#389 — The Bitcoin Group #389 - The 2023 Bitcoin Group Year in Review Spectacular

The Bitcoin Group, the American Original. For over the last 10 years, the sharpest Satoshi's the best bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Victoria Jones from Satoshi's page. Happy New Year, everybody. Ben Arck from LN Bits. Hello. Dan Eve, the crypto raptor. I buy 2020 free. Josh Shagalla from the standard.io. The Ahem Bug. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one, issue one Bitcoin Group year in review. But first, India will block Binance, Kraken, and other exchanges in crypto crackdown. India's financial intelligence unit said that the crypto exchanges were operating illegally in the country. Now their websites will be blocked. India's ban accuses the exchanges of offering their service to customers inside of India against India's law. For these outside companies that perhaps they're using with a VPN or something like that and probably have more liquidity, Victoria Jones, what do you think about India banning Bitcoin and cryptocurrency? I've actually heard of something similar happening in America. And also I've noticed bank starting to ask, I mean they were particularly panicious beforehand but starting to ask more questions and being more picky about crypto exchanges. And also, you know, if you do, I mean, even revenue, which is a common one that people use, you know, now saying that you have to ask some crypto questions before you can use their platform. So it seems to be a very popular theme at the moment. I'm wondering what's on the horizon. So yeah, and to be fair, I think most of us probably have anticipated something like this happening at some stage. We all know that it's the enemy of the government. You know, if they're going to have to come out guns blazing, it sounds like this is a reasonable strategy. You know, there are all sorts of rumors in the wider financial system of there being trouble on the horizon and it wouldn't surprise me if something happened and then this got implemented straight away. So yeah, it is worrying. But you know, this is a call to action for all of those developers who are working on decentralized systems. It's just like your moment is coming. I hope you're ready. Ben Arck, I thought this was the age of Aquarius Bitcoin ETFs, everyone accepting crypto, suddenly India blocks the websites. What do you think? I mean, I think it may be related and hopefully it's, you know, I think it might be a good thing for clear net Bitcoin behavior, people buying Bitcoin from exchanges. It might be that all these countries have realized that they need to, this is an industry which isn't going anywhere and it needs to be cleared up and regulated just as any other industry would. I've noticed that crack and have on their site a warning that by the third of Jan, there will be a compulsory assessment, extra assessment for people trading in the UK. So I think these exchanges have realized and they get a lot of letters from regulators saying they need to actually comply with the laws of whether operating within. And I hope it's just a process of the Bitcoin, the clear net Bitcoin industry which some people want to engage in, which are being cleaned up a little bit and is having less of these rogue, wild, West style exchanges and platforms where eventually everyone who is money, they're fun, you know, when you're buying sell Bitcoin and then regulated whatever way but on Kiwis seed way but then ultimately, you know, they always come with a rug pill at some point. So, yeah, so hopefully it's that. It could also be part of some sort of more crazy, cabal style attack on Bitcoin like the USD, World Reserve, hadjorn and me is being chipped away out. And that's huge. Like you really can't underestimate the how extreme and biggest story. It is for the USD to potentially not be the world reserve currency. We've had that since World War II and it was a deciding decision by Harry Dexter Wyatt and then I'm not sure many canes but at the Bretton Woods agreement, whatever comes next, there will be, you know, another moment where powerful people are sat in a room saying what are we going to use after this and that idea of an apolitical money, an apolitical medium of exchange will be floated around and now we actually have this thing called Bitcoin and maybe, you know, behind the scenes, a lot of countries are thinking that Bitcoin is a very good prospect for a future world reserve currency for people to trade things like oil in. So, and so it's it's it's it could be good. So yeah, it's a good thing or a bad thing like I don't know if there's any sitting on the fence on it like they're either we're trying to clean the industry because again, I'm using it or they're trying to attack it because they're worried about losing their grip on the USD. I don't know, like it's it's all speculation but it is interesting how it seems to be happening across the board in lots of different countries all at the same time, US, India, UK, Europe as well. So it is industry, it is interesting that there's a huge crackdown on the Bitcoin. I suppose it could be also FTX related on that front but. It would be world changing if the United States dollar was not the world's reserve currency. It might be one of those things we talk about where Bitcoin goes to a million dollars but it only buys a hamburger because the dollar has collapsed so much. Exactly. We can't really picture what it would be like and again, it's one of those things where I'm not sure we want to see what it's like. I know we want Bitcoin to do well and I've even heard some Bitcoiners Adam Meister was backing off recently saying yeah, it won't be the world's reserve currency but it's a great way to send money around the internet and I agree. I think it's still great for that. Yes, it would be a major change perhaps a catastrophe. Because you're an American so it would be a catastrophe for you. Everyone else would be better. For everyone else it would be better. It would be a catastrophe for the Americans. I agree with that. Dan Eve, what do you think about? Well, so I wasn't only about five days ago that China and Saudis made a deal that then no longer using the dollar for oil trading. It seems like it's happening although Argentina, I do not hear if some way that he's the guy we thought it was going to be the next El Salvador but he's now saying he wants the dollar to be used as Argentine's currency which is a bit of a U-turn. So yeah, seems a bit odd. The fact is all these big companies, the Black Crocs, the Fidelity, all of these other companies that are entering the scene and they're going to want some control over the whole environment. So if they can choke hold these exchanges, restrict them as much as possible, that's kind of help them control the supply of Bitcoin and how it can be traded and bought for their ETFs, their spot ETFs. There's also the fact that the... I mean, I don't know if he wants to throw a thing but I can't get to it. There's also the fact that we're in a bear market, right? That's when the regulators all hit everywhere. Although we've had a pump this year, it was with all the news of the scandals of FTX. It's almost like when Bitcoin's pumping regulators tend to not really view it that bad but they seem to scoop in when everyone's on a downer, right? When all these people are losing money, his Bitcoin is going down, that's when the regulator is all sweeping. As Victoria said, I also saw multiple different bank accounts and all of them have now got these random crypto warnings that pop up every now and then informing me that I'm going to be scammed in some sort of way. So there's just like this swath of information across the board and it does seem like a big kind of all-out conglomerate of companies that are trying to dissuade you from getting into crypto so that they can hold the reins when they go forth with their ETFs and their other Bitcoin products for their own banking needs and banking institutions. Josh Shagala certainly forchered and favored to the board, right? India, shouldn't they get on board? Well, definitely, they should and they eventually will. There's no stopping it. On the same note, we've just seen Nigerian central bank open, it's reverse, it's ban. So I think we've also seen China do that now. So China's reversing, it's ban or being a bit more light-handed. Nigerian bank wants to really look at deeply integrating it now. So they tend to sort of ban it and then go full hog the other direction and deeply integrate cryptocurrency, whether it's Bitcoin or whatever, the technology in some sort of way. I do agree with, so it's a different story with central banks versus retail banks. But yeah, the retail banks, I know a friend of mine in Australia tried to just send, it wasn't even much. I mean, it's different for anyone, but like five grand or something up into cracker I think or something, some Australian exchange. And their bank account got frozen and this was sending to us and got frozen. Then they had to spend ages trying to get through to the bank, because I don't know why, they're just so inefficient crap. And then they, that's right, and they were calling in from overseas. So they got hit with massive long hour long, they would be on hold for hours. And then they suddenly the phone would hang up and they'd have to, wow, no, I'm rang up again. And so they got hit with a huge phone bill of like, I know it was massive, it was like 300 bucks or something, just for that call. And when they finally got through to the bank, they had to spend, it was like half an hour with some specialist who was grilling them about where the money's going, why they're doing that. Do they know much about crypto? Isn't that the other thing? And, and the explanation that came back, because they got very to us back to the bank, the explanation that came back is that they're just having so many scammers, scaring people out of money that, that they just have to do that. Because once it's got, like if it's a transfer from bank to bank, there's insurances, there's a bank reverse or there's stuff that they can do. But with crypto, it's sort of gone and then they have to deal with their insurance companies are cracking down on it. So it's a fascinating time, but at the end of the day, it's a losing battle, similar to Napster, similar to everything else in the music industry. And it'll be the same with Microsoft Open AI and the New York Times lawsuit. Like, the fact is that the internet has come for money. And when the internet comes for your industry, you better start worrying for your industry, because it will be disrupted in a certain way. There's one last thing that I'd like to say, and that's that the doubt, interestingly enough, the standard doubt has been voting over and over like, oh, I has been talking about for a while about the Indian rupee as the next stable coin. So eventually backed by crypto. So eventually you won't need these exchanges anyway, because Indian freelancers and there's many of them all want to be paid in crypto, because it's just far easier, cheaper and better to be paid in cryptocurrency. Then it is as a freelancer. And so this is all coming, whether they like it or not. And the thing is if they ban the on and off ramps, what happens is that Indian will go directly to stable coins in that is pegged to the Indian rupee, and they'll stay in that ecosystem. So they won't need to buy the cryptocurrency, they will earn it. Whether they invoice in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency, or they invoice in an Indian rupee pegged stable coin. At the end of the day, money flows where friction is less. And that's what will happen. And we'll see. We'll see. It does seem very much like a welcome to the internet moment for the Indian banks. Of course, there's fraud everywhere. It's the internet. Welcome to the internet. And yes, they're going to have to deal with it if they want the advantages of the internet, which we've all seen. It's too bad. We can't seem to have China and India at the same time, huh, Josh? We get China back. India goes. India comes over. China leaves. It's this dual personality thing going on there. Yeah, yeah. Well, like I said, it's a matter of time, so they both just cave because, yeah, to block websites is such a pathetic attempt to ban something because everybody knows that you could just get around. I mean, China famously blocks most websites. And people just use VPNs. It becomes actually becomes more common that people start to educate