The Bitcoin Group, the American original, for over the last 10 years, the sharpest citoties, the best bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Dan Eave, the crypto raptor. Happy Friday, folks. Josh Shagalla from the standard.io. Happy Saturday, folks. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one. Issue one Bitcoin isn't suitable as payment or investment says the European Central Bank. Yes, the European Central Bank is back again. And they're letting you know that even though there's a Bitcoin ETF, nine of them, in fact, sponsored by various Wall Street companies such as BlackRock and others, that it doesn't matter. Your Bitcoin is still illegitimate. As it says here, Bitcoin has failed on the promise to be a global decentralized digital currency. Come on, give us a chance. And is still hardly used for legitimate transfers. The latest approval of an ETF doesn't change the fact that Bitcoin is not suitable as means of payment or as an investment says Ulrich Blinzel and Jurgen Shaft. Dan Eave, what do you think about the incredible slam from the European Central Bank? Well, it's definitely a defensive move because they've probably looked at the chart of the euro against Bitcoin and seeing that it's the euro's lost like 99.99% of his value since Bitcoin came out. So they're running a bit scared at the moment, but they're still coming up with the classic. It's only used for money in nefarious activities. They haven't kind of been swung around yet by all the positivity that's coming on the environmental side of things. I didn't comment on that specifically. But it's still just the same old trope that Bitcoin's a bad thing. It's failed in its example, the case study in El Salvador. But that's just I think very much dividing people politically right now like how things are going in El Salvador, the Bitcoin experiment, also based on their general kind of political lines as well. So for people outside Bitcoin, so everyone's kind of idea of El Salvador is a bit tainted anyway because everything's kind of a bit, what's the word? It's a bit controversial everyone saying now. So yeah, the ECB just clutching it straws as usual. Josh Egala, just when you thought we were all respectable with all of Wall Street loving Bitcoin, the ECB comes in with a hit. What do you think about their latest slam? Yeah, I mean their latest slam is fun. It's a fun little slam in the media. But the big slam, the big body slam, the big WF mega slam off the ropes is basically these mecha regulations which will split Bitcoin. I feel could have the potential to split Bitcoin into three or even four sections where you would have Bitcoin which is, you know, clear net and other crypto. Then you'll have BlackRock and their ETFs where, oh, if you want to buy this, I say you can buy the assets just, you can buy the ETF. There you go. And if you want to actually use Bitcoin, well, you have to use a wallet that sends your KYC data with every transaction to another wallet. This is an egregious move of mega-miniacle proportions. When, you know, we first of all, we could write attacks on their money, that their money is as slow as a bloody snail and a fucking snail's funeral. And we're actually building a currency that actually works not like their silly CBDCs. But it's absolutely insane what's happening. And yeah, that's what I think the ECB is trying to do. This article is just a little, a little taste for what's coming. The good thing is about these ETFs is that they are being run by very, very large corporations. So they are now invested in the success. Saying that, they're also invested in the success of themselves. So if they're happy to have a Randian Atlas shrugged style system where BlackRock uses the state to rush the rest of the market and force everyone into BlackRock's hands to buy a new Bitcoin only through them. And by the way, you can now send, if you have some BlackRock ETF, you can also send it on your BlackRock wallet because we already know who you are. So it's very frightening in that sense. And the last one would be, well, if you want to actually use crypto, you'll probably use something like Monero or something like that. But the problem with that is if you get caught within the European Union doing that, then you'll have problems. So the thing is, the thing is at the end of everything, so Toshibit built Bitcoin to actually not give a crap about any of this. And so there will still be people that will use it as a way to transact outside of themselves, whether that's in an outside of the European Union or not. But yeah, just be careful folks. Be careful. Be careful what you wish for. Well, I agree, Josh. I think Toshibit made the world's best currency. And while they might attempt a handicap it, that they'll always fail. It's a lot like this Vonnegut story that was made into a movie on HBO called Harrison Burzeron. And it talks about how everyone should be equal. So they take the famous ballet dancer and they put weights on her legs so that she can't dance beautifully. And I think if they try to do that to Bitcoin, we're back in Anne Ran territory here. But Bitcoin will outlast it. Bitcoin as a separate network will continue, even if there's only one Bitcoin, it can be split up in a variety of ways. We can extend the eight digits down further. But when I think of the ICB and their continued nonsense attacks, which now aren't just an attack on Bitcoin, it's an attack on BlackRock and everyone who works at the other eight or nine ETFs because obviously they've done their due diligence, but they aren't as smart as the IMF. These are like the Japanese who are left over in the caves after World War II. They're still fighting a war. The war is largely over. Peace has been declared. Horrible bombs have been dropped. And they're still out there in this cave's continuing to fight with their angry statements. While the inflows to the ETFs continue to go up and the price continues to follow. And this is just getting to be Peter Schiff and other jokey, Britain, Bitcoin critics that we've seen go through the years. But the important question is, Dan Eave, will the price of Bitcoin be higher or lower this time next week predicting against the Bitcoin predictor ball, the source of all truth and knowledge in this universe? I think we're going higher. Maybe 50. Let's, let's, I'd like to see a 55K. That would be great, wouldn't it? Josh Egolla, higher or lower? I think it will go sideways for another week. Consolidate over time, rather than price. Ah, push, the worst of all answers. And now we'll shake the ball which could cause bubbles. Will the price of Bitcoin be higher this time next week? Okay, see. Signs point to yes. Signs point to yes. Second week can grow. The ball has been optimistic. Here we've got more with issue two, Bitcoin back above 50,000 dollars of coin. What comes next? The Bitcoin market coming back from a low around 12 or 25 depending on where you want to market has come back to 50,000 dollars. And that means that it's worth $1 trillion as a market again. As you guys know, if you have a $1 trillion market, it is meaningful. If you do not have a $1 trillion market, you are worthless. Now the rich and others can invest in Bitcoin once again because it is worth $1 trillion. Josh Shagalla, what do you think about this big round number that is absolutely meaningless except to the people for which it means everything? Yeah, it's a fun number for sure. But if we look at something like gold, it's sitting at 30 trillion. So we've got a bit way to go. I remember when we passed a gram of gold, it was like, yes, we passed a gram of gold. These strange arbitries and of goals and road map, checkpoints. Yeah, it's cool. I think a trillion dollars is actually quite significant. I mean, when you look at the global market, you can start to see where... Where