The Bitcoin Group, the American Original, the best ones, the best bitcoins, the best bitcoins, artist cryptocurrency talk we'd like to welcome our panelists ben ark from l n bits even at all victoria jones from sotoshi's page hello hello everybody and i'm thomas hunt from the world crypto network moving on to issue one bitcoin security policy bitcoin core is accelerating its disclosure when a i can rediscover a vulnerability. On October 22nd, Core merged a policy allowing easily discovered vulnerabilities to receive rapid fixes across all maintained releases with an accompanying advisory. Developers explicitly cite AI's abilities to find flaws and identify supposed concealed patches.
Bitcoin previously had a cautious upgrade culture that assumes that defenders have time before making a change. and were worried about the potential to destroy your money. But now, because of AI, Bitcoin has had to change their policy. Ben Ark, what do you think about the new AI policy for Bitcoin and the idea that AI can find flaws so fast that Bitcoin now must be quick on its feet to fix them? Yeah, I mean, with the AI and with the frontier models, it's just making developing, like the process of developing faster um so you can build more more quickly but then that goes in the other direction which means that people can find bugs quicker and then it means that like historically you would you know you'd find a bug in your software and then you would try and bury it in some other PR so no one really pays it and try and get it in the software and maybe a few people would see it but they wouldn't really say anything because they know that it's a patch and then give because you want it you want to get the patch into the software and give people enough time to update their software so they're not vulnerable to the patch but now as soon as there's a whisper that there's a bug in any software, especially where there's money involved, then everyone's going to point their frontier agents at that software and say, find me the bug.
So everything just moves quicker. And it happens at our own project, you know, in LNBits, like before, for a, for a PR, for an extension or something, then we would have three people like look over the code and verify the PR, whereas now we have these frontier models. It's like, well, you know, one or two people look over it and you have one of the frontier models do a security audit over the software as well because you just kind of need to move quicker and then you find that you are just creating you know patch releases more often so it makes sense that we've changed our own policy internally for our software and it makes sense that bitcoin changed this policy it's a brave new world where the way in which you would release security fixes or patches for software is has changed and everything's sped up like everything's quicker um so yeah the period in which you would have the period of time in which you would take to develop a piece of software is is much much smaller than it used to be as is the period of time in which you would responsibly disclose patch release let people have one update that has also reduced quite quickly as well um so we're just all adjusting to that i think of it is um it's just hardening quicker is the the process of it hardening is much faster than it was and um we're at that point in history where where these agents are able to pick up on any bugs which have existed in the software for, you know, since it started or whatever, for a long time.
And soon a lot of the things will be patched. And people will just learn to live in this new, brave, brave new world of having these agents, finding all our bugs in our software. It seems like we came from the times of antiquity, huh, Ben, to think that there was a time where you'd say, well, we want the Bitcoin developers to go slow and not make mistakes and not screw things up with the money. There was bugs introduced in the past where they went too fast and put something in, had to mess with the chain, all kinds of things. But now, like you say, it's the exact opposite. AI has changed everything. And I can tell you just from hanging out on Twitter this week, it's been amazing.
First of all, there's the PHP vulnerability. I can confirm to you that I have upgraded world crypto network servers to protect our important website which basically mirrors our youtube to you and we've upgraded php because there's a php bug that can let you in where it could you know steal your databases steal your passwords steal your user information obviously a bigger deal if you're selling stuff you have people's information not a big deal if you're just serving world crypto network youtube videos but there was that there's been the upgrading battle on the playstation 5 the playstation 5 was hacked earlier this week Sony released a new firm 1400 then they said that's not enough now if you're on 1400 you have to upgrade to 14.2 everyone thought that was it the end of the war it turns out they've hacked the PlayStation 5 up to 14.2 and perhaps further they're targeting grand theft auto 6 the idea that you could play the game without paying as well as they have an app store for PlayStation games they have an app store where you can play we games and Xbox games and all the other kind of games.
Basically, you can execute any code you want on the PS5. And someone just hacked the switch too yesterday morning for the very first time. And it was a complete amateur. Both of these hacks have been done by amateurs who basically type into their computer, hack the PlayStation 5, and it comes out and starts doing it. For the switch, they had some kind of that little flipper device. It was monitoring the switch. They had something else turning it on and off. they basically said to their computer hack the switch let me run my own code on there and they hacked it so this is just the beginning of this we've seen it with hardware wallets and now we're seeing with bitcoin code itself i think that changing everything go ahead unless i'm less worried about um i think the free and open source stuff is actually in quite a good spot particularly like bitcoin software because it has always been relatively conservative in its development when you're talking about things like playstation and they've got like terabytes or gigabytes or code um and it's slop and it's it's closed software which now the a i can do you know penetration testing and get into but um yeah it must be a nightmare if you've got if you've got like a proprietary system which is all closed and you don't know what most of the code does and it's just a big blob of crazy code and it hasn't been refacted and cleaned up because there was no one does it wasn't public so no one was looking over the code poking holes in it um it must be a nightmare but i think they actually think they weren't quite a good spot in bitcoin like a lot of the software is pretty jet and um and it's lean and it's been refacted a whole bunch of times and many people have looked at it so we're in a good spot when it comes to innerabilities but it doesn't make sense that they changed their policies i think it was chris ellis back on the show in the old days who used to call it instead of iot he called it iohht the internet of hackable things and we've all talked about the the baby monitor and so and so forth but those were penetrated targeted attacks where the hacker wanted to take them over now Let's say that you have an air conditioner or a fan or a humidifier or a TV in your house that's, you know, internet ready or connected to the internet.
Previously, you had to use the company's app to access that device. Now people, again, amateurs, people just typing commands into AI are saying, I would like to control my fan. Reverse engineer how the fan software works and taking over their fan. So we saw recently in France during the riots and so forth, the refrigerators of the French grocery stores so that the food would spoil. So we're seeing a lot of reason why you want to have an internet-connected fridge where you can check in and see what the temperature is, but you don't want to have an internet-connected fridge where you could turn the fridge off, right? It's an interesting line, or maybe turn it on too much, burn out the motor.
Who knows what people could do? Maybe they could fake it, make it not report the correct temperature. But we're seeing again, everyone said, oh, let's just have the companies write these things. Let's not have any standards. Let's not have an organization that, say, does Red Team on every baby monitor that comes out or every internet-connected radio. No, no, no. We just said let them do it. And now we're going to find out what happens as the AI makes hacking as easy as, you know, hack my PlayStation, hack my cell phone. Victoria Jones, what do you think about the AI changing everything and the Bitcoin Core, perhaps changing from a slower defensive organization to a more active organization.
Well, I think it's always interesting when the world comes up with a new innovation. I mean, I remember when I was still working as a dentist and social media started to become a thing. And for a while, I worked for one of the indemnity companies. And I remember once having a conversation with one of the, you know, one of the people who managed a lot of the cases. And she expressed a lot of concern about, you know, people kind of discussing. private cases on social media. But one of the things that occurred to me as I was talking to her is that, you know, maybe in the past things have been a little bit too covered up and actually that can be, that can facilitate things like corruption.
You know, sometimes when you open things up to more open discussion, you unleash unexpected surprises. I mean, certainly, you know, the invention of YouTube has completely transformed my life. You know, when you get engaged with these new, new tools in a different way, you know, things can happen that you've never expected before. And I think, you know, it has a potential to make life a lot more exciting. I mean, obviously it's not what we've been used to. And, you know, we'll need a lot of adaptation to how things are changing. But, you know, there are immense positive possibilities. in that, not just things holding you back. I mean, obviously with Bitcoin and Bitcoin Core, obviously they're just having to adapt to the way of the world, really.