themselves on how to get around blocks. And they just use, you know, they just look Indians are smart people as a as a as a generalization. And and also quite capitalistic and profit driven like any good human. They they want to make profits. And when they see that that capital is heading into this industry and man, imagine the ETF launches of BlackRock and suddenly trillions potentially head into this industry. And they've just bland and blocked it. And all these Indians can't get in. Well, what's going to happen? Of course they're going to get in. They're not going to not get in. They'll be specialized. It just basically opens your country up to corruption, corruption, because you need people corrupt to get it skirt around the laws and get people in. It's the same as any sort of prohibition. I think that's a really good point. Josh, India is mirroring China here. And there's obviously excessive demand for cryptocurrency, similar to a drug war situation where there's demand. People are going to find a way. If they really want to invest in cryptocurrency, they'll go to a black market. They'll go to a less safe market, as we saw with the Silk Road, which allowed large amounts of cannabis to be traded for large amounts of money without violence. They're going to find violence with their cryptocurrency because they're going to be forced to go to the park or the bar or wherever you trade cryptocurrency in India. So hopefully they'll get VPNs first. But we need to move on to the exit question. Competing against the Bitcoin predictor ball, the source of all truth and knowledge. So powerful. It makes green screen screens, green screens, link. Victoria Jones will the price of Bitcoin be higher or lower this time next week. Well, I said lower last week and I was correct. So as I'm on a winning streak, I'll repeat that prediction against the ball I might add. Ben, are higher or lower? Hi, baby. So yeah, the new year is going to rock it from now. Dan Eve. Yeah, I think we'll be springing up right. The ETF says all these rumors about the ETF. So it's going to it's going to pump it for the decision. And then who knows where it is from that going from there? Josh, a gole more positivity. Absolutely. And I'll go higher. We're going to ask the ball here. Will the price of Bitcoin be higher this time next week? It says cannot predict now. Cannot. The ball is taken of a occasion. So no answer for you. We have one more story before we start the year end show fast times at FTX high. Fortune crypto has given us a profile of the members of FTX, the company that just might have taken your life savings from you and they're treating them like high school kids describing the romance a little bit of yearbook action, most likely to become president, homecoming queen, the invisible man and so forth. But it is a kind of a nice way to get people to pay attention to the various characters and unnamed mystery characters such as Sam Trabacco from the FTX scandal. Victoria Jones, what do you think of Fortune crypto's article? Is it fun? A nice way to teach people or kind of insulting to people who have probably lost their life savings? Well, I mean, I was fortunate not to be involved in the FTX scandal. So I can look at it with mild amusement. But obviously, you know, anyone who does has lost funds, you know, not unusually they would clearly be mad about it. I mean, I'm just the whole thing is sickening really and I'm sick of hearing about it. But if I had to hear about it again, it's mildly amusing. So I'll give them up. Ben Arich, what did you think about the article? Like you say, I mean, like how many of the core group of the banks is the 2008 crisis? Can you can you name? And well, none of them were indicted, but I mean, like none of them went to jail, but like how many can you name? You know, and I think this, like you say, it's for me is the first time I actually, you know, thought about a name like Nishad Singh or Gary Wang and you a little bit more about them. Because I think like Victoria said, it's I wasn't personally involved in FTX. I had no funds on there, and I think I don't need to be honest, I don't even know what FTX was until the news broke. So to touch down from from that world, although I have got friends who lost some money, so that sucks, you know, and for everyone else who lost money, it sucks as well. But it's very important, like, people remember their names and their names get pulled through the mud a little bit because often, you know, with these white collar crimes, there's a slap on the wrist and some token time, which gets appealed and then they're out of jail before you know it and they're working for some consultancy or setting up her event you capitalists fund or whatever. So, yeah, so it's a good thing that their names get pulled through the mud, because they create a love hurt, a love loss and sadness for people who lost their money. And yeah, I quite like that, I'll be honest, is that was quite cool, it was like that. That is always hard to take Ben when someone gets out of prison and gets the same job in the industry, they just got punished for breaking the rules and it doesn't make a lot of sense. Well, they ended up coming like a talking head being paid fortune on like CNN or something, because they were the ones to commit some fraud at some point and now they're, I go to consultant for fraud. There's an experience in scamming, so we have to go to there. I think that's what happened like that actually if you read the article, so it's like, I didn't know that. I mean, like it's, it's, I mean, it's just a good thing that some of them are going to face, you know, criminal charges, I think in, you know, like public opinion, like they'll look after their own, because he's a, you know, rich kids of the elite and they'll look after them for as long as they can, but then as we've seen with other people who are part of the elite, like once the public opinion turns and everyone just piles in and I think that will probably happen with this lot. It's like the FBI and Hannibal Lecter, you'd want to interview him about eating people, he has the information. Dan Eave, what do you think about FTX and the yearbook article? Certainly none of them are eating people at least not yet allegedly. Well, I mean, you know, from, from an outsider's perspective, it wasn't involved or impacted, then, yeah, it's quite funny, but I think from someone if you were impacted at least you've got faces of people to hate, right? And so if you did see the mystery in the street, you could be like, yo, you twa, look what you did. I mean, you know, there's, there's, there's just been a huge story isn't it? It's been ongoing throughout the year. We started, we saw the sentencing yet, right? So it's not quite over yet. And obviously we've only had SBF's trial. There haven't been any of the other trials, whether there'll be a trial because they, if they've just negotiated some sort of plea deal or whatever that they may not be a trial, right? Because as I understand it, it might just be a straight sentencing. But there's a lot of drama that's still unfolding right now, but I mean, yeah, you've got to see that the funny side of it. There's unfortunately so many of these exchanges that go down and this one's just been covered in in such a, an insane way compared to compared to all the rest with the way Sam did these interviews and even dropping himself in about Mingling Co. Mingling custom of funds. But it is really sad as everyone's pointing out the fact that, you know, 2017, 2008 crisis literally impacted the whole world and no one could put faces to the people responsible to that for that. And that's disgraceful. It's literally disgraceful. And yeah, here you go. You've got like an exchange that went down and fair enough a lot of people will hurt, but everyone knows his face. And that's what's really pretty bad about this world, you know, and it's going to continue to be that way for a long while. So whilst all the banks are getting these record fines and and and still to this, you know, to this year getting record fines, you know, a crypto exchange, that gets just brushed under the carpet. No one gets indicted for anything. It's just literally waved away. And and here we are, you know, talking about just just a bang another crypto exchange going down. And that's bigger news than than a bank that services way more people doing complete insane things in terms of anti-many laundering themselves and, you know, funding terrorism blah, blah, blah. Yet Bitcoin is the bad guy. You know, it's just it's a ridiculous situation. Well, and like Ben said, there were no trials. No one was tried for crashing the economy, although we know who did it and we know what happened. Josh, Shagallah, what do you think about the FTX high school story, most likely to be voted 20 years in prison? Well, it's it's really like watching a train wreck in slow motion, except it's kind of less charm and more math. But it's it's really one of these things that just keeps on going and going and going and going and like Victoria said, I'm tired of hearing from these clowns, although I think it is kind of important to keep that in the front of of the media because of the massive fraud. This persona that that Sam had as this math whiz and that, you know, he's trying to convince everyone that he's the next Einstein with that wacky hair and and instead it's the next Bernie made off. But really, if we if we look at what needs to happen is there needs to be technical solutions to to this sort of thing because the the law isn't enough, you know, the reason why these people are getting jail time and getting all this stuff is because there's already regulation, there's already laws, they just chose to ignore them all. And this is why I really love the defy space because defy and and people that are building these things as smart contracts, although there's still scams in there, you can at least read the law in terms of code about the rules, read the regulations, the rules that these contracts are going to do and perform and then make a decision on whether you go with that. Obviously, not everybody's a programmer, but this is the whole thing about free and open sources that you can read those read the code or somebody else can read the code that can code and discuss that in in plain English and nowadays you can even get AI to read through and explain stuff in plain English and what's going to happen. Obviously, there's there's smart contracts that can be attacked or or wrongly architected so it's not a it's not a panacea at all. In fact, it's very early days, so it's there's probably even more money loss in in that space, but you won't get this sort of thing in the future because it's anti-fragile. So people learn the market learns what to look out for and yeah, seeing this sort of thing as a as a schoolbook, a school end of yearbook is kind of it is funny and it's good to expose some of these other characters, this supporting cast of characters. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, we'll see what happens with the Mt. Gox creditors and you know, I'm one of those guys. So we'll see how that plays out. I think the FTX thing will probably play out very similar where you if you are a creditor at FTX, you'll basically be put into a the ultimate HODL strategy where it's kind of a HODL with a haircut. So you will get more value out eventually because there is still a lot of crypto leftover, depending on how they deal with it. Maybe the state just comes in and takes it all. In Japan, they had a certain legal frameworks set up. So originally, the state was just going to take everything and then Mark Apelus restructured the collapse to basically enable everybody to get whatever crypto is left out. So if that is the case, if that's what happens, people might end up with more value than they lost in terms of fee out value. Of course, they won't get the same amount of value vast amounts more that they should have if they kept the crypto. But yeah, let's see what happens. It will be very fascinating seeing this roll out. I get a feeling the liquidators are going to keep on snacking on this one for years and years and years and draw it out for as long as possible because that's what they need to do to get paid. So who's the good point, Josh, that the at least with D5, the market actually punishes the security if it's badly coded, if they lose everyone's money, if they run off with it, the price goes down. We've seen several corporations where they perhaps poison thousands and then continue on as a corporation because they're just too big to fail or the poisoning happened in another country that no one cares about allegedly. But let's move on to the year end spectacular. 