it. That's all the stories we've got about Sandbankman Freed. Dan Eve, what do you think about this week in Sandbankman Freed? It's definitely unraveling to be some sort of crazy, like, there's definitely going to be a documentary about this, right? There's so much going on about it. It's just crazy the way that the media is treating them with as Brian Armstrong says with kick gloves. These are people that are Bernie Maddowff scale like scammed people effectively by, you know, well, number one, mixing co-mingling funds, which they, you know, he's admitted to and that's pretty much a, you know, that's an admission of fraud, like right there. And then if that's going to be used as evidence. But the fact is that they, it wasn't just the co-mingling of funds. There were some really insane investments from this from Alameda. I wonder if the other guy to, to, to Trabacca, if he ends up getting, getting his knuckles wrapped for this as well, because obviously he only exited Alameda in, in August, I think, this year as a co CEO. I think it must have been involved in very much, you know, most of the operations, although you could argue that since Caroline and Sam were kind of seeing each other. In this soap story of fraud, then, you know, she may be more aware of the track, the fault of dodgy transactions than he was. And it's just, just crazy. I mean, even the exchange with the, the, the, it's it maxi mortis and the way they're just kind of casually chatting about such a big incident just seems, it's just funny. It's just you wouldn't have expected that sort of level of like, you know, he's like a kid that that accidentally like ran over someone's flowers when, when he, you know, his ball went over the fence and they're like, oh, don't worry about it. You know, it's really good. You're honest about what you've done and that you've admitted that coming into our yard was a mistake and you accidentally hit the flowers. And the fact that he's kind of doing this crazy tool, you know, his lawyers ended up sacking him as previous lawyers. As you said, he's now using gizlain Maxwell sloyer, which is just another kind of crazy part of the story in itself. She's being represented as in Caroline, Alison's being represented by the firm that's representing, what's the, what's the, the Madonna against Pfizer. So there's like, there's some really big kind of players in this whole thing and you'd imagine so for $10 billion of fraud. But the whole thing such a shame that, and you know, it's being tied to Bitcoin. It's like, you know, people, people worried about Bitcoin because of this and it's nothing to do with it. This is a pure scammer. You know, this isn't anything to do with Bitcoin. This is someone who's committing fraud. It's like saying, when, you know, when people fall for fishing attacks that it's the banking industry's fall. It's, you know, unfortunately, it's the fraudsters fault. Like the, you know, the banking industry, like it's as much as we hate it. But, you know, if someone gets defrauded, they're not getting defrauded by the banking industry, or they are mostly, but in this particular case of fishing, they're getting defrauded by the fisher. But in this case, they're kind of going, oh, well, those people aren't bad. It's crypto. That's the bad thing. They've been tainted by crypto. They were nice young people. Now they've been tainted. You know, it's just, it's just insane the way it's all been, it's all panning out. But yeah, I'm looking forward to the documentary and the, the polycules and all that stuff. I think you're right. And the media coverage has been shocking with Bernie made off. They chased him down the street. They were hounding him with cameras and microphones with this guy. He was talking to representative waters on Twitter as it was no big deal. Like, of sure, a congressman, if you think I could be helpful, you know, I could drop by after school. Like, yeah, I'm just, I'm not too busy. Congressman, but, you know, I'm really not that helpful either. And obviously he's not going to show up in person. Like I think they've nab him. I still don't understand why no one's nabbing him in the Bahamas. The Bahamas, what's happening with this guy and to say nothing stories we didn't cover his parents may never teach it Stanford again. They're both law professors. Her parents are from MIT. So it's mudding America's institutions to say nothing of a potential sex tape. And as Dan was saying, a diagram of the polycule. Which media organization, I think the daily mail will come out with a little diagram, a little chart where you'll be able to see this one was with that one, but not this one and this one and that one and this one and this one connected them all. Mike Dupree, what do you think about SBF who also clearly admitted this week to mixing customer funds. They were one big pool. I just always keeping things interesting in the crypto space, I guess. First the magic, the gathering guys went from cards, you know, the wonderful Mt. Gox claps and now we've got these poly animals. I don't even know how to describe what they were going on there, but sounds like kind of a sexual free for all. But yeah, very interesting people we have that we're trusting our money with. I don't I don't understand how people with such a kind of shady setup were able to recruit so much investment from so many even non Bitcoin people that just truly surprises me. That even people in the proper financial world don't do any real due diligence or anything before they're investing in and trading on these these new platforms. It's just it's really shocking to me, but I guess, you know, it's it's a real awakening call for those who are not real crypto people, but wanted to to get in on some of the action and such it's kind of a hey, you know, welcome to being in control of your own money. Welcome to the reality of unregulated, you know, basically unregulated exchanges and clearing houses where, you know, this kind of stuff can happen. So in the in the scheme of things, I think it does kind of put a bit of a diastratification between Bitcoin and the crypto industry as a whole to remember the principles of, you know, Bitcoin in the early days, which was to be in control of your own money and, you know, not to be trusting third party entities with it. So I think it's kind of really driven that that. That important principle of Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency home to those that, you know, that weren't really careful enough, but I'm still just in a bit of disbelief at how how grand of the scale, they were able to build so quickly with, you know, but nobody even really looking under the hood and seeing what was going on there, but yeah, just again, very, very shocking, very shocking stuff. It is incredible that they trusted this guy with so much of their money, like Mike said, the original idea of Bitcoin and crypto as a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis was hold your own money, be your own bank. And with this guy and others, they just give them the whole farm. They hold all the money. And we do know a little bit about the character of the other exchange guys and they're weird too, right Brian Armstrong is essentially a Vulcan doesn't care about anything CZ much the same way doesn't care about money has billions of dollars. And then we have this SPF guy in the Bahamas running around with everybody. And apparently he's the one with the best background right the other people their background is, you know, whatever. His background says he should be safe Caroline in the article. She got into that dirty crypto and it destroyed her. Ben arc, what do you think about the SPF story. I know you're tired of it, but look at all the drama all the ins and outs and of course billions of dollars missing billions and billions. Yeah, it's going to make there will be a good Netflix TV show to come out of it at least at some point. It's just this crossover period where we're moving from the Lexi system to the current system where people can have more control over their funds and people are yet to learn why that's important and episodes like this reminds them of why that's important. And then they're capitalizing on that brief period in time where we're still building the same stuff we built before. With these tools which allows to build systems which you know our corruption resistant and people do have their own keys. But it the way the kids acting and I think like with the media, for example, they're just playing nice with him because he'll talk to them and he'll give them information he'll give them stories. But they're not on his side that they're just playing nice from now when they're getting as much information and many stories as they can out of the dude and out of these people and as soon as the trial starts and that's when the mudsling will start am I'm sure. So it's just a temporary. I don't know, temporary niceties from from the media sector, but yeah, the shit show continues. It sort of shows the kind of egotistical kid he is or he thinks he can talk his way out of the bad situation is often the way with with people who want to ride and then they they they they're ego so big that they just think they can talk the way out of the situation, which I think is what he thinks he can do is talk his way out of it. But yeah, it's certainly going to clear the while this sort of market is clearing the pool of all the all the you know the bad actors and the bad companies and it's it's making people more aware of why we should actually use these tools properly and have systems where we actually have control over funds and over keys and ultimately you know this entire space we bet for it. For me it's the it's it's it's when we're going down in this bear market and then you have people all the way down say no there we are every time it plateaus like oh they're the end of the bear market and buying the dick blah blah blah and it's like no, like there needs to be blood in the streets, there needs to be some cataclysmic thing which happens. And this is that cataclysmic thing which happens this is the blood in the streets is where ones depressed and the question whether like the whole crypto industry and Bitcoin is all going to implode and there's going to be nothing left and that that's where we are. So it's probably it's sort of at the bottom of the bear market in the depths of depression so good thing where we're where we want to be so we can we can climb out of this now and build better tools so so people don't have this happen again is this another example of you know not seeing the the the the what the trees for forest is it's at the phrase where if you have so many people who are interesting somebody or an institution is being dependable and secure and so many people who are interested in the say from reliable and you look around all the people are trusting it and you're like well this thing must be legit because all these other people are trusting it and you get this feedback cycle where everybody then trust this thing and underneath you know under the hood is this just a big pot of money and there's trucking money into its