The Bitcoin Group, the American Original. For over the last ten years, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Dan Eve, the crypto-rafter. Hey, hey, Friday. Victoria Jones from Satoshi's page. Good evening, all. Josh Shagalla from the standard.io. I hope you're having a capital warning. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one, issue one, cryptocurrencies head for a winning week. Bitcoin tops $30,000 on ETF optimism and the flight to safety. Dan Eve, the prices are up and suddenly everyone looks like a genius again. What's going on with the price of Bitcoin? What I was doing this, this, this the usual roller coaster ride goes up. It goes down. Obviously, there was the coin telegraph spike last week where they, where they, they said that the ETF would, it was going to be approved or had been approved or something like that, allegedly, reportedly, however they edited it to. And since then, obviously, there's been some quite good news about how the, the even though that news was incorrect, there's, it's very looking, very likely the spot ETFs will get, will get approved. And there's a lot of feedback that's being given, you know, for, for to the ETFs and they've reapplied and adjusted their application. So this is all kind of seemingly good news towards the ETF, depending on if you want an ETF or not, I think the ETFs kind of good because it means that I've got pension money that's sat in silly stocks and I can shift it into a into, into Bitcoin related funds once that happens. So that's going to be beneficial to me, hopefully. And maybe to other people as well, we can't, you've got this money, they don't have money to hand, but they've got something in their pension that they want to be able to, to, to invest. And although, you know, it's not hot, not your keys, not your coins at the end of the day, you know, I can't take my pension out and put my pension into into Bitcoin, but, and hold it myself, but at least I can have a third party do it. And, you know, there's risk there, but at least I'm not in, in, in dodgy old school stocks, like yesterday's tech, hey, don't need those bits of papers. So ultimately, it's, it's looking like they're, they are going to be approved and probably quite soon as well. Victoria Jones, the price of Bitcoin is back up. Is it all ETF optimism? Well, I'm going to be very controversial and disagree with Dan. Um, you know, I, you know, I think in, in the article that you posted, it actually said that, um, the trial that was scheduled for April has actually been cancelled. And so this means that the SEC can still appeal the original ruling. So, you know, that's part of the small print that some often gets overlooked in the hype of these things. Um, and I, you know, I've done a number of talks recently where, you know, one of the main questions has been about the ETF. And one of the things I point out in my talk is that, you know, there've been quite prominent economists I've seen on American television for pointing out that, you know, something like a Bitcoin ETF has the potential to kind of bring down the entire financial system. So I don't know. I think all of this talk about the ETF could be very premature. I think, you know, they're whipping people into a frenzy only to disappointment the last minutes. I'm very skeptical. I think if the, um, I think if the price is going up, I, personally, I think it's more to do with the fact that with all these wars going on and, uh, the government trying to find the US government trying to find a new speaker, you know, people are just anticipating that money printer, go burrow is just around the corner. I think that's a much more likely reason for Bitcoin price starting to take off. So, yeah, that's my personal opinion. And, you know, I've, I think I've even said on this program, I really don't understand why everyone gets so excited about, um, the ETF. So I mean, again, you know, I was talking to someone yesterday who was making the point about their pension. And I said, yeah, but if a financial system breaks down, you put all your money into a Bitcoin pension, rather than using that money to keep it offline, then you lose it. So, um, it's, it's a tricky one, you know, you really have to be, you really have to be very aware of what's really going on, uh, before you're making those sorts of decisions. So, sorry, Dan. Josh Agala, we talk about ETFs all the time. And now it's allegedly making the price go up. Is it finally ETF time? Well, you know, the thing is that a lot of people, and people, humans in general, they love to grab onto something like in the, in the camera space, it was mega pixels. Like, oh, the mega pixels, you know, it was this number that the sales people could talk about and, and, and everyone would be, you know, it's, apart from the fact that cameras had all sorts of other things going on that made the image better, the mega pixel was the thing. And I think there's a similar similar in crypto where everyone, uh, ETF, that's the thing. Will it go through? Will it not? That's the thing that will bring Bitcoin higher or crypto is general. But the fact of the matter is we have the Fed in a $110 billion whole, you know, I mean, it's, it's literally, how can it's, it's one of these institutions that is losing money even though they've got a money printer. Like, how, how can you possibly, like, it's, it's, you actually have to work hard to achieve that. And, and so there's a whole bunch of things going on that Bitcoin and crypto, well, Bitcoin specifically was designed for. And that was as a way, as an alternative mechanism, as an exit door to the legacy system, uh, to, to be able to have an alternative choice in the face of adversity. And, and this is what we're seeing how now play out. And a lot of people got to remember that sometimes the face of adversity doesn't look like true adversity. Maybe it's just perception of massive adversity. And that's what drives people. But right now we're seeing true about, I mean, the, you know, the wars around the world, and whether it's Ukraine, whether it's in Israel and against Hamas, you know, we, we have a whole bunch of negative news. On top of that, we've got, uh, Larry Fink saying, our flight to safety is a thing in crypto, you know, backing up that, that narrative so that people get reminded, it's not just gold now. We do have alternatives to not only go, but to that. So there's a, there's a whole bunch of things that play here. It's not just the sales point ETF. And while that makes a good headline, it simplifies the complexities of the human condition right now. Excellent. Josh, moving on, predicting the price against the magical Bitcoin predictor ball, the source of all truth and knowledge in our universe, Dan Eve, will the price of Bitcoin be higher or lower this time next week? I think, I think we're going higher on a little mini bull run. But one thing I will say is, it's just about, you know, holding onto a number, one number that is important in Bitcoin is the exa-hash rate. They, you know, the sort of the hash rate, which is in the exa-hash is now. And when the Bitcoin price peaked in 20, you know, was December 2021. The hash rate then was 196 exa-hashes. And now it is 400. And it's been higher. It's been like 469. So that's double double the hash rate of when Bitcoin was at its all time high. And it's probably just a little bit under half of the all time high right now. So that's something that keeps on moving strength, the strength, all the fudge you see about mining and all the crap you hear in the news about how's environmentally bad even though that's swinging around right now. One thing is for sure. And that is that the hash rate is increasing, you know, very steadily on a on a nice little, a nice little upward trend. And as Max Kaiser always said, the price follows the hash rate. Victoria Jones, higher or lower? Yeah, I think it'll be higher. It's looking a bit healthy at the moment. Josh Legala, the good times just keep on coming. I was muted though. That was me pumping. He's pumping it up. Remember last week we asked the eight ball and it wouldn't answer. So we're going to go ahead and ask this week, be careful shaking the magic eight ball can cause bubbles. Could be a problem in the market. Will the price