2023 year interview. It's a great time to push the thumbs up button or to retweet the tweet or whatever you got out there, push the like button. Okay, Victoria Jones, are you ready? And everyone you can play along at home in the chat, you can say what your idea for the category would be and have a debate back and forth or maybe in the comments later, let us know your ideas play along in the home game. Victoria Jones, for 2023, what was the best Bitcoin company? Well, I'm going to be a little bit, my nominations for all of the categories kind of follow a theme this year and I'm going to be a little bit tricky by saying that, you know, I don't really support any companies that are in the traditional financial space because Bitcoin is the antithesis of that. So I take the word company to mean groups of people working together in order to support Bitcoin's development. And I know Ellen Bitt's got a lot of props last year and I'm not taking anything away from you Ben. I think you do a terrific job. But on my website, I personally use the BTC pay server and I think those guys, you know, the way in which they manage to collaborate in a decentralized way to keep the thing working. I use it on my website and it's not easy to set up. It really isn't, but at the same time, you know, once you get it working, it's very slick. It provides a brilliant service. You know, we're still in the early days of Bitcoin and it's companies like that and innovations like that that the world needs and so they get my vote this year, even though they've been around for a while. Ben, ARC, best Bitcoin company. I'm going to be a bit of a bit of an eGitys and it's actually because like I don't get out much. So I don't actually know any other companies. I'm going to pick two. I'm going to have to pick Allen Bitt's because the project's just done so much this year and we have a for profit arm, which is rolled out the software as a service. So you can go to AllenBitt's.com and spin up Allen Bitt's like you could if you go to like WordPress.com and that was quite an undertaking to kind of put in this whole Kubernetes cluster thing which was pretty hard. And then there was there's all the shop stuff as well, which we sell where we sell off the hardware and it helps build some momentum on some of the hardware projects and get the hardware into people's hands. So yeah, I mean, I've been single minded. That's been the thing I've been working on most of the year. So no, it's that for me that's the that is the that is the that's the been the most insane thing. The insane thing to see progress. And like I think at the beginning of the year we were like let's by the end of this year just hopefully gets a point where it's out of beta and into production and people can use it in production because so many of these pieces of software we use are just perpetually in beta. We don't want that we want it to be like audited and have you have some assurance that it's it's definitely doesn't have bugs. The core software at least and and we've got it to that point and we've got this incredible extension framework. So I won't run out too much but I love it's flipping it's ace. The other company I want to give props to his block stream man because I mean like with all the scaling stuff with all the fees the high fees I think for a lot of people like they've started using liquid as a kind of bridge pushing liquidity around and in and out of lightning we have with our node and there's been times where it's saved our node not demos server being able to have liquid there's that extra resource. So I'm really happy for the block stream that you know that there's a really good video of and it's like Adam back in the war room and he gets this memo that more than four people are using liquid finally and it's this kind of this trailer for liquid. So I know it's kind of somehow it's become controversial the people like oh liquid is not Bitcoin blah blah blah but it's it's it's it's it's it's a really good resource which is decentralized enough for us in the ways in which we use Bitcoin and with our node for us to just like push channel liquidity around and it's very cheap as well which is which is great and DNI who works on LNBIT sees heavily involved in bolts which is part of the liquid federation so we have some cross over there but yeah my block stream props to him wild unto him for for building something which was a slow burner and wasn't all sexy but then when we needed it we really needed it like thank God they were building something in the background which we could rely upon to keep our keep our lightning nodes our channels balanced so yeah thank you really Ben more than four people using the liquid network amazing Dan Eve Best Bitcoin Company 2023 I think LMS is by default because I just think it's a great bit of software with all the add-ons like it's like a new add-ons every week so that's that's that's kind of a default but in terms of one that I use quite frequently I really like Electrum like I use it for just monitoring specific Bitcoin addresses I've got a lot of different addresses that are mine I just like snooping I'm not more snooping that's a bad word but just monitoring like a nosy neighbor poking their nose through the curtains and just having a peep at these things here and there so I think an Electrum's really good it's just a really nice nice UI really simple easy to use and then there's like another service that I've been using a lot recently a sat-spack which is like it's like a lolly I had some some some some some some bad reviews about lolly so I just started using sat-spack and that's pretty cool over the place I used to use quidco and top cashback or whatever it was in the UK we use so now I use a sat-spack but yeah so I think it's a tie between Electrum and sat-spack for me for Bitcoin software Bitcoin company. Josh Jagala, that's Bitcoin company 2023. Yeah I mean there's a bunch to choose obviously LM bits is fantastic and people people I've talked about LM bits to a lot of people and they're like oh well it's too confusing there's so many parts and then when they see the website and they see the demos and stuff they're like oh this fantastic this is so easy so yeah definitely go and check it out and I'll be I'm going to have to shout out Voltaura as well because it's never been hacked in this whole time it's still around since 2015 it's the Bitcoin physical gold exchange but it's yeah it's you know that I could throw micro strategies in there in just in terms of like trying to be a little bit out of the box thinking purely because it's it's a company that's got a lot of eyes on it it's been around since the .com bubble you know it's it's a long running company and they they switch to being a kind of an ETF where they're just buying Bitcoin yeah so it's I think it's fascinating to see a company like MicroStrategy which is a huge company just making it their business model just to buy Bitcoin it's very fascinating all right Victoria Jones are you ready with the envelope the envelope please here it is it's been sealed in a jar on a desk and fulcane waggles porch for over the last two weeks hermetically sealed that's right here it is carnax the magnetism has three wheels dances in the rain we open go that's how you have to open it and the winner is best Bitcoin company 2023 micro strategy with honorable mention for naive bucali yes their strategy was small and we made front of the many times for mirroring the pirate at 40 bitcoin campaign from the old days just let us buy Bitcoin for you and hold it and the price of our stock will go up well it turns out the price of micro strategy stock did go up despite the simplicity of their small strategy it's almost what I would do if I had a Bitcoin company just buy Bitcoin and sit on it in addition to that Michael sailors been out there with the talking about Bitcoin on all the news talking to all the companies all the advocacy that he's done micro strategy is the Bitcoin company of the year 2023 moving on worst Bitcoin company Ben Ark who is the worst Bitcoin company 2023 micro strategy no I didn't have one so I just wanted to just wanted to chuck it in there but yeah I did because I really couldn't think of a bad Bitcoin as I was pathetic but a bad Bitcoin company but no I'm gonna I'm gonna the I'm just gonna say micro strategy this is the worst one because it's all a pump and dump he's the world's biggest and most successful pump and dumper and one day he will dump on us I don't mean that by the way micro strategy but yeah a led strategy that must be taken out context at some point Dan Eve worst Bitcoin company I couldn't pick one I you know I just that my companies they're working on Bitcoin you know doing something useful I mean obviously there's people who have Bitcoin and other ship coins and their shipwinkers can you know you can lump those in but there's no specific like Bitcoin company I think that really is that bad I mean you can go back to I'm sorry so it's always said so best Bitcoin company is BC pace server so I'm gonna say for for bit pay as the worst Bitcoin company because I still don't forgive them for the 20 forever hated poor bit pay for they still exist a bit pay a bit pay a bit pay a bit they do yeah and they're like they're like still they're still like picking up some big customers as well they did some good ship back in the day man yeah they did they were they were innovators back in the I went to one of their parties they were giving away the mini bar that's not bad Josh Shagalla worst Bitcoin company 2023 well um I you know some would say that uh well I said before micro strategies and I could put them in the worst as well quite easily because the same reason Ben uh had but I would also add that they have vast amounts of debt and are highly leveraged at the same time and that could have turned out extremely bad for them because they had these long positions and as the price was going down it only needed to drop another like few hundred bucks and it could have been lights out for the company with a massive margin call so so they're just lucky that that didn't happen um and because that didn't happen they could now go on to be one of the most valuable companies in the world because if if now we go on to the next moon run um it's it's gonna be huge for them so uh while I don't like that sort of business of sort of gambling with with funds like that specifically because it's um is micro strategy still publicly traded yeah good is um yeah I don't know I that so yeah that that puts that in the thing is um there's other companies that obviously FTX uh is is a big one for this year um yeah I'll just leave it at that I think Josh can see inside this envelope there's something going on here but uh yeah micro strategies for the up and the down I could see that but at the same time I mean he's at least with he he said he would invest your money in Bitcoin whereas with Sam we had no idea where the money was being invested Victoria Jones worst Bitcoin company we've heard a lot of the same answers from best Bitcoin company here Blackbrook I know everyone's excited about the ETF but to me it's just the antithesis of what Bitcoin is but is meant to be so you know and I think I think we should call it out more often than we do um I think there's a lot of hype about it pumping the price but there's also a lot of uh nefarious activity that goes on uh with these companies and Larry think is not our friend the enemy of our enemy is our enemy and the worst Bitcoin company Josh had it's FTX how could it be anything else they took their customers money they had the super bowl commercials they had Larry David Tom Brady Jizelle Bunderen all telling you to buy crypto currency he even Tom Brady tried to melt the bear market the winter cold of crypto with a flame thrower for you because of FTX and allegedly SPF taking all of the customers money and spending it on whatever he wanted which seemed like a lot of fun for him allegedly didn't like moving on in 2022 though they're still the worst Bitcoin company of the year they're awful awful what's the most defining moment most defining moment of 2023 Dan Eve most defining moment well I've picked maybe quite an abstract one which was the fact that um and it there's going to be a bit of a theme in my answers here but like uh