The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last ten years, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Waseem Alcindy from OX Salon. Josh Shigalla from thestandard.io. Well it's an absolute pleasure once again. Ben Arck from LNBITS. Good evening all, happy Friday. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue one. Issue one. Formerly President Donald Trump now 34 times convicted felon says that he'll commute the sentence of Ross Ulbrich after speaking at the Libertarian Convention. The Maga Trumpers attempted to force the Libertarians out of their own convention, but were unsuccessful leaving the room full of constant booing. Trump even going heel at one point, being angry at the audience, claiming if you're happy with your 3%, go ahead you losers. Be happy with your 3%. But along the way he did claim that he would accept Bitcoin, put Libertarians in his cabinet and free Ross Ulbrich, something that he could have done all four years while he was president. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is also reaching out to the Bitcoin and crypto industry as we may have according to Bitcoin magazine, the first Bitcoin election, if you will. What's seen, Alcendi, what do you think of Trump and his empty promises to a booing room at the Libertarian Convention? I mean, like it's it's Donald Trump, right? So you should be used to empty promises by now. This is we know how this goes before he bid on this ride once before. So I thought it's more interesting that the like we serve like a few like Trump, like Trump himself and the kind of Maga, whatever movement around him. That is pretty no quantity. You don't get too many surprises from it really. So my instinct is to look on the other side, like you know what basically what with the Libertarians thinking, doing this. And I guess it's that kind of classic two-by system third-by bind, we could do something. Otherwise you lose by not doing anything. I mean, probably others know more about this than I do, but I also remember hearing something about the Libertarian presidential candidate, the selection of the candidate in the buy was also extremely disrupted and weird. Now, I assume that also happened to this convention. So I hope that for somebody to tell us more about that. But yeah, this idea of whatever Bitcoin election crypto election, these topics also going around the like let's say the other circles around Web 3, the you know, there's the big capitulation on the area ETF mild colleague from MIT Gary Gensler. Seems to be very, very quiet at the moment. Somebody whispered in his ear to change how he behaves. And yeah, it seems like the depocketed folks in the coastal cities in America like crypto and they could have the drop in influence. Stuff that happens in DC now. It was interesting, the nominating of the Libertarian presidential candidate that happened the day after Trump and RFK juniors speech. I think that it went largely Libertarian. I think Trump got maybe six votes on the first ballot. So not a good showing for the ex president and RFK didn't do much better. Maybe 15 votes are show with the Libertarian candidate coming in and naturally scooping it up. It was a big deal for the Libertarians to have the former president speaking at their convention. I think it's the first time that a another party's candidate had spoken at another party's convention. So it was very irregular. And as I mentioned in the introduction, first there was a mini revolt by the Libertarians using Robert's rules of orders where they attempted to tell Trump to go F himself. Then there was a in physical revolt where the Trumpists lined up three hours early attempting to take the front rows of seats from the Libertarian delegates at their own convention. The Libertarians got upset, started live streaming this, started politely explaining to the people how this was their convention and they were here to speak, see the speeches at their convention, this leading to the booze. I can tell you the mainstream reporting on this was all about the booze and that president Trump finally spoke to a more fair audience that isn't just made up of his supporters where he can control everything. However, it has been a little scary here in the Bitcoin type Libertarian area. I had a poll on the Mad Bittcoins Twitter about 50 votes, not that many, but it was 6040. People said they would vote for Trump on this single issue. So obviously it's incredibly dangerous to free one man but to lose freedom for lots of other people as well as the other political issues. You can't really decide just on one person like this. It's very simplistic and as well as as I said in the intro, Trump could have done this the whole time he was president. He could have supported Bitcoin, he could have freed Ross towards the end. I've heard he even did think about it, but I do think before I forgive this to Josh, we have to give lots of credit to David Bailey and whoever else did the work inside the Libertarian convention to convince people that the number one issue to Libertarians is the freedom of Ross Ulbert. There's apparently nothing else taxation, all these other things, not as important as freeing this one guy and they were successful in bringing that to light and bringing that to Trump's team. And if you think he was pandering and serving up a bunch of good things to make you feel good like how he likes guns and he likes being free, especially when he's accused of committing crimes and yesterday convicted of committing crimes, it just seemed like a big pander to me. And I'd see you through right through it even even if it was a different candidate that I didn't love. Josh, should all of what do you think about Trump speaking to the Libertarian convention and promising them everything they've ever wanted apparently? Yeah, it's hilarious. I was laughing at the Libertarians. They're so rowdy. They just don't care. It's so funny because you listen to a normal Trump rally. It's just always, yeah, yeah. And the vibe is really quite catching at these things. I know. But at the Libertarian convention, it really is like a bunch of drunk brits at a football match. It was amazing. Look, you can say whatever you want about lies or whatever. But there's sort of politicians do. That's what they all do. They're all the same. They all try to give you a promise and then sometimes they stick to them. Sometimes they don't. You don't know. You can't just say it would be a lie. I have got it under pretty good authority from Linnol Brick to herself that Trump was like weeks away or days away from pardoning him last time. And then the what the indictment came where they tried to grab him on that. So he was focused on that. And then he got kicked out of January 6th. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, my hope is that he would, I think that's probably his best chance because it's not a, you know, the Democrat Stone even Nerma Ross's name. And it was Chuck Schumer that famously put him in there with this ridiculous you know, absolutely ludicrous sentence. But yeah, who knows. I think it was funny. I think it was quite amazing to see. And you know, we all know these sort of anarchist types and how like they just don't care. You know, they just say it how it is, which I appreciate about the space. If any of you guys have ever been any of the viewers here, which I'm sure they have, to some, sorry, my dogs are fighting over some sort of treat here. If they've been to one of these things, it's uncontrollable. Like it's out. You can never really tame them. It's hard. So Trump got a taste of the Libertarian party, I guess. Yes, there's litter everywhere and they all have guns. I can't wait till they're in charge. By a great Josh, it was quite a statement by the Libertarians that their convention to a boo and be rowdy and get this chance. But I really think for the mainstream, the way that people view Ross Ulbrecht is more like Tony Montana or whatever from Scarface as a big gangster. And they see him on the boat with the machine guns and the selling the drugs personally. And although we on the Bitcoin group and other Bitcoiners know that's