we are now, when I got in, I just would never have thought that we're here already to be quite honest. And it's been what, 13 years or something. So it's phenomenal that this strange little software where you open up Bitcoin QT, which was the original name for the little bit of software that you ran. And these funny little bits of money where it was sending around hundreds of these things to each other and giving them away so people could test them out would be equivalent to what, like, way more the most countries, central banks, push around on a daily basis. Like it's phenomenal to me, actually, that we're here now, that this libertarian dream of having a state independent, free network and money would be available where a technocratic gold would be possible and wouldn't be shut down. It's absolutely extraordinary. You know, for those that say, yeah, but Bitcoin is BlackRockcoin and, yeah, well, we've got competition, use BCH then, use, I don't know, you're fucking use B, B-S-V if you wish. It doesn't matter. The fact is, it's got, we've got, we've got independent money. In whatever form you want, you've got Ethereum, you've got, there's so many versions. And that's all part of the decentralization. That's all part of it. So it doesn't matter. And that's the beautiful thing is that you have the choice to go, meh, I don't like that. That's great. Well, then use something else. The fact of the matter is you don't have to. Now, like, when I was growing up, if I wanted to send somebody in the United States, America, there's some money, then I would be forced to use a bank transfer. Now, I'm absolutely not forced. So it's beautiful. I love it. A trillion dollars. We should celebrate this fun arbitrary number. It is, too, Josh. There's only a handful of companies that are worth more than a trillion dollars company. It's like Apple, Microsoft, that level, countries worth more than a trillion dollars. If you want to talk about a blast from a past, I saw a tweet today talking about, I'm going to say it's name wrong, but Marney Maddie, I believe like the third contributor to Bitcoin Satoshi, how Finney and Marney, and he was talking about sending around 182,000 Bitcoin as just a test, just something that you do on a Saturday, send them around for fun, see if it works. Dan, Eve, what do you think about Bitcoin back above 50K, the trillion dollar market? Yeah, it's arbitrary, but it's like, it's just one of those, another one of those milestones, right, that people like to see. It's like just a nice mental thing, like a hoop to get over. And it's still nothing. It's just a drop in the ocean of even just the stock, right? It was only, I mean, a video just passed the two trillion dollar market, I think today, and today, right, it's back down just at 1.97. But in a video, a two trillion Apple 2.9, 2.8 trillion Microsoft over 3 trillion. So it's not even, it's even just like a fifth of some of the larger normal market cap stocks let alone actual currencies. So still a long way to go. But it's just crazy how, even like 10 years ago, you knew Bitcoin was going to be around, the idea of just going, it's $50,000, it's just a crazy concept even now to go. Because you knew it was going to get that way, but you're almost unable to admit it in your head, like this whole trip along the way. And every time a new all-time high hits, it's still nice. But it's a milestone that we're back over, right? It's been a long while since 2021 that Bitcoin was over 50K. And it's halfway laserized, right? So that's why it's such a big thing. So yeah, I'm happy to see the price this way. And we're going to see a lot more action as the harvining case. That's for sure. And exciting. It is funny, Dan, if you'd known back in the day that Bitcoin was worth 50K, you could have just told everybody, like, oh, just invest, just hold it till 50K. It'll make it no problem. And now everyone's like, oh, of course it did. But that's only because we can see it because of the hindsight. Yeah, there's it's an amazing thing. It's in hindsight. Yeah. Captain hindsight. Moving on to issue three, let's keep it going. Ethiopia to become the first African country to start Bitcoin mining. They've got a lot of excess electricity and apparently a lot of hydropower. What do you think about the future of Bitcoin mining in Ethiopia? Josh Shagalla. Well, when I was growing up, Ethiopia was always a very, very poor place with a lot of starvation, really shocking images. I remember growing up as a child with extraordinary images. And it was always at the dinner table. Josh, you eat those lentils. The poor kids in Ethiopia don't have any lentils to eat or anything to eat. And it always left a bit of a footprint on my understanding of even the whole of Africa. Because as a kid, you think Africa is this country almost. You don't have an idea that there are individual countries in Africa. But if you look at the economics behind that, if Ethiopia is still in debt to the world bank from those days of around about 13 billion dollars, which is a lot of money for the nation. That's just the world bank. Because another few billion to the IMF. If it was to hold some Bitcoin on the balance sheet, it would probably be a wonderful thing for it, because it could release it from the shackles of the world bank. Yeah, I would definitely love to see Ethiopia be released from this debt, not through some sort of bono, orange glass wearing, dropped the debt stuff. But just, hey, we're going to wear strong enough people ourselves, which they are. They're extraordinarily strong people, through what the adversities they've suffered. To basically be at the stage now where they can start to mine Bitcoin and use some of the excess energy they have to pull themselves out of the debt responsibly. And never go back there again. I'm just impressed with the resource distribution, the idea that there's excess hydro power and Ethiopia. And somehow, a Bitcoin person gets over there and says, hey, let's, you know, mine this hydro, let's take this extra energy and use it for Bitcoin. It's as if the whole world were a risk game for resources and suddenly Bitcoin's available. And now the world is rebalancing according to this new invention. So it's really exciting. It reminds me of an old George Carlin bit, something like, wherever there's a woman, we've got a man working on it. I think it's a side-feld that actually, yeah, he might not be our best man, but he's there. And in the same way, wherever there's excess energy, Bitcoin mining just pops up. And it's just there. And we've said before, it's like getting that golden egg, you know, the goose that lays the golden egg. So of course, everyone wants to mine in their country. And now it's actually happening. And I'm really excited for Africa and other countries like this who maybe haven't had these opportunities, who suddenly will get them, hopefully positive things because of Bitcoin mining. Dan, Eve, what do you think? They've got miners in Africa now, not underground. Yeah, that's awesome, right? And it backs what we're saying that if Bitcoin mining is following where the cheap electricity is, where's the cheap electricity is excess hydro, which is what this article is saying. So where you've got this, you know, this excess of resources that's just spewing out, you might as well capture that and use it for something. And whilst we haven't got the best energy storage solutions for storing electricity, Bitcoin is the best outlook for that to turn that excess energy into money and then use that for the actual environment. So that's just amazing. And it's also, you know, it's the EIH, they're actually doing it as well. So it's Ethiopia themselves, it's not, I mean, obviously there's the external investment, but it's not just a case of, you know, someone swooping in and stealing the resources