of Bitcoin be higher this time next week? Concentrate and ask again, concentrate and ask again, you can't always get the knowledge that you want from the magic eight ball. Moving on to issue two, breaking SEC approves, I shares Bitcoin spot ETF. And originally, it didn't say reportedly coin telegraph broke the Bitcoin market this week, causing the price that you can see in the top of this post, the green candle goes up and the red candle goes down as Pete Rizzo, famous editor of coin desk and worker of crack and said, career ending and CTO Larsen said reportedly, yes, coin telegraph had some trouble reporting the news this week. As they said on their Twitter account, we had an unfortunate incident where an intern falsely tweeted, I shares Bitcoin ETF approval by SEC. I wish I had the button, but it should go, haha, pretty close. We have investigated and fired the intern and deducted six months of wages from his company linked bank account. I'm not sure you can do that. He was like, what? I know what? When did you get these powers? A two white known scammer? Well, go. So obviously, someone made a lot of money on the price going up all the shorts being liquidated, the price going down. And as the editor and chief said in Dubai, Christina Lucretia with Mario not fall, saying that the false Bitcoin ETF story they posted this morning was not a problem with journalism, but a problem with society. Victoria Jones, what do you think about the coin telegraph false Bitcoin ETF story that caused the price to rise like crazy and their reputation to fall? Well, I mean, I do feel sorry for the poor intern. I mean, clearly the scapegoat, I mean, for heaven's sake, if his role is that critical, he'll nurse putting an intern on their Twitter feed in the first place, you know, I mean, of course, it's got the potential to create a problem. It sounds like a really lame excuse to be honest. And then the prospect of them taking six months salary out of bank account, I mean, what? Who's heard of that? So why are they paying him in crypto? So it just to add really quickly, that's a joke account, right? That's from at poet. It's not pointing. Oh, okay. Oh, geez, we fell into the same trap. They don't have the gold tick right or the blue tick, which everyone is. Oh, well, well, it's still funny. Oh, it brought. Yeah. I bet. Oh, no. So that's why it sounds completely ridiculous. But, um, yeah, but even so, you know, the editor and chief actually being in Dubai and saying, nothing to do with me, it's all to do with society. It's just like, oh my god, you know, if you're the, you know, this is your, your job. And, um, I mean, honestly, one of the problems with society is people like you running companies and failing to take responsibility when you've actually done something wrong. I mean, I don't know, boggles my, boggles my mind really. I mean, so late. And in fact, on the tweet, you can actually see the guy in the background with his head in his hands kind of going, I don't think it's going to be the intern that's sacked. It's going to be the editor and chief. So yeah, you see that guy behind kind of going, what is she saying? We'll be having words about that next week. I have a good spotting, good spotting. Even without the joke tweeted, still an incredible story. They allowed this to happen and shows how much power even a tabloid like coin telegraph has in the industry where this story, it's approved, gets picked up and picked up and picked up and actually causes people to change what they're doing with their money, buying into Bitcoin, crushing a bunch of people that were shorting the market and then having it change just a few minutes later. Josh, Shagall, what do you think about the coin telegraph false ETF story? Yeah, this is spot on you. You tipped off exactly how the angle that I was taking on this is that you have bots now listening to the sentiment of articles being written and with a reach that coin telegraph has, you get very, very fast actions from the market depending on because they have a high cloud, right? So it's extremely dangerous. And if you add on top of that, the fact that people mainly read headlines and retweet headlines and you even get the feature that Twitter has it says, are you sure you don't want to read the article before retweeting this? These are all little things that go towards hopefully fixing this stuff, but we just suffered from it then as an example. We read a thing and we repost that had our opinion about it and this was just to highlight how how fallible journalism is because especially now, you know, it all started when CNN first came out and now we have a 24 hour news cycle. So news has to work really hard to get content and then not only just fill the content but have people clicking and viewing on that and obviously we all know about clickbait, we all know about that sort of thing. So as high as much as we can get that clickbait, the better. Now that's just one side, that's the business of media. On the second side of that, you have greed and human corruption. So I don't want to say that Peter Schiff is a corruption thing. He's just playing the market when he says, Bitcoin bad, Bitcoin bad, knowing that his reach again, reach forces the price in a certain direction depending on his sentiment and then other people will react to that and he can take advantage of that because he knows. So if you mix those two when you have reach and influence and mix greed or whatever with that, you can definitely make some good coinage. And so I'm always a bit suspect with these sorts of things because it's very easy if you have reach to be shorting the market or going along doing something and quickly manipulating the price. So yeah, that's my take on it. It could be, it might just be a mistake by this publication, but yeah, I'm always a bit skeptical about it. It could just be, we need more eyeballs, we need hype. This is what gets eyeballs. It could be greed. It could be neither. It could have been a legitimate mistake. Well, it's always been very difficult to tie down where coin telegraph comes from. CoinDesk is a publicly owned company. They're owned by digital currency group, Bitcoin magazine, although started by members of BitPay and Vitalik Bootruna was sold to that group out of Tennessee, Bitcoin Media. They own a lot of other Bitcoin Media. They own the Let's Talk Bitcoin Network, which they purchased. They do another magazine for conferences. They do the popular conference but coin telegraph. No one knows who owns coin telegraph. In fact, I don't think you're even allowed to ask originally when they came on to the scene famously, their quote unquote editor was Tony Lane, who was quite a character in the crypto industry until she unfortunately passed away far too young, but did seem a bit like a beard or a mask for the company. And then Victoria Jones. Victoria Jones is right here. Nothing. Victoria Jones. What's her name? Sorry, Victoria. It is early in the morning. Jill Tony Lane. I don't know. I don't know any other ones of coin telegraph. Yeah. Yeah. All right. But there was a big deal where they had a whole scandal of if she was really the editor and if anyone really listened to her and if she was a figurehead and all that was kind of worked out in the public square. Now we have this new quote unquote editor and chief of coin telegraph, Christina Lucrezia, who says that the ETF story was not a problem with journalism, but a problem with society. I'm not even really sure what she's talking about here with the exception of that coin telegraph was a news organization and they published news and everyone got really excited about the news, retweeting it, sharing it, making investment decisions based upon it and so forth, which seems to be all problems with coin telegraph and they're reporting nothing wrong with society or journalism unless they were tricked by some source and then presumably they should out the source and give us the information. Dan, what do you think about the exciting coin telegraph story? Although unfortunately it doesn't seem like it was posted by an intern. Yeah, so the background I read on that is that there was a telegram group where some coin telegraph or editors are in or something like that and some pepe meme, literally pepe the frog