not true. He's much more like a kid running a website than a big gangster. The outside world sees him as a gangster. So I find it very hard to believe that Trump was actually going to pardon him. I think he got close, but we have to say, was he totally done with politics? If he was totally done with politics, then he could pardon him because you're essentially pardoning a huge drug dealer. It's going to look really bad in the wider press regardless of the Libertarian or Bitcoin press. And it did have a weird feeling, Josh, the speech. I thought it was kind of like a high school speech where Trump was coming in and lecturing the Libertarians about why they should vote for him and kind of leaning on them. And then he kind of lost it at that point where he went like, WWF heel. And he was like, are you happy with your 3% and it was the kind of thing. I think Josh, we've had this discussion ourselves, but not in a negative way in a public space, the way that that Trump did. And you really can't insult people that you're trying to get to vote for. You can't be like, come on, the Libertarians join me with your measly, lousy 3% that gets you nothing. Yeah, I thought it was a strange, a strange tactic. But at the same time, it's right. Like the Libertarians have always had hardly anything, hardly anything in terms of representation. And some of the policies that he did happen, it was very much right. And that too were Libertarian leaning. And that's why I think that he appeals to a lot of people in the Bitcoin space because there are, you know, I mean, the whole started to know new wars and stuff like that is, it is right down the Libertarians' alley for sure. I do think he's right about the 3% and how they get nothing, but I don't think he's right in the way he communicated it. I think if you tell someone that to their face, they're going to tell you to go after yourself. And especially if you're coming in as the larger outside force, he's the nominee of a major party. They're this little third string party. It just, it sound, I don't think it was part of the plan. I think he went on. I mean, he said before that he didn't want to be a Republican party. He would have just run on his way, but he would never have gotten in. So he had to, and it's the same with some other people at Ron Paul running as a Republican because it's just no point running on a different ticket. Yeah, you have to have the support of the two parties. They have the fundraising. They have the backbone. You really can't do it. The ballot access, things like that. Ben Arck, what do you think of the former president now, 34 time guilty convicted felon speech about the old Bitcoin and Ross Obrecht there? He might be joining them in the cell soon. They might consult on how to make a Brandy wine in the toilet or something like that. Yeah, I mean, I think we've just become a special interest group Bitcoin as a whole. Like if you think about where we are now compared to where we were four years ago, the reason that he didn't, you know, under the sort of things Bitcoin, like Bitcoin is like such as releasing or pardoning Ross Obrecht and then also accepting Bitcoin and being a bit more pro Bitcoin is because four years ago, we were much more of a guppy than we are now. And now we, there's significant liquidity in Bitcoin and a lot more big players in the space. And I think it's to be expected that we'll see this more across the board that there'll be politicians talking about Bitcoin, especially when, you know, they in the in through the lens of the CBDC debate, which I think most people don't like the idea of and Bitcoin seems like an obvious free and open source alternative to some sort of CBDC thing. So yeah, it's it's before years, it's a long time, like it was 2020, like we were a much smaller community then and Bitcoin wasn't as as influential as it is now. And three percent may not sound like a lot, but in a close election, it is a lot. And there's certain, you know, a bunch of synergies toward between some of Trump's policies and then also between what libertarians want, such as like, you know, less regulation and whatever else. So I could imagine in capturing quite a lot of the libertarian vote. And the fact that, you know, they applauded for minutes after the Russell-Bricked announcement or whether he'll go through with what he says, because as we have all done over the years that, you know, politicians say a lot before they get elected and they want to get elected, they don't do the things because actually there are, you know, more mechanics in politics than just one person, which is a good thing. So whether he can, I don't know, and there might be a lot of backlash from, I mean, he's pandering to an audience. So he can say that he's going to release Russell-Bricked. And then maybe he could do it in such a way that it doesn't cause too much controversy. He has served 11 years. And I think the real sticking point on the Russell-Brick thing is there's been a lot of, you know, documentaries and literature and general populace is interested in the subject and there's a lot of other subject. There's a fair amount of evidence that he did try and kill, or chronic pain, the administrator and that's that's shady. So yeah, but if he, if it is possible, you know, that he could put grant clemency to Russell-Bricked and have him released or as time served or whatever. So yeah, I could imagine winning over a lot of libertarians and then within his own supporters, there's a lot of Bitcoiners, you know, look at the Canadian truckers and whoever I find and they can agency, they can't vote. But that ilk of person across the pond in the US and they like Bitcoin, they like Trump. You just had to look through the comments on the Twitter post and there was a lot of Bitcoiners in there applauding Trump mentioning Bitcoin and talking about accepting Bitcoin donations. It was crypto and I think a lot of Bitcoiners are skimming over that fact. But yeah, so yeah, I think it's a, I mean, I don't like the guy, but I think it's a good move on his part to try and win over the libertarians. And I know that he didn't to begin with, but, you know, saying, oh, you're measly 3% where will it get you? That was just within the first few minutes of his 40-minute speech. But in the 30 minutes in, he read the audience and then he pulled out the Russell-Brick card and got applause for many minutes and I'm sure that's what everyone will remember and walk away with. So yeah. I think it's a nice dream, but I don't think there's any realistic way that he could free him. If you want to think about it just for a sec is a thought experiment. 3% of your audience is libertarians. You make that 3% happy. 97% of your audience, let's say they're Republicans. Let's say half of them are the old guard of law and order Republicans who used to believe in law and order and they wanted drug dealers busted and they want them arrested and so forth. And he's going to come out there and say, I just freed the world's biggest drug dealer. I don't think I think you would cut off half your audience to gain 3%. I don't think that strategically tactically you could do it. Now, the real important one is free of sandwich, you know, because that has real geopolitical impact around the world if a non-U.S. citizen can be charged on trees and it just means that anyone can be extradited to any country for trees and if you, if they're not a citizen of that country, he's absolutely terrible for the free press. So, free of sandwich. Maybe this is the first step. I mean, if he freees Russell, break people and say, well, what about this? A sandwich guy? What did he do? Well, let's see. I think that's exactly why it would be even harder to free a sandwich is people don't even really understand what they did, what he did. He got some information, he published it, you know, he shaped the information. WikiLeaks changed. It's not just publishing stuff. It's now waiting till it's the worst time for the political candidate they dislike, which is a bit of a targeted thing. Almost seems like a Russian agent, but I think that's a whole nother bag of things we don't want to