and that's it, you know, like the sort of classic story of like, the mind situation or something like that. So this is good for the country. And if they're managing to hold some rather than just selling it as well to the ETF holders, right? Then it means that they can stockpile some Bitcoin escape as Josh is saying, escape the shackles of the international monetary fund and all the other agencies. Yeah, it was like, wasn't it, it was in Ethiopia as well where that feed the world song was, it was about excited off. I think so, yeah. Yeah. How they're turning it around now with Bitcoin as well with such a cool piece of technology to be able to, yeah, start really turning the country around and changing its monetary system as well, hopefully once they realize that coin, the coin. Yeah. It is impressive to see Bitcoin as an alternative to batteries and especially as an alternative to that evil power killing machine. I had a link to it once. I think it costs $30,000 or more and it's a power dampening machine. You send electricity to it and it will basically kill the electricity if you have too much. But it's great that people now can use the electricity for their town, fill all the batteries they can. And when the batteries are full, mine some Bitcoin, make a little money back rather than just having that electricity go into a damper machine or become a problem. But let's keep moving. Let's go on to issue four. Got a lot of topics today. Is that a joke? Sorry, just for a quick, is that a joke? The night's just a dampening machine. No, there's, I mean, because of, we've talked about load balancing, grid balancing, when you have too much energy, you have to do something with it. You can't always use it. So there is a specific kind of machine, not a Bitcoin miner. I don't know the technical details. I would guess it'd be heavy, full of metal and it grounds the energy. I'm not a scientist. I don't go by my word, a historian. But yeah, there is a power dampening machine. It's very expensive. And we found it when we were looking at all this hydro Bitcoin mining and stuff with the obvious idea that mining Bitcoin, getting a little bit of money instead of just getting nothing and having to pay for the power dampening machine or whatever it's officially called. A less known the chat in the comments, how you're an expert on power dampening machines and how they work. Or ask chat GFT. Perfect. Yeah. That's an incorrect effect in full effect. That's right. Everyone there going to be like, of course, we're experts on that. We can't believe you don't know about that. But we're moving on to issue four. Reddit is having an IPO. And that means we get to look at their books. And what did we find Bitcoin, Ethereum, maybe even a little bit of Polygon, a layer two scaling network for Ethereum. They're all on Reddit's books. And that's because Reddit's going public in an IPO and they want you to invest, despite the fact that Reddit, the website, was sold to CondayNast, the massive, wired magazine publishing type company. They're now selling it again. They're selling it back to you. So two parts of this, Josh, what do you think about the Reddit IPO and what about the idea that they secretly were holding some Bitcoin Ethereum Polygon? I don't know if they were secretly doing it because I remember reading many a headline that Reddit is going to, you know, has employed some crypto people and they're looking at how to move crypto about and use it as tips and all this sort of thing. So I think they've always been very friendly to Bitcoin and to crypto as a whole. So yeah, it's good to see. And, you know, it's IPO is really like a quirky meme that's getting framed into high art. And, you know, what I love about Reddit, what I really love about Reddit and for China, because usually it goes from 4chan to Reddit to the world. And is that you get things like GameStop, you get these sorts of things happening where people that just don't take anything seriously take on very serious topics. And so I'll be waiting to what the meme armies of the world do with this IPO. It's very interesting. It's very interesting. I mean, the other thing I'd like to ask the community is, would you buy this? Would you buy the IPO? Do you think it's worth something? Do you think that Reddit is going something? Because for some reason, I, you know, Reddit was very, very big when I was first, you know, part of, you know, like 10 years ago, I was like right into it. I loved it. And then slowly moved it like I didn't spend much time on a Bitcoin talk forum. So I'd rather use the Reddit. For some reason, I think it's because the app I was using Reddit is fun. And it was just easier to use than the forum on my phone. So yeah, I don't know. I have fun memories of it, especially the comments in all these subreddits. I just love the fact that things just get hilarious very quickly. But yeah, I don't actually know how Reddit makes money. So maybe I should read the IPO filing. Maybe it's just holding Bitcoin and Ethereum. Maybe that's how they make money. I'm not sure. But yeah, more companies. I would love to know how many companies are holding crypto on their balance sheet. It would be, it would be fascinating. A little peek into the world. It would be great. Josh, if Reddit was just a Bitcoin and Ethereum holding conspiracy. And that was their main plan. They're like, we get more money. We hold more Bitcoin. It makes more money. So on and so forth. But no, much like, I feel Reddit's a place I used to go. Like I used to hang out and Reddit. I used to go to our Bitcoin. And I used to do all these things. And I wonder, I mean, I kind of want to buy the stock again to that ownership thing. But would it really go up? Are people really going to go there? Is it still a thing? It feels like a thing from the past. And also having an IPO feels like a bit of a thing from the past. Shouldn't they just have an ICO like telegram or signal or any of these other companies and just go to the open market of the world instead of the open market of the United States stock exchanges for United States people. And other things like that, although maybe you can buy them on cash app or maybe you can get things that represent the shares. I'm not sure. But Reddit's definitely had their history with crypto. So I'm not surprised to see it on their books. They've tried to make their own coin a few times and failed. They've hired big crypto people and fired them. And they've sold multiple versions of their Reddit alien mascot, Shmue with different costumes and different colors. And all those things as NFTs. So they should be pretty above the board. I guess they need more money than that. They got to keep the servers running. They got to feed the monkey. I don't know where it is, but they have all these. They previously had advertising and Reddit gold as their monetization options that I'm aware of Josh. That's right. Yeah, that's right. But if everyone would remember Dig was basically the competitor to Reddit. And they even had the Dig Effect, which was basically the way that Amazon sold their massive server infrastructure because they would always bring up the Dig Effect saying, if you got on the front page of Dig, your whole server would go down, which was true because back before scalable server solutions, you had one shitty little server sitting somewhere. And as soon as you got any attention, it would just kill you. So the problem back then was you had to have hundreds of thousands of dollars of server architecture for that one time, that one day that you get the Dig Effect happening to your server and your service dies. So you need to constantly write. So what Amazon sold was this nice elastic, stretchy thing where you buy just a little server. And if Dig got you to the front page, you would scale up. And then it died because