The Bitcoin Group, the American Original, for over the last 10 years, the hardest talk. list. Ben Ark from L.N. Bids. Hello, everybody. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue one, of course, the price, the price of Bitcoin. The price of Bitcoin is 62,045. That's $1,612 Satoshi's, up 0.55% on the day, with a high of 62,476. of 61,161. Issue 1, Strategies, Hoddle Playbook is under pressure. Michael Saylor has said his company will sell $1 billion in Bitcoin to cover its important business coverings. They have to cover their stock holdings. There's more Bitcoin whale wallets keep selling mounting pressure on Bitcoin's price trajectory.
And meanwhile, the popular K-pop company behind BTS merch has sold all of its Bitcoin. Ben Ark, we seem to talk about Michael Saylor almost every week on this show, something we need to stop. We predicted several weeks ago that he would have to sell, that it wasn't a big deal, that it was a standard, normal business practice. The only reason it's become a big deal is because Michael Saylor was out there waving the hoddle flag, telling people that he would never sell. And like I said, many times, telling people that the Vegas conference that they were all idiots if they didn't go out and start their own bitcoin treasury company no matter how large no matter how small ben ark what do you think about michael sailor finally breaking his hoddle as well as the whale selling the k-popper selling everyone's selling yeah he's got these dividend obligations on this preferred stock which strategy sold and i was thinking about it today um i was remembering all the years where we wanted a Bitcoin ETF in Bitcoin.
So Wall Street and People's 401ks, whatever, they could have Bitcoin on their balance sheet who aren't typically able to invest and just buy the asset and whole Bitcoin itself and how we looked forward to the day when those ETS happened. And then when they happened, we were excited because we're like, oh, great, you know, now all these funds can invest in Bitcoin. But what happened before then is strategy had kind of slipped in there and then people are able to get exposure to Bitcoin via strategy. But obviously that's very different to an ETF because they're not just buying Bitcoin, holding the Bitcoin and then having a stock price, which is relatively coupled to the Bitcoin.
They're creating all these junk assets to sell on people and then using those junk assets, the money they get through, all the different financial tools they use in order to get capital in so they can just buy more Bitcoin. and increase their treasury. But it's a real, like, I don't know, risky exposure of Bitcoin to traditional funds, 401's, pension funds, whatever else. And it's kind of a real shame because it, the thing which we looked forward to was sort of sidestepped. And then most of the people, and most of the capital, obviously, because strategy was doing so well for so long, everything pours into that and that becomes the main. And, you know, Michael said it's on CNBC and the TV.
all the time talking about bitcoin recycling all of andreas i mean he just took bitcoin as a ecosystem packaged it up as a product and then presented the product to sell his equity to so people would buy into strategy uh but obviously the huge problem being that that you know there is there's no it's not pegged to the bitcoin price it can go much higher it can go much lower and then when it goes much lower because um they you know inevitably have to sell uh Bitcoin and actually JP Morgan came out and said that strategy is not good for Bitcoin this week. Because they said that, you know, if being such a big holder of Bitcoin, they can buy up a lot of Bitcoin and make the price go up.
But then if they need to, they will sell a load of Bitcoin, which is what we're going to see. And now we're seeing all these other moves from these other, you know, big whale projects, which are also dumping Bitcoin. So, yeah, it's, you know, it's the bare market stuff. We're heading down to 40K. I know we've had little dead cat bounce this week. Or I don't know if I got it to bounce really more like a dead cat scraping along the road before it bounces maybe again. Or drops and then bounces. But so yeah, it's I have no idea. Well, no, we do know actually. So the Bitcoin ecosystem embraces these billionaires and they thinks they're great for Bitcoin. I think for a lot of people, they got muddled up.
And they thought Bitcoin. they thought strategy was big institutional investment coming in you know like healthy big institution investment which would have been just regular normal ETFs but it isn't and it never has been and now we're on the you know the wrong end of the stick when it comes to the repercussions of having something like strategy be the one pioneer or you know being the the main platform which people are using in traditional markets to invest in bitcoin and then as we discussed last week the reason the Bitcoin ecosystem has such faith in Sailor, you know, partly because there's a bunch of bitcoins who made a decent chunk of change when they switched different equity or 401ks into strategy early on.
And then also partly because that big wave of new bitcoins, which came into Bitcoin, they saw Sailor recycling all of those talking points of, you know, Andreas and Max Kaiser and whoever else. And for them, he's guy he's the you know their cult leader he's the he's the person who represents and articulates the the reason they're excited into this bitcoin project but he's not that guy he's just uh he's here to make a quick book and he's going to no matter what happens with strategy if it crashes and burns he's going to walk away a very rich man don't trust the billionaires i agree ben we wanted a jp morgan we wanted a john d rockefeller not the company not standard oil the JP Morgan Investment Company, but we actually wanted the rich guy.
We wanted a real rich guy to get in there and to back this Bitcoin. Instead, we got Michael Saylor who raised this money through the stock market. We could tell there were problems when he shifted his strategy from issuing new shares into actually selling those shares directly to retail, especially when they changed that rule where it said he couldn't just pump up his shares and then have them automatically added to the indexes, that the indexes would no longer automatically buy his stock. That's when he started to have trouble. We talked about it then. Of course, the large concentration of Bitcoin in his hands was bad for Bitcoin. Leads us to this point where when he sells, everyone freaks out.
When he changes his mind, everyone freaks out. And we've talked about this before, how his Hoddle strategy was too simple. And his Bitcoin understanding was too simple. He always kept knocking that third leg of Bitcoin out. be a currency, does need to be sent around. And we don't even need developers or security updates or anything. He wanted to ossify the protocol, turn it into bone. It never made any sense. And it's funny what a difference a year makes, Ben, because I remember last year, people were telling me how they were making money on the stock market because they were buying this strategy stock and how stupid we are or were because we weren't buying any.