get into. And as we were saying, we didn't talk about much, but the Democrats have woken up to this issue. There will be on-voys from Biden and so forth. They're not all going to be Elizabeth Warren. As Ben said, Bitcoin's grown up and we're now worth both sides talking to us. Like, there are going to be lobbyists. There's going to be people arguing on both sides of the political spectrum for Bitcoin, but I do think we'd be better off with a group of centrist people arguing for us rather than far right or far left. I think we would get more people. But let's move on to the exit question. What would Ross do? You're in a cell. They've promised to free you. The promise is a little shaky. Comes from a con man, 34 times convicted con man. And it also might destroy the world. So do you want your freedom in exchange for destroying the world? What would Ross Obrecht do and a little bit as well as what would you do? What do you think Ross will do? And what would you do if you were in the cell, but you were offered to be freed by a morally questionable individual? I guess it would have been like, I mean, I know what I can speak to myself. But I find it harder to put myself inside Ross's mind. So I guess it's about the extent to which, if you're compassionate compassion to another. So I would like to believe in the bestable possible worlds. Sometimes doesn't feel like we're living in it right now. But I would like to believe in the bestable possible worlds. And so I will opt for the altruistic option by the cases. Charge Shigala, what will Ross do? What would he do? He'll sit there like he is rotting away. I mean, it's just what you do. You have to keep on living in a stoic hope that I guess even having hope is not stoic. So trying to just, yeah, just survive and having this slight glimmer of hope in the future that maybe something will happen. I mean, you do never know. And usually a pardon will happen right at the end of a political sitting. So yeah, it probably be at least another four years. If Trump gets in and manages that pardon, but at least it's a little bit of hope. And I know that when I talked to Lynn about it, she was really upset because she was told that he would. And then he got removed out of the White House before. But it was really quite a powerful thing for me to see her just say, I said, well, what are you going to do? And she goes, well, I just get up out of bed and I keep going. And that's just an amazing thing, an amazing woman doing that for her son. So yeah. But yeah, Assange also, you know, let's hope that maybe the Australian government can stop being such a bunch of cowardly fools and allow this persecution of somebody that's, you know, whether you think it's political or not, whatever, it doesn't matter. That's what journalists do. They expose things. And it's really important that they are allowed to expose things because that's pretty much the kingpin of democracy of the people having power is having the knowledge to that is exposed from people willing to expose things that are inconvenient to hear, whether it doesn't matter the timing. It doesn't matter at the timing at all. The important thing is, hey, there was an event we reported on it. We hit the sources for a while as much as possible. And now you know the information. And this is unbelievable that we're still sitting here with a guy in prison for showing literal war crimes from drone strikes that should put us all a little bit fearful on the fearful footing. I mean, the fact that the guy sitting in prison, not everybody isn't, you know, totally up in arms about it, is out of control. And it came with this nonsense charge of, you know, these girls in Sweden saying that, yeah, anyway, we all know the story. So yeah, sit there. I think Josh is definitely right that pardons come at the end of the term. So even if Trump were to be honest and truthful about this part, you would have to wait another three to four years to get it. And like you said with Lynn, you could be promised it at the last moment and then have it pulled back for some reason. So it's a very tenuous agreement you have here. It's not the kind of thing you can put in the bank. Ben Arck, what do you think? What would Ross do? What in prison? I mean, you just want it to be free. Don't you be in prison sucks. You don't care who likes you out, you know. And then I suppose you imagine that you can do great good if you're out. We'll be interested in seeing him on the, to see whether he engages, you know, the Bitcoin community and the veteran community for so hard would be so vocal about trying to get the guy released. He'll be interested to see where the prison has changed in much. It's from what I can tell that. I don't think it has. I think he's still very much believes in what he believed in before. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, 11 years is a long time and it's probably an excuseable amount of time to have him released. It was kind of like, you know, making an example of this guy, put him in jail, throw away the key. As similarly as they're trying to do with the sand on those Trumped up charges, which have all been dropped by the way. Now it's just treason charges. They're trying to charge a song for us and saying, but yeah, you and Kare, you just want to be out of prison. See, that's where I get romantic. I want Ross to sit there and say, and maybe to write a big angry letter in the old DPR style that we haven't heard from in years and whose autobiography I would love to read. DPR, not Ross Oberg. DPR, I want to hear the real autobiography. But I'd love him to say, even though you would set me free, you would jail everyone else. And I can't have that. And that noble stand from prison, even though we don't even think this is a fair offer that this would actually happen and all of those things you get taken for that as well. But I do agree Ben, 11 years is a long time in prison. He probably just wants anybody to let him out. But still, is what good is it to be let out if the entire world burns after your let out? So it's a bit of a tough decision even there, even if you are the one locked in prison. Moving on to issue two, issue two, green piece begins to change their mind. As predicted on this show, green piece went way too far when they attacked Bitcoin, saying that it would destroy the environment and that it was a horrible monster represented by this green skull with flaming eyes and toxic chemicals behind it, Bitcoin truly the worst thing in the world. Now, according to leaks within green piece, they're changing their mind, saying that it's damaging the green piece brand and that there are bigger issues to fight and that Bitcoin could be even a positive force for counteracting climate change. As we've said on this show for decades now, Josh, Shagall, what do you think about green piece starting to wake up and see the realities that Bitcoin might not be so bad even might be good for them? Well, it's fascinating that they use the word sexed up just like Tony Blair's dossier ears. But yeah, no shit, like what do you? The fact of the matter is that they just never really did any research because all of the miners that I know are basically constantly on the search for cheaper and cheaper electricity that isn't government subsidized because as soon as as government subsidized and that's the reason why it's cheap, it will be rug-pulled from underneath you very, very quickly because governments don't like to subsidize something that they're not benefiting them directly. And so, and we see this everywhere, there's examples of this everywhere, these miners will use specifically in more socialist countries where electricity is very, very, very, very cheap because it's all been subsidized. As soon as the miners, they're they're finding out, why is this electricity being used so much and they come in and just basically shut it down? Because when you're subsidizing something, you're actually distorting the market, you're removing the scarcity. So, you're not giving price as a scarcity metric to the consumer. And so, the consumer will just use way too much of it because they don't realize the