the so I think when the it was the first time since 2017 that the mining fees were more than the block reward um because of the ordinal type and you know kicked off that that huge conversation again about how the fee subsidy is going to going to keep Bitcoin going when when the harvining you know kicks in or keeps keep on kicking in um and you know when we're so close to it now we're like what four four months away from from the harvining and yeah I just thought it's quite quite a big moment actually so with all the with all the fuss going on about but you know block size debates coming back again um and you know the the it brought back that debate of how how is Bitcoin security model going to work with with the block rewards producing and you know the the the the the ordinals are definitely consuming quite a lot of block space um and there's all the drama about the the censoring of these transactions as well along the game with that so I think that was quite a big moment in in this year Josh Shagala most defining moment 2023 I think um the the fact that this ETF is getting closer is kind of defining the the talking points definitely in terms of the mainstream side of things um it's what's really driving yeah a lot a lot of these conversations but on a technical front I think the ordinals um uh uh are bringing back the discussion of on-chain spam and what that means um for you know but what does on-chain spam mean you know and and people getting back into the camps of no that's uh if you pay for a transaction it's legit you've paid for the transaction that's the whole point uh you know famously we have Adam Bax invention of of the the stamps for email where you um you pay a little bit of money to get an email through and then it's not spam due to the fact that spam is only available if it's something is totally free and uh and so yeah this conversation is fascinating and I think it is it is defining because people are jumping into camps called it's either the the ordinals spaces either a bug that needs to be fixed which is a definition defining moment or it's um it's not it's not spam it's part of the part of the blockchain now it's part of Bitcoin and uh and that's also then a definition and a defining moment so that's my complex answer. Victoria Jones most defining moment 2023 um I think CZ being kicked out of Binance is quite a defining moment um not because I think that um you know Binance is necessarily uh has no case to answer but I think it was definitely set up as that what they did very successfully was make crypto accessible to almost everyone around the world um you know I recently watched um a piece of McCormack interview where he mentioned that you know almost he he does interviews all around the world and wherever he goes um you know anywhere in the world you know everyone's heard of Binance the locals are using Binance and of course one of the things that um you know Binance was criticized for was giving access to people who the US didn't want having access now there are a lot of talking points around that um in terms of you know we want to make Bitcoin accessible to everybody we want everyone to have access to this decentralized finance and for all its faults uh Binance was giving people access to that and of course the US coming in and kicking him out and introducing their own their own jurisdiction you know I think it's the beginning of the end and just the fact that you know already talked about the fact that these banks are now restricting access for people to transfer their money I think that could be more of a defining moment than we realize yet um and and quite a worrying one actually um I think there was a lot to be said for what CZ was trying to achieve and I I am actually sorry that he's not there anymore I'm not saying that Binance wasn't doing I know there were lots of issues with spoofing and people feeling like their trades weren't right but in terms of access and and that being there for everyone I know we want Bitcoin to work that way anyway without needing the exchanges but until we get to that point I think Binance had a really important role and I think CZ was key to that so yeah that was my thoughts on defining moment Ben Arck most defining moment yeah I'm I was gonna look I agree very much with Josh that I think the ordinal stuff was was really quite huge for the Bitcoin space um and that was I think and I was like genuinely for every when that launched it was just such as an impact like and again like Dan said with the the fee stuff you know it's uh um the fees being so high because of ordinal it's had such a huge impact on the Bitcoin ecosystem but I'm gonna say Noster um it was like you I'm I'm conflating that December of 2022 into 2023 which is when Jack Dorsey first picked up on Noster and they gave that grant to Fiat Jeff but then there was the event there was Noster uh Nosterica in March that was huge like pulling all these people together all these Noster bitches all these Noster freaks together and then having them like share ideas in the meets base so many great projects flew off from there and um it's uh Noster isn't Bitcoin um but I mean it goes to goes together so well like bread and butter and uh things like the lightning network which is implemented through zap so it's um could be improved but you know it's it's cool people are like experiencing a digitally native payment and there's no QR code which is like one of the sticking points of lightning is it's kind of fitted with the QR code thing you've got to scan the QR code pay the QR code and then you have solutions like Albi where you can pay in browser but it's still kind of fiddly whereas with when you're using like a social network and you send these apps to people it feels just very like natural um and there's a whole bunch of services I know which are being built on on that concept which is being able to click and we'll have browsers pay or you know like not having to get your phone out of the scan QR codes because you're logged in using some of your Noster keys um and that's very exciting and interesting uh and I think as well like Noster itself um although it borrowed a lot of talent from from the Bitcoin ecosystem uh it pulled in a hell of a lot like like new developers who weren't Bitcoiners but they they saw Bitcoin being used in this digitally native way and it's very intuitive and it makes sense and it's like oh yeah right nothing counts to make sense to to send something like zaps than something like Bitcoin um and uh and the lightning network and all the stuff which sits behind uh sits behind zaps as well for me Noster was probably the most defining moment like seeing that protocol which you know we first covered on this on the WorldCrupple Network it was like the first there was the first place in the world which we actually well was actually spoken about or uh Noster was spoken about on a on a YouTube stream and um we have to dig that out one day and like watch or something like listen to us talking to our everybody about this new thing that I'm not knowing that someone like Jack Dorsey would get involved and it was just a momentous as well to like have someone like that Dorsey you know using a billionaire using it to kick another billionaire in the balls Elon Musk uh because Elon Musk's sacked a bunch of his mates basically um and then you have people like Edward Snowden coming in um and you know and and a bunch of people who interested in food and speech and um uh food and speech platforms and then seeing Bitcoin there natively built into these clients is is very special um and I very much look forward to 2024 I think it's going to be very exciting time for Noster uh and Noster being used in a whole range of other applications I don't want to you know go on about Elon bits too much but we did also roll out the Noster market thing um which again liked Agonali was the the kind of one of the things which helped influence creation of Noster again also first covered here and we're equipped with network and uh well also we got we have we just all the the things which are being built out on Noster and the the the the the different use different ways different this new paradigm shift of having you know a dumb server and smart clients where you're empowering the users um is is is powerful across a whole range of applications and I look forward to those applications being explored in 2024 and the more having like this crazy you know digital native currency um which we can some micro transactions through built in natively um I was talking to a friend of mine uh and uh we've actually started building something like as a you know proof of concept um but uh just like so I'm a speaking to people at VR and having you know lightning payments in VR and I was like well how are you going to scan the QR code you know you're in the casino and you got to because I got the VR headset on um whereas uh I think Noster could fix a lot of those things and you we could see you know those payments happening in VR space uh so yeah we've got some experiments around that that's pretty cool and uh yeah anyway 24 was going to be a momentous four Bitcoin and Noster the most defining moment 2023 BlackRock ETF interest $9.42 trillion of assets under management they like us they really like us suddenly Bitcoin has a friend a big friend who will get us an ETF in January most to find I didn't get to say and I guess to as well somehow I don't know I swear I can't see through these things but I was going to say the most to find oh hang on was this surprising was this surprising that was most of fun moment Josh are you ready for surprise because you're good to all first for surprise the next category to Josh's surprise is biggest surprise Josh what's the biggest surprise of 2020 look the the biggest surprise for me really was that December 6 2023 Jamie Diamond comes out and says who are up to me I'd shut Bitcoin down December 29th rolls along JP Morgan is now you know recognized as as an author authorised participant in the BlackRock ETFs like that to me I we all know that Jamie Diamond is a financial criminal allegedly and so it makes it's definitely not that surprising in that sense because the guy knows how to manipulate the market he knows that if you bag Bitcoin you basically can pick up cheap Bitcoin so this is again one of his ways of getting cheap Bitcoin I guess for his ETF or whatever it's just bag on it so as we lead into this ETF moment happening expect a lot more far coming from the people that are actually sponsoring the ETF because they want to buy up cheap well as they said in Star Trek 6 only Nixon could go to China Victoria Jones what's the biggest surprise of 2023 well I was thinking I was thinking about this and the ETF doesn't surprise me because we've been talking about that for since 2017 CZ didn't surprise you know although I thought it was a defining moment it didn't surprise me because people have been talking about Binance very silver-resigning surprise me because you know he's been a he's kind of been a fixture they that was like the first you know whatever you call it on Bitcoin where people could actually trade in the stock market with Bitcoin so it was an innovation at the time I know there's been a lot of debate about you know the fees being too high and obviously the discount stars are 40% at the beginning of the year it's now reduced to 5% but in spite of everything he he he has had the advantage by setting up that company and keeping it going and so for him to suddenly go straight off to CZ just as a bank so we're all starting to get nervous about crypto I don't know my spidey sense is something something's up so yeah Ben Ark biggest surprise so I lost my muteboard um the biggest surprise of 2023 I would say it's the pop up pop up probably the FTX caps and how it didn't really pull the Bitcoin price down that much because historically when we've had like exchanges big exchanges to go down they've really like pulled the price down with them and it just it shows that it would be hard to really like for one entity to crash and then also pull the Bitcoin price down and it wasn't really a surprise because we all knew that but I'm just struggling to find a surprise in in something we were surprised because obviously we're great predicting everything on this show so nothing's a surprise but the yeah I think I think it was I think it was the it was the for me I felt that I was happily surprised that that bedrock of extreme hodlers who aren't going to let go of their Bitcoin