dependency and they're just spending that money willy nilly and there's no oversight and and yeah people lose all their money so it's it's happened before in history it's going to happen again. But we do have the tools to build that things bad bad bad bad bad system so that's what we should look forward to and that's what we should support as we go forward and yeah just watch the drama and go follow the polls I suppose. We interrupt this program with breaking news sent to me by Dan Eve in the chat exclusive axios as that sbf secretly funded a crypto news site which crypto news site it turns out it's the block and the block CEO has resigned after failure to disclose loans from bankman freeds alameda so he also bought his own crypto news site. Which he was able to use to promote his alleged Ponzi scheme FTX Dan Eve what do you think about this breaking news that you just sent me right now. It's crazy well it's it was BTC moon guy that posted it and I quickly read up and was like oh wow so he's literally he's resigned in shame after you know they've got a disclaimer on their on their site that says you know we're really we're really you know in partial and blah blah blah and it's just critical that the block is fully transparent about our own phone. Financial holdings as to avoid any appearance of bias or impropriety the most valuable asset that we can hold and strive to earn again every day is our readers trust to the readers trust now that they're funding the blocks it was like a $15 million loan apparently it was it was behind the backs of everyone else it was just the CEO. And so to part purchase part finance his apartment in the in the Bahamas of course but also to help the company so it was it was a dual purpose loan so that's very very good of sand backman free to you know this is another company that's falling now because of the SPF disaster so you know it's really a gift that keeps on giving so and yeah thanks BTC moon guy for pointing that if we're pointing. Yeah that out there's a very very interesting to put the cherry on the cherry on the cake. It's the key it's the contagion aspect doesn't it's how many how many companies can this you know disaster take down how many other companies can it take down with it and I know of another company which is you know in a bad state because of the FTX stuff which is happening so it's yes it's the contagion which people are really worried about and we're yet to see like this is total impact on the industry I think. The one thing that about the whole thing is interviews that the reminds me of is you know i'm at the stage in life where I sit down with the misses and we watch a we watch a bunch of like murder documentaries and the amount of them that have got what's it they call it the gap not the it's the ju the juper's delight or something like that where they it's like they they murder someone and then they're doing all these interviews like yeah I don't know where this person is we're really hoping that we find the murderer blah blah blah and it's. And yes it he just seems like that I mean my opinions completely change you know i'm saying that you know he's the full guy I kind of feel sorry for him you know he did this if you know it in effective all for his whatever is called. The the ultrism thing and but now it just seems like he's a complete scammer and he's like a psychopath that's standing over the dead body and still saying oh we need to find the murderer we need to find the murderer. I don't have the story right here but there was also a story this week about how the article in coin desk essentially sunk their parent company DCG DCG had been taking some of the Genesis and Gemini money and they'd been loaning it out to FDX to get that sweet yield money right they wanted a percentage on their money they weren't good enough with the money they made on Bitcoin they wanted more. And the story that broke by coin desk essentially destroyed them and they might have to sell coin desk and they were talking about whether or not coin desk at least the current incarnation has editorial independence and they were like shit yeah it does they just torpedo their parent company no one would have allowed this and if you see what it's lock had. By having a $15 million loan from sandbankment read they obviously couldn't tell you anything about FTX they're obviously biased it's a disaster for them and it's a lesson for everyone well funded projects in the crypto industry I wonder where they got that money they also said that SBF tried to give a hundred million dollars to Taylor Swift to advertise for her company Mike to pre what do you think about this breaking news that the block took 15 million dollars from some of the money. Sam Bankman freed and FTX isn't that how much they paid the shark tank guy to to be one of their representatives or whatever that's also the truth and that's an insult to the shark tank guy you think he would have gotten more than some random guy setting up a crypto blog or whatever the block was. Yeah I mean it truly speaks to how good he is at vetting businesses I guess when he didn't do any do deal just whatsoever on a Bahamas off story. Like a negotiation thing though to where he's like 15 he's like I'll take it is like maybe I should try 30 maybe I should said 45 as little voice in his hands like you're Mr. Wonderful you're the greatest negotiator I can't believe he didn't get a royalty deal where he would get $15 on every Bitcoin sold at FTX that's a style come on. Yeah it's just absolutely crazy I mean I was looking at I can't remember what website it was on but there was a kind of a flow chart that showed all of the different people that had all the different crypto firms that had investments in FTX and it was just like a laundry list of well known names it was truly surprising that I mean I can understand that you know maybe some of these kind of old school traditional finance guys who you know aren't really used to the high risk of unregulated. Global trading environments like Bitcoin is crypto in general is you know I can understand a little bit how they weren't as cautious and you know you have a little bit of understanding because they're you know kind of used to more regulated traditional markets and they're kind of slower to adopt them to change I mean it doesn't excuse ignorance but I mean these crypto firms that jumped right on the boat right along with everybody else even you know just. Truly shocking to me how I don't feel at all sorry for any of them they should have known better. Well and DCG made tons of money on the hoddle right they had investments in every player in this industry they looked very above board they said all the right things about Bitcoin but really when it came down to it Sam and FTX offered them a way to make interest to make more money on their Bitcoin or their theorem or whatever it was. And they sent it over and they got they got caught trying to make the more money it's just like everyone else who was like buy a car take out alone get more money and then but it turned out they bought a huge car they bought like a fleet of cars from this guy. Yeah I just I can't believe that people did see the obvious signs of something shady going on when you just looked at the returns and the you know the yields and stuff like that that they were kind of promising it doesn't take a financial guru or rocket scientist to to notice a trend there and to you know kind of throw up a red flag and be extra cautious so it's just truly shocking to me but I guess in the end of the day maybe it's time that. It weeds out some of the people that aren't making good financial decisions and so far is where they're placing not only their own assets but in you know a lot of cases other people's money as well which is very the really scary part of it so I think it does reinforce though again the founding principles of decentralized stateless currency which is that you know the real magic here the real proof is in the putting of storing your own assets being responsible for your own money and not trying to. Trusting these third parties. Well it's like that old saying where the sheep get fleeced the pigs get slaughtered and the wolves get fed something like that and arc what do you think about FTX secretly backing the block with millions of dollars 15 million dollars. I guess they're just throwing cash around and it was that they're in that position and there's a lot of Bitcoin companies and which have gone to this position where they just they rely on the money going they rely on the number going up so they're kicking the can down the road they make some bad investments they start giving money away they think it's going to bolster the industry and then help their own portfolio and they'll be able to stick and it's the same thing which happened with you know the mount got stuff they think they can dig their way out of it and they just can't let the whole gets bigger the more they try and dig their way out. And yeah I mean I wouldn't necessarily say that these people started off with ill intent and they wanted to fraud everybody they just they were just grossly just miss gross misconduct they they they they just they were given too much power too much money and they didn't have no expertise there's no oversight and there's too much trust in them being the Savon genius kids whereas in reality they're just. Egotists making bad decisions and you know ultimately it's the the people who suffer for that are going to be the the the investors and the people who then use their platform so it's sad is the shame. But imagine if he had gotten Taylor Swift it all would have been fine if only Taylor Swift would have come on board you would have turned this whole thing around really quickly exit question do you think that he'll appear on Tuesday as he said do you think he'll appear on Tuesday as he said do you think he'll appear on the other side of the world. So if you think they'll treat him nicely and eve. Oh yeah the way they're going they're just going to be I mean I don't know about all of them but like certainly some people are going to go quite easy on him if it's anything if the Twitter is anything to go by and whether he turns out in person or not I think it it might be better for him like to stay in the in the Bahamas right and wait to be potentially extra lighted by the long hand and a lot. But yeah so maybe he might he might do it by zoom but I think it's definitely going to be a I think it will be a mixed bag I think some people are going to go hard on him because it's a they he's going to be questioned by multiple people right it's not just one person it's like. It doesn't it like anyone could well loads of people can find questions I am right isn't that is that how it works. I think a series of congressmen will get maybe like three to five minutes each so they'll be different style to each one will be able to say oh that guy went easy that guy doesn't understand anything that lady was nice to him so forth and back and forth. Yeah but yeah I don't think I don't think it'll show up in person I don't know if he could get out of the airport I mean if you if you