The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists. Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one. Bitcoin price could reach $45,000 due to the rising gold price. The price of gold is once again above $2,000 and ounce. And J.P. Morgan's analysts say this could cause the price of Bitcoin to rise all the way to $45,000, almost erasing the previous bear market. Thomas Hunt, what do you think about the price? Of Bitcoin. Well, I'm a really bad person to ask about this because I always, I'm always bullish about the price. I've been in Bitcoin since it was about $100 of coin. And ever since then, I've looked back and I said, if only I had more, if only I had more. And that doesn't change now. I've seen a projection just now in the chat. The guy said we might rise to 45K and drop to 13. So you never know. And even this article says that the price could rise conversely. It could also fall. So I want to say both without being too specific, I'm both bullish and bearish about the price of Bitcoin. However, as the article says, Bitcoin, happening more and more, we're going to talk about that in the next issue. I'd also like to disagree with myself and be incredibly negative about the price. The Biden administration is cracking down on cryptocurrency and this will no doubt affect Bitcoin. Now, turning to the magic eight ball, the source of all truth in Bitcoin, will the price of Bitcoin rise this time next week? Will it go up? Here we go, shaking the ball could cause bubbles. Outlook not so good. Outlook not so good. The ball is bearish, not much meat on the issue for issue ones. We're going to just move on to issue two issue two, Bitcoin, Ethereum balances on exchanges, edges towards the five year low. The article speculates that the collapse of FTX, the rise in self-custody interest and Ethereum's latest upgrade appear to be fueling the latest exchange Exodus. But we all know what's really behind this, right? It's the haveening. The haveening is coming and Bitcoin and Ethereum are jumping off the exchanges. As they said about Ethereum, this isn't that big of supply of a surprise with Ethereum going into staking. You're not going to keep your Ethereum on an exchange. If you could keep your Ethereum on a stake and perhaps gain interest. Bitcoin, however, there's no need to stake it. There's no way to stake it other than trusting another company with your Bitcoin. We've seen how that's turned out. So with the Bitcoin leaving the exchanges, I almost think that some of our outreach work and I and many others have done with Bitcoin, Treasurer and Ledger and other apps say what you will about Ledger, but still hardware wallets, right? People are getting their money off of exchanges. They've seen the horror show that was the FTX collapse and maybe they're finally listening. Right? So that's good to see. This could cause a shock of supply where there's not enough supply on the exchanges, especially when the Bitcoin haveening rolls through. So this is good news for Bitcoin. Moving on. The exit question is this good news for Bitcoin. I just said that it was. So I'm going to stick with that. I think it's good news for Bitcoin, good news for Ethereum, good news for everyone that's self-custaining their own Bitcoin. But again, if you're not trading it, if you're not actively moving it into this and out of that, you don't need to have it on an exchange. You don't need to trust a third party with your Bitcoin. It's kind of the whole thing that Bitcoin was designed for. It's surprising how few people take advantage of self-custody though. So this is exciting to see. However, it might not be a bunch of individuals. It might just be a series of large individuals who have decided not to trade or to take a break while they wait to see what happens with the Bitcoin haveening. As we've discussed before in about a year from now, the amount of Bitcoin being produced, the number produced by the miners will be cut in half. The reward for each block will go from something like 6.5 to 3.5. It will be cut in half. There'll be less Bitcoin being produced. Eventually, this will affect the market as there'll be less Bitcoin being sold. If you're in exchange and you're used to making a weekly order of 100 Bitcoin, you might only be able to get 50 Bitcoin. This could affect the price of Bitcoin. And it has in the past. So we've been through many haveenings now. And we're getting ready for the next one in about a year. And basically, whether you like it or not every week from now till the haveening is about the haveening. Even after the haveening, if the effect doesn't happen before and if it doesn't happen immediately, everyone will be counting down till the effect actually happens. They'll say, maybe there's no haveening effect. Maybe there's no haveening effect. And they'll say that every day until there's a haveening effect. So we'll see what's happening. Check out worldcryptonetwork.com where we've got on this day a video from 2021, three videos from 2020, a video from 2019, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013. And now add 2023 