I didn't even know that we were buying stocks. I thought we were all Bitcoin, people. At least that's where I am, heavily underwater, of course. And it happened again with the Nakamoto stock thing, which again was another one of these Bitcoin treasury companies, which seemed too good to be true. The golden goose, you can just invest in the golden goose company like SoftBank. And then there was that big list of all the insiders who had the special access to Nakamoto got the good deal. And then it didn't even turn out to be a good deal because Nakamoto went up and Nakamoto went down. I thought we were all just hodling. I thought it was simple and not to name any names, but there were a lot of big names in that Nakamoto list.
I think a friend of the show, Jameson Lopp, friend of the show Adam Back and others who were the insiders trying to get that good deal, but then it didn't happen. And as you said, well, Ben, Bitcoiners just love this hero worship. Some big guy comes in, Cuban, sailor, whoever it is. They've trashed Bitcoin before. just said, I'm not sure about Bitcoin. And then later got in. Instead, we always have Trump or Cuban or Sailor who hated it, destroyed it, publicly vilified it, and then changed their mind and got in. And again, we're on that typical Bitcoin path where they have this irrepressible, impossible hero, you know, perfectly Teflon, can't get anything on him.
And then, of course, the idea of Hoddle breaks. And the bitconers are all like, oh, I guess our hero's good and now we go from hero worship to hero destruction so i think i'm going to see that with sailor it's it's a technology we all got excited about because you can it's a parallel monetary system where you don't need a trusted third party you don't need to go panhandling in the bank please can i have access to my money but you can take your money and then you can have complete control over it and and you can secure it with your you know and then you can transfer it with that I trust a third party. Like that's what's cool about Bitcoin. That's why Bitcoin is good.
And then if you take those properties away from Bitcoin, it's just crap. Like it's not the thing to be excited about. So I've got some exposure, you know, like by proxy, by this crazy investment vehicle. And by proxy is the exact thing that Satoshi was trying to avoid. The whole financial crisis was caused because we didn't know it was inside those boxes. and Satoshi gave us a way to actually know who had what money when. And then what are the Wall Street guys come and give us, ETFs, strategy stock, the SOTRC, the things where you could get dividends and they're going to do all this fancy math and get you some money, all things we didn't need and we still don't need.
But at least like an ETF is regulated and like it has to prove at some point that it actually has the asset. Whereas strategy doesn't. It just says, oh, yeah, we've got all this Bitcoin, but, you know, there's no proof of reserves. And that's for a good reason. Like, they say it's like a security thing, but it's, yeah, we all know that that's just bullshit. Yeah, it was funny when Saylor said it was because of a security thing that he couldn't tell us how many Bitcoin he had and where he had them. But the security is that he wants to know that he's going to sell before we know. He doesn't want us watching his inflows and outflows. to the exchanges so that people could front run his trades he wants to be the one front running his trades but uh we've talked about this guy almost every week for like six eight weeks now at first it was strategy selling question mark then it's like now it's strategy selling for sure so i think we're done with him but ben with the exit question what could happen that would make us talk about michael sailor and strategy again a lot of bitcoin and it's going to tank the price all the bitcoins were suddenly hating and everyone would turn against him um and it's just it's part of the ride like this is bitcoin you know like yeah this is what you get with this new crazy unregulated thing which um anyone can build on top of there's going to be some bad actors you build weird investment vehicles on top of it and it's all a learning process you know like the the communities as a whole load learns that okay the next time someone comes around and says, look, there's this golden goose, which is the infinite money printer, blah, blah, blah.
And we've seen this kind of with the Nakamoto thing, actually, and, you know, some of those other treasury attempts to build treasury companies. The next time that happens, people are going to be a lot more suspicious and unlikely to invest in. So through all the chaos, blood in the streets, blood and guts in the streets, and the bear market will come out of it, probably with some pretty stable ETFs for, you know, regular normal pensions or whatever else to be able to get access to Bitcoin exposure. And then people in general will just be like, okay, well, let's not do that again. Let's let's not put all our faith in some billionaire to who can, you know, turn on a money printer.
And let's not put our faith in another sailor. Hopefully, hopefully we'll learn from it. Yeah, I agree, Ben. I think it'll be a massive sale by Sailor when we talk about him again. And it'll cause the price to drop horribly and all the bit corners will get out there forks and their torches, which they were storing for the next time they needed them. And that's when we will strike again. But again, you guys can go back to the beginning. We've always questioned this sailor guy. He was a former dot comer. He was a party boy. He used to have huge parties on his yachts. That's what he was known for. And he was known for losing, I don't know the right amount, but an incredible amount of money in one day with a micro strategy back in the day.
This was talking, you know, like yahoo time that kind of stuff he was a big loser then and it doesn't look too good now we've said for quite a while that his strategy seemed too simplistic and his attempt to just jump on the hoddle meme seemed like too much now he's turned around he's breaking the hoddle meme i wish we had the audio of his speech from vegas 2025 because i know he was just ringing the bells he was just you've got to go start a treasury company you've got to get all your friends and family to invest then you can buy more bitcoin anyone who listened to that speech and did it is in disastrous stakes right now it's also quite likely when you have a you know someone who's very well off he suddenly sort of comes into the bitcoin space it's also quite likely they could be a spook or something like there is legitimately security vulnerability there like who is this person can we really trust them um and you know i'm not saying say it's a spook but there's always been a lot of gossip around that you might be compromised and I think it's you know the sorts of people which alphabet agencies go after is the the the gazillioner egotist who wants to get the edge and also not calling them a spook but another well rich person who came out of nowhere who suddenly the whole bitcoin ecosystem see to think was wonderful but I've always thought was a bit of a tool did you see Jeff Booth he was talking shit about Gloria this week so glories are the the the bitcoin core developer jeff booth waded in saying he's running um knots because uh he went on some trip with gloria there's the the bitcoin core developer who's you just need to look at her commits you look at her proof of work look what she did for you know for bitcoin um and uh there's some question marks over her how capable she was and that's just ridiculous like you just you can see how capable she was by the commits she made and by how hard how hard she worked and there's also talks with her clearly understanding Bitcoin very deeply.