meme dude was like the ETF is going to be approved and they were like score and just posted it without sort of checking. But that really is a cop out from the editor and chief like to say it's society is full, that's pretty disgraceful. I think the excuse was as well, you know, it's it's the pressure on us or you know, paraphrase and the pressure on us to get their article out there first, if you don't get out there first, you know, your second or third or whatever. But the point of news is that it's got to be correct, right? You need to be a good, reliable news source, otherwise you're just, you know, the boy who cried wolf and no one's going to believe you and read your stories at the end of the day if you keep on providing terrible like fake news or don't check your sources. And we've seen a lot of that obviously recently with all the the stuff that's going on in both the both the walls. It's and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. Maybe it is because the fact that there's I don't know it's easy to tweet something whereas when there's a proper editorial process where, you know, people have to review articles thoroughly before they get printed for the next day, there's a lot more of a thought process that goes behind it whereas now it takes seconds to to tweet something out that can change the world in terms of the financial markets. But it's I don't think this is isolated to just coin telegraph and crypto. There is about 1.9 million on Twitter on, you know, CNN for example is 66 million. So the same could happen if they were a slap dash in bringing out, especially say bad news which which moves markets a bit more than than than good news tends to. And in fact, but I actually go back on coin telegraph. I've still got a gripe because in June 2017, they had a recent bunch of articles along with crypto coins news that KMC miners were bringing out a new miner and I, but I've lost basically a bunch of Bitcoin because I checked about five different new sources, whoever this was coordinated, the attack quite well, they all published the thing saying go to KMC site like now blah blah blah blah blah it was all on Twitter. I've got the stamp the tweets and all that. And yeah, essentially it was a completely fake outfit. They didn't do any due diligence on the company. It was all utter crap and I lost a bunch of Bitcoin and it was very soul destroying. But yeah, I learned my lesson to checks sources and unfortunately, you know, a lot of people don't do that level of critical thinking first. They'll they'll like and share which is as Josh mentioned, why they've recently introduced that button like are you going to share this news article? You haven't even read it like come on, like the amount of people that probably do that. I'd love to see if they've got stats on that like, you know, 97% of these people didn't even click on the article. They just shared it. It's the same thing with like people that write complaints and they get about TV programs and then someone like someone interviews them and they say, what don't you like about it? They were, well, I haven't seen it. But so and so said it was bad. Like, well, why are you complaining then? Like, you have to do your own research and come up with that quick, you know, critical thinking yourself. So it's a shame, but it's it's going to happen until the rains are pulled in. It's probably not done. The reputation of crypto currency a very good job because it shows that markets can move so quickly. So but the good thing is that come out of this will be that the rains might be tightened internally on these news outfits before they go and publish crazy ass news and then blame it on society. We've a wobble. Sorry. It is interesting. Dan, the way you said like that articles can move from webpage to webpage and it's really the same article, but it looks like five different articles. It has a different headline. Maybe someone writes, I read in coin telegraph and then they just regurgitate the same article. We've seen that even recently in the news where a very very famous legal case is now all about the former president. He doxed one of the people in the trial on his true social website, which was then reposted to his Donald J Trump website, which they completely forgot about and left up for two weeks, which is a disaster for them because they've essentially doxed this person much longer and ignored a judge's order to delete the evidence. But when you have things that post and repost as I'm sure coin telegraph does or it just happens because of their ecosystem news like this that was in a chat room five minutes ago can just be reposted, reposted, reposted, and of course people are making their investment decisions based upon this news. If they want it like Josh is saying they're racing to be first while coin telegraph wants to publish the article first other people want to be the first with the news to invest to buy to sell and so forth. So it's very interesting. It also reminds me of the SBF case where people invested without confirming their investments. They needed to get in the last one was in the last one was in just as with this. We could have seen major Bitcoin publications or even Forbes reprinting this without verifying it. It can be so easy to push retweet. Moving on to the exit question. What about so far? I just want to just want to say that was Maria Jones not Victoria Jones. Maria Jones she was a XVP also co-founder apparently but no one ever knew and everyone always said that both 20 lane and Maria Jones were kind of almost just front masks for like I don't know. I think out of Russia maybe some I don't know it's all gets very speculative and fake newsy. It's always been out there for any an investigative reporter who's tired of reporting on who is Satoshi Nakamoto for the five of you could always try to figure out who is coin telegraph. We really don't know. I agree with you Josh. I remember Maria Jones she made some incredibly beautiful videos for coin telegraph and then met her in a couple of conferences and then she disappeared like the others but I hope she's well and so forth but it's been very strange you who runs coin telegraph. But moving on to the exit question. What about positive Bitcoin news? Where do you get your Bitcoin news? Who do you trust? Victoria Jones where do you get your Bitcoin news these days? Google, Twitter, Bitcoin magazine, coin desk? Well I mean I've been in Bitcoin a while now and I have a lot of friends in the space I'm pleased to say and you know I often I'm often in chat groups with them and so often if there's something that comes up I'll normally hear it there first. You know rather than Twitter I find Twitter can get a bit samey and then of course there's problems even with you know Twitter and YouTube you know the censorship. They only seem to allow things like click baity things just about the price with Bitcoin whereas you know the philosophy behind it is quite interesting certainly what I'm more interested in but that doesn't kind of get the viral uptake like you know a news post does. So yeah I mean I'm much more interested in the philosophy and so you know most of the noise about you know as I've already said about the ETF I'm not too I'm not too impressed about that. So yeah I would say I get I get my news from my friends you know getting to know people in the community I think really helps because people who are interested they'll often see it from a different perspective and they'll help you see through the noise and help you understand you know what the important points are. So for myself I find that beneficial. Excellent source of news it's interesting the news you get on Twitter recently I seem to be gaining all my death notices from Twitter like I didn't know Suzanne Summers was dead and someone was already like referencing it like it was old news and I was like wow am I behind Josh Egala where do you get your Bitcoin news? Well the World Crypto Network of course every Friday but yeah like Victoria said generally what I think generally in this world you know I got rid of my television a long time ago and of course I have the internet but it's I got rid of Facebook a long time ago and one of one of the things I realized was that if something's important enough