You know, if things can be hacked that quickly, then, you know, maybe they do need to be more transparent with their procedures. And I think over time, we're just going to have to hope that that works for the benefit rather than the demise of Bitcoin Core. It be interesting to see what happens. how quickly things are moving in AI and other spheres. We truly see it every day. Listen on there. But we're going to move on to issue two. See if we can get Ben back with us. The Lightning Network, potential hacked. Aclare patches two potential vulnerabilities in the Lightning Thief Network, they say, involving trampoline payment, expiry, ordering, and unverified inputs during Taproot's channel.
splicing say that 10 times fast it says malicious participants could exploit either to leave a forwarding node paying out without collecting its incoming payment they strongly recommend upgrading there's a big problem because these failures strike at lightning central promise forwarding payments without trusting the other participants but you better watch out because that could change the way that lightning works as we've said before lightning network is like handing a hot dog off in a stadium You hand the hawk dog to someone, they hand the payment back, you give it to the guy. It all works out fine, right? Unless someone is taking bites of the hot dog along the way.
Victoria Jones, what do you think about Lightning Network having potential problems that could break the promise of, I give you a hot dog, you give me a payment? I like that hot dog analogy. I don't think I've heard that before. But yeah, I mean, I have, yeah, very good. I have actually had experience of trying to set up lightning as a non-technical person, and it's incredibly complicated. I mean, Bitcoin's hard enough to understand when you're a non-technical person. But, you know, if you make the effort, you can just about understand it. And, you know, the main chain seems very robust. But the lightning network is definitely much more of an art form.
I don't think that they've really perfected or made the software slick enough. Lightning was the best solution we had at the time in order to try and make payments quicker. And we've not really come up with anything better. I mean, I think people have tried suggesting better methods and people are still working on them, but it's the Lightning Network that's really kind of taken off and been used the most. But there are definitely issues with it. I've experienced that from trying it myself. And I recognize that there can be many So this issue doesn't surprise me at all, even with my very limited technical knowledge. But I'm sure Ben has more to say about it.
So I'll pass over to him. This does seem, well, I can't hear anything at all. This does seem like a return to the time when they used to give out the be reckless stickers with lightning. And they'd say, oh, you're being reckless using the lightning network. But again, that's how software has to develop, right? perfect overnight uh bitcoin couldn't handle all the transactions we want couldn't do everything we want overnight ben ark what do you think about the lightning network and their troubles with handing off the hot dog i mean again it's the same thing you know we've got this software which's been developed over a bunch of years um it's a honeypot so if you can pack it you can get money um so it's going to be some of the most targeted software on the planet you can get bitcoin out if you if you manage to hack the thing um it's just that rate of hardening it's just increased and we've had quite a lot bugs this once we had core lightning had a bug um the lightning development kit had a bug as well um and now we've got async with a bug uh for so async with the company they made the first lightning node um and uh they're they're great they offer some great services they offer like a managed self-custodial node solution called phoenix d which is spectacular it's an incredible piece of software um we have people like you can fund all then we have people spinning up on bits with one of these managed nodes and it just works yeah and i'm less worried about you know the bugs you hear about um there's some bug and there's a patch and they've updated the software and more worried about the bugs you don't hear about um and then when it comes to just the lightning network in general like yeah it has always been hard to to use it's getting easy every year it gets easier as long as it gets easier every year i'm happy um and to me you know it's you know it's a bit like up an SMTP server that's also quite hard some people do it if they really want to other people don't bother they find easier solutions like using Gmail or whatever and I kind of feel that that's sort of similar with with lightning and we'll keep making it easier to spin up your own lightning node but there's some great managed channel solutions where you actually control the node but you someone else manages the channels for you like the async Phoenix D solution which are making lightning ever easier to use and I mean I think the future of payments on the planet is bi-directional payment channels.
It just makes sense as a solution. Probably the Lightning Network. And I think it's the reason in which there's been a lot of interest from Tether in the Lightning Network as well as they try to, you know, create the next world's world, world's reserve currency is the USD over stable coins. So there's a lot of interest in Lightning Network. It's very powerful technology. But there has been many years of people developing software. like thomas said being a little bit more reckless um it being seen more as a kind of application layer where you're not holding your life savings so maybe you can be a bit more reckless uh but the reality is there's still a great deal of money on the lightning network and you don't want you don't want any catastrophic bugs in there um but it's good stuff's getting patched you know it's the focus of a lot of hackers and they're pouring a lot of tokens into trying to hack the software we're finding patches it gets hardened it gets stronger and tougher and It gets harder to hack.
And yeah, it's a good thing. As long as people don't lose too much money in the process. Well, it's not how many bugs you have. It's that you fix them. And that the bugs don't cause more bugs after you fix them. Ben, I agree it's kind of like email where we went off the servers. At first, people ran their own email and web servers. Then people changed. Other people ran their email and web servers. But now I think we're going back. People are going to run their own servers again with AI. Do you think that Bitcoin has to go through this transformation? We have to make it so that there's an email server so everyone can get on Hotmail and then go back to if you're really cool, you run your own Bitcoin server the way it's starting to be cool to run your own web server and things.
Because with the AI, you just say set up a web server, right? Dude, yeah, I think that's a very good point, in fact. You see it a little bit with Amachi, but it's a I do think that the future of desktop environments, computers and stuff, operating systems will be that you have an agent in there and you just say, make me a lightning node. And then you say to it, manage my channels and it just takes care of it. Actually, a lot of this stuff lends itself quite well to letting an agent do it. As long as it's sandboxed and secure and safe and it's not going to break into the rest of your system. But even some of the open source models are capable of like spinning up a lightning node and managing channels.
So I think we'll see. more and more people using AI in that way for just kind of a text prompted computer just like, you know, spend me a lightning node up. I think it's a good, it's a very good point actually, Thomas. That's probably a lot of these things which were hard to set up like an email server and are going to be infinitely easier to sell. Yeah, it's cool. Well, and I think for a lot of people, if you haven't jumped into AI yet, one offshoot might be to take an old laptop or an old Mac Mini or something and give that to the AI make that the AI computer you don't have to worry as much about your data getting intertangled and you can do things like set up a web server and then use your your Mac or use your phone to go to that web server on your local network that you can then extend with tail scale which is free software you can get so you can be it's a VPN that makes it so you're on your local network when you're out and you're on the cell phone network or someone else is Wi-Fi.
In Bill Gates' 1995 book, The Road Ahead, he talked about everyone having a home server in their basement and how you could listen to music off the home server and videos and everything. And I threw the book across the room. I said, I want a home server now. I know you've got a home server, Bill Gates, where it's my home server? And I got no home server for maybe 10 years later. But Victoria, what do you think? Are normal people going to set up their own home servers? in these little mac minis and if it is like ben says you just type in hey set up a lightning node spin up a bitcoin wallet you know are people going to actually use this for their finance are we going to go to the server and then back uh not right now i can't you know most most normal people have way too much stuff going on to even begin to think about that and even if they are remotely intelligent and have some skills um it's still quite challenging i mean obviously AI helps a lot.
I've used AI a lot to help, you know, with my website. But no, for the average person, they've got far better things to be doing than setting up their own servers and setting up their own lightning nose. I mean, crikey, there's probably still only 1% of the planet that's even remotely interested in Bitcoin. And then they're only mostly interested in whether or not the price is going up, let alone the technology. I mean, you know, it's a very, very small proportion of the population who are engaged with it at that level. So, but you never know. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. You know, if we get to the stage where everything else breaks down, then maybe we'll have to.
And maybe we're doing all this work to try and make it easier by the time that becomes necessary. Let's hope we've either figured it out by then or it never happens. Well, in the Doge, Doge or Dodge in Hell by Neil Stephenson, he talks about the future where the internet is so full of garbage, that you have to have a human being edit your incoming feed and you also have to have an human being edit your outgoing feed because there's so much fake information about you going on out there and in many ways I think this could be the AI sitting on a little Mac Mini in your house and instead of going to the internet you go to the little Mac Mini and that's where your information comes from because the internet will be so full of garbage to go out there as an individual as a human being trying to figure it out I think it could be possible.
So I agree many people aren't doing it, but they're missing out. I did like nothing this weekend. Like Ben, Ben will tell you, like I did nothing. I upgraded PHP, right? But I feel like a hacker going in there. And I'm copying, pasting commands from chat, GPT, and I kind of know what we're doing, and I kind of don't. And at the same time, I don't want to write all this stuff. Chat wrote some things where, like, echoed commands into the terminal and separated things. And we upgraded to Ubuntu, so we get free updates and security updates, and we did all this Linux-y, hackery stuff that I don't know how to do, really. Can I connect? I don't know if I could I share screen?