price. And so, when you have a true free market, you have to actually find actually cheap energy. And what's cheaper than water falling down a cliff or heat coming from under the earth? So, miners are very, very active in finding renewables, in finding renewables. And and there, there you go. Well, I think we are still streaming. I'm the host now, apparently. So, I think we still go. I don't know. I think we still go. Yeah. Yeah. What's your opinion on that? Okay. So, like, there's the, like, the old chestnut of like Bitcoin mining, good for the environment, Bitcoin mining, bad for the environment in reality. I don't think we actually know. It's like the time, looks like it's my tipping point right now. If you look at air and seat temperature data. And so, even if the amount of energy that Bitcoin uses now, relatively to overall energy consumption of different on the time, and whether a lot that is green or not, it may, that may not matter. It may, you know, because we're in this delicate moment, is a small change might make a big difference. We just don't know. So, I find it hard to make directional statements on either side. I thought, well, everything what you said Josh, like, makes lots sense. But one thing I will add though is that there is a new energy source on the block, emerging especially for kind of like, computation intensive bits and bobs. And that is a small scale uranium nuclear fishing power. So, like we've been talking here and people talk about, oh, a small scale of nuclear reactors. And then that's been 20 years away. Well, big tech companies are now signing contracts for power delivery in the near future, from small scale nuclear power to gain build. Friend of a relative of a friend works on those in America. He's got what? What's small scale like battery scale? This is more like municipal scale, let's say, or it might be like you build a, you build a nuclear power plant, you power a data center or a data capsule, like a enterprise campus, basically. Like a submarine. Like a new field of mud work. You might build one for a neighborhood of a city or something like that. Like, or like, so you wouldn't build what it's not that this monolithic idea of we build a huge one out in the middle of nowhere. And then that's susceptible to like, soon arms and earthquakes. We build smaller ones. And the risks are actually much more than the big ones because you can't get these massive runaways. But anyway, loads of big techs now signing energy delivery contracts for the quite near future with nuclear power plants that being built now. So this is all like, you know, about to change again. And like, it then depends on what you're opinion about uranium is. But do you think that's clean or not? Because you have to dig it out the ground. In a way, there's not. Oh, it's clean unless you're in a war. Yeah, but also you have to dig out the ground. That's been messed up. But, um, yeah. So there's lots of stuff with uranium. And then you said you said you had to be in relation to other things. So yeah, it's, there's a lot there. And like I'm still actually picking away all of this stuff. I appreciate the Scotsato sheet degree piece thing. I think it's actually beautiful. And just a reminder that, um, me and the collective that I worked with and murdered, we wrote a satirical theatre production about proof of work. And some of the opinions in that were the opinions that the three piece people seem to be holding. So like, as usual, life, imitation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Change, change the code. It was a, it was a pretty naive campaign on green pieces part, but the thing is a green piece. You have to, I know they, they seem like one big organization, but they are pretty fractured, uh, rubble of activists. And, um, there was definitely opposition when they, they came out with that campaign, um, from, from within green piece. In fact, so we have allies like in green piece, Bitcoin, how do I realize that we have allies? We have friends. We have allies. We have allies in extension rebellion, um, which is far more hardcore than green piece. Um, and also they're getting access to all the evidence and research has been done that Bitcoin does, in fact, incentivize renewables. I'm not saying that like, you know, personally, I think a lot of the incentives for renewables are also incentives for, for the energy sources, but particularly with hydro, like, uh, some of the stuff which, um, oh, Cracky, what's the name of it? Oh, the, uh, the African, well, they're setting up with hydro power plants and then gridless, gridless, particularly the work that gridless is doing, um, where they have these small hydro plants which are servicing, you know, a town and they're relatively poorly maintained hydro plants, and they're going in and they're saying, right, we're going to up your hydro plant, we're going to make it increase its capacity to the point where our power is three towns instead of one, but with the excess, we're going to, we're going to mine Bitcoin, and that's, that's a very successful uh, or has been a very, very successful initiative. Uh, so there's a lot of great work which is being done in renewables. And ultimately, like mine is the, you know, that they're not these like cypherpunk crypto, and these big, organic big operations, um, which if they are using 30 energy sources to mine Bitcoin, they can, and will be regulated, like look what happened in China a few years ago, all the mining was in China and it's producing all these horrible emissions from mining using these coal plants, and then, uh, all these these, uh, uh, uh, and the Chinese just shut it down and said no more mining in China. So it does have, you know, if you start mining using dirty energy sources, it does have enough of an impact on the local community of that country, um, to fall, to kick the governments into action to start regulating some of these big miners. But yet, the, the, the, I was very skeptical when it came to renewables and mining, but over, I'm actually start a Taliban group, Bitcoin environmentalist, and there's a couple of hundred people in there now, and, um, my, I've been complete, been completely turned, and, uh, now, are very optimistic for, uh, Bitcoin and sanitizing renewables. And actually, from Green Point and from Green, Green Peace and from Extension Rebellion's point of view, um, for those who kind of get some of the arguments for using Bitcoin, um, to incentivize these renewables, um, they see it as a radical market force, which can, I mean, like, from their point of view, from my point of view, as well, climate is something we, we, we, that's humanity, desperately needs to tackle. And the reality is the governments are utterly failing at it, look, but Trump's a classic example pulling out of the Paris Agreement in 2020, which is absolutely horrific. And this is a, an, very important agreement between lots of countries, but governments can't be trusted. They, you know, they, they talk the talk, but it's, as, uh, uh, uh, uh, Greta said it's more, more, more, more, and actually using some of these like radical market forces, such as Bitcoin mining, could be a way to, to really ramp up, um, use of renewables. Uh, so yeah, I'm, I'm pretty, um, yeah, I'm pretty positive over that, over the whole thing. And, and, and well done for, um, uh, for, for the, for the, the tweet, uh, because it was such a wild research tweet. And they clearly done the lack work to reach out to Greenpeace and, and those involved in Greenpeace and get the inside scoop, which is, which is great to hear. Well, and what I think Ben is, one of the ideas on this for a long time is it's easier to build a miner than to build a battery. So if we have all these hydroelectric plants that have excess energy that they're not using, um, basically, basically, basically, basically, basically, and storage of electricity is the issue. So a lot of people think solar, but then you need a whole load of batteries and batteries aren't paying any ass. So when it comes to having like a regular base load, water is easy. You can like, you know, capture it in a dam and then you can release a