then it'll bubble up through my friends and get to me that I don't need every single tiny headline but you know we you know back in the day with Bitcoin was very new you could sort of keep track of every project and now there's no way of of course there's no way and the thing is being in also now not just Bitcoin and I'm sorry sorry but in the the Ethereum and the EVM circuits there's even more happening there's so much incredible research into cryptography into ways of decentralizing centralized authorities like exchanges there's so much happening and so I really just keep an eye on different groups doing doing work in the space you know builders I really love to keep an eye on builders because they're the ones where news comes out from they're the ones that create news when when they release something so I try to I try to keep an eye on builders and and not just not just the coin telegraph and things like that. All right a large question like a downward pointing thumb I can't appear from your mouth Josh I don't know what's happening now. I don't know what that's about. I don't know what it is for some kind of cartoon feature I'm not sure what's happening but Dan Eve what's your favorite go to Bitcoin news source I don't know don't do any gestures maybe it like picks up on gestures now I'm not sure what it's doing. We'll see if it shows up. I still look I still use I still use Twitter slash X but obviously take almost everything with with the pinch of salt double check the username's even if it is verified because you know there's still tricks that can happen but just be critical of the of the source that's saying it and if there is something that's especially quite a bold claim then just try and check if other people are saying it and where they got their source from and that's anyway you can kind of kind of do it if you're relying on social media is to just double treble check whatever you're reading make sure that it sounds rational because it you know the craziest wild that is then again since 2020 everything's gone all crazy right there there's everything is nuts out there at the moment but you've just got to rely on not rely on don't trust verify right there you go so you you find sources that are generally okay but you still got to check them and as we've seen again over the last couple of weeks with the crazy stuff going on in the Middle East there's all sorts flying about from from from both both sides I must say of misinformation just like there is on anything whenever there's any any agreement or disagree with two opposing sides you're going to find disinformation on both sides you just need to weed out the crap sources and make sure that you are critical of those but actually fully enough so that tweet the original tweet from from crypto coins news who have changed their names now it seems they actually still have the tweet up on there that says and other people are saying press release KNC minor returns with improved mining product for sale exclamation mark and then a little KNC we are back shop now so I wonder how much they paid for May 15th 2017 that's still up coin turn off hit the track straight away I said even said it might be shame on them because they deleted the page but but the crypto coins news they are they are balls on the table still out there with their fake KNC mining scam well they had an exclamation mark it has to be true now the place I get most of my bitcoin news is my iPhone yes since since Bernie Mac died on eight nine two thousand eight and I was standing in line for the iPhone and a rumble went through the line and everyone was all talking about how Bernie Mac had died pretty much every piece of information I've ever gotten has been from my iPhone I'm not really sure about bitcoin news anymore I still I read Google news I read duck duck go news for bitcoin most of the mainstream media just seems to parrot and puppet various stories about the price various stories about if you'd bought bitcoin on this date this is how much money you'd have or most of the time not have so it's very hard to find sources coin desk is okay bitcoin magazines okay they're little kind of right leaning politically and a little radical really with their libertarian type coverage and their graphic design and so forth but they're kind of the best we have bitcoin magazine I don't know it's tough to say it's a lot like the bitcoin standards you don't get to choose who writes about bitcoin or who the heroes are you just have to deal with so I'm gonna I'm gonna agree with Josh I think the best coverage is right here right here on the world crypto network yeah moving on check out the bitcoin group 10th anniversary special right here on the world crypto network we had a trip back through time we watched almost every 50th episode number one number 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 we're still working our way up to episode 400 but it's been an incredible 10 years here on the bitcoin group thanks to everybody who's been a guest on the show everyone who donated to the show and helped me buy microphones and trips and brought Chris Ellis out to Washington DC once Josh is in here tones in here Dan Ben our team everybody's in here thanks to Victoria MK Lords dovey and Dreas there's Adam McBride we've had everybody on the bitcoin group so it's great to have everybody Adam Meister all the crew here on the bitcoin group here's to another 10 years moving on to issue three Sam Bankman freed was a bad friend too Nesad Singh said he tried to get Sanctron freed to do the right thing to lay down on his sword and admit that his company was fraudulent thus saving all of his friends from having to turn on him and become rats instead bankman shrugged off the billions of dollars of loss that was obviously stressing out his friend Nesad told Sam at the penthouse near the pool in the Bahamas about the problem how there was around three billion dollars missing how they had been misappropriated and using customer funds for pretty much anything they'd wanted since the beginning of the company which is an incredible reveal we also learned that they spent around a billion dollars so they could meet celebrities and make friends hiring an influencer group which allowed them to easily couple up with these loving and willing celebrities who took and accepted the money Josh Egole what do you think about Sam Bankman freed his friend who was his brother's childhood friend who had known him for I don't know it's 20 or 30 years incredible amount of time came to him at the pool and said we've got a problem we should shut it down and Sam didn't do anything and now his girlfriend his lifelong friend and his brother's lifelong friend of all turn states evidence against him. Yeah I remember I had to I lived very very far away from my day job for a while there and like like really a long like two hours drive and eventually you get flashed with enough speeding fines that you have to like go to court and the court sent me to like a driving school in fact that you must go to driving school and so I sat there and one of the one of the lessons learned there was from insurance companies and insurance companies going through all of the frauds that happen in automotive and stuff you know because every week there was a different theme I one week was a guy in a wheelchair talking out terrible driving so without a seatbelt isn't all this stuff anyway the insurance one of the big takeaways from that day was that eventually you get caught because you split up with your wife or you split up with your girlfriend your girlfriend will come back even five or six years later and say it's the insurance company out of spite this guy lied to you and and then they'll come back and bring it across and say we've got now evidence that you actually misled the insurance claims and blah blah blah and they see you so you know I don't want to say that you should mistrust your best friends or your wife's or your family but you should try to do the right thing and if because you will eventually generally speaking you will eventually get caught and so the moral decision shouldn't be will I get caught or not it should be is this the right thing to do and when it comes to a large scale fraud of court what what are you doing are you