And he went on a trip with her, probably some human rights foundation thing. It was around Africa, I don't know, doing something to do with Bitcoin. And he was probably shilling Feddy, which is also ridiculous. And he complained that when he spoke to her, she didn't have skin in the game, she didn't have Bitcoin. And he couldn't trust her. And that's partly why he's running knots. he's taking that stance under the whole knots debate and he's just a fucking moron like he's this this guy honestly like he's yet again just some other rich dude who at some point also lost a lot of money went bankrupt then was suddenly saved wasn't bankrupt anymore then suddenly turns up in bitcoin says he's an o-g no real proof that he's an o-g start steering the narrative and now he's like commenting and criticizing bitcoin core developers people who aren't just here to make a quick book people who are actually working their bollocks after software but uh gloria's left us now because she you know gave up on uh she could be bothered with all the all the abuse she was getting on on x so it's it sucks man we just need to just give us andreas back can we get get rid of these billionaire sleazy rich guys give us andreas santinopoulos back you know putting back on ted talking about bitcoin they're really good old days it is also uh i don't know the story with jeth booth and uh the female developer but But she could have been lying about not having Bitcoin.
It seems like a common OPSEC thing to just, you meet some weird dude. He's like, oh, you got a lot of money in this thing. And I don't think your average programmer has a lot of money, just to say. I mean, I think they do well, but they probably spend it. How she spends it, how she hoddles or whatever, that's her own private business. I don't think she has any reason to tell this random dude. And I've been only, you know, I watch it from afar on Twitter and stuff. bitcoins are attacking this developer because she's a woman is a terrible idea i i think it just looks bad we look terrible like we're chasing away people yeah yeah if you say she like she's got good commits she's got good commits let's keep her you know what we're doing no they they they they they they they they they're accused of being sexist but there is an element of sexism in there um that she was she really was targeted and some of the few she got online was very very sexist so um yeah i'm not everybody i'm sure some people they just you know they like the bt 10 one 10 thing and they like knots or whatever i don't know why they like knots is a ridiculous project go again go look at the repo go look how insane the commit history is of knots compare it against an actual proper for an open source repo which would be bitcoin core um but yeah yeah well that it goes back to the the original idea of the internet the reason you would be anonymous and your title would be like you know john goofy or fred donald duck or whatever is so that they couldn't you for being white or black or a girl or whatever it is you could just have your work stand for you and unfortunately we have a lot of these faux anonymous people that show up to conferences and have a face and put a bandana on and whatever and obviously that's not going to help this girl that's not going to help you know some dude trying to hide the color of his skin or whatever but maybe we need to go back to anonymous people if we're going to have this bad public reaction to a girl coding I mean, it's just a bad look for everyone all around.
And as Ben was saying about famous people who have gone bankrupt like Michael Saylor and Donald Trump and the fact that they could be recruited by the CIA or the KGB, it makes perfect sense. Where do they get the money back? Where do they get this second round? Not everyone is Richard Nixon where there is, you know, the American have second chances in politics. I don't think you get a second chance in money making. know that Michael Saylor had a disastrous run with micro strategy, and for him to just suddenly come back and then be the darling of Wall Street to have his face on Fortune magazine, much like the FTX guy before him, is crazy. And it just keeps happening.
And I hope we don't bring back the FTX guy or the guy from Mount Cox, Carpellus, or whatever. Like, can we get some new people to run these companies? Maybe someone a little more trustworthy with a better back record. I guess we're going to get Adam back has a treasury company now. But yes, it's a mess. He's all right there, man. Like Adam, he proved himself. So like, you know, he's been getting a bit of shit on social media recently because of, you know, all the Epstein Island stuff. But he came out and it was, you know, he tweeted out. He's like, just leave this woman alone. She worked really hard. Go look at the commits. She did well. She knows she understands and knows Bitcoin.
Like this hot or not guy, he's just addicted to social media. is dopamine here. This is the other thing as well, like something I tweeted out this week is that X is a really terrible platform for, I mean, again, another vulnerability for people discussing and making decisions around Bitcoin. Because we all know the algorithm is set to create conflict because that creates engagement. You know, if I get open up X and I see some post from somebody which is going to annoy me and I'm going to pile in and start arguing with them, then that makes me engaged for longer on X. And then that generates more revenue for them. which is bad in itself because there's some issues we have currently in bitcoin which may not be anywhere near as have as you know as much like fire under them if it weren't for them being on extra platform but then also like just the musk you know all the paypal boys are probably compromised talking of probable spooks musk is probably a spook probably was recruited during the paypal days along with peter teal and um and uh the u s have this incredible tool and because it's an incredible tool where they can just easily stay a narrative by tweaking the algorithm.
And that isn't good for Bitcoin at all, man. Like, we're all, everyone's on Bitcoin on X, like talking about Bitcoin and trying to, like, argue out their points over whatever new bit there is or whatever new upgrade there is for Bitcoin. And it's happening on X. And for me, it's the exact same concerns which you had around famous with a Bitcoin talk and then also our Bitcoin. It's too much control for the person running the platform. to have over shaping the Bitcoin narrative. So hopefully people become wise to that as well. You know, people don't like admitting that this thing they spend all their time on is unhealthy and is incredibly easy. It's like shadow ban and steer narrative.