If the software will let you, let's see. They've changed the menus. There you go. Maybe. Try now. So one of the things which I sort of worked up for myself, but I think I will release it and I'll make it a little bit more public. I strongly feel that NixOS is the ultimate operating system, which I will end up using, just because it's the way it's built. But one of the things which I built for myself, because I got fed up of like going to find software to install software, is I built this thing called Peasy. So there's this little green blob in the top of my computer here, which I click on this, and I open up Peasy. And then I just say to it, like, install whatever.
I know, Libre Office or something. Or no, you're not even that. Install the word processor and they'll go and install Libre Office for me. Or I can like set dates and stuff and I can do all these things. Sorry, I can set appointments in my calendar. And I do feel that this is the future of an operating system is that you'll be able to talk just to your computer and say, do this, do that. And you don't have to go and copy paste commands. You don't have to go and find an application. It'll just go and find it for you. Now, you know, the reason I use, I use Nix is it looks. people aren't doing this. If you're not working with AI, AI is conversation. Like you kind of have to type in what you want and the computer will help you make it, whether it's like applying for a passport or doing something on the computer like making a video file or editing video or importing photos.
It's amazing. The cool thing about, because there has been some experimentation with this for March, it uses Arch, but the problem is that it's like a big blob of an operating system. So you need like an operating system built properly and uh i use nixOS and nixOS it's very so has its own declarative pro like its own declarative language for your operating system which is basically a big confit file that's your operating system so it's very easy for the a i to just amend that rebuild the system and you get all this rollback um functionality added in as well and honestly like nix for me now using pz it's gotten from kind of quite a techie linux distribution which like most people couldn't use to i could get my you know, my 80 or dad he uses Ubuntu, I could get him on PZ, you know, I could get him using NixOS with PZ.
So I do think that that is, I think you're on to something. I really do think that is the future of, um, of operating systems. Have I stopped showing screen? No, I made you stop. But I do think that having a Mac Mini or an old laptop or an old computer as you're like server computer, even if you're not hackery is a fun idea. Uh, you can do Claude, you can talk to it through dispatch. I think that GPD probably has a similar thing coming. You can do that. I can do all that here on my desktop. But because it's on an operating system, which is built properly, you haven't got, because the worry is, oh, if you let the AI just rip on your computer, it's got access to everything, it's very dangerous, which is true.
But because it's using NixOS, everything's kind of sandbox. So it's very, it's just very secure. Like it's the best operating system for using AI on. And I think this is the future for operating systems. And maybe not even typing, maybe you just say to computer hey computer like i want to make a lightning payment can you can you install a lightning bullet and a lightning node and just go do it and then you can make a lightning payment i think that's the future see we used to just think programmers could solve all of our interface problems but now we need a i let's move on to issue three issue three robin hood sees surge in bitcoin gold prediction markets as traders move beyond sports almost as if sports gambling was only catnip designed to get people in the door, just one for free.
People are now interested in Bitcoin and gold prediction markets, as well as with tokenized stocks coming online soon. It's all gambling. It's not gambling. Maybe it's all gambling. Victoria Jones, what do you think about Cal She and other markets seeing a surge in Bitcoin and gold prediction? Yeah, it's giving me a big short vibes, you know, when they're kind of talking about CD derivatives and stuff like that. I mean, that was like the complicated version for the financial system. And it's now kind of like we've got the tools on the street. This is, you know, this is what you're now using with Robin Hood. I mean, it's just derivatives on derivatives.
And, you know, we all know how the story ends. We're just waiting for the Jenga tower to collapse. It's amazing. They advertise in the background of the soccer games on Law Liga. because Crackin is a sponsor. But at the same time, Cal she is there. Whereas if you watch American football in the US, it's all fan duel and these other sports betting platforms. It just seemed like they're getting people into the idea that, hey, you can invest in sports. You can gamble with $10 a week. Now you can invest on Robin Hood. You can get crypto and derivatives and other products that you don't understand. And they're still pushing these parlays. It's disgusting. Parlays are bad.
Don't bet one thing at a time if you have to bet don't ever parlay it's ridiculous uh but ben ark what do you think that's going on the uh the masses love sports gambling uh the bread and the circuses they could be rich too the lottery uh it's their big chance and now uh gold and bitcoin prediction markets instead of buying the actual asset yeah these prediction markets well i mean it really normalizes gambling um and uh and it gives everyone access to i'm not i don't like gambling i think it's a real vice and i think the the way in which it massages your brain and releases all that serotonin is very dangerous and generally makes people lose a lot of money so i'm not a big fan of gambling um and and seeing this prediction market thing the phenomenon of prediction market is happening in the u.s is really spectacular and um obviously it's been spoken about in the crypto anarchist kind of seen for a long time that you could just you know offload decision making to to put in a bit of state like proof of state by putting your money where your mouth is um to try and get like but as we've seen in the u.s with with all these prediction markets there's a whole load of kind of corruption and um what's the word insider trading uh obviously that's not going to happen with gold and bitcoin but yeah it's yeah yeah i mean i've got like a you know a 20 year old lad um and uh it's kind of scary him going into this world where there's all this like gambling at his fingertips um thankfully he's kind of like steered away from all and managed to stay away from it but um it's kind of scary that it's it's so normalized you know well and he's already past the target market at 20 uh the thing i see is that they're teaching children to gamble and i've talked about this before so if you've seen it you can fast forward but you know instead of buying the red ninja turtle you buy a random pack of ninja turtles you don't know which one you're getting and if you don't get the right one now you have to buy it again you have to buy it again now basically you're gambling and there's a one in 10,000 chance.
You could get the gold Ninja Turtle. You could sell it on eBay for lots of money. They've done this with sports cards. It used to be, you know, you get a pack of sports cards. Sometimes it has a good one. Now they're putting special sports cards in with like a piece of a player's jersey or an autograph sports card, a real autographed one. So there really is a reason to open them. So they've got people in factories like Willy Wonka opening thousands of baseball card trying to get the magical token one if it's in that pack. We've seen this again with Japan. They have machines. You can buy a random toy. Maybe you get the gold one. And Roblox dollars. I watched a video recently about Roblox, and apparently you get the Roblox dollars to buy things.
Then in-game, they use dollars as a thing that you spend, and they give you billions of dollars. So dollars are worthless. Roblox dollars are worth money. lessons that epic 2014 video just keeps coming more and more true where they say the internet could be a you know a tower a library a wonderful place or it could be the lowest of gossip and the absolute garbage and the worst things that we could think of and as we see these prediction markets take off i think we're headed that way it's only a matter of time before we see the dark prediction markets as predicted in that guy and other videos so but let's move on on check out world crypto network dot com where we've got 5,101 videos woohoo a lot of them are shorts but you can check about for free on youtube and at world crypto network dot com issue four china moves to confiscate five billion dollars in bitcoin from fraudster who fled to the uk a fraudster who worked as the controller of tjanin lanin technology recruited associates to sell fake wealth management products nationwide in china from 2014 to 2017 without financial regulatory approval promising guaranteed returns to investors the scheme raised 2.8 billion dollars which was held in 61,900 bitcoin along with cash jewelry and other cryptocurrencies the case took a significant recently when the UK high court ruled that Chinese law not UK law applies to ownership disputes over the seized Bitcoin once again it's a con and a scam and a scheme but if they just bought Bitcoin and given it away openly to their investors it seems like they would have been just fine however the Chinese government is certainly coming after them and the UK government seems to be rolling over I'm not sure the particulars of the case law.
Victoria Jones, what do you think about the $5 billion and rising that the Chinese are seeking a return? Yeah, it's an interesting one. And of course, you know, Bitcoin's unique because it's literally been the best performing asset of the century so far. You know, I mean, maybe Elon Musk is about to, we'll take over at some point. But, you know, Bitcoin has been in that respect. And not only that, but it's an asset that's so transferable. And so in many respects, you know, the English courts have not really been faced with this kind of dilemma before. So I can well imagine that they're unsure in how to deal with it because, you know, the fiat value of what was invested is one issue.