going to get caught you're going to get caught and by the way I talked yesterday we had a Twitter spaces on the on the standard Twitter spaces and we talked to a bunch the founder of Kiva Swap one of the one of the guys of from Kiva Swap which is like uni swap doing great work in the decentralized exchange space and they're based in Singapore and I said do you know anyone you know we because we talked about that when the atomizer was on the show is anyone know anyone that lost money and and it was it was quite interesting because they said well where where are you you know I'm in and then he said I'm in Singapore and we lost a lot of money because the Singaporean government has a fund of the people who invested in FTX which basically gave it a green light for retail to say oh that's a good investment I'm going to do the same so a lot of people in Singapore put their money into FTX as well and so thinking it was a safe place and so there are a lot of retail investors I just wanted to put that out there because we did ask that question and and I got the answer yesterday loud and clear that depending on where you are in the world there's absolutely retail investors that lost a lot of money it wasn't just big VC firms was that was that was that was that FTT or investing in the the actual company entity no I think that was like okay the the Singapore government have invested in this company I'm going to use it so I think they were just depositing into FTX and you know using as an as an exchange it's been interesting as this trial goes on to hear the inside workings of the company and how it ran especially this allow underscore negative function which apparently very early on was implemented and allowed SPF and the others to loot the customer accounts previously this function if not turned off would have not allowed the accounts to go negative but it seems it was written very early in the company's history and that these customer funds were used for anything they wanted early on which which is just shocking and even more shocking that Michael Lewis didn't revise his book given the simplicity of these crimes these are not complicated crypto derivative crimes that involved a lot of planning and timing and scheduling this is just the money comes in we take it and we use it for marketing we use it for investing at Alameda we use it for buying the penthouse whatever else it is and it's a it's stunning it's not you know there it's not if they're adults or their children or whatever it's like you wouldn't run a lemonade stand this way this is just yeah and all part of the trial it's all factual now go and and it's and it's it's part of the it's kind of a bull market thing that can happen in bull markets because they're just money comes in it's going to grow you just keep blowing it in whatever because it's just going to you know a number go up technology um yeah very sad it seems like it was only a couple of days but it did feel pretty good during the last bull market i remember talking to vortex about the market before and he's like yeah we only had a few days like you only had a couple of days to make those smart decisions uh but with Sam and these other guys the money just kept rolling in they made random crazy decisions with it and more money rolled in it's it's an unbelievable snowball type effect that they were on we're just no matter what they did uh because of the way they were set up because of the lane they were in whatever it was uh they just grew uh Dan you know what he's about Sam do you think he's a good friend sorry good uh Dan okay Josh i was just gonna say you know Sam remind me uh when i look at him is this sort of nerdy type who maybe got teased a lot in school and uh so he has this uh setting inside of him to want to please people and want to make friends and want to be the nice guy and uh uh in terms of like oh look i'll fund you oh and i won't just fund fund you with you know a few thousand bucks i'll fund you with thirty million bucks and and all tom Brady you know and trying to get into these pockets of influential people to be the lacked guy at the party um by just throwing money around and i i think this is a big part of the story is this human psychology of the kid that was uh uh you know paid out a lot and i mean it was was teased a lot there's that fun so soon really agrees with me today um but uh and then and then really wanting to to you sort of compensate from those early childhood traumas by basically buying friends although the pictures he took with jazel are incredible i think it's well worth it i mean the other ones tom Brady and they didn't really sell it but jazel loves a picture uh Dan Eve what do you think about sand bakeman free? it is he a good friend he uh pretty much like they article saying he forced all of his friends to plead guilty and to testify against him in a way by not taking responsibility for the company and taking the fall himself oh he really is but he really is a big mean he isn't he after all these things that are coming out you know he's really gone from this kind of buddy you loved him Dan you were ready to fall i'm gonna say i did not love him i just said he seems like the sort of guy that's kind of down to earth he did an interview you know i must admit i was i was taken back by you know he the way he played it off he played people well he like it wasn't just it what obviously wasn't just me he did sequoia and all sorts uh had them and you know and i'm not an esteemed uh intelligent investor like those guys i didn't put any money in and would never go near it with a barge pole so so that's well one place i have the i have that up um and i certainly don't have any and didn't use if takes as an exchange right so that's that's kind of a good thing but as a character i thought you know maybe it's just the the kind of nice part or the optimistic part of me that wanted to think that hey he's a he's a nice guy that's trying to do good for the earth but that was actually just all bs and he's just like a giant meany um the whether this obviously everyone's turned against him it's the the whole prisoners dilemma right that's the thing is the prisoners dilemma if it's either well if you don't give evidence now and and um and testify against them then you'll you'll be pulled under as well so we can strike you a pleader which i never quite understood you know i don't understand even nowadays in in any case and especially where i watch these kind of as we all do you kind of murder mystery type stuff but how that can have so much weight right that you can have such a pleat your your your sentences would use so much for doing uh also you know seeming very bad crimes but just because you're dobbin in on someone i think that's quite a crazy thing especially if it's only happening after the fact when you've been discovered it's not like you're admitting to those crimes then you're going through authorities and then you know you got caught out like you are only doing this as an act of desperation why should you be given such an insane amount of leniency that's that's always kind of confused me um uh and and so you know that they're playing this thing where with Ellison how she was just a young lady that was swept away by some samsar slaw you know musk about him or whatsoever you know all these bravado and his you know much owners and all this uh when actually in actual fact as pros and con list the pros and cons list but in if in fairness it was more cons than pros um but you know that they are were a party to all of these decisions all along the way and um it yeah it just seems kind of strange that uh that um he's the only one that's this this uh if i were him i don't mean i it seems like he would have he could have basically done the same as them and just pleaded guilty and then and then literally tried to pull them in uh so you know it then becomes a spider man pointing another spider man sort of thing um i was thinking that today dan if only there was something that sam could go rat on if only there was someone above him in the company where he could rat them out and then everybody would just be uh convicted by ratting each other out but uh it's uh eventually it does does come to a point there it does come to a former pressure sure you know