They don't like admitting that. But yeah, hopefully, I mean, hopefully just the people actually working on Bitcoin, solving the problems which should be solved in Bitcoin core. Hopefully they just, I think that's a great get out of jail card for them to just say, look, we're not going to engage on this platform anymore because it's geared towards us all arguing with each other. It's not healthy. People, you know, end up getting bullied and they leave the project and that really sucks. So we're just going to, I don't know, go move and use something like Noster or we're going to, I don't know, we're just going to move. And I think they did initially try to do this, but they were going to switch to a sort of signal or something.
Whereas I think, like, it needs to be open, but it certainly needs to be a platform which nobody can, you know, pull the lever on and steer the narrative in a certain direction. But yeah, it's, Bitcoin's going through dark times at the moment, man. It's a proper bear market. It does seem like X isn't the place to have this conversation, especially as they and YouTube and Facebook and everyone else has switched away from actually showing your tweets to your followers, showing your videos to your subscribers, and now just shows you whatever the algorithm chooses. I think the problem with this is that the algorithm is so good. It delivers you. tons and tons of good content.
So now that you're used to having this feed that's all good content. And the feed didn't used to be like that. There's hit and miss. People have good tweets or bad tweets. You have a tweet like, we put out a tweet advertising this show, like presumably a good tweet. But we also have to put out like some housekeeping tweets or a tweet how we're not going to make this week or whatever. And obviously those are less popular. They're not hot in the algorithm. And I think people are used to a feed now that is all hot. and they're not going to want to go back, unfortunately, to a Noster feed that's like hit or miss and tweets that I'm not interested in. It's darker than that, really.
It's about engagement and the way you engage people is to make them mad and get them pissed off and get them arguing in those feeds. Because then they check back in. You know, if I jump in, it opens up and it's like, you know, you've gone to X and then suddenly you find yourself in an argument with somebody on some feed. And then you check back in minutes later. because you want to see what they replied with that idea. And then it just kind of ramps up. So the engagement, which happens through the algorithm on X, is it goes beyond it just trying to deliver good stuff. It's not just good stuff, it's delivering to you. It's stuff to keep you engaged, which is necessarily good stuff.
So yeah, I mean, if WCN, if you were to go on and pick a fight, like, maybe that's the way. We're going to do the show this week. Fuck you, Jeff Booth. Fuck you Michael Saylor. Let's go. be decent vision. That's what's so funny because I feel so the opposite about it, where I'm less and less engaged now. No one rides back to me. I don't write back to them. I don't feel like that it's the internet town square anymore. I want to go out and campaign for things or fight for things. I feel it's like pointless and a waste of time. Maybe I'm just getting old. I don't know. I guess people still like to fight with idiots on the internet. I feel it's so not rewarding, you think.
I think you've just got, you know, you're a healthy, mentally stable human being who has a lot of other stuff to do with their life than having endless arguments on X. So yeah, I mean, I go on it and then mostly to like try Shill Noster or Ellen bits, so I have to, you know, go on it to Shill Allen bits or whatever. And inevitably end up getting in a scrap with someone. And then I do go across to Noster. And yeah, it's less engaging, but in a good way. Like I don't feel gross. after I've used it. I go on it, you know, I see some nice pictures of some of lunch dinner and listen to some music, someone posted and, you know, listen to a few nice notes from interesting people.
You've got something profound to say and I like those and that's it. I turn off and then go touch grass, you know, go walk the dog. Whereas with X, you know, you go on X and then you get into an argument, you're like, then I go walk the dog and I'm like, I'm like this and the dog's walking off, I lost the dog in the park because I'm too busy on my phone. Well, I do miss the old feed. I feel like I used to have a bunch of friends and I used to put up Europe pictures whenever I'd travel because I always thought of myself stuck behind that desk. And I was like, I would like to see some Europe pictures if I was that guy stuck behind the desk. So I think they could, you know, kind of live vicariously through that.
And then I'd get a lot of nice comments. And I remember one time I was at the British Museum and someone said, hey, the Rosetta Stone is downstairs. And I was like, oh, the Rosetta Stone. And you know, I learned that from I learned that from one of my followers, you know, and probably follow him too. It used to be such a nice time. It's not anymore. It's just quiet and silent. It's just not a response. Do you know anyone on X who has like, has a popular account now who just posts nice stuff? I can't think of anyone. I don't know. Anyone who just posts nice stuff on X and like, you know, has like, It's popular. I just don't exist. It's just a tabloid mess of people raging against each other.
And yet I still go back there to read it because it still has interesting stuff and I still want to see what's going on and it's slightly different than say my Google News feed. It's just different. I don't know. It's still out there. And yeah, Elon was the worst thing that happened to it. But at the same time, they would have gone to the algorithm anyway. Facebook, YouTube, all these people have gone to the algorithm. So I don't think we have a way of stopping that yet. It's like the imperfect monarch, isn't it? Or the good dictator problem where, you know, when you have like a good dictator, it's a nice place to be, but then you get a bad dictator and it's a bad place to be.