slow steady rate. Um, and if you're in an area where it rains a lot like it's a, it's a pretty, you know, but what doesn't, what, what does dip is the, um, the grid or wherever they're connected to whatever power they're feeding into to demand for, for electricity does dip and that's that's where, um, it could just be used as a way of making, like with gridless, uh, of making some of these smaller hydro operations, um, profitable in, and, you know, and like, profitable ventures as opposed to, um, necessary things which don't really make any money. Uh, but yeah, hydro is, I think hydro really is the one when it comes to, um, and the geothermal stuff, um, uh, which Josh mentioned earlier, like in, in places like Iceland, you know, it's just limitless energy and, and like you say, Thomas, you just, you lock it everywhere. Geothermal can be absolutely everywhere. You just need to dig deeper. Yeah, yeah. And we can plug all that into Bitcoin mining. It'll be much better. Oh, let's keep moving, but let's look at the green piece skull one more time. And I remember what a great job they did with their anti Bitcoin propaganda. It's also a great time for you to go ahead and see. Real quick, um, uh, friend of mine that came to the theatre production we made critiquing with the attitudes around group of work. New nose, the artist that made the skull of Satoshi and said that they are sound. So this idea of the, then coming out and saying like arguing in favor of nuance is corroborated by like the, the real networks of, well, and it is really a nice piece. If you look at it, it looks like it's made up of old computer parrots, old computer wires. It's got cool lighting. I don't know about the nuclear power plants on top, but again, he was paid. It was a commission not his fault. Uh, but it's also a great time for you to push the like button for the show. We're having a like drive this week. We're trying to get 50 likes on the show. Usually we get about 45. So that means about five of you who usually do nothing would have to push the like button. Uh, so give that a try. Check out worldcrypto network.com. We've got 3,773 videos and more. You can watch it worldcrypto network.com. Moving on to issue three, Gemini Earn users receive $2.8 billion of their digital assets in kind a 232% recovery. We hardly ever say anything nice about these platforms where you can leave your Bitcoin behind for other people to lend it out and hope that it'll be there with interest later. Hope, hope, hope. But Tyler and Cameron Winklevye, the CEO and president of Gemini Earn, have done the right thing and are giving the money back to the users. This hardly ever happens. So we do want to celebrate it and uh, celebrate all the people who are getting their money back now and the Winklevye for giving it to them. Ben, Arck, what do you think about Gemini Earn? Turning assets to the people. I'm so sorry, sorry, tell me, sorry, I, I, I, I read app. Can you go to somebody else on, or I'm going to defer to another panel member because I didn't actually catch this article. Let's go to a with seam. It says that 97% of digital assets, oh, to earn users, be a return, one billion dollars more than when they halted with draws and that it's a 232% recovery from when they halted with draws. Of course, this is all from their blog and their web page that they wrote themselves so we can trust that. What do you think, Wiseem? Well, I mean all these figures are already measured from the absolute like bottom of the trash can at the market and this is like basically tracking the recovery of that. We've already seen stories which you may have discussed on this program other times around that. For example, the credit is FTX now being due more than 100% of what they had at the time at the exchange went down. And so this is another, you know, example of like bizarre old lands, crypto stuff, where because of the market turning round and things being denominated in different currencies, you kind of blink and then you look again, a bit like they live by by me. And then all of a sudden there's different reality in front of you. What I don't know about in this story meant one of the other, like one of the gang could say, is exactly where this money came from. Is it due to the underlying assets and this sole of them recovered the value? Did the Winklevides pay off because they made loads of money on their Bitcoin? I'm not exactly sure. Yeah, I'm not sure. And exactly says at this point, I do assume that the Winklevides made so much money off of their adventures in crypto that as a gesture of goodwill and attempt to save their business, it makes sense to pay these people back. Josh, Shagallah, what do you think they're getting their money back? Yeah, I see them say it right. This is what happens when the market corrects. And you can always stem it from time of loss. So you could say that everyone, no one in Mt. Gox lost any money, except if you were actually wanting to huddle, then you've lost a hell of a lot of money. So if you convert it into the Fiat losses right in that moment, but actually Bitcoin is don't, they don't think in Fiat amount. Yeah, they've got that number on their phone and the number go up to that. But actually, the number that you want is Bitcoin go up. That's why you put it into the earn program in the first place because you want more Bitcoin. You don't want more, you know, if you start it off with one, you want 1.1 afterwards. You don't want 0.2, but that's worth the same amount as when you put it in there. So yeah, so it's a bit of a, it's, you know, I mean, if it was Trump, it'd be put in jail for it because it's an accounting thing. But it is true, I guess. Yeah, so that's one thing. And the other thing is that don't use these centralized things. This is what this is the amazing thing about DeFi. DeFi allows you to earn interest. There's plenty of lending markets out there. I mean, the standard we don't have lenders. That's why we can do 0% interest because people actually mint against their crypto holdings or against their rapid coin. But you want to stay away from centralized authorities that are lending out the crypto. The reason why is you, A, you get more returns using, using automatic, automated market makers in DeXes by earning, earning you. I don't know how Gemini made their yield. What are they doing with your money? Are they putting, are they lending, are they buying bonds with who knows? In a DeX, I know exactly what's happening. You're placing your liquidity into an automated market maker, which is predetermined, coded. Anyone can see it's a free and open source. You can see exactly what is happening with your money. It's being used as liquidity on a DeX. So you know where the, you know where the yield is coming from. For me, DeXes are the most cipherpunk thing you can get outside of Bitcoin itself. We should be, we should all be celebrating the fact that DeXes are a thing. Because a normal autobook cannot function. It's too computationally heavy. So a DeXes is, is absolutely phenomenal. And these, these liquidity pools are a phenomenal way of earning a yield. And so if you do want to earn a yield, they're possible. They're a way to do it without giving up your private keys. And yeah, do it. Have a go. I am being told we have an inside source about how earn makes their yield. It's sports gambling. Yes, it's sports gambling. They took the under. But I do want to celebrate for a minute here. Like you guys are saying, the magic of crypto, even if they were underwater and they're only paying the back at the USD value. These are dead companies that came back to life, presumably because of some leftover Ethereum or something on the books that turned out to be worth a lot more. And I just think it's really fun when this happened, when Kiro cards, my startup came back to life. And everyone was like, all of a sudden, these collectibles you made are valuable. And it just shocks everybody. Nobody had any shares in my company or any bets on it doing well in the end. But just like the earn program, somehow pulled out a win. But let's keep going here. Let's move on to issue four. Issue four, Caitlin