they had a shitty upgrade and everyone moved over to Reddit because Reddit, even though it was slightly different, it was always Reddit versus Dig. And yeah, Reddit's still around. Dig was awesome back in the day. I remember having like 180 digs or something one time. And it's sad, Josh. The main thing I think about Reddit these days is those annoying messages that you get when you want to go to a Reddit. And then it says, no, you have to do this in the app or no, you're not old enough to see this Reddit. And I think of Reddit mainly is this gatekeeper that blocks me from content and noise me, which is sad because I used to really like Reddit. Dan, Eve, we haven't heard from you yet. What do you think about Reddit? As well as the fact that they're holding on to some crypto. Well, there's a VPN check now as well, I think. So if it doesn't like a VPN, you can't get the information either. So yeah, I use it less and less. And yeah, it's really just a truce of that initial message right going, do you want to use the Reddit app? Come on, use the Reddit app. And just like, give me the info. I just, I needed like just the sentence after, after, you know, that box right there. And I've got to go through this separate process. But when at one point that there were rumors that red coin, this was in 2014, right, that red coin was going to be the currency for Reddit. And they came back around in 2017 when John McAfee shield red coin as well. And they were like, yeah, red coins going to be the currency of Reddit or RWD. Which never obviously materialized. But it would seem logical that they would, you know, adopt a cryptocurrency for their, for their, for their crediting system. Obviously, they could create their own token, which like telegram are doing. But then they could also use, you know, they, they can have a real good opportunity to use lightning. Or even something that, that I'm quite surprised they haven't done yet if they're holding like Ethereum is they're obviously, you know, kind of into what Ethereum can do. So why not have kind of the NFT is advertised the same thing that Twitter's doing and open up kind of more crypto based integrations into, into Reddit and help buy a shield their bags. But maybe it's, it's, it's finally becoming a company that's going to start making big money, right? It's like, you know, the early days of a lot of these apps, they, they, they, they amass this huge number of users, but really don't know how to like, you know, ring the flannel out of, of all the revenue streams. Like, you know, Facebook and, and, and, and eventually did do. So maybe they're reaching our stage now, right? They're like, look, we've got this huge, massive users, but we need to start ringing, ringing out the cloth and, and, and eking value out of this, this great big potential gravy chain. So maybe we'll see some good positive changes from Reddit and we'll come back to a platform that's, you know, really used for, for people as a good resource and discussion ground. That could be a good thing because I could, I could do a return to Reddit. I, I, I feel like we've hit the, the worst of all stages in a startup that the era of walled gardening when all the old people, the early adopters are all gone. And they're just like, find us as many customers as we can hold on to. And like Dan said, sell them something. Get them the money. Josh, did you have more on this issue? Yeah, like the thing is that a lot of these companies seem to go to the stock market as they're dying. And it's unfortunate. Or, or they're in a heyday. And then as soon as they hit the stock market, it starts dying. So the exact kind of note, you know, the future somehow, and they just want to get you know, load up and sell. It's like a way of selling without selling almost. I mean, they're selling to the public. We can see this, I first of, it's Robin Hood. Actually, I'm not sure if Robin Hood is back back up, but when they, when they went, you know, IPO, the whole thing was, I know they're back up. Oh, no, they're not by far not. We were reaching like $50 and now they're down at 14. So yeah, it, I'm not sure. It'll be very, very interesting to see if they can actually make some money. Yeah, maybe maybe this blends well into the exit question. Josh, you can go first. Will the, the Reddit IPO, will it succeed? Would you buy it? Yes or no? Yeah, well, this is what I wanted to say was like, I would love to see the meme army just take Reddit and good. And like that nostalgia of GameStop, GameStop and just like push it. Yeah, we're going to push it. But yeah, I don't know with AI and stuff. And I think this was the main problem that Reddit had with AI is that AI used Reddit to train, like open AI used Reddit fast amounts of Reddit data to train it. So now people, you know, I don't know, you like, I need, I need Reddit as much as a moose needs a hat stand. Like it's just probably not needed. Yes, but it'll be an interesting IPO. Dan, Eve, are you buying the Reddit IPO? Oh, no, I'll skip it and just buy it and buy Bitcoin or I'll donate it to a moose for a hat stand. Now to see again, I don't have any logical reasons for this. Like Josh says, if they make money on advertising and Reddit gold, that's another nice way of saying they don't make any money. And if Conday asks the magazine company can't make any money with all these eyeballs over all these years. And now they're going to sell it to you on the open spot market. It's a pretty risky stock bet. I still kind of want to get maybe one is a collectible. I don't know how much they are. If it's like $100 or $30 or $5. But as far as like a money making stock, I think it's more like you buy it because it feels good and you want to own part of Reddit. Maybe they let you vote or something. I don't know. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But nothing they've done ever has. And again, just because it's not the original cool group of Reddit people like Aaron Swartz who passed away and other people, they sold Reddit to CondayNast. This is CondayNast doing an IPO of Reddit and probably going to make a lot of money in the background. But we got to keep moving here. Issue five block says it's Bitcoin bets boosted by the cash app yielded $207 million in gains. The Jack Dorsey payment provider notched a 90% year over year increase in gross Bitcoin profit driving up its stock in after hours, trading. And we don't have to say too much about this. But we have reached the point of the year, the point of the market where Bitcoin companies who stick with Bitcoin are celebrated for it. And all the articles that previously read Jack loses all his money. Bukele loses all his money are now saying all their money came back. So Danny, just really quick, what do you think about cash app? Make it a bunch of money off of Bitcoin. Yes, it's classic, isn't it? Right? They're they're laughter when when Bitcoin's dying, the price is dying and they're hailed as as genius when when the price is going up. So it's good that they are getting some of that that positivity on the on the return, right? And it's not just all the doom and gloom. So, you know, they've done really good right? And any any company now that's that's holding Bitcoin is going to be tied to to Bitcoin's price. So anyone who's publicly holding Bitcoin during during a ball run there, they're likely to you know, to ride the wave too. And for good for good reason, I'm sure also it's it's another opportunity for a lot of companies to actually open up more payment avenues and and to hook in more customers who don't want to use fear, you know, there's the stubborn Bitcoiners who who just want to use their their their hard money to pay for something rather than just you know fear money when when the money's got to go out. So yeah, I think it's just another cool another cool Bitcoin venture that's doing pretty good and writing the Bitcoin product price wave. I always I always look at these the same way. I'm like, I had this idea. If I had had a big company like Jack and I could have put a hundred million dollars in a Bitcoin, they'd write this article about me. Shake my fist at the sky. Josh, you got what do you think about cash app making money on that sweet Bitcoin? Well, you know, we're at the stage in societal economic issues where the only you know, every company is making a loss where at high high inflation, you know, except the only companies that make money holding Bitcoin and the balance sheet is it's got to like, oh wow, they're profitable. Oh, they've got Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Okay. So we'll see how like, really interested to see how many more hold Bitcoin. Yeah, did they say in the article, how much Bitcoin is is actually being held? I didn't read the whole thing. I think at one point they had about 8,000 and they had a lot of Bitcoin and they bought them early and of course, they've been selling them and reselling them to their customers through the cash app. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. We need more solutions. I would like to see more lightning network stuff. You know, it's happening, but what I'd actually like to see is more L2s for Bitcoin, more L2s. All these companies should be working on L2s for Bitcoin and just like on Ethereum, L2s are normal. Let's try to build another L2 because, yeah, lightning, I love it all. I love it. I love everything Ben's doing. I love all the people that are building on that and it is really cool, but you need competition. You need as many people try and different things as possible. Don't put all your eggs in that one basket. Here and here, the lightning network needs a friend. Let's move on to issue six where things get political. Okay, this is going to be our last article from Bitcoinus.com. Sadly, Bitcoinus was once a great and decent Bitcoin publication, but now what they do is they write these articles based on tweets. So I want to put a disclaimer out here that none of the people who are quoting this article thought that they'd be taken seriously for their political opinions. They just put out some tweets. So it's not really their fault. But David Bailey, the publisher of Bitcoin magazine, Terademi Stren, others are running hardcore fear-based Bitcoin paranoia about order 6102. In 1933, the Federal Reserve, being a gold-backed institution in the United States, needed more gold. So FDR signed order 6102, which you shouldn't know, unless you're a libertarian or hardcore Bitcoin or maybe have a history degree. And they basically seized everyone's gold and it's horrible and it was awful and it's a bit libertarian nightmare and it happened. But it happened a hundred years ago. There's no reason to believe it would happen again. There's no evidence to back this up. This is just complete paranoid fantasy theory to make people afraid. But Josh Tagala, will it happen again? Will they ban Bitcoin in the United States? And according to the thrust of this article, if it really is 6102, go house to house, knocking on the door, collecting people's Bitcoin like a libertarian boogie man. Yeah, I mean, that that was the whole thing behind Bitcoin was that remember they banned gold and a lot of the paranoia in the gold industry was around that time. It made a big mark on people's memory and people that specifically like self-sovereignty. And so it is understandable to have that paranoia and you should have that paranoia. It's just that I don't know that but Bitcoin was designed to get around that paranoia. It was designed to be like, book. Yes, it's not anonymous but it's sued anonymous and it doesn't allow for that scenario to take place in mass. Obviously, they can make it illegal. Governments can do anything. They hold the hammer. But now, this BlackRock thing is a two-tiered system. It could mean that BlackRock having this, that the state makes Bitcoin illegal apart from the BlackRock ETF. It could happen. So that is one take on it but there's definitely no knocking door to door and taking it from you. It's just that they might just force Coinbase to be the place that looks for fresh ETF to buy and custodial for all the ETFs. Not sure. I don't think it's unhealthy to bring it up and remind people that it is possible because without that thought, we could be running blindly into a trap. So yeah, just I think it's important to have a little bit of skepticism and paranoia around these sorts of things. I just think it's in the wrong time period. It's more Bitcoin five years ago. On the eve of the BlackRock ETF and the other nine ETFs, you're going to now wave the flag that the government's going to ban Bitcoin when the SEC is just finally approved the spot ETFs. Now's when you want to bring us down. Now when you want to get all negative, I don't think it's a good look. I don't think it has any evidence to back it up at all. And again, let's remember the difference between Bitcoin and gold. Gold is heavy, takes up space, and you know, you can get a limited amount. Like if you want to put your life savings into gold into your house, it's going to take up a lot of space. It's really easy to seize. On the other hand, Bitcoin can be split into hundreds of keys hidden all over the world buried underneath your garage, other friends house in a river anywhere. There's all kinds of ways to hide your Bitcoin, which makes such a law where you would go house to house even more ridiculous, even more nonsensical. But it's fun, you know, maybe it's 100 years ago and history just keeps repeating. So the 1929 Yankees are going to win really good with Babe Ruth because it all repeats. It doesn't make sense to me, but maybe that's what they believe. Dan Eve, what do you think? We've got some hardcore Bitcoin bands coming from the government, all of the sudden based on no evidence. Oh, it's, you know, it's the nice, it's the nice kind of drama route, right, to kind of stir things up and be like, they're going to come for you. They're going to come for your Bitcoin and pry it from your hands like they're going to pry the, pry the guns from people's hands, apply the gold from people's hands and and you know, I think we've moved on right a lot since then and although, you know, the government confiscated the gold, I don't think they, you know, they do it like now. It just, I can't tell you anything like that, like that happening, not now. There's too much human, you know, human rights for the government stepping on something. And remember after, like the gold ETF, they confiscated all the gold and after the diamond ETF, they confiscated all the diamonds and after the spider ETF, they confiscated all the spiders. I mean, none of that happened, though, none of that happened. So we don't have a, yeah, it's no past. So it's just a big drama, isn't it? So to make it, make it sound like it always helps your fight, right? When, when, when, the, when you're the, the potential of the other side is a lot more hardcore, you know, it makes you, makes you fight stronger when you know, they can literally come and take the Bitcoin from me. But, yeah, yeah. So all, all part of the fight is not going to happen. So they can never take our Bitcoin, but they can take our freedom moving on to issue seven, the first photos of SBF from the FTX scandal in prison have been released. But let's talk about them and see if they're any good at all. Here they are with a watermark that says Tiffany Fong right across his chest, Sam Bankman freed and a fellow, a fellow inmate named G lock to the left with his photo there also did a small interview with Tiffany Fong, laughing and discussing Sam and Jail talking about how he'd lost some weight and gained a beard. So Dan, Eve, what do you