And it's zero some. With any centralized platform, it's there as some. You could go on for 100 years having, you know, fairly passive, like not too corrupt dictators, ruining those things. but then eventually just get a bad Apple who comes in and then they, you know, so it puts people off the platform. And I think that's what will happen eventually with X. People put people off the platform. People always complained about Jack Dorsey and he was too liberal and all this, but it seems like he was kind of a hands-off, fair-minded master of Twitter. Whereas Elon, he specifically changed the algorithm. The programmers say, you know, allegedly, of course, to promote his own tweets.
to promote his own ideas, to promote his own companies, perhaps even. And that's no good. And that is not a platform. Whenever I mentioned Noster on X, I never used the word Noster. And I've said this before on the show, but so many people have observed it that as soon as I put out a post and it'd be a post which should get likes because it's cool, people like it. And if I use the word Noster, zero likes. If I use, if I break up the word, you know, a little bit or use a different word like Nost. or the end or whatever then people like it so there is shadow banning like this you know it's of course there is there's also that thing people say you can't put the link in the first tweet anymore but that is like the whole point of twitter is like a little short message and a link and then they'll put the link in the second tweets and i have to click on it i hate that i hate that stuff i know i guess you have to do it if you want to be popular again i refuse to be popular i keep putting links in there i just don't care because i don't want to waste your time making you click on a second tweet or whatever.
If you want to get my link, get the link. That's the whole point of the web, but I guess we're pretty far away from the web these days. But it's been a good issue. We've got to move on to issue two. Issue two. Tether freezes, $1.4 million USDT in 131 tron wallets linked to ISIS K. That must be like special K, it's a good breakfast cereal, after U.S. sanctions. Well, we've talked about it before. is not the same as bitcoin tron is not the same as bitcoin they can freeze your accounts and here they are certainly we disagree with whatever isis k is even if it's a great source of vitamins and minerals and your breakfast cereal we disagree with you know whatever they're doing but at a larger scale and i'll take this one first we disagree with freezing wallets we disagree with PayPal freezing wallets i disagree with usd t or or Tron or whoever you are, freezing wallets is against Bitcoin.
It's against the idea of free-flowing money, free-flowing information, sometimes good, sometimes bad. We can't control at all. That's the whole point of Bitcoin. People keep saying, oh, we could just use tether for this. Oh, we could just use tether for this. Well, now, allegedly, the ISIS-K terrorists have learned their lesson. Their accounts are frozen. Probably a good thing. But Ben, what do you think about freezing? using accounts and the clear difference between Bitcoin and Tether and Tron and probably a lot of these other projects. Yeah, it goes back to like the first time, UK, we always had like a good news cycle about Bitcoin. So a lot of us heard about Bitcoin pretty early.
But the thing which really made me get, you know, stand up and listen and take note and do a more of a deeper dive was when WikiLeaks first accepted Bitcoin for, because they got, you know, the US government just leaned on visa and PayPal. so they couldn't accept donations. And this was WikiLeaks, which was doing great work, you know, for whistleblowers. And the US government was able to lean on those payment platforms. And then they couldn't accept donations. So they switched to Bitcoin. And I went, wow, what is this Bitcoin thing? That's amazing that there's this way of being able to accept a donation on such a great site, which you don't need to ask permission.
There's no trusted third parties. That's the whole, like you said, that's the whole point of Bitcoin. Now we have tether for a period, like tether was useful when Bitcoin was an incredibly unregulated market. and people had exchanges and they wanted to tip in and out of bitcoin to trade or whatever it was kind of useful um but yeah it's it's just fees in that way it's you know it's just a it's a payment processing thing you can use but they can ban you they can freeze your wallet they there's no privacy like this it's not bitcoin it's not the thing which i'm interested it was historically linked to the bitcoin ecosystem but yeah they got huge sums of money and they're investing a lot in the bitcoin ecosystem system, which is his own kind of worms.
But I did like the way always Minero comes out in those sorts of stories comes out on top because they're like, well, we couldn't seize the Minero wallets because Minero is private. And it's like, oh, yeah, nice. There we go. But yeah, I mean, even though it's a terrorist organization, whatever, like it's the whole point of Bitcoin is you can't freeze wallets. You shouldn't be having them on a centralized exchange. You shouldn't be, I mean, with Tether, even if you have them in your own wallet on your phone or whatever, then they can still freeze the funds because it's just a centralized, I don't even know what it is. It's not even a shit coin. It's just like a centralized database.
Yeah, Tether has brought back all of our least favorite words from working with banks and Wall Street, where they freeze your account, where they ban your account, where they reverse your transactions. And again, obviously, we generally disagree with whatever ISIS K is up to. be a free speech organization. It could be a pro-women organization. It could be something you support. And now they're freezing it and they're banning it and they're reversing the transactions. And that was the whole point of Bitcoin. Like you said, Ben, the EFF accepted Bitcoin. They accepted real Bitcoin. They didn't accept tether or stable coins or some side chain or whatever it was.
They accepted the real thing to solve the problem. Like you said, that Visa had banned their payments. same thing, ban their payments. They accepted the real Bitcoin. I haven't been to the Pirate Bay in a while. They used to have a real Bitcoin address on their footer if you ever want to send them Bitcoin. But again, I don't think they added a tether one and a light coin and a stable coin and whatever else. Real Bitcoin. That's what it should be about. Do you remember Rob Pirate Bay used to have Bitcoin address you could donate to? the block more stuff is say like b c h and there's just lull next to it it's great bc h lull that's a good reaction by the pirate bay and so so brief only six characters seven in a space but uh let's keep it going the exit question is the magic eight ball so check it out last week uh we can go down here victoria said down ben said down i said up the price is up i was right ben uh Are you going to stick with lower this week?
Are you going to go higher? We've got so many people selling. It's going to go down. Ben continues lower. I like this 62. I get the opposite feeling of Ben. I think we're back. That's not investment advice. You should probably do the opposite of what I say. But I'm going to stick with higher. So here we go. The magic eight ball. I remember shaking it can cause bubbles. And shout out to DJ Booth for the portable version as we're on vacation this week. go. Will the price of Bitcoin be higher this time next week? Yes. The ball says yes. It's only right 50% of the time, but I take that, you know, a lot of heart in that. Check out world crypto network.com. We've got 4,993 videos, including a lot of shorts.