But, you know, you're dealing here with an extremely valuable asset that's changed a lot since the original crime was committed. So how do you resolve that? it appears that they've kind of got around that by, you know, passing that issue off to the Chinese government rather than the UK government. And it probably has something to do with the way in which the crimes kind of evolved over time. So it's an interesting one. I mean, as an aside, I'm working on my next series of newsletters. And the one I'm working on at the moment is talking about the usury laws and medieval, the economics in medieval times. and you know where these laws actually came from and Thomas Aquinas actually originally wrote a treatise on you know what money should be used for and and when it's morally right and when it's morally wrong one of the points that he made was that you know money that you hold just for the sake of making money is probably more morally corrupt than money that's actually used to invest in and create products and it's a it's an old idea, but unfortunately we live in a society these days where literally the only way to survive is to learn how to hitch a ride on the games everyone else is playing with money because that's just how the world works.
And anyone who's kind of stuck in the old way of doing things, just trying to, you know, invest money in order to have a profitable business, you know, in many respects, you're kind of held back by that. And of course, a lot of the UK laws are based on many of these old moral principles, you know, religion has had a big part to play in the ways our laws are structured. I mean, my daughter, when she was at school, she used to complain about why she had to do our re- lessons. And I had to explain to her that, you know, a big part of the way in which our laws are structured, you know, their history comes from, you know, our religious heritage. And of course, you know, that was all very much had a significant impact in the Middle Ages.
So, you know, the legal system in the UK is very much influenced by that. But of course, you know, the Chinese will have their own heritage and their own moral codes over this kind of thing. And so I can imagine that they may well have different philosophies on this. And so maybe the best way to resolve the issue in this case was to say, right, the Chinese can deal with that bit and we'll limit ourselves to handling this. But, you know, as you say, we don't know the full details of the case. to break down you know exactly where you know that that division could be made i'm sure they're in a back room somewhere going are you sure there's not a way that we can keep on to this money charlie we've got to have it cheerio and they're like no someone can't think of a way can't even with all of our books and magic no we've got to give it to the chinese all right and so i'm sure that's what happened uh but it is funny as you're talking about religion and we talk about it before how many times religion teaches you like a health code lesson like pigs are unclean so they're trying to protect their people don't eat pigs now we have better health codes pigs are cleaner moral lessons like you're talking about usury and i was thinking how usury used to be a sin and you say oh you're charging more than this percent interest you're you're a real bastard you know you're putting your foot on that person's neck and make it so they can't breathe because you had more money because you live near the crops or whatever and i i agree with what you said about money invested in jobs being better than money invested in money making And I go back to this idea where Bitcoin is this goose that lays golden eggs.
And I say to all these companies like Microsoft that work so hard to make software so they can get money, why not just hold Bitcoin instead, right? Until there's a significant penalty. They've said now if your company is more than 50% Bitcoin, they're going to remove you from the exchanges. So obviously, if you're Microsoft, you go 49% Bitcoin, right? But you just hold it. Fire everybody else. all your money in cold storage and complicated ways of keeping it secure and you're set. And then nobody makes anything. And you almost wonder if you go back to some of these ideas like Star Wars was in a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. And Dune was also all about the past and how they had AI in the past.
And they were lessons. Maybe if you build these computers like Vonnegut said with player piano, everyone sits around and does nothing. The computer does everything for us. And the problem that we're having is that, and again, socialism, communism, let's put up those big signs. Who owns the computers, right? The data centers own the data centers. The AI companies own the AI. They're giving us the output for right now, but it doesn't seem to matter because they're just training the AI, training the algorithms, which they will then continue to own. And anything that we make, they can make their own version of and so forth. Again, the people need a control of these computers.
the people need to share. Everybody's upset about data centers and AI and noise pollution and energy and all of this. But what we need is a cut. We need a cut of the profits of the AI. We need a control. We need us board seats for the people before it's too late. And it doesn't matter. But that's something else. Ben Arc, what do you think about AI? And of course, we're talking about the confiscation of $5 billion from a fraudster. Maybe he should get a cut of that money. he helped to go up by Hodling. Yeah, sort of straight off topic that a little bit, didn't we, from the original story? The interesting part is the Chinese law applying to, I don't, I think maybe the UK just paying lip service to the Chinese to try and stay friendly with them, because that is a bit odd if he's in Britain, but I suppose if the asset was taken in China, it's a very strange idea that this thing, which has no geographical location.
And if the person who can access that Bitcoin is in a different country, that the laws of somewhere else would apply to that person in that country. But it's a lot of money. I can see why they would want to get it back. And I think I'm always amazed when I hear about some new billionaire or whatever or close to billionaire Bitcoiner, hacker from way back when, who I'd never heard of before. many like just coming out with every couple of weeks there's some new billionaire bitcoin who hacked something and they've got this money and then it managed to be arrested and um so uh yeah back in those heady days i think a lot of people did get hacked in it in those days as well you know everyone thought bitcoin was going to be imploded on itself so i can see why there was less of the kind of hoddle mentality that there is now um but yeah i mean to victoria's point i completely agree that that kind of like the morality of using money in a productive way is kind of gone.
And it's been replaced by this hustler corporatism of do anything you can to stack as much as you can, you know, regardless of its impact on other people. And, you know, I don't like it. And I think that, you know, the future will be more of a democratization of institutions. And a lot of the free and open source software and things like Bitcoin, like free and open pro calls and Oster, those sorts of things will help help pave the way for that as well as, as well as the AI as well, because actually the AI is a big problem for big corporations and companies. And it's a big, like, boost for smaller, you know, small to medium size enterprises because you can.
So yeah, I think it's ultimately like that's, we move towards greater liberty for more people a long enough period of time. Stuff gets better. Historically, if you look at human history, stuff gets better over time. So if we think, well, if that continues, as it has, then why would it get better? And in what direction would it get better? And the inevitable direction would be that more power to the people, us having more autonomy and power over the things we use, like the software, hardware, whatever else we use. And then the kind of corporate oligarch power being eroded away. AI plays a big part in that. Again, I've also gone completely off topic. See, stuff gets better or it doesn't get better.
We don't know when it stops getting better, Ben. No, but he's, I mean, look at human history. Like, it does just wait, you know, wait long and I feel it'll get better. It gets better. Yeah, unless you have new history. Do we actually know? I mean, though you look at, you know, a couple of thousand years worth of history, it gets better over time. You know, like humans get access to all living. Our lifespans are only like 100 years. So it's hard to look at a thousand years of history. Oh, right. Yeah, I suppose. I mean, we could get all gloomy that things are going to get really terrible for us. but yeah our children's children will be all right and again what kind of children are they they i've been told that the children today have no idea of what it means to sell out if you get your music on a commercial that's actually a huge deal because people will listen to your streaming numbers will go up you'll make money if you're popular on instagram even if it's just for being naked that's a big deal because you're popular and you could get money uh this also i think lines up into that sam bankman freed idea of effective altruism do whatever you can to get a billion dollars because when you get a billion dollars you can do good things with it right so anyone that you step on anyone that you poison along the way it's fine because the goal is for you who is enlightened to have the ability to administer this billion dollars and it is funny that the uh the other thing this is happening and i'm sure it drives all the libertarians nuts is this is a victory of slow bureaucracy.
It took years to take care of this case, so it went from $2.9 billion to $5 billion. And I think more and more people are starting to notice it and pay attention to it. And like you said, Ben, maybe the UK government shrugged their shoulders and said, well, it's only a few billion. Give it to the Chinese. And now it's up to $5 billion. And if they hold it longer, if there's more bureaucracy in trouble with giving this money without, maybe it would go to $10. to the UK like if i was going to flee to a country why would you flee to the you flee to a country where there's no extradition where you know like no one's going to find you why are you going to go to the UK for it's ridiculous imagine they could have bribed someone better with that money but if you look at uh richard hart who you guys are both not here to discuss oh we could wait to the end to talk about but yeah he did flee to turkey so there are many options uh where he's also turkey's also a terrible choice like japan go to japan and go to Yeah, Japan, do they have no extradition policy?