really think about how much money this people has lost people you wonder how he can just be in the Bahamas yak it up on zoom having a good time doesn't make any sense Mike do pre what do you think will he show up to Congress will they treat him nicely. I have no idea but I mean I agree with Ben I don't see I mean I know that there was a news article about him opening up with draws you know in a little bit early for people in the Bahamas to try to make things right there and you know it's reply to that when people question it was just that you know that they live there and that they need to make sure that they're safe and such. And that's probably the reality of the situation he's wherever he is right now he's probably very much keeping an eye over his shoulder because of you're talking about a lot of a lot of fortunes that were lost here and probably the safest place for him right now is just to remain in the Bahamas and as you say I don't know not only just with people in general trying to trying to get get Adam for you know for looping. You know for losing their money and for playing games with people's futures. I think also that he would risk potentially you know not being able to leave the United States I'm pretty sure that I don't know what regulatory body would even be investigating this but I'm sure there's multiple and I'm sure that he's going to be seeing the inside of a courtroom at some point even if he is ultimately extradited and does remain kind of hiding away over in Bahamas or wherever else he. The team is the safest place to be for him but if I were him I would be very weary of you know walking into the United States right now especially with as many people both from the legal side of things as well as just angry customers so I think it's highly unlikely that he would that he would show up. Yeah I mean I'm still a little bit surprised that in Bahamas that the government you know as we were saying earlier you know well we've made off of some of these other guys why nobody's even brought him in for questioning or anything it seems that he must have broken some regulations even with the more lenient regulations in the Bahamas I'm sure that it's still not legal to you know to fraud people of their money and to mix. Mixed leverage and on leverage traders money and stuff like that so I highly doubt. And the Bahamas they want to have a reputation as a place for crypto businesses so this is a huge fault failing for them by not you know charging him with something not bringing in even if he did pay them off or maybe all that matters is that he paid them off. Yeah well I think that's probably the reality if you're throwing cash around these I imagine he's greased a lot of people in the Bahamas so yeah I think that's probably why there's a little bit of protection there but he's he go get the better of him at some point and he'll go somewhere he shouldn't go and get arrested he'll definitely turn up on zoom at least and try and talk his way out of it. Certainly seems pretty happy to take meetings and talk to everybody which I find to be very surprising because you usually want something like this happens I'm sure he's got some lawyers somewhere that would be advising him that the best thing to do right now is to remain silent because there's not really not much you can usually in these kind of situations there's not much that you can usually explain your way out of it's usually by even answering questions you know without a very well structured well thought and through even written responses kind of put it on the table. You know you're putting yourself at risk of saying something you shouldn't or you know kind of put your foot in your mouth kind of like waiting with coffee Zilla the other day so I'm actually surprised how vocal he is about the whole thing and just the whole complacency of him just kind of chilling and you know smiling and having zoom calls and just saying oh well you know we made a mistake or whatever it's it seems kind of unreal to me how lightly the regulatory bodies as well as just the company as a whole is it's taking this. When you look at me CEO I don't remember his name but came out and said that he couldn't believe the entire mess that he'd seen here and he had worked on previously I believe like the end line stuff and other companies that have been similar positions I just am really surprised that there's not more of a legal spokesperson that's making you know official kind of statements as opposed to these group zoom calls where it's just random people asking him questions kind of off the top of the cusp without any reason. Cusp without any real planned out answer so I'm very surprised that that he's as vocal as he is but I yeah I really don't think that we'll see him in person in in Congress I don't know why he would what his what the advantage that would be because there is no real at this point there's not much explaining that you're going to be able to do to justify the blatant just the blatant way that they mixed funds the even going against throwed agreements and their own terms of service and that kind of stuff so I'm just shocked at how much how vocal he's being in that he's even accessible at all I mean when you look at for example when Mt. Gox went down Carpellis was basically silent for I don't know if it was months but I mean we didn't hear much out of him almost for a couple years before he started posting again and even now he very rarely discusses the civil rehabilitation and the bankruptcy proceedings and that kind of stuff with Mt. Gox so yeah and I'm also just still I mean they're still figured it out but just curious kind of where the money went I mean we talk about these you know 15 million year and there and that kind of stuff but there's a lot more than that missing and I just don't know where all that money went is very confusing to me as well because obviously it's a zero some games so you know for every dollar lost somebody made a dollar where all those dollars end up. I think he said there was no. Go down. So I was just going to say that he keeps on repeating this thing about I've only got 100 K in my bank account and that's another thing like again you watch these like these murder mysteries where the psychopaths talking he repeats a phrase and it's because he's clearly lying about that phrase like you know this guy but apparently created backdoors for people to shuffle their money out in all sorts of different ways so there's no way that he came out of it with just 100 K in his bank account he would have he could have had fake companies you know that you saw the company structures and say as it is like hundreds of companies underneath you know FTX and that sort of group so that he could have funneled it into into all sorts so the idea that he's you know he's this oh I'm this poor guy who can't afford legal representation I think is yeah that's definitely not true he's his death he's hiding a lot of cash under under the bed somewhere I think one of the ideas for where the money went is these large leverage bets where the bet is just out of control and the leverage is thousands X and it goes the wrong way for too long Caroline said she didn't use math and she didn't use stop losses so it's possible that they simply just accidentally whoopsy gamble the money away it also sounds like they had bad investments into random things it sounded like the movie Brewsters millions where they're intentionally trying to lose the money so I don't know what's going on there but I agree with what Mike was saying the advantage to Sam showing up in person is I want to see it on TV that's the advantage is no advantage for Sam it would be horrible I agree with Mike he wouldn't be able to get out of the country presumably the US justice department seems so slow would act actually act if he was there in the country and he does keep talking he did fire his lawyers or as Dan said his lawyers fired him for all of this nonsense talking he has been hurting his case I see two ways that could go one he's incredibly naive slash a con artist and this is the only way you can really react is with more of the BS the bottom here you figure this worked last time I just lather it up to more people it works this time or he has an exit strategy and I think you take care of himself I don't know about that but that's what I would worry because the kind of fantasy land I can I can help this industry like he really he did that interview with step and off list he said at the end he's like Sam kept talking about making the victims whole and his part in that so he wants to be a hero and to come back and to give these people money but if you look at what step and off listed he took his two hours with Sam no put it down to 15 minutes and then after the bit laughed at Sam's idea that he could make victims whole and then the three people on the panel the other anchors also agreed that it seemed delusional and insane like there's no way we can put Humpty Dumpty back together from this and Sam seems to think that he can or he's you know going to kill himself I don't bend what is he's just he's just like to rationalize it's the it's the ego thing he thinks he can talk his way out of it he's he's spent a long time giving lots of people money and then all these people around him are smiling him and thanking him for all the money is giving and always such a and then that just played into his ego and I think you're giving him to which credit for being calculating I think he's just an idiot and he just lost the money on bad bets and gave out a lot of money thinking you know just to make friends basically and yeah he's yeah yeah I don't think he's just calculating because you think he's not doesn't this is an exit strategy or anything he's you'll end up in jail I think people are getting that money back either I do think that the coffee Zilla explanation should be anyone's new explanation of explaining why this is fraud if you deposit a Bitcoin with Sam he's supposed to hold that Bitcoin in a separate account according to that interview what Sam allegedly says that they did was to mix that Bitcoin with other Bitcoin which was for margin trading and lending i.e. all of the customer deposits were being taken from one thing and put into another thing and when it was time to withdraw them as Sam again said on coffee Zilla he withdrew them all from the same pool so anybody who got their transactions in first got their money whereas if you had your money in the customer deposit section it's supposed to stay there if your money is in the margin lending system it's supposed to be landed out he says he violated this that has nothing to do with alameda or any additional things but let's move on although we still this issue persists over everything and now we get to watch him in congress on twos day issue two jack dorsi's block backs Bitcoin mining company that wants to bring 25 cent electricity to rural africa jack dorsi's digital payment company block and at least killions Bitcoin focused venture firm still mark have let a two million dollar seed investment into gridless gridless designs builds and operates Bitcoin mining sites