Jenner says she was scammed by alleged hackers, so he'll Aurora call it following the Jenner token release. And this is where things get fun with crypto. I don't know the details, but apparently on Salona for about 10 bucks, you can print up your own coin. And once you've printed up, say, 100,000 of your own coin, if you sell one of these for a dollar, it means that your coin now has a market capitalization of 100,000 dollars. If you had even more tokens or sold them for even more than a dollar, you could make millions. And apparently people are running up dog coins and all kinds of other nonsense. And now celebrities like Caitlin Jenner are getting involved. The fun part about this story is before they had their successful Jenner token launch, they had another token launch where the alleged hacker took them for $350,000. So it's getting exciting over there. Meanwhile, Iggy, Azalea, pop star is getting involved in crypto and crypto Twitter and also making her own mean coin to make herself millions of dollars. If you trust that she won't sell, I'm sure everything will be fine. Was CM Alcindy? What do you think about the celebrities? And they're wonderful, wonderful mean coins. There is nothing new under the sun, friends. It feels like just yesterday that we were probably sitting around here talking about Paris Hilton, the old TIG and ICO in 2017 or Dennis Rodman endorsing popcorn in 2016 or whatever that was. So I feel like the incentives are always there. This one was just really bizarre and half-baked. Watching it happen was sending you the tweets being like, what's this? This looks weird. And then reading this story that we're discussing, then you start to realise that, I mean, I forget sometimes I think maybe we all forget because we've been looking at these things and working for so long that when you're new to them, you don't know anything about these things. And I always forget that the level of knowledge that you're entering with is very small. And so when people find this thing and then somebody else kind of makes it down to the chosen, yeah, it's sad. But then your celebrity, surely lots of people are trying to take advantage of your image, your likeness for marketing stuff. So I feel like maybe this is like a gullibility detector. I don't know. But reading this article is amazing. It's person Lord Stone 5, being coins a week or something like that. Right? Yeah, press it. Well, like you're saying, we're seeing when they first saw the links on their Twitter account, they thought they might have been hacked. You could very easily hack them, put in a link to this pump.fun website where I guess they make up these tokens and take the person's money, confuse their audience, take a lot of their audiences money. But as it turned out, no, they'd hack themselves. They'd done them to themselves. And as was seen with saying, we had Floyd Mayweather, we had Paris Hilton, we had other people supporting ICOs, promoting them. And they all got in trouble for promoting illegal securities and for putting their audience at risk. It's just very in genuine of them. It's very desperate to try to make this money off their audience. Obviously, Caitlin Jenner doesn't have much of a career right now. EGD is AL is still an active pop star doing concerts and stuff that could still make money the old fashioned way. Josh Shigal, what do you think about the explosion of meme coins and now celebrity meme coins? I mean, not now, like I was saying mentioned, it's not new. We all remember Kanye coin right at the beginning, back in the day. And he then sued to try and like stop it because he didn't even realize that he was actually, it was history and the making sort of where you get these memes going. But I mean, I think they're fun. It is part of the market. I'm not a big coin monopolist. I just think it's that they're now that we have rare digital assets, you can basically bet on a cultural meme, you know, you can bet on a concept, on a joke, on a the fact that something will move through society in a viral way was never, you could never really bet on that. And so it's interesting. I don't like calling everything a scam that is outside of Bitcoin because I think it lowers the meaning of scam, which is a very, very important word, because there are absolutely scam. I'm not saying that there aren't meme coins out there that aren't scams. They're absolutely is. But there are also meme coins that are like, hey, we really think this is funny, or this is a cultural, the important thing. I don't know, something, some concept. And you know, you can buy some of that and say, hey, now I'm part of this thing and it'll go up. But no one, you must know that you're pretty much burning your money if you're buying these stuff because it'll go up, it'll go down. And if you can get rid of it at the right time and give you back to someone else that will lose it, then all the power to you. But yeah, that's the thing. They are just a bunch of things that you can bet on, just like horses, just like anything else. They are bets in a market of random crap. And this will always be there. They will always be there. You'll have major cryptos like Bitcoin and solid projects, very serious projects that are there to undermine central banking. And then there is a whole circus of clown shows that are bubbling away that you can, try to wage on just like any casino. I mean, it's just a casino except no regulations. So, and there are absolute scams in there. There is people taking brands and saying, hey, now I'm, this is the real, I don't know, whatever celebrity, Bitcoin celebrity. And funnily enough, Max Kaiser, originally where he got his original money from, was inventing the the celebrity stock market where you could bet on a celebrity. And it was a stock exchange where you could basically buy shares and a celebrity. And if they did well, that's just stock will go. Well, it wasn't tied to anything. It wasn't like you'll get dividends on their next movie intake. It was just you're buying the celebrity and it was the bet on a meme. So, it is what it is. And I think it's quite fun. I think it's cool that it exists now. And it is what it is. Quite fun. I don't know. It's like we always say it's about collectibles and collectibles a unique thing that's worth what someone will pay you. Sometimes you have a beanie baby and it's really valuable. Other times you don't, what's important to note about these is versus something like Bitcoin or an Ethereum where people are just trading them kind of blindly like stocks. There's lots of buyers waiting to take that Bitcoin off your hand. If you get a Ige-Isalia collectible number 15, maybe there's lots of buyers today, maybe not tomorrow. You don't know. And that's where it comes into these things being collectibles where like Josh saying, if you get it at the right time, sell it at the right time, you could be singing the praises. What a great investment it was for you. But for someone else, it could be buy it for $100. It's worth a dollar. And I held it for 50 years. And that's a collectible. So sometimes it doesn't work out. Ben, Ark, what do you think about the celebrities? They're here and they're printing meme coins. Hooray. Yeah, it does feel like a throwback. Like they haven't really learned. We need some of these like celeb securities. These these security producing celebrities to bunk up with Ross. You know, when he comes, a couple of them to go to jail for issuing and licensed securities, I think that probably will happen at some point and it should scare a lot of them off. In saying that, I do agree with Josh that there's definitely something there to be able to like have something to buy into something which is to say if you find some YouTube or wherever you think they're going to be really successful to maybe like an NFT type thing or some more nausea, I don't know. And you buy it because it's kind of bad. You know, I was here early. I have this thing and it's going to the prices of this thing. This collectible is going to be somewhat tracked to the rise of this person in the public arena. There's definitely something there. And I think that's what