to that list. Worldcryptonetwork free shows about Bitcoin and crypto currencies. Check them out at worldcryptonetwork.com. Issue three, Caroline Ellison, how a young math with an appetite for risk became a major player in Sam Bankman, freed corrupt crypto empire. Well I actually went through the trouble of reading this entire article and it was very long. Of course, you can't read it at fortune.com like so many articles you have to highlight the headline copy and paste it into Google or duck duck go and search for the headline. Usually another web page or even fortune will let you in if you go through a search engine. Anyway, Caroline Ellison, they kind of they write her off. Like she became a villain when it seems like her actions were villainous the entire time. And there's a kind of ambivalence. It's interesting as a as a fellow gifted person, I read this and of course I identify with Caroline right away and the way that she had a you know quick upbringing and soon kind of debating these major issues on herself. And just the way that she went at it like. Excuse me, there does seem to be a certain moral ambivalence to Caroline as if she knew what the right thing was and she knew that there were so called you know ethical and moral values to doing the right thing. But she never really had any motivation about why she would do the right thing. Eventually she seems to get into this effective altruism movement. If you guys haven't heard of it, I'm not that familiar with it myself. It seems that the goal is to make lots and lots of money so that you can do lots and lots of good, which I like the idea, but I also worry about how you make the lots and lots of money. It seems that when Caroline moved into the investment sphere with Jane Street and later with FTX, she started making money on other people losing money, which seems like you're taking from people in order to do the great good. So we have a bit of Robin Hood here, but she's stealing from the poor to help the poor. So it's tough to take that. It's also tough to kind of completely forgive her as the article seems to it was evil Sam Bankman free who did all the bad because he ended up with the money. But it seems like Caroline could have objective. She could have become a whistleblower when it would have mattered instead of just turning afterwards in a predictable fashion as did Sam's friend from camp Gary Wong. So both of them turned on Sam. Sam allegedly according to the article took billions of dollars to his accounts. Caroline only took six million dollars. Exit question is Caroline a hero or a villain. It says in the chat, backster Churchill says, I know a snitch when I see one and she's a snitch. So there's not fans of Caroline in the chat right now. Quick coffee break. Excuse me. We've got some more news from the chat. They're talking about the point of Bitcoin was to get rid of trusted third parties in digital finance, not to give them a new job. I agree with that, but remember how incredibly lazy people are. Everyone who comes to Bitcoin, they say, wow, what a beautiful machine. I could attach my centralized institution to that. So obviously FTX in the same way as coin base or finance or anyone else who both is facilitating the future of Bitcoin. They're helping us out there spreading the word, but they're also adding these centralized values, even when it comes to centralization of the mailing list. As we saw quite a while ago, when the ledger mailing list was hacked, ledger, the company was okay, but the marketing people had their mailing list hacked. And it just shows in Bitcoin, you have to be very careful, even if you're the marketing person, because your list is incredibly valuable. It's a list of people that hold Bitcoin. If it's a list of people that have purchased leisure and it's an incredible target opportunity for hackers. I've got a couple more comments in the chat. They say she's a villain. They aren't fans of Caroline. So even a nice article from Fortune isn't going to turn it around. Of course, they're probably not talking to us, the dedicated crypto people. They're probably talking to the finance people trying to get them to forgive Caroline. And someone who just came under the control of someone powerful like Sam Bankman freed. We'll see what happens. Issue four, issue five, here we go, going into the future. Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lumis Bitcoin is cleaning up the environment. Environmental groups disagree, says the headline. And what Cynthia seems to be talking about is the excess gas that is flared from gas facilities that could then be used for Bitcoin. So whenever you're mining, you know, the stuff, gas wells, you hook it up into the atmosphere until you can get a pipeline into hook it up. But now if you had Bitcoin, you could mine that. You could mine the vented methane gas to mine your Bitcoin, preventing that gas from being put into the atmosphere. So it is a bit of a tough sell, a bit of an edge case. But mainly we just want to talk in this case how exciting it is to have a senator, even a senator from Wyoming talking positively about Bitcoin. We never had anything like this before. And even if she's just presenting one side of the argument that yes, Bitcoin can be used for venting methane gas. As we've seen in Texas, Bitcoin can be used to balance your energy grid. However, you do have to pay those miners, incredible subsidies to get them to turn off their miners to keep your energy grid balanced. I don't know if that one's going to work out as a major use of Bitcoin. However, we do keep seeing more and more allies in the Congress, in the Senate, in finance, all joining Bitcoin sides. Once again, this is good for Bitcoin despite, if you agree with Lumis or not. And it's good to have a pushback from this environmental article, even though the street, which is a major political newspaper, disagrees right in the headline with the subheader, environmental groups disagree. So the debate is still ongoing about cryptocurrency and the environment. And we talk about it almost every week here. Let's move on to the next issue. Millions worth of Bitcoin and tether used to pay Chinese companies involved in fentanyl crisis says elliptic, which I think is chain Alice niche. A chemical supplier in China said the business is Mexico-based clients always use USDT or Bitcoin to pay. And it's a funny side note not to make light of this issue, but I was reminded of Tatiana Morose's song from a few years ago when she said, always use Bitcoin to pay. So it's funny to see that kind of relinked in a negative manner here in this article. Of course, this is a hit piece on Bitcoin. The obvious retort to this is right there in the headline. Always use USDT or Bitcoin when you can't use dollars, right? The majority of drug transactions are done with dollars, pounds, euros, whatever, fiat currency is responsible for kidnappings, drug dealings, business dealings, anything. It's horrible. And the fact that Bitcoin is taking some of this business is potentially a problem for the dollar. As negative as it is here and no one wants to support fentanyl and no one wants to support the drug trade, the fact that Bitcoin is being used for this is probably a good thing for Bitcoin as Bitcoin as money, right? Years ago when Lazlo bought the pizzas, it was just Bitcoin pizza day a few days ago, no one on that forum believed that Bitcoin is money. Now it's clear that both the Mexico based clients and the chemical suppliers in China both believe that Bitcoin is money, both believe that they can exchange it for other monies or other goods as services. So this is not while we do disagree with fentanyl, we are against the fentanyl crisis and so forth, not really such a bad article for Bitcoin, though the people who wrote the article certainly intended it that way. Originally, remember that Bitcoin could only be used for drugs at the Silk Road. Now they're trying to get you to think it's only used for drug transactions when really this technology, this payments technology known as Bitcoin could be used for all kinds of transactions. There could be a giant container ship full of cars that was traded for Bitcoin. There could be a giant container ship full of meat and hay and mushrooms and other common things, apples, bananas, traded for Bitcoin. They always use Bitcoin to trade for bananas. But again, they're trying to get you afraid of Bitcoin. They're trying to get you to fear new technology, which often causes people to miss investment opportunities as well as business opportunities to work in this space to be a part of the Bitcoin and crypto space. Maybe you're like, I can't do that because I don't want to support the drug, you know, drug war. I'm on this side. And that's fine. No one's supporting this drug. But what we're saying here is this is an incredible payments technology that people all over the world are leveraging for their payments needs. Similarly, the way they used to use the dollar and they still do use the dollar. If they won't take the Bitcoin, I'm sure they'll take the dollar or the pounds or the euros or what have you. So that's about it for issues on today's Bitcoin group. I'm going to check in with the chat. See what you guys are saying here. We're going to go all the way back to the beginning of the chat. As I said at the beginning, as Bobby Fisher, when he played himself at chess, he played both sides equally and he always won. So back to Churchill says there's great premiums on gold right now that mask the manipulated price. Interesting. Mateo says, oh, no, Tom disagreed with himself. That's true. You'll never know what to do about the price of Bitcoin because I'm on both sides. It's going up and it's going down. They say there's not really good news about the D shift says there's not really good news about not having Bitcoin and Ethereum on the exchanges. It needs to be traded. So it is different perspectives. Certainly, some could say because of the supply shock, because there's not any Bitcoin to trade or Ethereum to trade, the price could go up. But that would be kind of a false up if any of the big whales sitting there on the outside decide to dump and