alongside small scale renewable energy producers in rural africa where excess energy is not utilized that's right they're mining Bitcoin with excess energy but now they're trying to do it in africa Mike Dupree what do you think of jack dorsi's plan i'm surprised they even have that big of an infrastructure in africa so far as power is concerned but uh always interesting to see what jack's up to it seems that he always has some interesting can of worms that he's cracking somewhere in al Salvador in africa or wherever else but uh yeah i i guess that's a good plan but i don't again i i don't understand where this extra energy in africa is becoming such a burden that they're able to be mining there also i don't think that the shipping infrastructure or the data center infrastructure and of course mining in high temperature areas uh i i'm just very surprised that doesn't sound like africa would be a very uh good place uh for for Bitcoin mining in general but uh i guess i wish in the best luck with it it sounds more like a help the children project than a business doesn't it Mike it seems like all these things add together and then when you talk about the actual constraints of it the air conditioning electrical power consistency shipping the miners to them access to the internet the actual way of doing this sounds very difficult in practice yeah i don't it doesn't make a lot of logical sense i think there's really a lot more places uh in the world if you're going to look at a global capacity that are just better set up for it where they already have infrastructure in place and they have things such as geothermal mining up in Iceland that they're doing some Bitcoin mining out there because the power generation is really abundant and it's uh you know it's also very green because you're using geothermal electricity which is you know pretty pretty good on the environment uh i also i'm kind of skeptical whenever somebody talks about using like solar and these kind of renewable energies for uh for Bitcoin mining because in general they're just not very dense uh types of uh power generation so i mean uh how many solar panels do you need to run a Bitcoin miner it's got to be uh you're you're talking a lot of them because uh you know mining is very very very energy uh heavy so i i just think that it kind of sounds like a uh kind of a blowing smoke kind of idea you know more than it is any real any real meat to it but uh i guess we'll see but i think there's probably far better things to do in Africa than try to mine Bitcoin but uh it has been Bitcoin Africa week on twitter every tweet i've seen has been Bitcoin Africa everybody's meeting jack in Africa which is it's going on over there right now right or coming up thanks no it's timed with the conference so it's good news by grief mike it doesn't seem like the right project for really mining a little more interesting is the Texas program where they're using the excess gas when they have too much gas and they don't they can't manage it they can use that excess flare gas to mine Bitcoin but then again they think that the Bitcoin miners will turn them off during high power points and i'm not sure about that plan uh Ben arc what do you think of this plan to mine Bitcoin in Africa i think it's very good i spoke to i will be about it um i'm also very skeptical about using renewables uh with Bitcoin mining uh mostly because of the you know we don't you can't you can't use a word in submissive it's um what's the what's the wigs the the renewable crowd use is predictable predictable so the sun comes out and then you can use the solar panels to capture some energy but no the the this the this the scheme which gridless is doing is in Africa you have a small hydro plan and that's small hydro plan um generate electricity for a town and they have lots of these little hydro plants they've got lots of you know rivers and and and where they can you know attach one of these hydro plants so what gridless are going in doing is they're going into these hydro plants and saying look we will bolster your hydro plant we'll make it more productive we'll build in for some infrastructure however we're also going to stick this container full of miners next to it and uh we're going to take the excess energy which is generated so we're going to create enough energy for your town but then we're going to because we're now running double capacity we could run two towns we're going to use like extra capacity for mining Bitcoin because it's hydro um it's it's fairly constant so your base load is fairly constant with solar you do have this intermittent stuff whereas with hydro uh particularly where these hydro plants are based um it's it's fairly steady so it brings the the cost of electricity way down and uh they benefit from you know mining Bitcoin using that the hydro plant and then after a certain amount of years then the uh communities can then use that excess that energy to power more townships but there there's I think there's a couple of examples where they've taken one of these hydro plants which is powering a small town and it's now powering three small towns and that's been made a profitable and sustainable exercise by attaching these extra containers of Bitcoin miners um I was very skeptical but the one I spoke to I hope he'd been out there and he's a good dequeye that the guys um uh spearheading the Fediment project um he he changed my mind I was you know he I spoke to him in Bitcoin Amsterdam and he he spoke at me for like half an hour and and he was just so passionate and um and he was saying look this is this actually works and it's it's working uh as as a way of um you can the the gridless are very honest as while they're saying look we're not a Bitcoin mining operation we're just using this tool so we can build these hydro plants and make them more sustainable um and uh as a way for us to make the infrastructure and the hydro plant more efficient and better and scale it up um so it's I think it's it is quite an exciting use of renewables because people benefit they get electricity and I think that is one of the more sustainable ideas for using renewables with Bitcoin mining um and actually uh use of renewables with Bitcoin mining is on the rise there was a um Cambridge did a report on it and I think it was it's quite a large percentage it was I think thirty-six percent or something of Bitcoin mining uh is done with renewables and then there was another report which came up fairly recently by another guy uh who who went and um uh I think they I think he he said it was probably closer more to more like 40 percent, 45 percent using renewables um so for grid stabilization the flaring stuff in the US of uh of burning the gas flares to and using that um uh power source to then run some miners uh if you've got like a free electricity then you don't have to have those because one of the biggest um one of uh uh uh uh uh problems with mining Bitcoin on renewables uh well mining Bitcoin is you need to have your miners on all the time in order for them to make any money and then if you turn them off when the sun's not shining or whatever then your miners aren't going to make any money but if your base load of electricity is is basically free then your miners don't need to be on anywhere near as much uh so uh Troy Cross, Margo uh they're doing some great work on this uh there's some there's some there's some yeah there's as an example of using renewables with Bitcoin mining I think this is very promising actually and this is probably why a lot of investor a couple of million dollars into it so it's yeah it's quite it's good to see if only solar panels worked at night for this is a solar side show so there will possibly but uh no it also omis a friend of the show met him in London and Elise Killian as well also met at several of the conferences uh Dan Eve, what do you think if only solar panels worked at night uh Ben's turned me around it sounds like a good plan now I agree with Mike though the logistics are tough well I think it's still ultimately really really positive but in the article it's saying and there's always this this meme that floats around like saying if you had if you put this like this patch of I don't know how big it was it's not very big but in the in the you know in the middle of the desert in Africa it would provide uh you know electricity for the world and and the the reason why that's more reliable in the Sahara is you know there's a lot less cloud than there would be so it's kind of as as Ben was saying it's less reliable predictable and in a lot in in that place there like you know there's not lots of clouds and not lots of rain so um to kind of take away the the the sunshine from the solar panels and I think the else calls there's there's like ten terawatts of solar capacity um in Africa 350 gigawatts of hydrogen 110 gigawatts of wind so that it really does seem like it's time to start taking advantage of of the sun shining so hardcore you know and and and actually you know using that to to provide energy um you know they're saying in this article they're not using bitcoin for bitcoin mining bitcoin they're mining it is uh I think the quote is like a mean a means to an end right it's like um the they they want bitcoin to to to to really a cheap power to the masses rather than just mining it to help secure um right mining it to help secure the network so that's ultimately very positive especially if it does really post to the electricity infrastructure and they say that in again in the article that look um it's like 30% of of school kids still still do their uh homework in it using under candlelight pretty much and so you know it really does mean there is a need for for for for electricity in that part of the world and if you can subsidize it by using bitcoin then that's that's an incredible thing the only downside is that um I just think to myself like if if it comes to turning miners off at not making money the people running them are like well we could have a blackout because we are making lots of money mining bitcoin right I mean everyone's dealt with blackouts for so long it wouldn't really matter that we just didn't you know give any electricity out tonight because we could just mine a bit more bitcoin I think that that could lead to a conflict unless there's um you know there's a lot of kind of uh dare I say regulation on how that electricity is distributed uh to make sure that it does go to the right causes um then I think that that using bitcoin as a means to to to really boost and bootstrap the rollout of wide scale electricity and renewable electricity at that to Africa's an an incredible thing and I think um yeah I really hope to see it being successful I think as well that these uh so sorry I think as well these hydro plants are owned by kind of the local community under a kind of cooperative thing um so that it's less likely I think it's like a relationship they have with the um it's like a business relationship where you know this amount of electricity will be used for the mining uh so I think it will be hard for the incentives because I see what you're saying like just turn off