hell strong and we did have you know blood in the streets at the beginning of the year it was kind of blood in the streets like perfect storm of fud happening in our little world and the Bitcoin price didn't seem to give a fuck so the honey badgers back and it's it's rooted up and it's ready for 2024 it's going to eat all the other markets has trace mayor used to say the hotlers of last resort and they held through Dan Eve what's the biggest surprise 2023 all right I think although the ETFs have been on the cards for a while black rock jumping in was a surprise for me because it was just like the biggest right it was like the whale of whales but also grew with Victor about the about Barry Silver and maybe it's because all of these you know these these existing leaders they're slowly trying to escape because they know that like the traditionals are going to be hunting for them right well it's hunting season for the leaders of these existing exchanges because didn't didn't cracken what's the guy called rum his name now but he stepped down the news well so you know I'm surprised Jesse power from cracken has stepped down yeah yeah so it does seem like there's there's a slew of people leaving and maybe that is because they just don't want the hassle of the you know the giants stepping in and what the giants can actually do because of the their pay pockets and and I'd be worried right if I was the leader of a big crypto company and you've got you know you're stepping on the feet of black rock and fidelity in all these companies you know you're going to have to either obey them or just leave your company quietly and not have to back that down in that particular way so yeah I'd be worried if I was a big a big crypto company leader I'm surprised that Brian Armstrong is to be fair with all these other people leaving especially with these fights of the regulators happening all the time and worried they should be because the biggest surprise of 2023 SPF and CZ convicted sure maybe one of them was a shoe in but to see them both go although CZ's company does live on and he made billions fair trade off so far although he may get jail time moving on the next category best new offering Victoria Jones we did Josh he started with Josh Victoria Jones what's the best new offering of 2023 um Noster I think Noster's the best new offering it took me a while to kind of figure out what it was and I had to go to conferences and hear Ben talk about it a couple of times before I actually dived in and got my own Noster account but I think the the principles of it you know especially you know I think decentralized money is a fantastic innovation we also needed decentralized internet um one of the newsletters that I did a while ago I investigated what actually happened with the South C bubble which was something that happened soon after the Bank of England was instituted and one of the things that happened at the same time was the Mississippi bubble and in conversations with friends one of the things I pointed out was the reason why France became a complete basket case after that was because they were trying to run the Mississippi company and the Bank of France at the same time the reason why England survived was because they kept them separated so when the South when the South C bubble collapsed the Bank of England was able to step in and take on that debt and so you know we need we need different pillars you know you don't have a house it's held up just by one pillar we need other innovations that will support the infrastructure you know if we're relying on bitcoin and we haven't got a decentralized internet what do we do if the internet goes down and so obviously you know that's a that's a working progress but you know Noster is almost like the seeds of that that they've managed to get working and you know clearly there've been some big names who've really you know jumped on board and understood this and adopted it I mean I have to say I'm still using Twitter more than I use Noster basically because there's a larger audience there but I can definitely see the potential of it and you know from that perspective it I think it's really essential service and good jobs for all those people who help build it Ben Arquets the best new offering of 2023 oh I didn't have one but I think I'm gonna say Noster again and yeah Victoria's totally right and one of the cool things about Noster and why and it anything which comes after something like Twitter or those legacy platforms the most powerful thing about this legacy platforms is is their network effect of users and whenever you create a new platform you have to pull in all these new users onto your you know you're mastered on server whatever whereas with Noster because all these users are insuroperable across clients as that I mean we're I think it's 400,000 daily 400,000 active users now as that user base grows then it's a case if it's a bit like it's the Trojan where you know just as big just to free enough resources the Trojan and just as Bitcoin's the Trojan and they have to let it in then Noster will be the Trojan in that you know how do you get an extra X million users why you just implement Noster into your whatever platform and then there's legacy social media platforms will implement Noster but yeah whatever comes next needs the power of that network effect by having insuroperable users across clients and that's what Noster has and I can't really think of a better way of doing it than using public key grip that public key grip is incredible so yeah that was good excuse to have a little Noster run anyway yeah roster Dan Eve Best New Offering of 2023 oh wow I think I think I think it would it would be wrong if I didn't say Noster right because no I think it's been an incredible bit of technology and it's decentralizing social media and I think there's a lot of opportunity we've only like with Bitcoin we've only begun to see the you know the the amazing use cases that Bitcoin has in the early days and we're seeing that we've not start now so there's so many amazing services that are growing it didn't it isn't Darmus shutting down or the guy he's he yeah with Darmus will um he's uh and and I spoke to him about this in Costa Rica his biggest problem is that like when you run a free and open source project at some point you need to give other people commit access and then um and merge rights and then when you when you do that you just say we're gonna have like three people like sign something off before it gets merged in whereas well didn't do that so every single commit which was PR'd in he had to review himself and then merge in himself and it's just a nightmare so he's just getting everything was all backed up and then it meant that like often when people would complain about um something to do in Noster it was quite often something related to something in Darmus which hadn't been merged in yet so it was a little bit more slow to move to some of the other projects and I think that's related to the Darmus thing but it's sad because it's a nice looking platform but um I'd be held before he shuts it down I hope it just gives a bunch of people in that because it's a great community around a bunch of those people some more access more merge rights because he's gonna he's gonna pass it on right rather than just shut it down all together was is is it just gonna be a case I imagine so I mean it's a free and open source project so hopefully someone if you just want to maintain it someone else will maintain it and then run it probably more how I like a free and open source project should be run nice nice indeed Noster. Josh Shagala best new offering um yeah I mean I have to say Noster as well but I'd also say the standard what we're creating to Bp for Bitcoin and crypto in general being having stable currency that's backed by crypto that's backed by Bitcoin or wrapped Bitcoin in this in our case is really important it's really important but Noster is also extremely important and we can see now that really every single department is going after Elon Musk's Twitter because he's trying to make it as a free speech as possible but the establishment doesn't like when you criticize them or when there's a and they will just call it misinformation or disinformation whatever they want to do whatever they want to call it and we will see the destruction of X because the powers don't like free flow of discussion and information they like to control the narrative so having something like Noster as a backup is really good because you do have obviously different different doors you can go through but they become echo chambers just so so you can go to telegram but also telegram there or or rumble or whatever you want to choose whoever says that they are more free speech the problem is that those are centrally controlled and it's only a matter of time till those also get banned and destroy it if we do go down a full on tyrannical global thing then anyone that offers any freedom like ultimate freedom of speech in the free market of ideas no matter how bad these ideas are they should be able to be challenged in a debate and so Noster is a really important part of that because it's the only true decentralized variant of a micro blogging mechanism so yeah I think it's it's a very important technology and I'm glad to be an early participant obviously I don't for those who follow my handle it's not like a chat on there all the time and I should more but like Victoria said it's it's hard when actually that's one thing that they could do more is try to focus on engagement it's it's it's really like I'll tweet like crazy on there and it just literally will not get one message back or one like or anything so that's really frustrating you sort of feel like you're fighting into into a tornado and you know there's no one will smell it or hear it it'll just go past so I think I think that's something that Noster could work on is is focusing on obviously decentralization first but then engagement second and then someone would say this is why tiktok I don't use tiktok but why tiktok became so popular it's because they really put a focus on engagement when you're a new user you get on there and you instantly have a massive you know you put some video and it just they make it go viral for you and so you feel like oh this warm welcome of this community and I think that's something that that Noster could really focus on I've got it so I hope if I was to pull a rabbit out of how does it work I would also say that the best new offering is the standard as well because I used it and I think it's I think it's a really good service like and and it's just so if I had if they had this in like 2017 and 2013 or whatever like in the other bear markets I wouldn't sell stuff off I could have just literally took a loan out against my Bitcoin or my you know Ethereum or whatever and not had to sell it and like and then you don't even have to pay a tax because you're not selling it you're just taking a loan out against it so I think it's incredible really really good service and yeah I think I definitely recommend it to anyone yeah same I'm not definitely yeah and on that note finances just sent round an email saying that UK users won't be able to take out loans and they're crypto anymore so you might be you might be cornering the market yeah yeah no totally it's like it was something which was being built for a while and that was because you were doing it properly and you're like getting audited and you're really responsible with and appreciating that this is people's money at stake I mean obviously this is from you know running for authority or a professional in the work you do but no the standards incredible and I think it's gonna yeah really be very useful in 2024 costable thank you very much guys actually there's an audit going on right now so if you're a white hat or you'd love to hack around in smart contracts head over to codehawks.com there's bounties galore going for and it's a competitive audit so thousands of attackers are attacking our smart contracts right now as we speak and and there's yeah we're trying to find holes very good Josh however the best new offering of 2023 ordinals NFTs on Bitcoin who would have thought of that it's a vindication for the everything comes back to Bitcoin belief back when we were making Kerio cards we couldn't do NFTs on Bitcoin it was not technically possible now it is privacy coins next moving on to best technical innovation Ben Ark best technical innovation of 2023 oh man um oh