And you can watch them for free at world crypto network.com or right here on YouTube. Issue 3. Trump says he didn't know about the windfall from family crypto ventures. President Trump released his tax returns, or at least something similar to that this week, and the public learned that Donald Trump had made more than $1.4 billion, billion with a B, dollars off of cryptocurrency, largely Liberty Financial with a large investment by, I want to say UAE, the Saudis. The Trump coin cryptocurrency made him a lot of money. What's so interesting about the Trump money in crypto is that he made the money without investing anything, without having a real product that people liked, and without any of the people who invested in his things actually making money.
So the only winner here is Trump. And according to this article and according to the president's mouth himself, he didn't even know he made a billion dollars. They didn't even run down the office and say, hey, boss, we made a billion dollars on that crypto thing. It's more than you've ever made on your hotels or your real estate or your very popular apprentice television show that convinced people that you're a real business guy. Well, we just made the most we've ever made. And he doesn't even know. So, Ben, first of all, do you believe that he didn't know? And what do you think about the president's incredible profit? Truly, if you judge by, you know, amount of money, in office he must be the greatest precedent i've never said that before horrible horrible thing to yeah i love that i love because i saw this and i love the i love i mean obviously that guy is awful but the way he speaks is it's kind of trolly and funny in a way and it's funny in like gallows humor you know obviously it's terrible but he's like oh yeah i didn't know we made 1.4 million i didn't know my son was taken care of it if i did know it's not illegal i made 1.4 billion that's great but I didn't know and he just sort of like has this the way he speaks the way he kind of not contradicts himself but he'll he'll defend himself by deflecting and then the initial criticism he'll then say well that's actually not a problem and then he'll then deflect again and yeah it's it's quite remarkable isn't it that he gets away with it that he gets away with and then also didn't know I didn't know you know like he said there was they didn't have dinner with he didn't have dinner with his son and his son was like, hey, we've made $1.4 billion on Bitcoin or whatever else.
Sorry, not even Bitcoin, sorry. The Trump scammie coin. And there was no mention of it. They didn't mention it to him all because, you know, why would they? Well, and what's so funny is that he even bothers defending that when the other half of this is he'll invest, say, just, for example, $50 million in Vindia. And then the next week he'll be, he'll do a new bill with them. and he'll talk publicly. You'll say, what a great company are. The price goes up just a little bit. They sell. They make a bunch of profit. It's so obvious. It's so transparent. And they haven't made hardly anything from that compared to the crypto winnings. And yet he should know about both.
And if he's going to be this Mr. Profit president, why don't just brag about it? Why don't just say, I am the greatest president because I made a billion dollars. Every other president is a moron. Yeah, and it's funny because contrastingly, we have Nigel Farage in the UK, and there's a great report from The Guardian. He figured out that some crypto billionaire from Thailand, I need to look up who this is, I don't know who this is, gave him a five million pound gift. And then there's talk of an inquiry over it, and they imagine that there might be more gifts from other people. And then Faragius, he's been, I mean, he's always in the new cycle, he's always putting himself in front of a camera like, you know, he's, he's there for everything.
He's always trying to put himself out there. And then he's just gone quiet because he knows that he's going to get shit for it. The reporters are going to, you know, quite rightfully hold into account. And then the argument of, well, it doesn't make a difference because it's a personal gift to me. It's got nobody else's business. It's like, no, it does make a difference. Because if someone, it changes potentially what policies you may put forward in the future. Like whoever gave you this money, may ask for a favour. It's more money than you've ever received in your entire life and then suddenly just get this five million dollars. It honestly sounds like Trump changed to Trump change to the 1.4 billion of Donald Trump.
But it kind of makes me proud of Britain and that at least people can be held to account here. And it will be interesting as an inquiry because I imagine he's received quite a lot more money for Arge from other kind of crypto-y type people because they love him. And yeah. It's the contrast is quite stark how now Trump could just make $1.4 billion and just shake it off and say, I don't know, it's, you know, off a scammy coin as well. No, he's not even like a legitimate investment. It's a scammy coin, which he shelled, pushed on his, you know, followers who he's supposed to deeply care about, the Maga people. They all, you know, lost money on it and they got dumped on by the Trump's, and he walks away at $1.4 billion.
And no one seems to care. I mean, so there's a news article now, or we'll forget about it in a week. All he needs to do is just go bomb some other country to take people's minds off it, make people think about something else. That's his usual play. It's really the worst way to make money. Everyone who invested in his coin or his world liberty financial, they lost money. They hate him. Everybody who sees him out there winning this billion dollars, they say, oh, that could be me. They hate him. He didn't invent anything. He didn't provide any services. He didn't make anyone. unhappy, but at the end of the day, there's a huge pile of money in front of his table.
It's a, it's like a poker game. It's a, what do they call it? It's a zero-win situation, like only he wins. Everyone else loses a zero-sum game, something like that. But it's awful, and it's everywhere. But it'll disappear, like he said. Ben, also on the Nigel Faraz thing, we didn't pull it this week, but there was an article that said a crypto company that was advertised by him is down 15%. So there are still losers out there. And yeah, he still keeps going. And as far as people not getting away with things in the UK, there is a potential now that the BBC could be essentially starting what would be the first trial about January 7th in the UK because of that issue where they edited some of his footage out of order.
Then he sued them. Now the BBC is requesting discovery. And part of the discovery they want is messages. that he sent on his phone on January 7th and all the other things that happened that day, which American courts and American Congress have done nothing about. But it seems by suing the BBC, he may have put them in a position where they can get this evidence, publicize it, and really break the thing. I think it was Jan 6. I said 7th. But either way... I mean, let's see if they can actually get the records. You know it's whether they can actually get it from the US government. But yeah, I don't mess with the people. they've got an army of lawyers who are pretty gnarly and ultimately that's taxpayer money as well that's kind of thing which sucks is like just for a little bit of you know questionable editing which they immediately apologised for and pulled the show you're now going to sue them and take however my was it 10 billion how much was it it was a lot of money which you want these going after some ridiculous sum of money he's suing them for and if he ever won then that would just ask taxpayer money it's pay money, which goes to create the BBC.