the town one of the one of the power lines fell down but the power lines that connected the bitcoin miners still worked well this is I mean this is the point these things this isn't Africa's not one big connected grid it's lots of little grids where they have a little hydro plant and it just powers a town um so you know the the wires going to the town will continue to operate so it's uh and uh the the town's folk I'm sure will go and uh you know that I don't think the mind of the people bringing the mining operation will uh we'll want to anger the town folk and take the electricity away now like pretty soon you're gonna need a military and then you're gonna need a government and then this whole thing's gonna happen. It's nice, yeah, it's nice, yeah. I love the idea unfortunately as I was going to say a minute ago we still come back to this this boring idea from westwing that Africa needs roads Africa needs basic infrastructure that would make it faster to ship the miner from point A to point B I don't know of massive road infrastructure freeway projects I don't know if they're going to do it maybe they'll skip to flying cars like India's skip to cell phones but infrastructure roads what's the real advantage also to for I mean from a business perspective for the miners to do it in Africa I mean sure this whole like philanthropy cola you know like we're gonna do it to help everybody out kind of stuff sounds great so I mean I'm sure through that they're also you know having less problems with import taxes less problems with you know tax and general regulations of that kind of stuff but what would you know what would be the reason to try and generate Bitcoin in that kind of environment versus elsewhere you know what's the motivating factor I'm I like just do the words I'm a fan talk but to me it sounds like they're doing some kind of thing where they can get a bigger reactor and they could power more towns if they had this extra slice of Bitcoin mining money it sounds like a buy a reactor program or buy it yeah they have the hydro plant I haven't gone off money to make it bigger and then and maintain it and then you know they have issues with the hydro plant being sustainable so that and by by also mining Bitcoin they're then able to build a more resilient and more get more power generation from the hydro in which they're pulling electricity from so they're incentivized to work with this company or this operation to put these miners in place um yeah it's it's a funny thing it's like there's this magic customer that you could always hire up who always wants more energy and all these different places are figuring out ways that they can work with that customer but then there's that always problem other problem where that guy always wants more energy like he never stops so we'll have to see how this turns out it's a fun fun thought experiment but we're running out of time check out worldcrypto network.com we've got 3,022 videos also a great time to give the show a thumbs up I'd say they're about 40 or 50 people who push the thumbs up button and there's maybe 500 people that watch this show so join the 40 or 50 push the thumbs up button it's free and issue three just eight percent of Americans now have a positive view of crypto currencies according to a CNBC survey it's down from 20 from 19% in March which jump to 43% up from 23% Ben arc everyone hates Bitcoin and Bitcoiners they hate crypto and cryptocurrency they don't understand it other people made money off it we don't have a lot of time but really quick what do you think about we're down to 8% I think 8% is an amazing number considering where we are price-wise I think these are eight this is 8% of the population who are like Huddler motherfuckers and they see the technology for what it is which is great right the ditch they are that extra a couple of 10 to percent who you don't see the Bitcoin technology for what it is and for its for its you know ability to to create much better world moving forward so yeah it's a good number 8% is a great number for for where we are currently in our market all the all the other focal come on board I'm sure as the price goes back up eventually but for where we are 8% great good number Dan Eve Ben has incredible optimism the 8% are crypto strong I miss the 25% what do you think yeah no I think bear in mind is a bear market where we're back down to like you know floating above a level that was lower than the 2017 peak it's not it's not too bad right and the one thing is about this survey is that they said it's a survey of drumroll please 800 Americans nationwide now Americans got like a what a population of 300 and something million right so obviously it's an extremely small population and it's also of NBC news specifically so it does depend on if NBC news isn't it doesn't run positive that many positive articles on crypto then it's likely to be skewed so that that kind of plays into it but obviously crypto yeah okay a PC Moogle good point crypto bad bad to say crypto but Bitcoin right but Bitcoin is being dragged into the the whole you know crypto mess that that's happened with FTX but yeah I think it's very it's a good position I think to be in right now considering we are in a bear market I'm with Ben I think this is positive and as we come out of it as you know things probably we'll get a bit worse probably more ripples from the from the the the SBF FTX disaster and more companies going down more you know more angry people taken to the to the streets but the fact is that Bitcoin still rocking strong it's like you know it's still got the highest hash rate or the most secure network on earth I don't know what the hash rate is doing right now it is at 278 exa hash's which is pretty much within about 5% of all time high within within a couple of percent of all time high so right now although the prices where it is the network is almost the strongest as it's ever been bar to specific individual days where it peaked over the current hash rate so yeah great position to be in I'm optimistic like Ben don't get me sad about the 8% strong here Dan Dan's doubting the poll but for right now the poll is the truth Mike DePree what do you think about our 8% remaining or looking at the other way 8% strong I have no idea what percentage of people take polls on CNBC these days but I don't I don't know how reliable I'm gonna how many exos I'm gonna put in the basket of the accuracy of a CNBC poll but I think that number sounds pretty weak and I think additionally that things like this FTX crash well a couple of things going on here I think that you get a lot of people that are irritated that they didn't get in on the gold rush kind of feeling and then you've got a lot of people that were just you know jumping on board because everybody else was on the train and they wanted some too so you've got people who missed out on making money and you got people who lost money because they didn't really know what they were doing and you've got a lot of negative publicity and press especially around the kind of people that we have with this SBF guy you know when they're weird sex capades and just the unregulated nature of everything so I mean it's not surprising to me that your average Joe who doesn't really know much about crypto wouldn't be too much too much entertained with the recent with the recent debacle of craziness going down so I mean that's not that surprising to me but I think that polls a little bit inaccurate I think that there's more and more people using crypto now than there ever have been I mean we know that for a fact and I think that the market is maturing nicely and that there are I mean we only look at these things that blow up but you know in a bad way but there's lots of also very positive projects right now in the crypto space and I think that when we do take these you know when a price does pull back quite a bit like this it's actually very good for the for crypto as a whole because it kind of weeds out a lot of the people that got lucky and a lot of the people that don't really know what they're doing and are you know just kind of playing games and trading and this kind of stuff versus people that are actually building value and creating things that will benefit the crypto industry and the future of crypto as a whole or Bitcoin as a whole in a way that you want to look at it so I guess in in a way sentence I'd say that I'm not too worried about CNBC's polls and 8% sounds low but I'm not nervous and I'm you know I think we've got a lot of great potential still and a lot of interesting things to come in the near future. 8% strong and I don't get any into the all Bitcoin versus crypto thing now but I do think crypto has been used as a generic for Bitcoin and the industry and I think they're going to keep using it so the battle to separate Bitcoin from crypto will fail because Bitcoin uses a crypto cryptocurrency that uses cryptography it's hard to define Bitcoin without the word crypto but let's move on to yeah it's a whole other thing let I want them to fight in the chat moving on to issue four Metallica warns its fans about a crypto scam there you go nothing to do with us after a fan lost more than 25,000 in Bitcoin oops on a fake Metallica themed YouTube channel obviously we've talked about these scams before we've talked about Elon Musk scams we've talked about SpaceX scams Microsoft other people Steve Dobbs coming back from the dead willing to double your Bitcoin if all you will do is send your Bitcoin to them as we know Bitcoin is one way money so the Metallica fan who sent them 25,000 in Bitcoin is never going to see it again what I think is interesting about this story is the expansion from nerds and nerd culture scams to general culture scams Metallica has a new album coming out that's why they chose Metallica like to pre what do you think about Metallica and the scams expanding into new areas Metallica and decentralization weren't they one of the first people back in the Napster days to actually go after people for sharing their their music absolutely and it read to one of the best internet animations it was a flash animation Metallica bad Napster good Metallica or Napster bad Metallica good that was it yeah exactly I you know I kind of I find it hard to really have sympathy for people who are so dumb with their money especially with the FTX stuff especially these smarter firms and stuff that were crypto you know centered firms that still got fleeced I think it's just important that people wake up and start paying attention to their financial you know future and not be so reliant upon the banks the governments and the regulators to you know be there and hold their hand the whole time because there's a very intrinsic cost built into trusting and relying upon these traditional financial systems to protect your wealth and so you know I feel bad for the people yeah that sucks man you know don't be so stupid next time I guess would be my best my best advice I think that people need to grow up and stop just following hopping on trains and throwing their money where everybody all does and just kind of you know gambling and actually to take