he's like that where someone's making the decisions yeah he's the head but at the same time you know it's that uh and that and that i suppose is the ringleader part right the ringleader is always the one that goes down the the one that goes down most but the more that comes out the the more you see that the other people were in on it it wasn't just a case of you know he is evil and he's bad ass and he's not complete bail but the other people kind of knew what was going on quite fairly i mean this this nishab seems like it was pretty unlucky that you only found out in the in September and tried to do the right thing um but but the other people were pretty complicit with everything that went on so um but what will be you know obviously interesting is here's what his sentence he gets but also what the other uh what the sentences they get even though they did these plea deals um yeah because a lot of people did get burned as just Josh is saying it burnt you know there there was um when they even investors it was the same with block fire right there were governments that had money that had funds that had uh that had bought into FTX in some way or used it in some way so you know it wasn't retail wise it probably wasn't as as widespread in the rest of the world but certainly a lot of organizations actually got hit by it um like with the block fire scandal it's an excellent point to add it's one thing to write into your journal dear diary sam is stealing everyone's money and it's so terrible but it's another thing to like go whistleblower and to tell us you count me your bonus but your just as you're sleeping on your feather bed in the the Bahamas penthouse with the pool in the spa and the masseuse and uh whatever else like this champagne on the balcony woe is me I want to have all the customer funds oh my it's awful yes more embezzlement Sam oh join me join me in the balcony yeah what we need it now is you defend Sam Victoria Jones sbf was just an alpha male doing his part to be a businessman and take your money he's just a can out there doing his can best in the world what do you think about sbf did he really ruin all of his friends um I don't know I mean certainly from reading the article it seemed that the guy seemed pretty aware of what was going on so again it kind of comes back down to this issue of taking responsibility again doesn't it you know it's just like you know now that all all of it's hitting the fan it was fine while no one knew about it and there was some degree of unease because he probably hadn't been part of something that was quite so scandalous up until that point but you know clearly now it's a bigger deal but he seems to be getting away with it and of course you know you have to remember that the whole world was kind of forning uh Sam Bankman freed uh at the time and I think osvin it's a problem with these companies especially if they're big and powerful they have a lot of money and they're being successful they often surround themselves with yes men and so this is often where it fails because no one feels like they can stand up and say no you know and uh he even mentions in the article that at that at some point it's just you know he was criticised for the fact that he was highlighting uh stuff and was top you know and was effectively told that you know they had to go along because it was a confidence game and you can hardly blame them because Keynesian economics is a confidence game you know they're just working within the system that they've got and trying to win like other people are they're just unlucky that they failed this time I mean you know the whole world is surrounded by corrupt people who've been getting away with it most of the time uh I think they just took it too far and um hence kind of got caught up in it so I don't know I mean they were all friendly enough in order to organize a business together I mean it didn't seem to be a problem then but of course you know now that the chips are on the table you know the fingers get pointed and you know I mean it just smells I mean that they're clearly a group of people with no integrity whatsoever and as far as I'm concerned they deserve everything they get well that's what we wanted to the exit question uh it seems like the trial is going terribly for Sam bad evidence everywhere bad lawyers asking repetitive questions pissing off the judge just no real hope here yet he can still only get a certain amount of years I don't think they'll send him to the electric chair Dan Eve continue with the predictive streak how long will SPF spend in prison I think we're looking about 10 to 15 right now I think is what the the average bet is yeah I was going double Theronos which is about which is currently standing at 9 so 18 but I'm going to say plus 50% like uh first so I'm going to go to for twitch for for 20 27 wasn't I wait I'm gonna say my math is really bad 18 now that's 27 right plus 50% um because it seems like it was all going on right from the start and uh and this this function of just being able to drain people's accounts that's pretty damning right that's not like a it was an accident that's willfully putting in a function that drains people's accounts uh doesn't split the books and keep things separate so there's there's lots of really obvious um fraud techniques being being uh unearthed now oh and again we have to highlight that the American legal system does not really have a standard for financial crime it's not like you still a million you get 10 years you still a billion you get 20 years as it is with violent crime if you murder someone or beat someone up you get x amount of years and when we start talking about 20 30 years that's really only reserved for violent crime and of course Ross Olbrecht the Silk Road alleged founder uh Victoria Jones how high can it go will we see fuzzy hair in the chair um well I mean again you know going back to that article I don't hold out much hope for the judge actually understanding what's happened here I mean apparently at one point he asked what mining was because he didn't know what Bitcoin mining was and uh you know sing um explain that they were it was bank Bitcoin miners with banks of computers solving puzzles in order to get a reward and add a block of transactions to the blockchain and apparently the judge replied by saying well I'm sure that's the best I'm going to get so you know if if he's struggling just understanding what mining is I mean I don't know I mean I'm sure he's come across financial crime before but whether or not you know this whole cryptic thing is kind of boggling his mind wouldn't surprise me um you know most of us have been it for several years now so he followed all the developments but you know for the average person who doesn't understand the language and understand how he got away with what he got away with um but I found that that technical jargon is not a defense people generally get more upset at me if I use technical jargon or explain things to them uh I think he'd get more years I think that pissed the judge off well yeah but he's still constrained by what he's allowed to he's what he's allowed to sentence or whatever so I don't know I don't know I don't know I mean I I'll go with the I'll go with what Dan says probably around that I think the reasonable explanation but I just had to bring that up because I thought that was really funny apparently the whole court laugh when he said that well there's always hope as they said in the fear and loathing movie castration double castration Josh Nicola what will be the result of the SPF trial as Dan has said we've got Theranos at nine years but remember she got pregnant had two kids got married maybe a little less years she's a woman and so forth how many years will SPF serve yeah I don't know I mean I don't even know how many Julian Maxwell is serving so it's kind of vague yeah proper goal 16 years and 56 minutes yeah who knows who knows I really don't know but it's it's exciting to watch it it it perplexes me that the judge wouldn't know what mining is that that's me is is really upsetting actually because if I was in the hot seat a Sam is and the whole world is trying to escape go alone which I you know I don't think Sam's not guilty that's for sure but like the rest of the