decide to deposit onto the exchange. It could be a major crisis for the price. Talking about Caroline Baxter says, I know a snitch when I see one and she's a snitch. People are not fan of Caroline Ellison. They say she's a villain. Let's see more chats about lightning channels of satz and you'll never pay fees anymore. So you could try out the lightning network. A lot of people are just reusing their lightning network coins. They don't have to trade them back to Bitcoin. They can just trade them again in another transaction. They say you should not fear the future and that they're trying to get us to fear the future with this environmental story and with this drug related story. When if you really know about technology, it always breaks everything. This is the rock and roll music of our time. You kids and your radio and your rock and roll music are ruining everything just as MP3 is ruined the music industry, movie streaming, ruined the movie theater industry, but created the very profitable normal streaming industry and so on and so forth. New technology always reacts with the market in in a new and exciting way that's upsetting for existing market players. So if you're an existing market player and you're seeing something like Bitcoin come in, whether you're in finance or environmentalism or whatever, you're going to be upset by Bitcoin. See, they're saying is that the cell phone is shrinking because of new technology. Other people are disagreeing on lightning and whether or not you need to go on and off chain to trade lightning or whether you can just keep trading your lightning. And you need to be watching out if you're trading physical things back to Churchill says in his town, a big gold buyer was shot by an armed robber. So it is sometimes better to trade online with an exchange then to trade in person. As we all remember, the Silk Road, all of the academic studies as for what actually happened on the marketplace is that large amounts of cannabis were traded for large amounts of Bitcoin or dollars or money or whatever. And that this was all done without violence, which is unheard of in the cannabis industry with the exception of course, the many, many states who have since legalized cannabis. It almost seems like Ross Olbrecht is in jail for political crimes for laws that have changed. Doesn't seem quite right. But then we have a whole new series of articles coming out with this fentanyl crisis being now the responsibility of Bitcoin. Well, we're running out of time. So we're going to go to predictions or story of the week. Thomas Hunt, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? Oh, I knew you were going to call on me and I didn't have anything prepared last week. I talked about Zelda. I'm still trying to play the new Zelda. It's okay. I mean, it's fine. It's got sky above you and caverns below. But right now my character is not very strong and can't fight very many things or climb very high. So very much starting the new Zelda checked out the Guardians of the Galaxy movie yesterday. I thought it was okay. It was an alright end to the series a little bit too much of an animal experimentation message there, which I'm totally against. But then was reminded of being against it by the film. I've been enjoying the Phil Knight book shoe dogs about the creation of the shoe company Nike and also keeping up on the rest of my reading and everything else that's going on. There is still a writer's strike in the United States that has not affected this show as we are not members of the writers guild and so forth. But it has affected many other shows and we do miss all of the late night shows Seth Myers, the daily show Jimmy Kimmel, other shows like this are just simply not continuing as well as the potential problems for many of the movies and TV shows that we enjoy. So it's been about four weeks. No one's talking about it and that can't be good for the writers, the weaker party in this fight. So I hope they will settle the writer's strike and I hope it goes well for the writers. Meanwhile in the United States, we are expecting that the debt ceiling will be raised by some kind of deal between McCarthy and the president. They just have to go down to the wire with it, which is frustrating. They could have settled it yesterday, but it seems that they're going to go right down to the last minute and hopefully for the economy and everything strikes some kind of a deal. Let's see what else we got going on. They enjoyed the one man show. They enjoyed that I disagreed with myself and tried to keep the conversation going. Remember, you can always post your own view on these issues into the comments or into the chat below and we'll check it out. Maybe you can even have a debate with the other people who watch this show. Apologies that we couldn't get any guests this week. We did have people scheduled just kind of all fell apart at the end. So it goes that happens sometimes. But thanks to everybody at home for joining us, giving us a thumbs up, saying hello in the chat and the comments later. We appreciate until next time. Bye. Bye.