think about this first behind the scenes from prison photo of SBF and the curious way that it got here with that wonderful I don't want to say anything bad. I was going to say something. A person who likes attention very much and would sell things to get more attention. Tiffany Fong, Danny, you've got... Well, she's getting us the scoop like, so Kudos for getting us that really odd picture. And doesn't this, she interviewed that G Lock guy and he calls, and he calls Sam Bankman free, he calls SBF his son, right? He calls him, he calls him Surnis like my son, nothing like that. He definitely said that Sam didn't snitch and that by prison standards that he was harder than Tukashi 6-9, I'm not aware of his situation. Well, I can just imagine now, SBF trying to keep out of harm's way and calling G Lock daddy. He's like, come on daddy, G Lock, protect me from the sisters. Whereas that's a shorthand redemption. But he looks like he's in his element, doesn't he? He looks like someone who knows how to trade fish, tens of fish. He's learning the ropes, he's got Daddy G Lock and yeah, it looks like it's going pretty good for him. It's a big, big, big running a big scam pays off. It just looks sad. It looks like it could be my talik too. Josh Tagala, what do you think? SBF in jail, the first photo released by Tiffany Fong. Yeah, I mean, it sort of reminds me of like the G Lock, you know, G spot, you know, as they call them. No, you'd be like Sam, you want to play doctors and nurses or mummies and daddies. These are, these doctors and nurses, that sounds like a good scary mummies and daddies. Say, all right, all right, come on, who do you want to be? Mummy or daddy? I'll rather give it than take it. I'll be daddy. We'll come over here and suck mummies, Guck. I think that's basically where it's heading that. Now, with all jokes aside, what I don't, I don't take joy in looking at these sorts of photos. I think it's horrible. The fact that, that Sam is the big like the only one that gets punished through this whole scam when really, he had a so-called regulated exchange. So where are all the regulators that screwed up and allowed what he did? Where are they? They should be standing in this line too. Where are all the people that allowed this to go through from the VCs that apparently did that to diligence? Where are the folks? There they are. See, the dogs agree, the dogs agree. But, you know, I feel like Sam has been scapegoated here a lot. Obviously, he deserves to be in prison for what he did. But there's a lot of other people that deserve to be. And all the attention is like, Sam, what about all the other executives at that company that stole funds? So I do feel it's unfortunate that there isn't, that there aren't more people that have to serve some sort of justice for this egregious miscarriage. It's also unfortunate, Josh, we didn't get that second trial. Sam was also to be brought up for the political charges of violating campaigned finance reform, donating directly allegedly to Republicans, donating to Democrats on the record. That was supposed to be a second trial. And for reasons I can't really understand, they, well, we all understand them, but they didn't have that trial. They said, well, we've already got Sam on three life sentences or whatever. One, three or four more. Despite the fact, like you said, Josh, if people are involved there, if they took money, if they violated, like, even, you know, campaigned finance reform is a law. There are laws. That's right. And it's not just about bringing Sam down. It's about exposing that sort of leverage that money, money markets allow for, for, for, for pull on influence. So it's, yeah, it should have been brought up and it's, it's such a shame. All right. We've got one more story before we go into overtime. It's a short one. But I just wanted to bring this up because I think it's important for Bitcoin issue eight Bitcoin, ordinals may push fees above mining rewards in 2024. Yes. NFTs might save Bitcoin. Everyone always talks about what's going to happen when the block reward gets too small and the miners are not incentivized to mind. But here it is. Perhaps because of the fees generated by Bitcoin, ordinals, AKA NFTs, they might make money for the miners renting out the block stays like it's a profitable and useful commodity might actually save the Bitcoin network long term. Dan, what do you think about ordinals on the network and the idea that their fees could make up for the ever decreasing block reward? Well, I mean, it definitely like, reignite that debate, about will the miners when, you know, when the block reward is, what's this? I've got a chart in front of me. I've just, I've just texted you if you want to bring it up in the, in the, in the share the screen, right? So this is the harvining chart. So what's the, in 2036, there's going to be 0.39 Bitcoin per block. You know, that's, that's, that's a really low amount, right? 20, that's 2036. By 2048, it's going to be 0.04 Bitcoin. A block is the harvining rewards. Obviously, the fees have got to account, you know, they've got to be enough to cover the security. But one, I've got, I've got a question right. So when it, when it gets so low, I know there's a problem right now that you can't even, you can't even pay the fee right to, to move some Bitcoins. If you've got a low amount of Satoshi trying to sweep it, you've got to wait for the, the perfect time. But what happens when the block reward goes down to, I don't know, in, in the year 2080, when the block reward is just 19,000 sats, like, but it costs more than that to actually move that, those sats. What's going to work then? We don't have any concrete solutions yet. But people say at that point, perhaps a company like Amazon will be so dependent on Bitcoin working for money, that they'll want to mine it, even if there's not a great reward. Or, and again, this is going to horrify the anti-government libertarian people. Maybe a government will come in and mine Bitcoin as a public good, as something that's not necessarily done for profit, but is done for the good of keeping the network up, because society would be worse off without the Bitcoin network. But again, this is all 2080 and beyond or 20, 2120, whatever it is. Josh, you got to think about the end of the mining reward? It's always, every time the harvester comes up, this is always the part that gets pulled out, this sort of thing. The funny thing is, the funny thing is, at, you know, I'm thinking back at like 2017 all the way back to, I don't know, 2013 or so, 2014, it was always like, even on colored coins and stuff, it was always like, you know, these meetups and these wacky artists would come and say, man, we should just put art on the blockchain. And you say, just, what are you talking about? Just shut up, man. Like, I can't hear it anymore. There's no art on the blockchain. What's the point? What are you talking about? And now we're talking about art on the blockchain might save Bitcoin. It's hilarious. I love it. And, you know, these artists, they were, they were right, man, holy moly, NFTs. Who would have thought, apart from being, you know, who would have thought it was the killer app for NFTs? I really would have thought it was going to be keys to a house so you can like, you know, send your key to somebody if you're Airbnb and being and then they could send it back or whatever else, concert tickets, all these sorts of things. They've all been tried. No one's, it's never taken off. What did take off pictures of monkeys and penguins and a lot of ways it's about the ease of access that the artists now with the systems they have can make their own NFTs. Whereas if you were going to make your own concert tickets or your own keys for your door, that would be much harder. Whereas the artists themselves can directly interface