charge of their money and to be responsible for it so I think it's kind of a blessing in disguise that money is getting kind of removed from those that are not being smart with it especially I you know it kind of hurts a lot more when it's fans that are getting fleeced and they're trying to support music I really do believe that you know we got to support artists and such but you know with the FTX stuff for example these large firms losing their money man I kind of don't I don't feel sorry for them at all I think that they got what they deserved and it's about time that you know some people that are riding fine lines and playing these games got burnt so I you know that extends down to fans as well and the people that just aren't paying attention to what they're doing and you see that's a lot I mean we had back in the ATM space as well where people are getting scammed and you go to people and you tell them you know when they're trying to use the machine you're like hey you're definitely getting robbed you're gonna get scammed and they still want to insist that they know what they're doing and insist that you know everybody thinks that they know something that everybody else doesn't this is one of the things that when you know somebody that doesn't know much about crypto ask me you know should they invest in Bitcoin should they invest in this should they invest in that and it's one of the first points that I always make to them is not to forget that it's all a zero sum game and you know when you're trading or you're gambling or you're you know even just using crypto to pay people there is you have to remember that for every dollar somebody makes somebody else loses a dollar and before you start playing games make sure that you're confident that you're knowing enough and that you're smart enough to ensure that you're not going to be the sucker on the other end of that trade so I hope that people learn a good lesson I think it's a valuable lesson to learn and it's something that's going to come along with crypto for the future which is that hey you're responsible for your own assets now so don't be trusting these shady exchanges that you know just brand new and going crazy in the Bahamas and don't be trusting magic the gathering card exchanges with your retirement funds and this kind of stuff so part of me says hey that kind of sucks I wish that Metallica had gotten the money although I have my own issues with the way Metallica went after people in those Napster days but at the same time I you know I kind of I think it important that we talk about it and that people hear that it happened and that hopefully all those people that invested or not invested but that donated money or what it bought an album or whatever it is they did with the with that 25 million I hope they all tell their friends and family hey be careful when you use Bitcoin being fragile your own money it's it's a great thing in the capacity that we're not inflationary currency and that we're not debt-based and that in the future Bitcoin is going to or you know historically has always gone up and become more valuable as opposed to any fiat currency in the world where it's always become you know inflated and become worth less and less as time goes by but that hey you know you got to so we got a powerful tool here a powerful currency but hey you've got to really be careful so I mean I just recommend and one of the unfortunate things is is that when people do get scam and people do lose money usually they're not going to be the ones that are most vocal about telling their friends and family about hey fuck you know I try to do this with Bitcoin and I lost all my money usually only hear about it when people make money and then you know everybody else tries to get it on the same train so hopefully people share their experience with using Bitcoin and with these kind of things with their friends and family and that in general the greater population of the world can become smarter with managing their own money and being responsible for their own money so maybe the the positive that we can see out of this is that maybe some people will educate their friends and family and people will learn a lesson and become more in control and capable of paying attention to what they're doing and less reliance upon third parties to have their best interest in mind which as we all know normally they don't I think you're right Mike it is amazing to think about the reality of this this guy had 25 thousand dollars in Bitcoin ready to go it wasn't in a hardware wallet it wasn't locked in Coinbase vault or any kind of controlled system it was ready to go so I don't know what he was going to do with it probably trading in and out of Bitcoin but in this case when Metallica offered him I assume 2x maybe 3x return on his Bitcoin he didn't just send some of it he sent all of it because if you're going to double your money why not double all of your money why not send it all so it's just a classic thing that happens to people the excitement the potential of getting double or triple or even 8x his money no matter what the lie was that got him to send the impulses were generated Metallica was going to pay him it made sense in his mind for 30 seconds and it's all going a little bit of logic sometimes goes a long way and just you know I hear all the time these people that are getting involved in these trading groups and are following telegram chats where everybody's telling everybody what to trade and this kind of stuff and I just don't understand how people really can be so dumb with your money I you know I've made stupid investments many times in my life but I look at some of these things and it's just like you know you're kidding me I mean maybe that person didn't deserve to have that Bitcoin I don't know it's not like it was really stolen from him and it's not like it was somebody else that was doing the trading on his behalf and that he was lied to through an agreement like with FTX or with Bunk Ox and this kind of thing but it was literally you know it wasn't a hack it was literally just somebody who made a conscious financial decision with with the information that seemed completely unrealistic from the beginning and they you know if you're don't know it's hard to feel sorry for them if it's too good to be true it probably is Ben Arck what do you think about the guy who gave his money away to Metallica do we do we know exactly why gave his money away to Metallica was there a promise of making more money to give him twenty five million then you get to hang out it's hard to figure no I think it was pretty straightforward generally these scams promise to double or triple your money all you have to do is send it to them and they will send it back to you sometimes they go as far as if you send them like five bucks they'll send you they'll send you ten bucks back to you know juice the line but after you put in you know a couple thousand they just keep the money hopefully hopefully they had the money to burn and it's just some rich idiot hopefully you know and it's it's but I agree with the pre-hearsing there's just a lot of margin for people just to learn and get that at not getting scammed and I think people are more and more as time works unlike you know the good the good data is rising to the top and people are becoming more resilient to being scammed through something like Bitcoin and you know there's only so many times where you can run the same scam before it becomes sort of a common knowledge thing like the Nigerian prince or whatever else or now you have like the Metallica scam and and then it's press about it and then people learn and it's I wrestle with regulation because I don't want vulnerable people because usually it's vulnerable people who get ripped off in any scam and I don't want the vulnerable people to be ripped off but I do think that you know those people are made vulnerable partly by regulations so having some consequences and having you know some more autonomy is a good thing and those lessons need to be learned and it's just a case of education and making sure that you know people know and are best armed to not get scammed but yeah I mean I don't know the completons and outs of why exactly they sent 25,000 dollars to this Metallica scam whether it was just we were double your money I kind of envisioned it being more of like a super fun scam so send us some money and you get to hang out with us or something and then I imagine some like kid getting on his desk computer and spending his desk Bitcoin on trying to you know hook up with Metallica or something whatever so yeah people people well well as humans are very good at learning stuff and humans will get better in where regulation doesn't work as well as it used to then people will get much better enough to spot scams what they are. Well unfortunately the regulation would have to come to YouTube because that's the company that's hosting the scams is YouTube and it's that power of the QR they put the QR code on the the money can jump right through the screen and Dan you've seen these happen before is it like I'm saying it's just a double your money triple your money it's an excitement feeling yeah yeah it's well it was cool so it was so it was called Metallica 2x.net and so it was literally as dumb as like you can do it like we're doing a world wide crypto offering we're going to give you to celebrate our 25 new albums and we'll give you twice the crypto you send us and people were like oh my god that's amazing and they literally just sent their Bitcoin to them which is just insane if you ask me. Now it says according to this article that that the only one person in the US is actually like I'd feel pretty I feel like a complete twat if that was me but like only one person's come forward to the police to actually raise it as a as a crime according to this article so that's so I'd be thinking I like you know I really could fell for that one hookling in Sinker but I do think there is a bit of a problem with the world generally we seem to be making things more about trust rather than people critically thinking for themselves and that has a problem with scams and and even with the original like the you know the the prints email scams they've they've evolved and people still fall for them like the latest one I read about that a lady in in in Japan sent 4.4 million yen the police investigated it they sent which is about 30,000 dollars to a Nigerian who claimed he was lost in space and needed a ticket home on a soya's. He's like oh my god and there's even snopes covered this one they're like the snopes article literally is is a Nigerian astronaut lost in space a Nigerian astronaut lost in space and he's $3 million $3 million dollars to get back home fact check by snopes scare so you know surely you just you can fact check that in your brain like there's there's there's I'm with with Mike here there's there's personal responsibility and I know it's really difficult you get caught up in the moment you know it's their favorite band and they're thinking well Metallica did like charity stuff so maybe they're just going to give people