You'd think you'd think he'd be unpopular because he sues everyone. He's incredibly, he's well known for this, you know, massive bill. I want to sue him for 10 billion. I want to sue him for 100 million, whatever. It's so petty, it's so cheap. He always settles. And yeah, the BBC, I don't know if they're going to get the discovery. You're probably right, Ben. But at least they asked for it. Nobody else has bothered to ask. this evidence and if they did collect it if they did publicize it at least it would be there later if we ever have like a truth and consequences like a reconciliation type of moment in the United States where we decide that you know somebody might have made some mistakes we could have the evidence we could have that hearing but we need to move on to issue for the good news you've hung in this far you've watched most of the show and now you want some good news news, inflows hit $221 million as 10-day outflow streak ends.
Everything was going down. Now it might be going back up. Metaplanet, the Japanese firm, adds 2,823 Bitcoin in quarter 2 as the overall buying pace cools, but Metaplanet keeps on buying. I don't hear anything about their CEO. Maybe he didn't have parties on a boat in the 90s, maybe they're a better company. Maybe the Japanese version of strategy is going to work. And finally, from BN Crypto, why Bitcoin jumped towards 62K and what could carry it to 70,000. Ben Ark, we found some good news amidst all the bad news. Do you believe it? Or do you think we're going to have four more weeks or six more weeks or who knows how much more of crypto winter? planner they're operating quite a significant loss though aren't they um the average price for what they bought the bitcoin for but it's nice they haven't slowed down buying um are they an etf like a regular normal etf i just you just want a boring etf you know they buy some bitcoin and then the price of the etf is pegged to the how much bitcoin they have i don't know enough about that's plan i know the japanese it's not it's not clear if they're under water but it is their their smallest quarterly purchase uh they only bought 2,800 down from 17,000 Bitcoin, which they bought last time.
So, and they say that it's mostly funded through debt. Oh, no. Okay, so it's another strategy thing. Oh, well, good luck to them. But yeah, it's probably not going to do so well. Yeah, you just want boring ETFs. They're all right. Have them in the market. If you must have them for, you know, so other people can, other funds can get exposure to Bitcoin. We don't want these treasury companies, because although they can suck up a lot of Bitcoin and push the Bitcoin price up quickly, they can do the exact same opposite and sell a lot of Bitcoin and being the price tanking down. I know the Japanese are getting, they're starting to become, I mean, they've always had a great condition with Bitcoin actually.
They've always, obviously, Mark Goops was there and there's always been a lot of companies in Japan, but I know the Japanese are, much more to Bitcoin. I think the big push and pump which we're going to have is there's more and more countries which are not using the dollar and deciding to switch over to something like bricks, but ultimately none of these countries can trust each other. So I think on a country level, Bitcoin is a medium of exchange, a political medium of exchange. That's what it'll end up being used for. And that'll be the next thing which really makes the price fly up will be when. when you think about the game theory of it. It's not something I'm not interested in.
You know, I don't, you know, I really just want to use myself and pay for beer without anyone digitally pay for my, you know, my beer in the pub without anyone sat between me and the transaction. But I think it's really interesting use case for Bitcoin as a political money. And yeah, so it's, but yeah, sorry, I've been on a little bit of a rant there. It's just, it's good to see the Japanese getting warmer and warmer to Bitcoin and good luck to matter planet. But yeah, I think just another one of these treasury companies, which is probably going to fail miserably. You were right, Ben, they are, according to the article, deeply underwater. If you think you or maybe I is a bad investor, the Japanese company Metaplanet paid $4 billion for their Bitcoin, and now they value it at $2.5 billion.
So they've lost around $1.5 billion on paper. And I hate to say it, One of my investment theses during the last year or so has been that Michael Saylor and Tom Lee and Metaplanet and that all these other companies, that they couldn't be total idiots and that maybe they know something. And now I changed my mind. I think they might be total idiots. I think they might know nothing. But they're investing with such huge sums, like the little minuscule sums that I have won and lost whatever, nothing compared to these billion-dollar throws. that these guys are throwing in it and tom lee bless his heart was out there the whole time aetherium's great therium's great and at 1750 maybe it is but boy it was a lot greater at 3,000 and the same with bitcoin at 60k when it was 120 just in october if you look at that bitcoin old chart from the beginning of the show it's a disastrous fall uh but uh anything else you think on these topics then that there's that any any one who sits between you and your access to Bitcoin, their job.
And it's that classic line that's seen in Wolf and Wall Street with Matthew McConaughey, where he's like, your job is to take their money and put it in your pocket. That's all it is. Michael Seda's going to walk away from strategy, very, very rich. Whoever's running Metaplanet's going to walk away, very rich. And that's their job. They don't care. They don't care that the people who are investing in their treasury companies are going to lose their shirts at some point. they don't care their job is to just take wealth and put it in their pocket that's why they're sat in the middle don't use them buy bickwin directly hold it yourself well and remember the first rule of ferengi the rules of acquisition is once you have their money never give it back so but i think we're running out of time here ben do you have a prediction or a story of the week go ahead uh no not really just been working on um Yeah, no, sorry.