Go to stay there. Don't go, don't leave the island. Like, go somewhere where there's no extradition, and then you're free. You can do whatever you want. That's not advice from the Bitcoin group. Not a visual advice, allegedly Ben says. But let's move on to the exit question, predicting the price of Bitcoin. I don't even know what the price is right now. Oh, it might be 81,408. So that's about the same as last week. I'd give it. But what do you think's going to happen? Again, predicting against the Bitcoin predictor ball, the source of all truth and knowledge and this and any other universe. Victoria Jones, higher or lower this time next week? Well, it had a bit of a surprise drop this week, so I'll say higher.
Ben Ark, higher or lower? I'm muted. Higher. in suspense and now we'll ask the eight ball will the price of bitcoin be higher this time next week you know i'm always bullish so i'm a bull and i'm bullish will it be higher this time next week outlook good outlook good this time next week moving on to issue four we've talked about it before massachusetts police officer heads off bitcoin scam targeting main woman let's see the quick thinking of a local police officer saved a main woman from depositing $11,000 in cash into a Bitcoin ATM as part of an attempted scam, according to the chief administrator of the police department. On Tuesday, around 5.30 p.m., the officer Kelly was at a Story Avenue gas station when he was approached by a 75-year-old woman who feared she may be getting scam.
The woman was nervous because she was on the phone with someone claiming to be a government agent who knew personal information about her and told her she had to deposit money into a bitcoin ATM machine yeah bitcoin about her legal repercussions based upon his training kelly was immediately suspicious and asked to speak to the person on the phone with the 75 year old but that individual hung up when the police joined the conversation we've talked about bitcoin atms before how they're likely to be banned everywhere but this is massachusetts to main a 75 year old woman Victoria, what do you think about Bitcoin, ATMs? It's certainly all their fault and all of the scamming will disappear as soon as the ATMs are gone.
Yeah, well, it's like blaming the tool for human deception and corruption, really. Yeah, I mean, these scammers are everywhere. I mean, one of the local meetup group that we have recently set up a new chat group. And within 10 seconds, I was messaged by someone who was asking me to help them with some money in order to buy some miners, I was like, what? And they were pretending to be someone that I knew. And because I knew them, I was just like, yeah, there's no way you'd be asking me this question. So I was able to stop it. But, you know, it's really, and especially for the older generation, because that generation, you know, they grew up, their parents grew up in the Great Depression.
And so, you know, for a lot of them experienced severe, severe poverty. And so their mindset around. money is much more challenged and they take these things and accusations by the government extremely seriously and so it's a real form of emotional abuse I think apart from anything else it's not really about the Bitcoin cash machines I think that they're just one vehicle that the scammers find particularly useful but you know the the the moral decrepitude of the people who pull these scams on older vulnerable people I just think is I really do. I really don't think that normal people have any idea what these scams are like. I mean, as an internet type person, I've been on YouTube.
I've watched the YouTube's where the guy goes in and he bates the scammers and he talks to them for hours and hours and hours. And we know behind the scenes that these scammers are in office buildings and they have a book full of things to say, a computer book, of course, and they flip through the book and it's a choice-based map and what do they say? You say this next. you're the only one for me. Oh, if I lose this $1,000, my job, I'll get fired. And they go through this book and they have supervisors and they have people monitoring them and reviewing their performance. This is a job. They're salesman, right? They're working on scamming you. The same thing for the people sending you links and sending you dirty emails.
And it's the Bitcoin ATMs are not really the problem. I agree we're going to get rid of them. They're a bit, I know, we've said for a while, Bitcoin's a bit like water, right? Like it opens up all these problems the internet all these things like the a i had all these pat holes like this php patch we've known about it for years but a i made it possible to exploit it easier in the same way these old people are all targets because they're vulnerable right they're weak they like to talk on the phone they're overly polite they don't trust the government they don't understand the government they all think that they've mispaid their taxes because they probably have because it's a confusing system and they don't understand it their banks are not transparent to them so when you call them up on the phone and i think it's going to have to be a massive public relations campaign hang up the phone call a friend if it seems wrong like it's okay to hang up like these people are too polite they're being scam look at this 75 year old woman i'll bet you anything in the case file they kept her on the phone as she drove from main to massachusetts the only reason that she got free is she she saw an officer in the real world said officer does the ira take Bitcoin.
And as a minute you say it out loud, it doesn't make any sense. Like, officer, can I pay $7,000 to get out of a traffic ticket? No, it doesn't make any sense when you say it out loud to another person. But if you're in the psychosis and they have you on the phone and you're afraid, like you just go to the normal ATM and get your cash out. Again, the normal ATMs are the problem here. People getting access to cash is the problem. Oh, wait, I'm ahead of my script. Ben Arc, what do you think about the Bitcoin ATM soon? to be banned nationwide yeah it's okay yeah yeah i mean i like a tms i got one here see so i mean have you really banned it if i've got one in my shed do you know what i mean come at me i mean well but they got it's like the normal like the the russians using cash in the soviet union like you've got to make it illegally you got to make it hard and then pretty soon on every street corner you could buy cash on every street corner you could buy bitcoin But we're not here that.
Don't skip ahead in your script. Well, that's a, that's a legitimate use case for Bitcoin at the moment. A lot of Russians are sending Bitcoin back home and then they're selling it locally for cash to pay for bills and stuff because you can't get money into Russia because of, you know, all the restrictions. So that's a really interesting use case for Bitcoin, which a lot of people are using Bitcoin for right now, which, you know, we don't really, I wasn't personally aware of until I heard it recently in some podcast or something. But yeah, this poor old lady, I mean, it's just sole people, right? It's techy people as well. I had a cracking scammer phone meet this week.
And I was in the hook, line, and sinker. I was getting scammed. So I have a phone call from the police, right? So you get a phone call from the police. You're like, instantly they've got you. You're like, okay, well, what have I done? No, no, no, you don't need to worry, sir. We've arrested someone who was trying to flee the country. And the ringleader of an organised crime syndicate committing identity fraud and your identity was in some of their files I was like oh wow no way that sucks I was like what and they said oh you've got pictures of your passport thinking well I've done that before you know I've like emailed myself a picture of my passport to send up to a mortgage company or something anyway so he kept me on the phone for about half a nine who's so legit like props to them and then he said okay so I'm going through the folder I've got like thousands of people who I need to contact I'm going through your folder now and I can see they've got photo of your passport okay um and uh they did have my email address so like oh you've got your email address was like okay oh no way um and then they were like oh there's another folder and then it it says cryptocurrencies i was like oh okay what's all about and then they said okay so i have a picture here i don't know what it is but there's like it looks like 24 words like written down on a piece of paper but they kind of blanked out uh and then underneath it says like leisure ledger trezer and then it listed off a bunch of of our wallet companies.
And I was like, oh, no way, that's crazy. You know, I had a Trezor once upon a time with a little bit of Bitcoin on. And he said, okay, I'll put an instant reporting for you. Now I'm going to email Trezor for you. And then towards the end of the call, he said, okay, they've gone back to me, actually, Trezor. And if you want, I can patch you in and you can just speak to their anti-fraud, because we work with them all the time. So we can patch you in directly to Trezor and you can talk to them directly. And I was like, well, I only need to because I don't got any Bitcoin, it's all gone. And I don't have a treasurer. anymore and they went, we'll just speak to him anyway, so help us close the report.
I was like, yeah, okay. So then I speak to this guy, this Trezzer guy. And he's like, hi, this is Phil from Trezor. And at that point, I was like, because he said, he said, oh, you know, we're from Trezor and, yeah, and he said something like treasor.com. And I was like, whoa, treasor is treasor.io, dude. Like another website. And then he was like, oh, yeah, that was just a verbal slip. And then I was like, hold on. So then it started, I started, but I honestly been on the phone for like 45 minutes, this fucking dude for like mid-week, busy working, not stopping anything because I'm working so hard. And I got, I got so close, you know, and had I had like a big fat stack of Bitcoin and I would be freaking out, I'd be like, oh my God, someone's got my seed.