panel have said you know pull out the pull out the Woody Harris and give for him wiping his tears with money they're all culpable and definitely down the chain of command they all should have something they should all be on trial so yeah I don't know it's not only Sam I think the rest of the executive board should at least get something Sam should definitely get something but yeah I think it's upset it's it upsets me that that the judge is seems to be technically inept when he shouldn't be he should understand the technology that is judging on it upsets me that somehow the world is okay with taking all the blame from every side of this and putting it on one person rather than an organization which is really what this comes down to it's a system that failed yeah it might have had ahead which was Sam but the system underneath Sam should also be on trial it's an excellent poise Josh I'd like to see some of the investors not the people that lost money the people that invested in FTX the ones who said it's a quiet kid playing video games in the meetings and let's just back him they should bring them in and put them on trial or at least to very least make them testify and say why did you invest in this company because of their blind investments in this company it leads to those losses of the normal people they enable Sam to allegedly pull off a much bigger scam than would have been possible if they had done their due diligence or if they had said no there would have been less harm specifically large VCs like Sequoia because when these VCs invest other VCs don't do due diligence they presume that the large lead investor has done their due diligence and they just go in as a follow-on investment and then you get other VCs and this is how you get this cascade and you get these scams like that woman who had the blood test one prick blood test and it would tell you everything about your blood she like scammed investors out of billion you know there's a lot of money and it was the same thing no she's she's in for nine years allegedly yeah right nine years like you guys were saying really the Singaporean government didn't get the idea on its own to invest in FTX it was these large money investors who had said things like we already made this much we already made this much of investment on our own we are such and such a big firm you can trust us that's and they have must have because that's a government organization doesn't just follow randomly investing into this curly haired guys exchange somebody has to tell them sure that's right I think Sam still going to get 10 to 15 years which isn't worth all the trouble of this trial he should just take a plea deal and like we're saying rat out the US government it wasn't me it was the US dollar that did it it was capitalism I was framed moving on to issue four lightning labs rolls out taproot assets to make Bitcoin a multi asset network yes taproot assets will give developers the tools they need to make Bitcoin a multi asset network but in a scalable manner according to lightning labs again it just sounds like more alt coins and they're going to bring stable coins to Bitcoin but I guess it's a good thing because the Bitcoin network theoretically would be more stable than one of the alt coin networks Dan Eve what do you think about taproot assets is it time to get excited yet oh well I think the idea of assets I don't view these other kind of tokens and assets is like a competitor to Bitcoin in in any way because they'll never be Bitcoin and most of them don't pretend to actually be Bitcoin you know they're just or shit coins or they you know try and provide some you know some some reason for the utility but they don't they don't compete with Bitcoin so I think that the something that gives Bitcoin more utilities actually a good thing I'm not saying utility Bitcoin is utility token but it's not just it's not just money you know it's the the basically a clock right where you know you can timestamp things and and prove prove things that are completely you know irreversible so there's many other reasons why Bitcoin and the blockchain is used specifically and so I think the idea of assets is quite good obviously a lot of Maxis are pretty peved off you know especially putting gooey stable coins on Bitcoin you know and stuff like that that they don't like and and obviously it paves the way potentially for utility tokens that they also aren't on kind of happy with but at the end of the day it brings more people to Bitcoin and it means that you know the more demand there is for Bitcoin space the more the more the more the asset rate is going to grow the more the secure it's going to be and it's going to make that money more secure in as well and in theory if you know with the hollal mentality the more demand there is for Bitcoin block space the more demand there is for Bitcoin to pay for the block space and therefore the more the price will pump because of it so I can see obviously the Bitcoin the Bitcoin block space is pretty sacred it's a sacred thing I definitely agree with you guys there but I don't think that you know that it it's I think there's plenty more things that you can use Bitcoin's blockchain for specifically and and taproot as well this is this is this is using the technology that was created on Bitcoin and Lightning right so it's it's it's the same underlying principles of de-centralization whilst not actually you know it being on a on a shit coin so if a lot of the argument about Ethereum and all these other changes that they've got a form of centralization and they're not they're not immutable then people you found a way to use it on Bitcoin that's now immutable so why not use it you know just just because you know it's a free market right or is it not my Bitcoin not in my not in my blockchain yards not in my black card the new nineties I've got a great idea we could put Bitcoin on top of Bitcoin all right it's away it's away Homer I'll give you guys time to think about that Victoria Jones we've got taproot assets altcoins are now good because they're on Bitcoin stable coins are now stable and safe everything has been solved yeah I mean I think this this argument is definitely testament to the fact that this is a particular point in Bitcoin's development I don't think this is going to be a long-term strategy by any stretch of the imagination I mean some of the conversations I've been having recently with people in person they there still seems to be quite a lot of confusion about Bitcoin just being a store of value rather than it actually being a payment network and I do think that argument is problematic because if you just use it as a store of value then you're just using Bitcoin like gold is at the moment like it's supposed to back the rest of the financial system but you know one of the talks I've been giving recently is pointing out the fact that you know poverty started to become a real problem when gold went out of circulation it's not just about the fact that gold is underlying the financial system you know when gold actually was used in the economy as a form of payment that's what kept it honest you know they only were able to create quite so much debt once gold wasn't circulating in the economy anymore and so for that reason we actually need Bitcoin to work as a payment mechanism and you know to try and fudge that development by having via equivalents backed by Bitcoin it's kind of backwards it's not really what Bitcoin is designed to do and there are plenty of other technologies that can do that in the interim and we need Bitcoin to be Bitcoin and we need it to be efficient and working as a form of payment not because we want to necessarily buy coffee with it because we want to buy coffee with it but because we need to use it as a form of payment if it's going to actually deliver what it promises and and it needs to be you know widely adopted I mean the reason why the 80 the reason why there were large drops in poverty during the 1800s is because people were you know were allowed to use it use it as a form of payment and also it was used as the medium of exchange throughout the whole of Europe you know that's that's what made it so good because you know reduced the cost of exchanging currencies between countries because all