Just, yeah, just being, I did sort of, I saw a great tweet by comment of the name of the girl who tweeted out. She's from an island where she's like creating like a Bitcoin economy. And she had a really good ranty video she did about how Bitcoin culture is kind of fucked at the moment with all the strategy stuff. And we kind of lost our way, putting all our faith in, well, I keep saying weep. I haven't done this. in all their faith in trusted third parties. I think it names Liza or Lisa or something. Anyway, that was a great tweet. I wish you could share it with a great little video, which I really liked. No, not really. I've been working on something, which I've got, oh, maybe I could show you.
Oh, yeah, so I think I might have mentioned it last time. Could you enable sharing, please, Thomas? Yeah, I think it should work. They've made it a submenu now. it's harder to use. Yeah, sure, built in. Ooh, there you are. Yeah, so we've, so we've got the NOSTA client and then we've got a relay, an Oster relay, and I have no idea why it's didn't already exist. Because if you're running an Oster Relay and then somebody posts something really horrible and you then share that thing and store in your database, then yeah, you're legally in a lot of deep water. And also it's just not very nice. So I made something called Ados, which is named after the Greek goddess, who is the goddess of humility and shame.
And in it, so what can happen with Nosta is the relay can, if it has a post, it can send it to Ados, and then Ados will run. So we've got one here, which is a warning. So I click review, I can hit recheck with AI. It will basically take the image from the post and it will pass it across. to Open AI, which actually has a free image moderation tool. I think they use it for training or something. And then it comes back with a review. So this is not safe for work, sexual content. And you can also run it on Alama or something or like, you know, like your own agent if you want to. And this is just going to set on my server and then the relay is just going to pass all notes with images to it.
If it's not safe for work or if it's something horrible, then probably make like a naughty list of end pubs. So to take them out of our global feed or take them out, take them off the relay. And then our client will also use the same thing. So the social client, just as another layer to keep users safe from inappropriate stuff, because we want a very kind of vanilla safe experience on Nostr.com. It will also make use of this as well and just filter out any inappropriate posts. But this doesn't seem to exist in Nostra, which is bonkers. is. It doesn't exist. So yeah, that's the thing I've been focusing on this week. And I just, I really like it. I think it's a cool tool.
So I had a lot of fun building that. Nice. I can't find the link, but I did watch the video that Ben recommended last week from Alex. He talked about the very early Bitcoin transactions. And he basically drilled down on the idea where Hal Finney says, I think I was the second note on Bitcoin. It turns out, according to Alex's research, it looks like Satoshi was the second node. How was the third node? And like Ben said, I really enjoyed his presentation and his style. He really kept it moving. I liked how he kept referencing that he had the charts grass. The original information was all on his site if he wanted to just read it. But he made this entertaining Bitcoin video about it.
And though I can't find the link, check last week. Maybe Ben has the link. and his great Bitcoin video. He did some really fun research there, and he presented it in an engaging style, so I enjoyed that. Yeah, he said to me once, he said, I'm going to be the greatest director, video director, movie director, who's ever existed. And I was like, no, you're not, Alex, shut up. But then this, it was very well put together. He's on his, he's on his way. It was an incredibly, yeah, incredibly well put together, 10-minute video, breaking down Bitcoin. too because there's always speculation over whether it was like bitcoin was created by the cia or whoever um but he was saying no you look at it it's obviously created by someone where it broke they were running multiple nodes trying to keep the thing going healthy he popped in for a bit and his you know it broke for him too um so it was like much more human and goofy um and uh satoshi was probably a single person not a team of people uh and he looks all the different IP addresses and everything so it's a great it's raw avocado on a on Twitter.
And yeah, we showed it on the last week. But everyone should go check that out. He's also, I think he's coming out with the documentary, which he's been working on as well. But he knows Bitcoin so well. And yeah, he's a good friend of the show. We've known me and you Thomas for a long time. It really was fun, Ben, the way he directed it, the way he would cut to this and cut to that and have his lamps here and his lamps there. And a similar thing happened this week. I watched, like most of the internet, that guy, Charlie, moist critical and he took this week to highlight a guy i'm going to mess up his channel is something like joe is hungry and he's this old guy that goes out and eats fast food or he eats the new food of the day but it's not a boring food review he puts so much effort into it like he was doing the drive-through and he had three camera angles and he's switching around and he like did a little robotic thing when he brought the pizza in i mean just so much effort into what could just be a boring food video or for Alex, what could be kind of a boring Bitcoin history video.
But when someone puts that effort, it really raises the content up. And I feel that when I was watching it, I could feel how much effort Alex put in or how much effort Joe is hungry puts in. And we just want to celebrate them and give them another little promotion here. It's not that much. But maybe after you finish this video, you'll go watch that one. So I'd enjoy that. Yeah, totally. It should be rewarded when people, I mean, yeah, the amount of effort Alex points that video, honestly. he's like a Buddhist monk in his apartment for 10 months researching it, making the video, making the web page for it. And at the end of it, you get a 10-minute video, but it's kind of the perfect time-minute video.
I mean, I have some pretty good media skills, but I just, I wouldn't have the patience or the, you know, the sticking power to make something so good is what he made. So, yeah. that people like Alex or Joe are probably never really financially rewarded for the work they do. And he put a link in at the end and wanted people to donate. And I don't think he's talking to me, but maybe somebody out there sold early, did well in this mess, could give Alex like 10K or something. That would be nice. And the old days, I always used to imagine, like, huge bitcorners just coming along and being like, oh, I'll give mad bitcoins a Bitcoin or whatever. And it never really happened for me.
But maybe it could happen for Alex. Alex, maybe it can happen for Joe. Somebody can promote them and like the things they do. So at least we don't have any money here, but we appreciate you, Alex, and that's the best we got. But thanks again to everybody for joining us. Be sure to give us a thumbs up down below. Subscribe if you haven't already. Oh, we're out of time. Until next time. Bye, bye. Bye. Inside.