there should be more pad I'm so sorry uh can I say noster IoT because I haven't really done anything on it and I want to make some videos for it by the noster IoT just because I've got some devices now my house and I can just turn them on and off without um well this is really going on anything to a Bitcoin so now I shouldn't say that um uh the standard standard I have like it launched 2023 Dan Eve best technical innovation well I think I'm going to I'm split between the standard and and ordinals because I just think it's you know everyone was complaining about the the the with NFTs on on Ethereum that they're not actually on chain and you know ordinals came along and they they brought NFTs to Bitcoin and on chain and you know there's no rep third party this reference it's literally you know your JPEG is inscribed um which obviously pisses a lot of people off and it's spam and and this that and the other but it's not I mean there's bring yeah brought back the discussion and somewhat I can't remember who it was who said that it's um it's it's not spam it's a it's a financial transaction if you're if you're inscribing an asset that's that's there's a financial transaction associated with that you're paying for it number one and also it's a it's a financial transaction you're going to you're selling that or buying that for for an amount it's so uh yeah so it's it's interesting that there's a lot of two two you know fours of an against so um we'll see if it this is like then is it going to be the new like block size war like the ordinals war and if they actually kind of managed to change the code to weed them out somehow there's obviously a lot of debates with ocean mining and how that's you know it was censoring um transactions but now it's not censoring transactions from my gather they kind of roll back so yeah it's it's it's going to be a big thing for for 2024 as well I think especially when the Harvlin kicks in um and we've got the the you know the um the feed debate. Josh Shagala best technical innovation yeah I mean I think one thing that's really important is some of the cryptography that's happening uh in 2023 because we are heading into a quantum world quantum computing world pretty soon so quantum resistance cryptography is is I think a really important innovation right now there is a lot of people storing vast troves of hacked data that uh that that basically they're they're waiting for quantum computing to be available so they can crack it in the future so if you if you do uh use the same password everywhere and stuff start start becoming better at that because it's coming and it's coming fast the second thing um I would say is some of the layer two stuff or obviously alambits is building on um uh the layer two of bitcoin uh which is extraordinarily important to make lightning actually usable because you can say oh we've got the lightning network now but if you don't have the tools that alambits builds then it becomes um basically pointless and and this goes for all of the stuff happening over on on Ethereum as well is that uh layer two's are this scaling solution they they cannot blockchains cannot scale by themselves because the humans have an unstoppable um yearn for data and for doing stuff and people the bigger your blocks are the more stuff will just be shoved into them and eventually you have terabyte blocks that cannot propagate across the network so you need to layer it out um that's that's that's the unfortunate truth and we have many many minds uh agreeing with that great minds so uh the layer two scaling solutions and the competition in that space is now heating up vastly which is really great to see um we saw in 2019 and and 20 and stuff where everyone had their new layer one uh you know the the Ethereum killer or the bitcoin killer but the fact that what I'm seeing now over 2023 is that all of these so-called Ethereum killers are actually just becoming L2s of a Ethereum where or they're like pivoting to say hey you know we're gonna uh uh anchor all the transactions or roll up into a Ethereum or something like that so layer two's are an extraordinarily important part of the crypto sphere um they're an important part of bitcoin they're and and we can see it in Ethereum the the the eth world people don't fight about that they just realize that that is how it's gonna go and uh I think it's bouncing back to the bitcoin space where people realize that L2s are the way to go you cannot just do everything on one chain because of that centralization factor so yeah uh layer two's I think is a huge big step forward you know what they say if you can't kill them with kindness kill them with a layer two Victoria Jones what's the best technical innovation of 2023? Yeah I had the Lightning Network as well actually um you know I know there are issues with the Lightning Network and uh it still requires a lot of work the thing I I would say that I've really noticed this year is the development with Lightning Wallets um you know I think there have been issues with uh some of the Lightning Wallets being custodial and so some of them have had to come up with self-custodial solutions and some of them have stepped up and I noticed they're becoming much more reliable and easier to use some of them certainly I found I found that in my own work I've been able to put Lightning paywalls on my website for my newsletters and I've been able to recommend you know a Lightning Wallet to use me and I I'm quite keen to do educational videos for people but I think in many respects the um a lot of the uh technology of Bitcoin is still really early we've got a long way to go to kind of make it user friendly um and it's hard to explain you know if I think about trying to explain it to my mother for example um you know people who it's really hard to adopt you know you need to get to the stage where they're kind of going to go yeah I can do this no problem and we're a long way from that yet um so but I I do applaud the development that's worked so hard it's not going to happen overnight but I can definitely see progress being made and the best technical innovation of 2023 is Nostar for all the reasons you guys mentioned I just had it for a different category allowing people to send messages freely throughout the internet notes and other stuff relays Nostar is the best technical innovation of 2023 moving on Dan Eve what is the worst technical innovation the other side of the coin the worst technical innovation oh I had exactly the same thing as I had for best which is the um aside from the standard because that's only what in the best the ordinal's and BRC 20s because they're both the best and the worst with with with they're like what it's kind of doing to the community because it's you know it's splintering the community even even further and I don't know I kind of I kind of like it whenever one just kind of works together and tries to root around problems and and work things out but um the ordinal's and BRC 20s just seems the whole discussion just seems to get people really angry and all mean to each other and say mean things rather than just trying to like get over an obstacle and like work around it and build technology that's gonna you know it just kind of I know it's it's it's it brought out a lot of bad stuff in the Bitcoin community which which you know could could could just be like left under the herd really and and I think I've mentioned this before like a while back about how how like you know like in a company when when there's technical decisions being made there's you don't see the the technical decisions you don't see the meeting that's happening with you know the technicians throwing like cups at each other across the table and showing which route to take and why they should adopt this side of technology and what do this and which pick hope they're not going to use and and all these arguments and you see that in in Bitcoin very very much and that kind of puts people off and makes it almost look like rather than when when they're arguing and all these ad hominem attacks and going down that route it kind of detracts away from the goodness of the technology and what it can do and what it can achieve and and I just think that kind of puts people off they're like wow you know they you know they they see the the people arguing and they're like well obviously Bitcoin's back because no one can decide on this and that and the other whereas they can't just go right okay well you want to do this you know you want to do this let's see if we can find a happy medium will this technology support this what the positives what the negatives so yeah I think it's it's both a the best and worst technical innovation of 2023 the ordinals and BRC 20s and the the inscriptions are spaces they overarching thing right jah shagala worst technical innovation of 2023 it's hard because technical innovations are it's a hard one to say worse because sometimes they start off really bad because it's the first implementation and then it becomes better over time for instance I just mentioned quantum computing resistance so we've seen a new new cryptography based around quantum viewing resistance but those have also been attacked and cracked so so they're bad at the same time but they're heading in the noble noble direction and and that direction is on an exponential curve so it'll come faster than we know and then we that most think and so um so yeah I don't think there's really such thing as bad technical innovation because it's it is innovation it's it's discovery and part of discovery you know when you send a when you send rockets to the moon some explode um and that's just part of it the the astronauts that go up um might die and and that's just horrible but it's part of technical innovation you have horrible things happen but it's in it for a noble cause victoria jones worst technical innovation yeah I have to go with ordinals as well I mean honestly really you know we need you know Bitcoin is like the best form of money world's ever had invented and we have to soil it with that rubbish but anyway bearing in mind all the stuff about technical innovations you know leave it to the Ethereum guys but you know whatever I won't I know some of you love it so I won't harp on about it Ben Arquadts the worst technical innovation of 2023 it's going to be um we'll have to say ordinals because I just want to talk about it but I'm I'm I'm a bit like Dan it's like it's like a hate love love hate kind of relationship in that it is sad seeing people you know um arguing about ordinals but for me I mean like the sad reality is that people don't work on scaling Bitcoin until it's critical um and we have these high fee environments and ordinals are given of it's a high fee environment and then you know there's some solutions like ocean where they're like okay we're going to censor transactions which is just insane and a very bad business model for a minor who's going to get fees from the ordinals which is probably why they've retracted that idea um but yeah no all the other solution is you know like I said before like bolts and and these liquid swaps and whatever else we've been using to try and kind of like bridge the different layers together and I think there's so much more work to be done there like liquid on lighting it's all like 5% of its potential so we have so much more work to do in those areas and now the work will be be be done to make those layers more interoperable so we can have actual proper off-layer scaling you don't want to re-transactions on-chain this is a decision we made with you know um uh with with with the segment we want like there's no you can't have the whole world using Bitcoin on-chain we have the we've been spoiled by these low fee environments we're able to buy trivial things with Bitcoin on-chain but it's like it's like it really is like digital gold digital gold and if you look at gold when people first found their shiny gold rocks on the ground and they would exchange them and I'll give you a bit of this big shiny rock and you give me that house over there and then the concept of doing that you know a few thousand years later was insane that you know I would give you a big massive lump of gold for that for that house and then we had coinage and then and then you have all these commodity use cases of gold and the more commodity use cases you have for anything you're using as money the more stable it is so it's quite important the Bitcoin is explored in in all these different and interesting ways I know