And yeah, amazing, an amazing piece of social engineering and scamming. But these people, so like quite often. often scammers, you know, they're slaves in the Golden Triangle, in some, they've been abducted and they've had their passports taken away from them and they're working for nothing. And they're working for organized crime and that sucks. It's really sad. These people were clearly British people, they had British accents. And it wasn't like AI, you know, well maybe it was AI, I don't know, but if they were legit British people, then like Victoria said, they're just horrendous people targeting people. At least they weren't targeting old people.
just sort of, I think it was randomly phoning up people, you know. And it is horrendous that somebody can sit on a phone call with an old person and then get them to give their money, you know, their pension. I mean, a lot of old people as well, they're, you know, they're in poverty and can't afford to pay their bills and to scare them into taking cash and they're putting in their Bitcoin ATM is horrendous. And they're horrible people who, there's a special circle of hell for them. But then there are people also who are enslaved. and you know that they're not doing it because it's a job they're doing it because they're being forced to it and that's also very sad as well but it's a very terrifying world the internet world it is amazing Ben and it happens as you say even to smart people people get caught up in that phone I know a friend of the family wouldn't shell out a thousand dollars for anybody you call them up for any reason you're not going to get a hundred bucks off that guy and and they had them on the phone and they took him to the bank And I fault the bank for this one, too, because the bank's got to stand by their policy, like the same way those stupid cell phone companies got to stand by their policies about transferring your phone number.
They're like, even though it says there's a note on the account, do not transfer a phone number. We're going to go ahead and transfer that phone number for you. Same thing at the bank. They had a protection where it was supposed to be 5K. And yeah, he would have had to come back the next game and get the other 2K. But he got them to override it. And he got the bank to get him 7K. so that he could get out of traffic tickets or something because traffic companies all take Bitcoin. And he went to the ATM and he transferred them the Bitcoin or whatever it was, crazy Minero Altcoin or whatever. And money's gone. Money's gone. So happens to everybody. But yeah, I think they're going to blame these Bitcoin ATMs.
They are the boogeyman. If you get rid of the Bitcoin ATMs, it's going to solve all the problems. It's just going to be people going to normal APMs, getting stacks of cash. and sending them at the post office so you're going to have to ban the post office next people are getting scams sending stacks of cash through the mail in the post office that says the next story that's why that's why that's why we all need to use tether but have it attached to our social identity so that's right the facebook coin we need to just facebook coin it's more secure but we got one more story for you today the central bank takes enforcement access action against coin Ireland yarr the central bank of Ireland has fined coin base Ireland limited 3.2 million euros for breaching its safeguarding and outsourcing obligations under the electronic money regulations act of 2011 in a settlement between the bank and coinbase they only banned coinbase ireland saying they put excessive reliance on outsourcing their security practices failed to have efficient local skill and expertise to oversee safeguarding customer funds.
The fine is $3.2 million, which let me look at my chart here. That is 0.05% of Coinbase's revenue, roughly four and a half hours of revenue. For whatever reason, the Central Bank of Ireland was blinded by the law and only find the local Coinbase Ireland. didn't find the international coin base. So they ended up finding them four and a half hours of revenue for a person earning $50,000 a year. The fine would be equivalent to $25. If you make $100,000 years, it would be about $51. If you make a million dollars a year, the fine is equivalent to $500. So it's a real big enforcement action there from Central Bank, Ireland. what do you think about Coinbase and the slap on the wrist?
Oh, it's just standard procedure in high finance, isn't it? I mean, you know, it's not the first business to be slapped with a fine that in the grand scheme of things is fairly insignificant. So, you know, I'm surprised that the government doesn't make more of it really. I mean, it's like trying to gather all of those speeding fines from all of these motorists. It's one of the things that actually keeps the government running these days. cow for them, you know. And it's equivalent with the banks, you know, just find them doing something nefarious, not really hard these days. And yeah, I think they need to up their finding strategy, to be honest, you know, keep being told how the government's running out of money.
It's just like, well, I'm sorry, but maybe you're undercharging some of these institutions. You know, the laws are there for a reason. It's because they didn't have those sorts of safeguards in place that, you know, Sam Bankman Freak got away with what he did. I think there are an important safeguard, but it becomes meaningless if the punishment is just a drop in the ocean. Yeah, I don't even know what the crime or alleged crime is about or what they're up to. I just read it because the fine is so small. I read it and I said, Coinbase, $3 million fine, obviously to a normal person that would wipe you out. That's crushing, right? But if we run the scale, it's a $25 fine to a person that makes 50k a year.
It's a $500 fine to a company that makes a million dollars. It's just too small. I don't know what's going on over there. If it was 30 million, maybe, if it was 300 million, maybe they'd stop doing whatever it is you want them to stop doing. But as of this, I think it's way cheaper than paying the lawyers. I think they're getting a sweet deal. They're going to pay more on accountants and lawyers. Ben, Ark, what do you think about Coinbase and the very, very small punishment? in the proceedings or the whoever was you know um representing coinbase in the court that and when they got the the judgment and it said you will have to pay three point two million dollars and you have to and then they're like they have to like hold the smirk back and just be like oh no oh oh that's really bad 3.2 million oh oh oh okay i think we can manage it okay but yeah it's parking it's not even a parking ticket for you know for Most people, I don't know what the average salary is, but it's 50K probably.
So it's, yeah, 25 quits. So it's like, it's like less than a parking ticket. It's, yeah, it's an embarrassment. But I don't know. It is, it is a remark. I mean, it's like it's a non-story, isn't it. It shouldn't even be a story. Like there shouldn't even be, you shouldn't even be on our radar as a story, but it is a ridiculously low amount of money for a company like Coinbase. There should be some scale there. It was a good one. But let's move on to my favorite part of the show. Bitcoin Seinfeld brought to you by Christian Moss at Mandel Duck on Twitter, M-A-N-D-E-L Duck. I haven't seen these before. Ben, Victoria, you guys haven't seen these? I've seen this one, no.
All right, so we've got a couple here. We've got Bitcoiners at the airport. This is the three-part series. I think we're going to go ahead and give it a try. is just killing me wearing this hat you can see now on the video i'm wearing my bitcoin hat uh but george is wearing his he's got the bright orange like a hunter i love i love the way he's like the bitcoin maxi character oh he is such a perfect maxi he has our number completely i think we all see ourselves in this uh but let's see what's going on with george and jerry at the airport jerry i can't believe we're going to plan b and lugano look a bit coiner that's the boston red sox There, another one.
George, she works for EasyJet. Well, they're here, Jerry. I can feel it. Purpose of your visit? A conference. What kind of conference? A tech conference. What kind of tech? Computers. Definitely not Bitcoin. Jerry, I can't believe. Oh, wow. Again, I think they got us perfectly. We've all been there. You're going to a Bitcoin conference. You got your goofy hat on, maybe your t-shirt, and then you go to customs or some kind of bank thing. And you're like, no, I don't want to be a Bitcoiner. Ben, you laughed. Let's go to, oh, Ben's drinking first. We'll go to Victoria. And then. Victoria, what do you think about the first Bitcoin sign? But we're going to watch a few more.
Yeah, it's very amusing. So it definitely made me laugh when it was like, definitely not a Bitcoin conference. And they had us, too, with the Boston Red Sox. lot for this hat that it's a Boston Red Sox hat. And then the EasyJet girl, yeah, we're all there just reading everything. Oh, it's orange. It must mean Bitcoin, Jerry. I tell you. Ben, what did you think of a Seinfeld? We're going to watch a few more. Yeah, I liked it. I missed those days where I was actually excited to go to a conference and it didn't seem like a huge chore to go to a conference. I did too many of them, I think. But yeah, that feeling of going to actually chat to like-minded people and they're getting all excited about it in the airport.
And then trying to pretend to. to the immigration guy they've got yeah i've done the exact same thing i've said oh i'm just going to it's just because it's going on holiday is like what for three days i'm like yeah yeah uh technology conference yes technology conference we've got a few more let's check out number two uh by christian moss at mandel duck sir what is this it's a bitcoin miner And these? Hardware wallets. Idiot! Who puts a hardware wallet in their luggage? What do you do? Leave it in the apartment with Kramer? Brain wallet, Jerry. I just remember all 20 words. You mean 24? Oh, funny, good stuff. You see, they give the guy a British accent. Ah ha ha ha ha.