money but no one gives money away like they're or if they do it's you know it's not in that way it's just not like someone going up double your money from over the other side of the internet and the you whilst YouTube should be doing more to censor it I know the idea of regulating it so really difficult thing because you could argue that the email email hosts should censor and remove any email that suggests that someone's an Nigerian prince and then how a Nigerian royalty going to communicate with each other if their emails keep on getting deleted and they're not actually trying to scam anyone you know but you know it's it's I think there is a thing of personal responsibility companies are a lot better about this now like you know my bank all the time funnily enough sends me a message saying about how crypto is you can get scammed easily in crypto so companies are getting better at warning people about these things but it's really you know it there is a lot of it's down to personal responsibility and making letting people know that you know getting making money isn't like really easy and maybe you see these kind of tiptockers and stuff like that where people think oh they're rich they must you know they got rich so easily but like getting rich comes usually comes with a long and hard work you know it's not just by sending money to something and getting two x back and then repeating until you're a gazillion and that's what people need to get like you know to learn about because otherwise we're just going to be in this you know endless loop of of I don't know of just I don't know just yeah nothing we're going to be spoon fed everything right and and even when you're spoon fed everything you're still going to have people that that literally screw up because they'll be eating everything that's on a plate and they'll get scammed by whatever surface it is whether it's you know door to door whether it's a salespeople like doing scams whether it's the email scams fishing and some of them are really really like really intricate there was a company I worked for they faked being one of the legal representatives in order to try and get informational emerge and this was a really sophisticated scam by a fishing but we had our wits about us and I was the one that's what they actually an email for when I was like that's dodgy and and so yeah like you know that's it plack plan foiled but but then again not everyone you know knows how to watch out for in their email so it's a difficult thing personal responsibility definitely but at the same time you know it's it's everyone knows someone who's done enough to do it I think we're going to see tons more of the scams I think it's exciting the way they used Metallica and the new album to power the scam I think we can say every movie released from now on every album release every major video game relief should have one of these scams all you have to do is get a video of the person talking put your little banner at on there put your QR code and people just give you money I also think one of Dan's big points right there is if Metallica is so rich they can just give the money away people believe that when we all know Metallica got rich by not giving the money away that's the first rules becoming rich right you don't just give it away you save every penny and I think they forget that and they're like oh they're just being so generous they're just going to send me money because they don't care anymore and and if it wasn't for them being so stingy and chasing people about Napster they wouldn't have had one of my favorite like South Park Quake's ever which is that's Lars Ulrich the drummer from Metallica he wanted a gold pleaded shark tank bar installed right next to the swimming pool but because of people like you he has to wait a few months now and they slayed them on Napster too the animation I referred to is just so good Napster Napster bad Metallica good and he talks about how Metallica spent upwards of 24 to 48 hours writing this song and Jason Newstedt set himself on fire and our drummer just got a gold plated Ferrari and you know they're like we need this money you can't be downloaded but you are going to jail because you downloaded in its sleep into its sleeps on Napster you're going to get in trouble in jail and it was a whole thing that period where during those MTV Music Awards and they had Sean Parker Napster the two Napster guys commented they were the guy and they were they were doing the comparing for MTV Music Awards and they both had Metallica T-shirts on because Metallica was soon with the time but yeah they Metallica on the wrong side of Facebook back then that's for sure and and this one this has nothing to do with Metallica it's not their fault these people got scammed all they do is always that fault fucks I stuff fault uh uh Ben Blaine's Metallica moving on issue five early Bitcoin pioneer Ian Freeman goes to trial in New Hampshire Ian and the other people behind free talk live some of the New Hampshire free state people were allegedly facing eight counts related to tax evasion and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business they had several Bitcoin ATMs they had no licenses they had no business they allegedly were just taking the money Dan Eve we've covered this before before obviously they're against kind of government and the whole idea of government and accountability uh what do you think will happen in the Ian Freeman trial well at the very least um I mean you know I uh I think it's admirable what like that he's uh that he's like standing by his ground so like I think the other ones played made plea deals everyone else that's involved it sounds like his ex-girlfriend who's now married to someone else uh actually um turned against him and she's we're gonna be testifying against him and whilst they made plea deals he's saying look I've done I've done nothing wrong and that includes uh I think the fact that he hasn't paid tax since 2000 2008 so he's like hardcore libertarian he's you know he's like really saying you know it's in the constitution technically if you really like this that I don't have to pay tax um but um uh yeah yeah it does seem like he's he's probably gonna end up let's face it he's gonna probably end up with a bigger sentence than uh sandbag when free and the the sheer scale of the operation I think it was 10 10 million um that he was associated with in terms of um not taxing agent but um unlike unlike it's money transmitting just at the volume of 10 million uh where a sandbag and free you know is involved and that is a 10 billion 10 billion dollars plus let alone if you if you think about the ripple the the the ripples of and the other companies it brought down um that that operation um but I think Ian unfortunately is gonna get more time um than uh sandbag and freed um he openly admits that he he doesn't want to pay taxes so that's you know they've got him on that straightaway um they're not gonna let that go lightly um they confiscated a bunch of bitcoin I think it was in the in the hundreds um so you know it's probably I don't know if you get fined as well as you know as as actually going going in jail but I think it's not looking it's not looking um not looking good I think for his situation unfortunately um I think one of the other problems is that bitcoin went up too much for Ian and them they were holding on to hundred bitcoin coins and so forth uh which are astronomical even to someone who got in relatively early like myself um Mike to pre you know a little bit about running bitcoin ATMs wouldn't it be great if you could just run them without a license and keep some of the money and give some of the money to someone else and just you know kind of do whatever you want which allegedly seems to be uh what they were operating yeah I mean I am partially libertarian and uh you know I think a lot of us uh that watch this show uh agree that you know the taxation is getting a little bit out of control especially in the United States and uh I'm not a true believer in regulators having too much to do with our money but um you know it is kind of a necessary evil and some capacities I just think it should be more limited than it currently is that being said uh it's that's an advised you know many other activists both in the tax and regulatory stuff as well as uh back when I used to be involved in the medical marijuana industry and that kind of stuff uh really the way to make change is uh not going to be from a jail cell so I mean if you want to if you really want to make change bring people together and you know work on changing the rules and changing the the the fact of way that things work not just by blatantly violating it because you don't agree with it so I mean if you don't agree with something change the rules don't just blatantly ignore it and be so vocal about it because yeah once you're once they take your funds and they throw you in a jail cell then there's very little you're going to be able to do to ever actually progress any of these uh legislations and regulations and that kind of stuff so um I wish them the best to luck in everything and uh you know it's it's always sad to see people that are true believers and people who are out there actually building products and building services that actually did benefit the crypto community as a whole it's sad to see them get locked up and to see them going through all this trouble and get their hard earned money taken away from them but it's uh again kind of hard to be you know feel bad for somebody that was being so blatant in their disrespect for the um for the laws whether they agree with them or not so uh yeah I wish him the best to lock and uh you know it's sad to see that uh everything went to nothing but you know we'll see how it goes and uh let's also acknowledge that in an in-fremend did a lot of good work with free talk live he turned a lot of people on to bitcoin a lot of people got their first bitcoins because of in they heard about it on the show they got incredible deals on bitcoin like a dollar 30 dollars like incredible deals on early bitcoin and they owe it to free talk live and in-fremend so respect to that uh there's even even there though he he was very extreme in his libertarianism and I believe that he exited free talk live under bad circumstances uh with disagreements over how uh the age of consent basically uh young girls should have the right to make their own choice uh at what age and you know if to a certain kind of person everything is debatable and uh I think he got in trouble for that debate as well uh Ben Arck what do you think about Ian Freeman his chances at trial and of course his contributions to bitcoin yeah it's sad mine I mean like disregarding what have we said about age of consent whatever like when it comes to bitcoin um he was providing good services uh local bitcoin straighter and um from what I can tell read in the article from what's lawyers saying that you know he did do some KYC with with customers and then if there was ever a customer who was trying to buy or deal with bitcoin for illicit purposes and he was made aware of it then you didn't