of their currencies were against a stable amount of gold but you know there was a law introduced in 1833 where when they started introducing banknotes into the economy the banks were required to actually provide the gold if someone brought that banknote into the bank and so you know the moment something happened changed the value of those banknotes people were would question it straight away like hang on what's going on here but once gold was actually taken out of circulation that was the point at which you know no one could tell anymore and that's the point at which we started to get all the debt that we've got at the moment and so you know there are a lot of really important understandings that you need about how money works to understand you know the direction in which Bitcoin should really be developed and I've not seen many people talk about it which is one of the reasons why I've been bringing it up my my talks I mean I actually did one in sorry earlier this week and actually got a good recording of it so I'm going to be publishing that one someday but I really do think that you know people need to bear these points in mind when they're developing these technologies because otherwise putting a lot of effort into something that's only needed temporarily and it's not really what Bitcoin's for we should be using the energy and the motivation for what we need Bitcoin for not these other projects that's just my opinion it does seem like we've gone a long way from Satoshi's vision like there was a game of telephone and he was like I have a dream that will recreate all of the traditional financial networks on Bitcoin derivatives and spot ETFs and all these things when really I don't think he had that dream Josh, Shagalla, what do you think they've got stable coins on Bitcoin now I don't know what it makes it stable maybe just because they say so but it's very exciting we're going to have all the assets it's going to be great. Yeah yeah you know those that don't know the the taproot actually allows for a lot more it's a part of scalability it's allows the alleviation of of network congestion in a way slightly because of the way deals with cryptographic person you know having other we always had other assets on Bitcoin by the way we had colored coins which allowed you to create coin and follow it around the network by coloring it in which then made them non-fungible but you couldn't use those on lightning network due to the way that lightning network works in a relay way so just like you have a race where someone is passing a button and someone else grabs the button and then runs the next 100 meters and then passes the button and and and let's say in that race you don't know who was the person that is passing the button who they got the button from and so it's very very hard to pass non-fungible tokens around in that mechanism so this sort of fixes that the problem is when they market it towards stablecoins it's it's awful because Satoshi was like hmm there's a fractional reserve system where banks can print as much as they want out of thin air and issue value so called value as debt and we don't need to keep any value in the bank we could just print it and Satoshi thinking hmm I'm going to create rare numbers where there is only $25 million provably and this stores value now we've gone full you know that's a 180 thinking 180 degree thinking from the legacy system and then the you know now the whole industry is like hmm we need to go another 180 back to 360 where we where we can get the banks money which is in fraction reserve and tokenize the so-called amount of money that I have on the account which is you know obviously a fraud because there isn't that much money it's all in fraction reserve and tokenize it and say now we have this on chain this lie of a number on chain as well and give it value now this is why we built the standard bio not to see ensure the standard but this is one of the reasons why we built the standard IO is that you if you build a stablecoin because stability is really useful where it's super useful but if you just use the banking system and tokenize their crap numbers which are an absolute fraud then you're just repeating the same thing over again and now we're building the crap system on a better system to make it crap again so rather than that we you know built the stand where people can lock up funds from anywhere around the world thousands of people lock up funds into smart contracts so they control an issue debt from that and and that's that's interesting and that's the kind of thing I would love to see on Bitcoin because if I could have built the standard IO on Bitcoin I absolutely would have but I still can't and and I'm still waiting for the day where we can have more touring complete smart contracts running on Bitcoin. Well and I do think Josh that your guys idea over at the standards a better idea than what they're floating here they're going to make another stablecoin but like you're saying they're going to link it to a bank account they're going to link it to the existing system they're going to recreate the problem whereas if you could link an actual asset that we know is limited that we know is controlled we're actually creating a new system we're trying something different which I think would be more interesting at least we could get the results on that. Yep yep but we're running out of time so we're going to go to predictions or a story of the week Dan Eve are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week go ahead. I'll go for a prediction and and and based on the fact that Luke DeGio got all upset about his node being tricked into holding it hosting BRC20 token essentially I'm going to protect that somebody is going to trick poor Luke dishes full node into hosting their their shit coin via tap route and lightning so yeah they're going to infiltrate his node and trick it into into having a shit coin on there so tough times ahead for Luke dashers dashed to years or dashers node it's dashed but it's all with the JR and it's so it's confusing to I don't know that he ever speaks anywhere so I've never met him but that Luke called that all right Victoria Jones you ready with the prediction or a story of the week go ahead oh well my story of the week I've been pretty busy I've been I've realised that you know in the last five months I've traveled to five different countries and two of those I was talking to conferences about Bitcoin and CBDCs and I also did that in Surrey this week and I've done it in other locations in the UK so I'm getting quite busy doing these important talks which really nice because of course I get to talk to people in person and discuss the issues but I finally got a good recording of the talk which I'm in the press of editing and so hopefully that'll be published on my YouTube channel on Sunday so you can look out for that all right very good it's great to be traveling it's also nice to be home I just want to again celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Bitcoin group if you guys want to go back we have a playlist you could go watch all the old Bitcoin group episodes there's Andreas, Dovey, Derek, everybody that's been on the show it's been really fun 10 years I went by really fast look there I look young something anyway at least we have video of that so you guys can check it out we've also got all the old comments all the old chats are all there you guys can check it out and then someday some poor intern or some graduate students gonna have to watch all this so let's let's give some pity to that guy or gal out in the future with all this video of course by then they'll just use an AI and they'll have the AI summarize it so it won't matter that must have been a special occasion because I was wearing a suit jacket there right so that was like a 300 episode or something was it I'm sure it was a yeah number number 300 and yeah I talked you up into the suit jacket look how nice that looks look at that that is a classic that is a free free gravitas all you have to do is wear a suit that's what Steven Steven Colbert used to say that back in the day Colbert but we're running out of time so thanks to everyone for joining us be sure to give us a thumbs up down below and until next time bye bye bye