It's a Bitcoin miner. I've done that exact same scenario, a bunch of times. I did it with the ATM, the original versions of the ATM, where it was really fragile, and it would just break every time we went through the airport. And they say, what, we're going to have to check your bag. I'd be like, all right. And then they'd end up the bag and be like, be really careful. And then I'd like slowly open the door, and it's just this box just full of wires. And they were like, whoa. I'm like, no, it's a Bitcoin. They love it when you're careful with a box of wires at the airport, but that's exactly what they like. And those fuckers, they always steal my screwdriver every time.
You can't take the screwdriver. Victoria Jones, what do you think trouble at airport security for Jerry and George? Yeah, it's funny. And it's like Ben was saying earlier, you know, I remember the excitement of going to Bitcoin conferences and yeah, the enthusiasm's definitely worn off. But yeah, fortunately, I was never in the position where I was taking technical stuff abroad. I was just had all my knowledge and my brain wallet to share and discuss with everyone. so yeah but i can imagine the scenario very amusing i do agree with uh starship schrodinger in the chat uh he's saying how the plagiarism machine is making a plagiarism uh but the horrible truth we've predicted for a long time that there would be custom cheers episodes i date myself i need to update that custom breaking bad episodes and so forth uh that you could just enjoy and that we won't watch you know we don't watch the same media now everybody's on a different stream we really won't watch the same media in the future when you're watching custom content most likely that you agree with politically that you agree with morally and so on and so forth that your choices will be reflected back at you in the tv you watch as custom television and starship also says leave the real computer at home and just take the stream deck i know uh back in the day NBA players wanted to play play in so much they'd buy a new one in every city because they couldn't really take it with them on the airplane let's check out bit corners at the airport part three by christian moss at mandel duck on twitter chicken or pasta chicken please and for you sir do you have steak sorry sir chicken please safe a dean says chickens are practically vegetables well at least you're getting your greens Jerry, look, I think that's Adam Back.
Who? Adam Back! He's supposed to be a Bitcoin billionaire. So? So why's he fly an economy? Maybe he's frugal. Frugal? The guy could buy the airline. Diamond hands, George. Diamond hands. He could at least fork out for extra leg room. diamond knees chicken or posse that's so good the uh the timing and the it seems like jerry and george uh george with his darn hat really putting us to shame i think i want full i want full length episodes i would full length uh i want mandel to see full length sinfield episodes and i would watch them they're great i was so bearish on like the whole ai making media stuff but after seeing what he's done with with signfield it just lends itself so well to it um and i've i again again like very relatable like i've seen out of back three times in economy i mean this is old adam back not you know adam back the black we have now in the fancy black c s i suit and the bodyguards or whatever else um but this is why i always had a lot of time for him why he's a cool dude like he's just a techie dude just hangs out he doesn't go to the whale area he would go and hang out and chat to normal bitcoins and he'd go in economy and you'd see him in the queue and chat to him in the queue for when you're going to get get your plane and i do miss that adam back and i hope that when everything blows over with all the epsine stuff and whatever else um i hope that he's back to being an economy again in his hoodie looking all shabby i love the beginning i love the reverence that george has for safety and he's like safe indeed says chicken is a vegetable like it's like he's quoting a greek god and then and then we zoom out and there's adam back in the next one and gosh does it look like adam back it really has it and then jerry comes through jerry now speaks bitcoin go.
He's like diamond hands, diamond knees. He's making jokes about Bitcoin now. It seems like, again, these get better and better and better. Very impressed with it. And I like the idea. And George didn't even go through. Maybe Adam Pack is hodling. He doesn't want to sell his Bitcoin, even for legroom. Victoria Jones, what you think of Bitcoiners on an airplane, part three. Yeah, very clever. Although I would say there's not a lot of point in hoddling Bitcoin. if you never spend it. I mean, you know, money is there to be enjoyed and at some point, you know, it's about improving your quality of life. There's no point in living frugally forever. So yeah, if I can afford a business class ticket, I'll fly business class.
I don't care if that's what Adam, Adam Back does differently. I'll take the privilege any day. And I do know from personal experience he does seem to travel with us on the normal airplanes. I do see him around after the conferences in the old days. But it was like, isn't it a known fact that he wasn't, he wasn't like, he didn't have that much Bitcoin. I mean, I don't don't docks him or whatever. I don't if that's, I guess it's the opposite of doxing, isn't it? But I think it was well known that he wasn't like, he didn't really have much Bitcoin. It seems pretty well known, even though he's quoted in the Satoshi paper and he emailed with Satoshi and all this stuff where you're like, you know, he should have loaded up the truck.
I don't think he bought early. I don't know that that's per. I don't know anything. personally about what his money is. But I don't think he bought early. I think he got way into it. Then recently he had that treasury company. I thought they were going to kill it. I thought they got low. I think it's already out of business. I think there's trouble at Blockstream. They got hacked. The Liquid Network, the hacker gave him some of the money back. I think 90%. Very good deal. But yeah, I don't know. And then there was all the Epstein thing, Andy on the island. He's had a bad year, isn't he? I look forward to the day where he's sat in economy again in his hoodie. and his shirt and we always used to wear the same clothes you think with that trajectory yeah it could be more real now unfortunately we've all been critical of bitcoin conferences during this Seinfeld segment what we're building up to mandel ducks perhaps greatest work ever i haven't seen it yet uh sign for one no bit bit bit fast is that doesn't count that is that's an o g bitcoin conference everyone who you should go to should go to it's not like the other conferences it's one of the conferences i'm going to this year and it's going to be spectacular i can't wait i'm excited about that one jerry and george head to bitfest uk mandel duck will be there he says use the code signfeld 21 for 21% off limited to the first 21 people let's see what's going on george and jerry in manchester perhaps where's big ben london buckingham palace london wait we're not in london no manchester well what's in manchester bit fest bitcoin conference doesn't have a Bitcoin conference?
Nope. What kind of city is that? Join us at Bitfest in Manchester this November. Use promo code Seinfeld 21 for 21% off. But hurry, it's only for the first 21 uses. Where's Big Ben? That's amazing. What amazing advertising. Well done. Well done, Chris. I certainly think it's amazing. I also get worried at the end. It's like it's so promotional. And obviously, you know, Jerry and George had no idea what's going on here. How amazing, though, they got the promotion at the end, the whole thing. I guess you can just make anything with AI. Who knows it's on the internet now? Victoria, what do you think? It's on the nose. I like all the jokes. Yeah, very clever. You know, what kind of city is that?
I mean, it does feel unusual not to have a Bitcoin conference in London. You know, BitFest has traditionally been in Manchester or Birmingham. So, so yeah. Well, Manchester, Manchester is the new, you know, like that's where Burnham's got his new number one. So it makes sense now. Let's see if we can get the prime minister there. Yeah. No, we don't want him there. Everyone can check out Bitfest. It's coming up. It's November 20th through 22nd in Manchester. Let's watch a little bit of the Bitfest video from their Twitter page. I don't know about the audio, the music. There it is. Look at everybody. Bitfest. Yeah. That was the best conference, man. There we are.
Coming together. Derek. building community around people that are looking to solve the world's problems. We have a special Noster day. The only Noster conference this year, by the way. Have a Pepe day. Bitcoin is freedom of speech. That's Roger. Freedom of speech. He's freedom of expression. I think it's important to share the information to the masses. I think it's really important that our festival like that happens every year, but they're also a more important for what we building those structures in society. I think that's very good. I think especially in the UK, events like BitFest, somebody with two young kids and a wife that are just getting into Bitcoin.
sort of, it's very ground level, it's very accessible for them, there's a kid zone for them to play at, and at the same time we've got some big names coming and speaking to. About five years ago, personally I'd never heard of Bitcoin and it takes events like this to grow the awareness of it. I think more and more people in this sort of like, period of austerity and people are really struggling and I think they want to have more sovereignty over their own money. Well I think it's probably a very good conference in England because it's the Royal Fruit collection. So Bitfest is a fantastic event. It brings lots of people who are keen on Bitcoin for all their different reasons.