Max, guys tried to do because it was Max coin. I think it was probably the first like cryptocurrency thing, peg which is kind of like part of the community which was, you know, part of the people who would listen and watch Max Kaiser and he got a lot of pushback for it later on because obviously it dumped to nothing. And I think that he did make a little bit of money on it. But yeah, there is something that I can't imagine that it's these these meme coin celebrity coins. I think it's probably something that more palpable like some sort of badge, you know, which has some sort of an F.T. Ordinal badge thing or something. Anyway, I think that's kind of interesting. More and more in the Nostya community like we're exploring the idea of badges, you know, to say if you go to a conference or something, you can get a badge and then you can have it and you attach to your Nostya profile. So there's something there. There's something there for it. The problem is we've just made a lot of very easy tools to build this stuff and you have some, I mean, if you're just some random person, famous person, not very technical and then it's some fancy, shamancy party. You meet someone who looks like a hacker and they look cool, you know, they look the part and they start some crypto bro, you know, it's got like, again, I don't know, bunny-rimmed glasses and some party and they start saying a bunch of techno babble at you and you think, wow, this guy's a genius and they tell you about how you can you can make some crypto and currency and it's going to, you know, get you more followers and I can see a social engineering, isn't it? Like it's the easiest way to hack stuff is it's not, you know, to actually brute force machines. It's a socially engineer and that's all they're doing is they're finding someone, they're finding a way in because those sorts of crypto bro hacker types, they they have this assumption that for some reason they deserve money with very little effort and I think it's probably a symptom of the world industry which a bunch of people have got very wealthy, very easily from and I think a bunch of them just, you know, they convince themselves that maybe they're not doing harm but then in the back of their minds they know they're getting a quick buck and this thing's going to crash to nothing and the person they're attaching it to could probably end up in Jail for being part of promoting some unlicensed security. So yeah, we probably just need some examples of people like Kanye West and this Australian singer girl and people like that to go to prison. I think with this Australian singer that I think she has 20% of the coins or something and she was saying that she only had like 5% or a couple of percent but she actually has 20% of it. So yeah, it's the same thing repeated. So I'm just going to stop and leave the game, keep going to prison for there we are. But these games companies say they need to go to prison as well for issuing, you know, in game gold tokens that people are mining. Yeah, that are securities you can trade on the open market. I mean, because they did use to be in like these massive role-playing games, it used to be that you could trade a lot of this stuff on open markets and they still kind of shut that down. I want secondary markets because then you end up with sweat farms and some backward country filled with children grinding on wall-to-war craft to get gold. And that's interesting because I think that's the, often we want, it makes a lot of sense that like some of those things in game items have like a transferable value and you can own it through public e-cortography and the technology set which we have but gaming companies hey that I did for that reason because they don't want secondary markets. Exactly, it makes sense for the users to own those assets but it doesn't make sense for the game company to go through all that trouble so that you can get rich off of the sword that was in their company. They would much rather sell that sword themselves get 10% of it. Was seem did you have more on this? Yeah, because we started, we came onto like basic memes and capital. I've got a little bit around the work of Jean-Baudrillard from the later end of his work, Symbolic Exchange and Death and like Baudrillard's famous for the similar act room and like if you haven't ever read a book, maybe you've seen the Matrix and that's also that concept. And Symbolic Exchange and Death, Baudrillard's talking about like a three stage processing of materials. And so you have the raw commodity and then it's acted on by labor to make that kind of forever refined commodity and then the last step is kind of moving into a semiotic domain. You create the code of the product rather than the product itself and so he's basically talking about memes as well in the second half of the 20th century. And so he's kind of talking about this kind of denigration or this like move down this abstraction ladder towards us just trading kind of meaningless signals and because like labor and you know as it becomes a extractor to the point where we can't really see like does anybody really care anymore? Like dog with hat is that backed by this is a treasury is there a consensus mechanism nobody cares anymore just by the way just to rank where you will there is a coin I think on Solana called Bitcoin. It's like you know dollar the BITCO I end so they write it out so now you can get like Bitcoin on Solana or whatever. Sounds like an exciting future yes and it will be interesting when you can take all of your different social media you got like a reward for being in a bar you got a reward for going here you got a participation award package them all up and then trade them for another meme or another coin and somebody else is presumably collecting those trying to get a full set of thank you cards from this or thank you cards from that. I do think it's worth noting even though I don't know very much about Iggy Azalea or Caitlin Jenner and if they're going to do a good job with their community but it's all about the person running it if this is a short term money grab and they're just trying to get your money that's all they're going to get that's all you're going to get but if the person is really focused on making a community they could do anything this with these like vendors saying they could drop NFTs on you they could reward you with more NFTs you could go to an event get another NFT trade that for Iggy Azalea dollars she could have a whole economy going and a really good marketing machine for her product it would tell you all about when the new album comes out it would tell you all about when the new concert comes out you could even collect an NFT of the concert announcement you know just anything for your fans sell them sell them sell them which is why I'm really glad that my band has already broken up and a REM will never sell any meme coins or any of this stuff and I won't have to think about buying it but if you were a diehard fan and this was your Michael Jackson or your whatever your favorite band was you might want to buy these things and not for just a monetary reason but just for like a I own part of Iggy coin you know I own part of my band I'm a contributor but I don't think it should be like a coin like you know like we were saying that it should be it should be like an image that can it NFT or something like that should be something more palpable rather than just coins you know like I don't know a coin's not that different from an NFT if you think of like a a quarter and it has a person's face on it we do around a 2500 of them and then we put somebody else's face on the quarter and do 2500 of them and maybe we do 500 of the next one it does kind of bring us back to this experimentation idea where all of the fun economic ideas are back here again what if Iggy did you know five million coins is that too many what if she did a hundred what if she did ten and you get to stay over at her house one weekend a year if you own one of the ten coins there's all kinds of ways for them to add value to this we are we are neverland we are we are conditioned after thousands of years