it's a bit of a hack the ordinal thing and some people feel it's graffiti and probably I should say it's graffiti as well because it's I picked it for the worst technical innovation but I do like the fact that it's kind of pushed those fees up and people are now actually working on on scaling and then I don't know man like I'm kind of very much on the fence and with the ordinal stuff and some of the people involved in the ordinal world are cool people like a like them and I know a bunch of Bitcoiners who builders and they don't really care about these ordinals and whatever but yeah I certainly don't think scaling Bitcoin is sensory transactions dictating what you can use your Bitcoin transaction for it's like you know we get a lot of sometimes we have a lot of transactions which are trading volume and you can see where those transactions are coming in from and they're coming from exchanged wallets well maybe we should sense those as well because you know they're blocked they're filling those blocks man and we don't want traders we just want holders as they're only used to get for Bitcoin is store value we don't want them to do for speculation so then we start centering those transactions as well say it's a slippery slight man and it's also showing like the regulators and the governments of this world could I mean I'm glad that the sensory transactions fail has failed utterly with the notion but it's it doesn't say a good example to the rest of the world is regular to look at anything oh we can sense transactions nice cool but yeah no so so ordinals is my choice for worse technical innovation but I kind of like a minus sort of perverse way again it's as if you could see through this envelope the worst technical innovation of 2023 is the attempt to ban ordinals it's reactionary it's unfriendly it's censorship it's not what we're all about if they're paying for the block space they're paying for the block space I agree with Ben moving on to enough already enough already 2023 Josh Egala what have you had enough of from 2023 um I've had enough of the that that Bitcoin is bubbling the oceans and global warming is all to blame on uh and and both and yeah just enough already with the nonsense of and fear mongering around global warming victoria jones enough already 2023 um the black rocket yet I don't believe it I don't believe it's a good thing so anyway yeah Ben arc enough already I think it's already happened but I had enough I'd very much had enough of the the the the argument the fallback argument um when people were discussing drive chains and then when people were discussing like um arc and other things other skating proposals we should really should be looked at like properly and there's some elements they could be worked on and improve whatever but they're interesting right um and I hate this this argument that oh Bitcoin works great for me I just write a certain Bitcoin translation this morning I'm across from you know yeah I'm kind of bright again I'm glad of this ordinal fee hike because it shuts them up you know those people are like oh record it's great for me you know as long as it works for me I don't care and it's like yeah but you don't want it to work for the rest of the world you don't need to work for the rest of the world it just needs to work for me me so I'm glad that's gone out the window with the high fee ship but uh long-made continued high fees and shut those people up Dan Eve enough already well unfortunately Barry met his divide demise earlier in the year uh Larry met his demise earlier in the year and so I think oh god that sounds a bit too sinister now but Gary Gensler needs to go no more pigeons for Dan no more business or anything like that Jesus 23 enough already um let's see Josh chicola did we start with you yeah we started with Josh so enough already uh ETF approval stories I'm tired of I've covered them for a decade it seems like a no-brainer people don't want to hold Bitcoin it's too complicated there's numbers and hardware wallets they want to buy it with their stock market money their pre-tax money they want to invest they want to call up their broker say get me 10% of that Bitcoin thing and then they want to hang up the phone they don't want to know anything about addresses or QR codes or any of that stuff but we've been blocking them from the ETF for over a decade for no good reason and we're almost there enough already I want it to be approved and then we'll never talk about it again moving on to one of the most important categories of 2023 Bitcoiner of the year Victoria Jones who's your pick for Bitcoiner of the year 2023 well she isn't strictly a Bitcoiner but I think the spirit of what she says is definitely in tune with my understanding of Bitcoin and that's Whitney Webb I really enjoy you know some of her interviews I mean some people would I mean she's not her first job isn't Bitcoin she's a journalist some people would describe her I would say as a conspiracy theorist for normies because she does so much research in those areas you know actually breaking down for ordinary people you know these are the corrupt things that are going on behind the scenes she really seems to understand the corruption with the financial system and she agrees with me that you know all of the well she doesn't agree with me she doesn't know who I am but I agree with her that you know the ETFs and the existing financial system is something that should be kept separate from Bitcoin and so for that reason she's the only person who I see are articulating that really well and so you know she gets my vote for Bitcoiner of the year Ben Ark who is the Bitcoiner of the year 2023 Alan Bits middle-aged developer hiding from his wife on his computer just grinding out code every night like contributing to all these projects building all these dependencies that everybody can use is he's just he's such yeah I mean like an unsung hero you know don't know big social media presence or anything not talking head telling is what Bitcoin is just actually grinding and building and helping scale Bitcoin with all these amazing solutions so yeah Alan Bits long may stay with as I know he's busy in his day job I don't know why he finds time to work on on on all the Bitcoin things he works on but yeah man what a guy that's just the phenomenal developer just you just got to look at his commit history and it's just like dark greens every day on GitHub and on everything did you think Alan Bits or Alan Alan is again there's Alan there's Alan Bits as well she's a good good Alan as an EWL yeah and there's Alan and there's Alan and there's just contributing to these projects and building all these dependencies out and the unsung heroes and the two say or say months are often frequently often only once oh frequently so props all right Alan Bits it was confusing to me too Alan Alan Alan Alan Alan Alan Alan Alan Alan the whole Bits family it's the it's the unsung and they got yeah they got little whatever give me a name quick but no the it's the the unsung developers in Bitcoin he will like building the shetman that the building is tall liberation and they don't care about the limelight and it's incredible they just they just they just they're just parrots through and they're just solving problems and building cool cool stuff and like there's so many of them isn't in our world and thank god for them very strong the unsung Bitcoin developer Bitcoin of the year Dan Eve who is the Bitcoiner of the year oh I mean I this is quite different I there's obviously lots of huge contributors but in terms of people that have like have they've really been in the sort of news and making you know I'd like to say so obviously my personal has been you know doing a huge amount they had to turn around they're obviously almost got margin called and and on that same note no but helly like they they got laughed at by the IMF and and you know scorned by by the international bank settlements and IBS or B.A. bank international is whatever whatever whatever with the final bostude you know the final bostude Augustus or God but anyway you know that guy and so yeah so they they they got scorned and laughed out and blah blah blah and you know they got they came back close to losing everything and so it's really good to see that turned around and and again it's certainly an answer would always case that first real use so a case of Bitcoin being used as a currency for ever country perfect think really really good so yeah I'm going to go for those those two as a combined but I think Ben made a good point of all the unsung developers that are coding away and don't really get much limelight in producing them in a season software that people are using. Josh Shigala Bitcoiner of the year 2023 yeah I have to agree with Ben it's the all the developers and it's not just the developers and the technicals but it's the entrepreneurs that are taking the risk of of doing stuff in this industry you know I I started of all Tori back in 2015 and it's and even though that's a centralized exchange it's it's still part of it's still part of the Bitcoin industry and it's very very hard it's hard enough building a startup in in the normal world it's like as Tim Draper would call it it's the hard things hard things it's it's was it Tim Draper maybe it was one of the other VCs but anyway it's it is one of the hardest things in the world is building a startup and and you just make it probably infinitely harder to build a startup in in the Bitcoin space because you have to deal with so many ridiculous regulations ridiculous fearful banks that will shut you down constantly it's it's a and then you've got hackers trying to break into you you've got like it's so so so difficult and so the unsung heroes are really people that are building in this space and and the developers that are building in this space it's it's it's my hat goes off to every each and every last one of you that are trying to do a legitimate job and for Bitcoiner of the year he traveled to me orca he interviewed Peter Todd he learned how to make omelets he interviewed the creator of electric wall electric wallet Tomas and Vlad from Bitcoin takeover created almost one Bitcoin group per week for the entire year had guests from all over the world on the show provides the show for free never took bribes from any company greatest of all Bitcoin predictor balls truly the Bitcoiner of the year mad bitcoins Thomas hunt hey that's me Bitcoiner the year again woo it's a streak it's a streak yes championship well done well done congratulations congratulations mad I know it's the best I I had no idea I didn't prepare a speech completely unprepared for this I had no idea that I would be Bitcoiner the year again like trophy celebrations there's going to be a great tomorrow but for now honorable mention runner up who gets honorable mention somebody that we should mention maybe we haven't mentioned them yet Ben arc honorable mention for Bitcoiner of the year yeah man um well you said if you said you said I mean the the result was you in the last one so I can't say you um I think but similarly Vlad you know Vlad or or remaining friend Vlad the um he creates a bit coin takeover podcast and he does the the magazines as well can't be quite something of a controversial soul on the internet on Twitter but nah just through the amount of producers and the quality of it um and I get his magazines and they're just they're fantastic they're really good and his his interviews are really good too and he's just kind of has that he has a vibe like Bitcoin had before I don't know that kind of like that the he's just kind of he's you know he's he's kind of weird but in a really nice way like a way which I feel comfortable with uh and uh yeah so I think he's I think he's he's kind of an uncertain here I just like grining away just um and also going back to the last one with valent bits and elin bits as well you know before they got into developing him and and first of foremost they were users so the users are also I mean I know you can't just have everyone as you're you're most influential bit all Bitcoin of the year or whatever but yeah I would like to say everybody because they um everyone makes this world and and which we exist in and we're all you know but the ancestors so um but no uh uh yeah I think Vlad Vlad does cool work and um and which is very impressed by the amount of producers anyone who produces stuff like just let you tell us definitely shout outs to Vlad love the Bitcoin takeover magazine and I would like