because the technology's gotten easy enough. So that kind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Spot on spot on the ability to go directly to your customer. But, you know, one thing I wish it did more of was actually songs. I wish NFTs, you know, I wish the musicians got more into the NFTs rather than just images. It's been tried as well. But somehow images just were the thing. It's also would be awesome to have a song as an NFT and there's, you know, minted 300,000 of them. And that's all that they'll ever be. I don't know. It'd be cool. It definitely been there before. Adam Levine had an early project with NFTs and songs. But we'll have to see Adam's. Adam Levine. Adam Levine. Adam B. Levine from Let's Talk. But we're moving on to the next issues. The far too political issues. Issue number nine, I think El Salvador is Bukkelli tells US conservatives to put up a fight. So this is the unfortunate part of teaming up with a dictator is that occasionally he'll go to the United States and address the CPAC conference. A Bukkelli warned the conservatives. And again, we're talking about paranoid people looking for more paranoia about dark forces that were trying to control the US and corrupt judges, despite the fact that Trump appointed most of the recent judges. He also called out global elites and asked the American people to rise up presumably against their democratic government and to replace it with a more totalitarian government. As we've talked about before in El Salvador, the president arrested 75,000 people without trials, without due process, and ended gang violence, as it says here, Amnesty International said that it was the gradual replacement of gang violence with state violence. Bukkelli then violated the Constitution again asking for a second term, which he was allowed provided. He stands down in the period before the second term. So that's a pretty hilarious work around to the law. He also took the Supreme Court by force bringing soldiers onto the floor and taking over the court. But now he's here in the US spreading the good word to the US people. So Dan, what do you think about Bukkelli? Suddenly very right wing political here to save us from having to choose our own leaders. Well, and I'm more interested in the Bitcoin experiment that's going on there than the overall politics. Because he's cleaned up the crime right. And obviously what they're saying is that the enemy murders are down, but a lot of innocent people have gone to jail. Then on the flip side, there's a lot of people that are probably been affected by murder in El Salvador who are like, yeah, wait a few, you know, they're on the flip side. They're like, some extra people have gone to jail, but on the flip side, there's less murders, right? So I don't know, it's a hard one. And obviously, I'm really read much into this dictatorship stuff. I'm just a heave, I'm here for the Bitcoin. I agree. I wish it was just a less of a political experiment with the Bitcoin. And yeah, everything's always okay until you're the person wrongly put into prison or your brother or your cousin or someone that you know for a while it works out these kind of systems. But eventually, the problem becomes that it turns on everyone. It turns on the people that supported it and put it in power. One of the first people killed by Hitler was the original essay, which were killed by the SS. So even your own supporters end up murdered. Josh, you go all the way to think about the the dictator of El Salvador visiting America and telling the conservatives to rise up against the freedom of democracy. Well, you know, I haven't listened to his original speech. So I don't trust the BBC to report something properly. So yeah, the thing is, you know, every, it's good that different countries have different systems so that they can test it out. But people of their own country should decide who their leaders are. And if it's bad, they should fix it in whatever way they can. I don't know. Like, you know, people can say, ah, you know, point fingers and they shouldn't have a dictator. I don't know. It's El Salvador's problem. And El Salvador has been one of the most dangerous countries in the world. And it's getting fixed up. And if I was living there, I'd probably be happy right, happier right now. If he, if he did, I'm not even there on the booths. I've no friends that have gone there and say it's way better now. They've obviously got a vested interest because they're big corners. And they like Bickella because his Bitcoin stands. But, you know, the beautiful thing is competition is king. So what you want to first do is clean up a country and make sure there's no crime, get property rights into action properly so that you can make long-term decisions for your family and build wealth. And then you need to figure out how to have a sustainable future for your local geographical area. You know, if Bickella is a free ban, he can travel around, he can give his opinion. And, you know, it is what it is. And because he's a leader of a country, then he's going to speak up to leader type places. You know, one thing is that I'd like to maybe remind the audience that years ago, in the 50s, 60s, 40s, 30s, 20s, politics was this thing that some people were right into. And there wasn't so much weight put on it. You have more control over your family and your work than it did policy. Some people get so overheated with it. It's great to talk about policies. Definitely good to be involved a little bit. But a day to day, what has effect on your life is the decisions you make with your career, the decisions you make with your business, the decisions you make with your family, how you bring up your children. These are the very, very, very key important things that you can make an actual difference with. And a lot of the time politics just divides, it just divides and conquers from each other. And yeah, that's my rad. I agree, Josh. It's definitely important to be grateful and enjoy your situation and do the best to help the people near you because that is where you can have effect. Dan, Jim, more on this go? No, not just agree. Yeah, with everything. But that said, I want to push back a Josh a little bit because I was going to close with this Ralph Nader quote where he said, the lesson of politics is, if you're not turned on to politics, politics will turn on you. But we've got more politics today, just a heavy show. We're going to just mainly talk about his statement. We're going to try to stay off everything else about him, including his many, many criminal trials and so forth. Trump Bitcoin has taken on a life of its own. We'll probably need some regulation. But let's go straight to the quote, Donald Trump former president in the United States said Bitcoin has taken on a life of its own. You probably have to do some regulation, but many people are embracing it. More and more, I'm seeing people wanting to pay Bitcoin. I can live with it one way or the other. Dan, Eve, what do you think about the former president changing his mind on Bitcoin after, of course, selling millions of dollars in NFTs and just kind of being wishy-washy in general? If Trump said that he'd make Bitcoin the US national currency, would you vote for him? Biden said that he would ban Bitcoin. Would you vote for Trump? I'm not sure. It's still about freedom versus not freedom. Even if Biden, and again, I love it when they ban Bitcoin and they attack it because I think it's unbannable and I think that it survives. It's a tough question. Trump doesn't speak about Bitcoin actually much. That little speech then wasn't negative. It wasn't positive. It was a neutral statement, which is unlike Trump, who makes waffly, crazy statements. That's quite sensible for him to make. Isn't pulling, at least isn't pulling in craziness of the headlines like