of having like cultural association to coinage I think as Bitcoin as we're very naive on this fact because we have a cultural association to Bitcoin so we're like okay great one uses thing whereas other people you know they they see when in their printed currency they see a reflection upon the community in which they live and they have for a very long time and it can be oppressive it can be not oppressive my best example of this was the lightning hack day in Istanbul and it was that the gedrumigai you know with the cat he was there and then he was like trolling us because we we pay for him to come to this this this this conference and we pay for him to do a sat on his drums and there's some point a some which started he said I love Turkey and then some which I do you love Bitcoin and he went no I hate Bitcoin I love the Turkish lyric because I am Turkish and I'm thinking that's it's kind of that there's a part there's something there there's there's something you know like we have been conditioned to associate culturally with currency and with money and as Bitcoin is we can associate with Bitcoin but a lot people can't associate with Bitcoin I think that's hard for them to see this money which they have no cultural association with or whether they don't like some of the the things which they identify the Bitcoin culture and the broader Bitcoin culture so yeah it does make sense to this within a community of the fans of a band or or whoever that they could issue something which has has that property you know that that cultural association which they enjoy well and these NFTs or tokens can also be used for access if you have a thousand tokens in your wallet you get to come into the bar you get to come into a club if you have ten thousand tokens in your wallet you get to go to the VIP room and again I'm going to remind everyone of the Vonnegut book that I like that no one else seemed to like it was called slapstick or loan some no more and what Vonnegut talked about is how people are really just loan some like they moved from the country to the city they lost touch with all their cousins and now they just simply don't have enough friends so what he does is he assigns everyone a random middle name like Johnson 52 and now you are a cousin with anyone else who's a Johnson you're a cousin with anybody who's a 52 and your family member of any of the Johnson 52s and they start setting up clubs and they start taking care of each other and they find out just like in the real world some of your family members are great and really supportive and helpful and some of them are jerks and he got to cut them out so it's much the same thing but now they have friends now they have cousins now they have family and maybe this could be done by having a cool coin in your wallet you have this NFT it means that your family you come in inside have a drink you don't have that coin you're not family you stay outside but we're just seeing the beginning of this and I don't know that Iggy Iggy coin or Jenner coin or whatever it is is going to be the one but you're part of a grand experiment even if you are just losing your money and wasting your time but what's nice about Noster Badges? I don't go about Noster Badges again what's quite nice about Noster Badges if when you earn them you think clients display them in your Noster profile people can access them on your Noster profile and it's a bit like GitHub Badges you know like I wear my GitHub Badges with pride you know yeah yeah so like I think there's that too I think being able to have some of these things in your social media client and sort of wear them as you would a badge would would be nice too. I think GitHub's also been really successful with their calendar feature I'm not a programmer myself right now but if you are you have that little chart that says you coded on this day you coded this much on that day and if you're a really hardcore programmer you have a very filled up chart so I think that builds a social score and all kinds of things but we're running out of time so let's go to predictions or story of the week we'll see him are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week go ahead. Oh I don't have a story okay prediction my prediction is that the Mt. Gox set-off will have an impact on Bitcoin so a bunch of Mt. Gox creditors received their big coins or the last while they're receiving them now so they'll be like setting pressure. That's another one where we've been waiting for this avalanche for so long that I'm just tired of it I'm like oh hey let the avalanche fall on us we'll see how it turns out but it could very well happen that's a good prediction Josh Shagalla prediction or a story of the week go ahead. Yeah a little while ago I gave Max Kaiser a t-shirt and he just tweeted that this was a few years ago he tweeted out that he's on his way to see President Naib D'Aqueli to wish him good luck at his inauguration and it's my fucked bag's t-shirt from Voltoro so I was very happy to see that being put good to good use and being sent to a to a president's inauguration fantastic thank you very much Max that's my story of the week. Very cool classic t-shirt and great to see Max wearing it Ben Arck prediction or a story of the week go ahead. That's my my favorite t-shirt because it's like the common ground which should be for all Bitcoiners is for banks I love that here when I first I think when I first met you in the flash you were in that t-shirt and I instantly thought yeah this is my dude right here I like this man it's such a great t-shirt thank you she's pretty good it's easy so for my story of the week so yeah just ramping up for BTC Prague I hope to see everybody there it should be an amazing event I think it's going to be the sort of conference of the year really it's a huge amount of people going and some great speakers they have a dev hack day the day before the conference being organized by Pavol Stick from Stoshy Labs he's doing an amazing job and we're doing like three workshops we have two Noster hardware workshops so we have a we're going to be making Noster IoT devices with people we're going to be doing SAP lamps so it turns on when you get SAPed we're also doing a workshop on how to build an L&Bits extension in an hour and then also submit it as a paid extension so people will actually pay you when they install to install the extension to L&Bits which is pretty funky and then I'm also doing a keynote which is amazing so it's my it's it's it's my first sort of non L&Bits Noster keynote on a main stage I've done at a conference and I'm going to be talking about the Hague Alien dialectic and why the tools of liberation are being built and why more tools of liberation liberation would be but are being built and I'm looking forward to it that's only 20 minutes talk but I'm quite excited about that and then just also just hanging out with everybody in Prague it should be an absolutely phenomenal event but yeah just just grinding hard getting all that stuff built and ready for it we are just having a fundraise for projects you know which needs some sats in the Bitcoin space and in the roster space so if anyone has any projects they're building and they want to be part of the fundraise we're going to be encouraging people to donate live on the day and then we'll have like a ranking system so you can see the different projects as they get sats tripling in yeah just just like DM me somewhere on on that but yeah just a supersite BTC Prague will be a good one sounds great Ben congrats on the keynote BTC Prague everyone should check that out not much left in the show still a chance you to give us a like and to join the 50 like club we're going for 50 this week and if you want to leave us a wave or a surfer emoji in the comments or in the chat there join the WCN Surface Club for making it to the end of the episode you did it even longer than the battery on my laptop which passed out almost immediately when I didn't plug the power in so that was a fun middle of the show won't for me but that's about it thanks to everybody for joining us thanks for WCN for being our guest and until next time bye bye