to award everybody as well Ben but we don't have enough oh he's caught he's caught well don't we have enough of let's go to Dan Dan Eve Bitcoin or the year my internet connection is unstable uh go ahead I think my honorable mention is that I absolutely love just I love Luke this year for his his like his comic but he's like he's like the guardian angel of Bitcoin like he really really you know he really wants the best for Bitcoin and it's just the funny comments he comes up with like his his like pesky ordinals tricking his his node into very you know into uh taking their j- having jpegs on it and stuff like that I just think he's got you know he's he's yeah an interesting character so I think he's uh an alternative Bitcoiner of the year for me jasha gala honorable mention oh yeah um I'd have to say um yeah I'd have to say yeah I'll give it to Vlad I'll give it to Vlad as well uh I think and and actually Victoria Jones Satoshi's page has is is is fantastic it's a great resource it's a great way to to catch up on history and to understand things at a deeper level Vlad is magazine is also really great in terms of debunking a lot of staff and he'll do you know it's it's it's just a good read and it's a fun read and uh and there's a lot of effort that goes into both the work that you do Victoria and any journalist in the space does it's it's it's it's and it's a hard way to earn a living too actually um so you know that's off well thank you Josh yeah absolute pleasure I'd like to throw Adam Meister into the mix Adam Meister the Bitcoin Meister still doing his shows I saw a live one the other day he always tells people to live cheap and hollow more Bitcoin I think that's great advice not everyone can live cheap though um but he's got a great strategy and a style for doing Victoria Jones honorable mention Bitcoin or the year 2023 well when I was looking at this category um I kind of you know I'm really judging it based on who's kind of come across my radar um and in Britain there's a new character called British Hoddle who has stormed out of the gate telling everyone just to get to one Bitcoin he's got a very simple message um I think his background is his parents were into property and he's suddenly realizing why you know Bitcoin's going to be a better investment in the future he's way too into the ETF so you know but we won't go there because we all know how I feel about that but you know even regardless of the ETF I think you know condensing his message down to everyone needs to get one Bitcoin I think it's a very worthy thing to do and he's he's doing it with energy and very concise message and I think he deserves props for that so he got my honorable mention very cool stack those sets honorable mention for Bitcoin or the year I have Michael sailor and naive bucali they had the simplest strategy by and hold Bitcoin but it really worked out for them at one point they were underwater they even got rid of sailor they were going to kick them off the board they was troubling paradise the IMF as Dan mentioned attacked El Salvador told them they were no good their plan wasn't going to work but now they're back in the black congratulations honorable mention to Michael sailor and naive bucali and now the number one award of the year story of the year Ben Ark what was your story of the year 2023 bucali oh story of the year 2023 I don't think of one sorry I don't know any stories can I come back can I can I just agree with somebody else when they say something welcome back to Ben Dan Eve story of the year mine to be a lame cop out one but it's just that I think the the long I was just thinking the longest story of the year which is like the ongoing saga of SPF and all the intricacies that with the of that case and and how that's planned out that's just been very interesting to to track and hopefully we'll see the back of it in 2024 we'll just have like half an ink hype and happiness the three h's yeah three oh right asha gala's story of the year 2023 oh well there's a couple of really interesting ones that when when kibaswap which is a huge decentralized exchange it's got hacked for like 50 million bucks or something like that and and the hacker basically sent an on chain message demanding that that he he basically becomes gets full executive control over the over the exchange over the decentralized exchange and and it's funny because meant to be this decentralized exchange obviously there's a there's a development group and and and stuff and there's these roadmaps to try it you know release that but that that was funny that there was or interesting that there was this individual with this crazy demand and basically holding all these funds obvious the other one for me was the whole bit boy saga of him getting arrested and and stuff which is also I don't particularly like this guy I think he's kind of annoying but he's a he's a character in the space now that we've lost lost all the OGs like what sorry what got for him to chase chase mayor or I don't know who's haja yeah no yeah so bit yeah a bit boy coming through being arrested that that was that was also you know one of these things yeah trace mayor but who was man it's so like Chris to Rose and Johnson and Bitcoin Uncensored they kind of had the spirit of BitBoy before before he had it yeah yeah that's right and then and what's his name from from McCaffey you know McCaffey dying we don't have him anymore so we need these wacky characters in the space that's good we still have mad bitcoins obviously there was yeah this copycat NFT thing as well if you're in the NFT space where board apes then sued these guys that just blatantly copied the board ate your loves and put them on a different chain so yeah yeah these these are all fun stories of the year but nothing nothing sort of super interesting to really go on about Victoria Jones story of the year 2023 well my story of the year is how well the Bitcoin price has done this this year quite surprisingly actually I mean you know as I was preparing for this this show I was looking back on some of my notes from the other shows that I've taken part in this year and I came across one from the very beginning of the year where people were making predictions on what the price would be by the end of the year and the price goes to Carol Alexander who's a financial analyst I think at University of Sussex was all something who predicted that the Bitcoin price would be at $50,000 at the end of the year because she thought the FTX collapse would lead to a managed bull run due to whales propping up the market epic fails go to Martin Mollers who predicted 10,000 Bitcoin price the worst one was Eric Robinson who predicted it would be $5,000 and Tim Dreypour I don't know what he was thinking he thought it would be $250,000 so you know it just goes to show when we start looking at predictions for next year chances are it'll be somewhere in the middle of you know all of the all of the extremes that people tend to predict so but overall you know it was still according to Forbes Bitcoin was still the best performing asset of the year although Google points out that actually it was the Bitcoin companies who hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets like a Coinbase Micro strategy and the Grace Girl Bitcoin Trust which rose almost 300% in value so you know the story of the year is Bitcoin our favorite subject Ben R to have a story of the year go ahead oh yeah no I think I sent you a link I don't know if you can you can play it but I'm just going to go back to the liquid being used like who the thought it's useful and a blockchain back baby and I really just really like this little video I sent you the the twitter links hopefully you can play it it's not very long it's pretty funny it's good you know you're really Peter come take a look at this look at this the numbers they keep getting bigger and bigger clicks are off the charts yeah Yoshi we're back take a look everything you got you really love us that thing oh that was great that's a company which has been like building something for such a long time and like and it's just what a great tool and I'm glad people are finally bloody using it so yeah that's that's my my story of the year is is a block screen not not not dying and actually liquid being used that was a fun advertisement great story of the year my story of the year is pretty much given me by the media when I google search bitcoin today it's about the price the price the price and the price bitcoin price rebounds up nearly 160% they thought it was dead they told you it was dead they took down the ticker they stopped talking about it and again that was the time when you needed to buy now that it's back up and they're talking about it all the time they put the ticker back on there and everyone's into it I don't know now but that bottom signal was there we all saw it it was an amazing year for the bottom of bitcoin and that's about it for this show be sure to give us a like down below say hello in the chat or the comments anything else you guys want to say before we end the show Victoria will just go around circle Victoria anything to say for the new year no it's been fun chatting with you all and you know talking about my favorite subjects so hopefully join you again many more times in the new year Ben are just a nice goodbye from you go ahead I love you all very much and it's because this is the thing we're coming out to see this this kind of bear blood in the streets market which you've had for a very long time and I've got the harvining we've got the ETF next year's going to be a cracker and it's going to get a cracker so like the bitcoin price is going to be silly and it's important to kind of look around the room the people who you know all the people who have been around over the past couple of years where it's been you know it's been in that bear bear market not that we care because we love bitcoin and we keep building but yeah I love you all everyone who stuck with us and users developers a contribute of any sorts just using bitcoin is contributing and and journalists and everybody so yep 24 is going to be really wants to look forward to Danny Eve in closing go ahead oh I just thanks everyone for watching thanks for watching throughout the year as well and yeah I hope everyone has an awesome year and we keep on chatting about bitcoin forever long live bitcoin and Josh Jagala take us into the new year yeah I really want to thank all of our regulars proper goal Gerbot and the rest you know you know who you are you hear every week supporting us and really thank you lots of love and health wealth and wisdom for 2024 it's going to be a crazy crazy year on the cynical side definitely check if your job is going to be taken by AI if it is start retraining start figuring stuff out because it's coming and we're on an exponential curve right now if on another side you know look at your health be healthy for 2024 and and health comes then then wealth comes so yeah 2024 here we go it's going to be fascinating thanks again for hitting that like button and subscribing to us it's really great and it's the longest running bitcoin show in the world and it continues to be we don't get millions and millions of views but I think here is where you get the alpha info you get the info that's that's that's keeping it real and yeah again thanks Thomas for putting it on every single week and collecting the troops like you do it's it's really important I think it's an important archive of this space and and what you have with with your website that actually categorizes and organizes that and thanks for DJ Booth for also helping out with that and yeah I don't want to take words out of your mouth I know you've got lots of people and then we want to we want to thank Marui for helping us schedule people to the show and helping fill in the details of the show helping to categorize the episodes on the webpage and I want to thank you guys are panelists and all of our other panelists who aren't here today for being part of the show nobody is paid to be part of the show to all volunteer thing people show up and volunteer their time and like Josh said it's the longest running Bitcoin show it's a really nice archive you can go back and watch it all and some days someone will have to some kind of a graduate student writing a paper on the Bitcoin group and I'd be like why did they make so many episodes they don't even take a week off for Christmas um but yeah thanks to everybody for watching and until next time bye bye bye