going, oh, but they use it for drugs and prostitution or something, nothing nuts like that. At least it was kind of a middle of the line, kind of quite from Orange, man. I agree. Dan, the last line is just especially wishy-washy. He just says, I can live with it one way or the other. So it's not like we're going to be, oh, Trump's a big Bitcoin booster. He's on our side, all that kind of thing. It's just more, he's mildly changed his opinion on it. And of course, a former president, even this one, talking about Bitcoin, is kind of newsworthy for our show. Josh, Shagall, what do you think about his mild endorsement of Bitcoin? I don't know. You always get mad at the mosquito and a mannequin factory here on these sorts of topics. But it's really, it's a good thing. I, at least he's not, a lot of the time, to say money. Trump, for my mind, all things, I don't see him as a racist guy. I know that's what the media like to say. I see that he does see one color and that's green. And so the US dollar is his obsession. He's like that. He's that sort of narcissistic focus on green. And so for him to say, well, there might be another color orange. He does love the color orange as Dan stated. He loves to paint himself orange on a daily basis. But I think it's good. I think it's great that he's saying it's, it is what it is. It's the free market that it's softening up. These people that are obsessed, because I have heard him say in the past that we need to make sure that the US dollar isn't undermined, because that's the most important thing. And the US dollar has been undermined with, with the sanctions that have been pushed against Russia and that's really hurt the dollar in a way, on a positive side, crypto has helped the dollar, because the stablecoin market has really controlled the narrative of what Bitcoin's priced in globally. It doesn't matter what country you live in. If you use crypto, you generally your portfolio is in the US dollar, which is a really fascinating network effect, because we've launched a euro stablecoin the standard, backed by thousands of people locking up assets into smart contracts where they don't lose the private, where they don't keep over the private keys. But this, the euro doesn't get used as much. Anyway, whether you look at the big players like Tether, they've got Tether euro, the volume is way, way, way lower than US dollar. So it's fascinating to see this as a network effect, and maybe it's what actually saves the dollar, is because the use case and people, the network effect of what people use things for, for instance, if I price milk in Australian dollars, I know a good deal when I see it. I walk down the aisle and I go, ah, milks. Now, dollar 30, oh, that's a good deal. Whereas if it's priced in like Sats, for instance, I don't know what is that a good deal. I have to get the calculator out. It just makes a lot of friction, whereas I'm already starting to get a feel of dollars in my life purely because everyone uses Bitcoin against dollars. So it's a fascinating thing, the psychology of pricing things in dollars. But yeah, it's a little bit off the topic. But yeah, interesting, interesting. Well, I'm not going to say he's a racist, but I just want to quote his speech when he started his campaign. He called Mexican people rapists and thieves, and then historically they have this problem where they did underinvesting. You know, if you're talking about the people, the gang, the problem where they won't rent to black people in the 1970s. And it's just kind of really heavily documented. And there's just a lot, a lot of evidence about not rating to be. But if you also look back, he wasn't called a racist, he wasn't called a racist until he ran against Hillary, and suddenly he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, these trials, no, this is not going on since the 1970s. Yeah, that's right here. A discrimination probe in the 1970s. So that was a long time before he ran for president as father was also accused of not renting. One incident, like, you know, racist. In fact, it wasn't in 50. Just a little bad. It's just a little bad. Let's keep moving. We're running out of time. Dan, Eve, do you have a prediction or a story of the week? Go ahead. I predict Trump's going to be America's 46. Oh, I'm joking. I'm joking. 47th anyway. But yeah, it depends. It depends, doesn't it? Oh. Yeah. Josh, you got to have a prediction or a story of the week. Go ahead. Yeah. Next week, we'll have a new landing page for the standard. That's a story of the week. We're working hard for that. And we'll be launching our yield accounts where you don't need to give up any private keys. And you start to basically be able to buy Bitcoin at 9.91 under market value. What? Yeah, you borrow for 0% interest using the standard without giving up your private keys. And you can start to lock up TST and EUROS into these yield accounts. And all the fees generated through people trading and swapping get into a pool and you can buy them up for almost 10% under spot on a market value. So it's a great way of DCAing in and maybe even arbitroging. So yeah, all of this stuff's coming. It's so exciting. We've had basically the last month and a half 250 plus white hat hackers trying to smash our contracts. All these auditors basically trying to break us. And while they found some little things here and there, the main things they found is ways to optimize the smart contract and stuff. But no one's found a way to basically break in. So we're now as watertight as can be. And super excited. We're working really, really hard. The whole team has in releasing this. So next week's a big release will be the repagging the EUROS. So that's back, relaunching the smart contracts, trading's back within the contracts. These yields are back. These yield accounts. So yeah, interesting time. Obviously, if you're not into crypto very much, don't do anything on that. If you're just getting into Bitcoin, just buy some Bitcoin, hold on to that. But if you're more advanced and you like to have fun with this sort of thing and an experiment, we're building some really, really interesting technology. So it'd be great to have you over and join the community over at the standard.io. Very cool. Josh sounds like some good stuff. And Dan, do you have a prediction or a story of the week before I go to mine? I don't know. It's been a boring week. So no pigeons. No pigeons to report. My story of the week's pretty exciting. Curio cards, the proto NFT project that I and Travis and Rhett created in 2017 has been added to a Tashin book. Tashin is this big German company. They make very large art books. And they're making a book called on NFTs and they've included Curio cards. So it's really exciting to be included in this book. I talked about a little on Twitter. I bought a big Tashin book about Stanley Kubrick. It had a piece of film from Kubrick's own personal copy of 2001 space Odyssey inside. So they do a lot of kind of large scale books like this. I got a fun book about Kubrick's Napoleon project that was never filmed. And I got to tour one of their bookstores. This is the Muhammad Ali book. It's incredibly large. I think they're making some large ones for the NFT project as well. So just a very cool company making some very cool. And as you can see here, very large books. So it's an awesome. And the joy gives Tashin, Tashin means pocket. Paws is amazing. That's funny because yeah, I don't think these will fit anywhere. So shout out to Tashin, shout out to Curio cards. It's just great to be included and to have our own little small place in NFT history. So thanks to everybody for joining us. Sorry we had to get political there for a couple of stories. And I'm kind of losing my voice too. So there's probably comments on that. So thanks so much for joining us. Until next time. Bye. Bye.