deal with them there was an entrapment um part of the case where I think some some some some police guys they tried to wait they said we're herendilism we want to sell 20 000 dollars worth of bitcoin or something so when i've been anywhere near you this is what i do and then they dropped it into one of the ATMs or something so it's he tried his best to to not um you know to operate um in as moral a way as possible but then at the same time obviously he's not paying his taxes and you know it's the old adish death and taxes just fucking pay a taxes man it's not worth it like like the priest says like challenge these things but challenge them in such a way that you will continue to be free and and be able to challenge them um uh because you know you're just to they'll make a scapegole you that they want they want their their tax dollar they want their tax money hopefully they had i think out of the 25 charges 18 of the charges have been dropped and then he got 70 he's got seven charges left um and now he's going to court hopefully some of the other charges will be kicked out of court i think so far he's facing a max of 70 years so if he has some of the charges kicked out then hopefully maybe you'll just get you know five years or something some sort of you know i'm a much smaller um sentence because you said my all in all before i can tell a decent guy like doing decent things building decent services and trying to operate in a moral way um there's some good question marks like i i think there was one of the the um uh one of the the the the main points against simmers as a lady who got ripped off like think it's 755,000 which went through his local bitcoins um and the the the the woman who's being ripped off it was issues being scammed some some some scam issues and then the uh their argument as well you know the bank allowed within a very short period of time and less than a week for 755,000 grams of our bank account like surely that should have fled some problems and maybe it shouldn't just be in freemen who's up there on in you know in the docs maybe it should be the the bank manager who allowed that 755,000 to leave this woman's account and go to local bitcoins so yeah i wish them all the best hopefully you know the the i mean it's inevitably going to face some jail time over the tax stuff but hopefully it's it's it's much smaller than the the 70 years which you could get my sentence for now good luck to the dude well as hunter as Thompson said many fine books have been written in prison and i'd also give that right advice to the dread pirate robberts as Ben was saying it sounds like Ian did try to run a clean market with his bitcoin eight gems as the dread pirate robberts tried to run a clean drug market he wouldn't allow certain things on there and all this he ran a nice market but at the end of the day he ran a drug market and as Ben and many others have said uh Ian didn't pay his taxes so he's going to lose by default he's he's starting off in a bad position against the government here uh let's see where's our next article we're almost out of time but we've got one more article issue six tim draper predicts that bitcoin will reach two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a coin next year despite the ftx collab he says the dam is about to break and he predicts that women will join crypto causing arise and saving the day no matter what about the ftx collapse of course tim draper also predicted the bitcoin would be two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at the end of this year which is right now uh he also bought the silk road bitcoins which should have been saved to build new Smithsonian new universities or missing museums in the united states mic to pre what do think about tim draper's prediction two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a bit coin sounds good to be i'm gonna go get some more i'll wait for it to drop a little bit lower first though Ben arc what do you think about tim draper a little positive news to end the show i think that's you know that's on point like so that's where we're targeting for when it next goes up is sort of that two hundred fifty thousand dollar range um sounds crazy for where we are but it always sounds crazy for my department of the price uh but yeah like historically if you look up whenever bitcoin is pumped and it's if you just take those pumps and you just superimpose it as to where we are now like it's possible like we get to reach from five thousand dollars a bit coin people are far more educated now than ever have been there's so much talent in bitcoin i've been to a budget conferences uh over the past year even though the bitcoin price has been dropping and just the just the the the level of knowledge people have about bitcoin now is so much more superior than it used to be and uh just the amount of services and and actually people accepting bitcoin websites accepting bitcoin uh there's more and more don't we we're in my little local village i've got like there's about six businesses which you're really keen on accepting bitcoin and using bitcoin so it's it's and you know the people who know those businesses are interesting bitcoin despite the price so yeah i think i think this this eight percent fucking hotler bad rock motherfuckers i think they can it's a good place to start from man and i can i can see tim draper's dream coming true he's right he wasn't right for this year but he'll be right for next year i'm sure Dan Eve the sky's the limit ending with optimism yeah i think so i end go right i'm still short term i'm still short term a bit in negative Nancy or necky nelly whichever but the you know if it's the end of the year historically bitcoin kind of doesn't do that good at the end of the year you know there's people like selling for taxes and stuff like that and so i think that there's probably going to be another little drop again as part of the ripples from the the whole sbsks thing um a bit of a mouthful that but uh ultimately that's the that's where we're heading right the the scarcity of bitcoin is its power and um there's still money being printed out of thin air and it's going to continue there's there's not really any letting up on that on that monetary policy or really admitting that it's it's actually bad for the economy so i think we're just history's just going to keep on repeating itself um i'd like to i'd like to think that the cycles at the the harvining is still going to pay a big part of that so whether that you know that 250k prediction it'd be great if it is next year but it kind of you know it kind of would be seemed like it would be more likely placed at the end of 2024 um you know after the next harvining rather than before it but if it does go before the next harvining to 250k and all that hype is surrounding it when the harvining happens then it'll be an ultra mega ding dong pump uh when the harvining happens because everyone will already be hyped up because bitcoin's 250k then the harvining's going to happen now be like oh my god it's 250k on steroids because there's harvining now so um yeah i'd like i'd like it to be next year but i don't think it'll be for a little while it's almost too much optimism in this room but going back to earth sam testifies on Tuesday exit question predicting against the bitcoin predictor ball the baldest source of truth in the bitcoin industry might do pre the price of bitcoin this time next week higher or lower lower dan eve despite you to be said my thing lower than arc higher gonna get a pump higher and arc says higher everyone else says lower let's ask the ball remember shaking it could cause bubbles will the price of bitcoin be higher this time next week yes yes unequivocal yes from the ball the ball has spoken but we're running out of time dan eve do you have a prediction or a story of the week go ahead um my prediction is that is that um um okay okay i'm gonna go i i i think out of the blue maybe uh i think oh the when is the sbf thing sorry there when's he actually in court right when's he in parliament or whatever is with parliament same Tuesday that's but it's unclear it's you'd him first right he'd be your first witness okay so there would be potential then after that if that goes completely tits up so my prediction is that he's actually gonna get like he's gonna get charges put against him because i reckon he's gonna stuff it up while he's in there so i think as a consequence of that he'll have charges against him but ultimately still think he'll end up wiggling his way out of it incredible wishful thinking mike do pre prediction or a story of the week i yeah i just think that there's gonna be a lot more not just with ftx but just in general a lot more hesitancy now if people uh uh getting in and i think that we're already kind of in a bare market so i i just think it's gonna go down a bit more uh for the next few months uh maybe even below 10K but we'll see then arc prediction or a story of the week i just gonna say i think i think the pre-s backdrop is just the for the years that the winning backdrop if we had an award for the winning backdrop and i'm so jealous of that that sun and sea and it's an excellent green screen goodness me this week a high quality green screen you got like a miniature in the background of the maca bull co um so the story of the week so cali is one of the main alambites developers he created the cashew extension for alambits and it's the easiest way this ever existed to create a e-cashment so that the minute itself which you create you send sats to it and then it gives you an e-cash which you can then send and redeem for sats so you can actually pay lightning in voice free exciting so it's cashew um you can actually play around on the demo service if you go to lecion.alambits.com and you just enable the cashew extension and then start playing around with it it's it's really exciting it's you if you think david charme you wrote his paper bucket back in 1982 and now four years later we've now finally got like the easiest way it's like click click click i have a charme in e-cashment fantastic it's pegged to bitcoin it's it's it's an e-cash which is redeemable from this alambit service which you're using um uh so yeah so it's very exciting uh well done cali uh to me he he's forever immortalized in the uh the cypapot call of fame um but it's it's it's quite an achievement so that's the story of the week was was that excellent excellent story of the week that it sounds great and we're going to do our year ends spectacular in just a few weeks December 22nd and a spoiler on the inside track to be bitcoin or of the year other of course then you know mad bitcoins who's always bitcoin or the year Ben arc with ln bits really knocking it out of the park there traveling around given these seminars teaching people how to build the little boxes like people all over the world know Ben now and we're just totally impressed with your work Ben you're doing great stuff at ln bits and just appreciate having you on the show and stuff thank you baby awesome there we go and we're out of time uh we'll try to do better next time uh but until then bye bye