We all sit down and we share our experience. and we talk and it's a good way to build friendships, build business relationships, make contacts, increase your networks. There aren't that many conferences in the UK, so the ones that do exist, we need to support them. Hey! Here in Manchester today, I think we had like 20 attendees about five years ago and today we've got to over 200 so it's growing organically and by word of mouth. Yeah, it's a great conference. The only, the only Noster conference this year is happening at BitFest. And check out BitFest, November 19th through 22nd at the Pendulum Hotel in Manchester. I'm not going to be there this year.
It's too close to the Thanksgiving. Just can't do it this year. But Ben, Victoria, you guys going to go? Ben, you're going? Yeah, no, 100%. We're doing the workshop area during the, we're covering like unconference area. where anyone can do it come and do so if anyone in the you know watching has a talk or a workshop they want to do they can do it at the on conference area and then doing a couple of nostit talks uh bitcoin talk as well um haven't exactly landed on what i'm going to do a talk about but i think it's going to kind of be controversial and uh might put the cross hairs on me so you should come for that because that'll be funny um but uh it's the best conference i Yeah, it really is.
It was just had a great time. It's one of those ones. There's no silly world areas or anything like. Everyone's just hanging out, chatting, doesn't know who you are and where you are, you know, in the industry. And it's going to be a lot of fun. But there's also a hackathon as well, and there's some prizes in the hackathon. So if you've got something you want to build, then come along to that and then enter to the hackathon. There's going to be some people on hand to help build stuff too. And there's, you know, some real, real money. price some real money there to be won as well so yeah come along should be fun um like ben said it's not just bitcoin it's also noster and pepes so it's got a lot more than just bitcoin uh victoria you're gonna make it well like you have all that you have all the music stuff as well like in the evenings they got all people like roger 9000 all the all the really good music artists and um bitcoin are going to be performing as well um i think that's what i like about it like to me bitcoin is this incredible phenomenon which like you know you try and make sense of and it's weird and it's arty and it's hackery and it's like exciting and could offer the world all this you know this new rails for a parallel economy and all this sort of stuff and that's the vibe you get at bit fest it's not it's not some corporate conference Victoria are you going to make it out to Bitfest this year I'm not sure I mean the last couple of years I've had to take a big step back from going to conferences and stuff because I've had a lot going on at home You know, I was invited to talk there, but I've had to turn it down this year.
I am hoping to get back out there again in the fullness of time, but, you know, just kind of keeping it with my website and these shows is about as much as I can cope with at the moment, just kind of keep my hand in. But, you know, I've really enjoyed them in the past, so a great way to stay in touch with people. And, you know, I'm sure I'll be going again at some point in the future, just not right now. Well, everyone, check out Bitfest at bitfest.k, one person in the chat and maybe he's gone. So that's 100% of the audience is going. We've got just a little more AI slop for you, or as I call it, AI humor. Here's SBF welcoming Richard Hart in prison by at Smolley, SHPP.
I'm not sure if he did it or posted it, but shout out to Smolp. lose all our ad rights today or whatever. And there it is, Richard Hart celebrating with SBF in prison. And Victoria and Ben, you weren't here last week. There's already been an AI, Richard Hart created perhaps by Febro-Cast PT. Pedro, the Minister of Propaganda, or someone else made it with AI. But you can see here, it says, Well, James. Hello, everybody. Richard Hart here. Coming to you live from the Turkish correctional ecosystem. Guys, huge announcement. We're launching Bail X, the world's first decentralized proof of innocent sacrifice. By the way, your sacrifice funds are extremely safe.
Nobody controls them, except maybe the Turkish government and the prison work. And this gentleman named Ahmed who keeps asking for my private keys. Lovely guy. But look, zero expectations of profit. Zero expectations of freedom. You are sacrificing for the freedom of bail, okay? And the tokenomics? Amazing. Every day I'm incarcerated, supply goes down because the guards confiscate my hardware wallets. Best sacrifice. Best prison. Best Future Freedom. Two more weeks, guys. Just two more weeks. Pretty amazing stuff. Ben Ark, you weren't here last week. Do you have any thoughts on the Richard Hart incarceration? As we've said before, he is now, according to what we know, in a Turkish prison.
While we are out here, breathe in free air, not a single Rolex watch to our name. They said Richard had maybe 30 to see. 60 watches. Incredible. He is, he is an example of like, like, we could have all just shit coin forked off and shit coined and made loads of money at some point. Like we know how to do it and we would know how to, you know, during all the different ways, we could have done it if we wanted to and we didn't. Um, because we're here for, you know, what we think the promise of Bitcoin could all the good it could do in the world. And for a period, Richard Hart was here for the same reason. And then he just got, I don't know, got itchy or whatever, just wanted to try and get as much money as he cut out of people.
And it was a shame because he could have legitimately just made some company or he could have built something because he could have a good and he would be free. And he was bright enough and articulate enough to make it, you know, to be quite prominent in Bitcoin. So he could be free right now. He could be, you know, admired and people could like you. And he could have money and no, he's inside the Turkish prison. So yeah, do shit coin. uh don't scout um and yeah it's a shame it's a shame for everybody you lost money and then also the fact that he decided to take that particular road in life promising mind it's truly the ultimate lesson and it's almost comical from the beginning uh richard seemed pretty well obsessed with wealth he seemed like he was projecting the wealth uh in a lot of videos uh he said he'd already made the money uh of course in his background allegedly he sold car stereos in his parking lot installed them for you allegedly he was richard schuller aka the spam king uh and he was coming from a side of saying i made lots of money and i play video games all the time and my wife life is worthless right get me something else is uh what he was saying and uh somehow that turned into this wealth quest and i just don't know what it was about a million watches all these clothes the the famous shot we talk about all the time carrying all the bags out of the store uh it seems so fraudulent and empty the whole time uh like like you think that he seemed he was a very smart guy he could understand the emptiness of all this wealth like that he's just stacked it on top of stacking it and he buy this watch and that watch and i these are 30 000 50 000 hundred thousand dollar watches i don't know anything about it but uh it just seems so empty and i just don't understand like even how he would care like i thought he'd already kind of worked out the emptiness of money um and to again to see the other side of it as i've watched that documentary the highest of stakes i think it's on netflix or something you guys can pull it up um the price of pulse pulse chain or hex whatever they converted into was around 41 cents at the time of that movie and there was a guy who had taken his whole life savings and put it in and not told his wife and then he had taken the rest of the money that he could find after the thing had fallen and he'd put it in again and i looked up the price of that that pulse chain or whatever by the time the documentary was made and we actually got to see and everything it was like 0.0 7th of a cent so the real people were wiped out here real people believed in his complicated interest it will pay you back promise thing whatever it was the flywheel uh but on the other what they funded with it is just so empty and vapid.
I just don't understand the value of it. Victoria Jones, what do you think? He's got fancy clothes. He's got fancy watches. We'll go back to Ben, too. But, you know, he's in a private residence. They have a pool and a shopping center. The locals call him Belina James, whale James, even in Turkey. He can't hide the great wealth of King Richard. But King Richard's in jail now. Like you and me may have nothing, but at least we're not in jail. Right? Victoria, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, Richard Hart always made my skin crawl. You know, I think there's just something about the hollowness of his soul that really eeks off his personality. And wealth does not compensate for that.
You know, what is, it's like that classic phrase in the Bible, you know, what's the purpose of having all the wealth in the world if you sold your soul? And it is, yeah, it's like what's it all for? you do in the process. It's just, yeah, it makes me cringe, really, I have to say. You know, Richard Hart does nothing for me at all. And we're not going to show it here, but I do want to bring up, according to the internet, and I don't believe this is true. I hope it's AI generated. There seems to be a picture circulating from the Turkish police, allegedly, and so on and so forth. Let's not touch this with a 10-foot pole, that Richard Hart was caught with his pants off.
a blurred picture with Mr. Hart half dressed. And I imagine they were pounding on the door for a while. I don't think this was a single give door. I think it was a pounding situation. One would think he would at least get dressed. There's other things. There's lots of conspiracy theories saying that the Turkish police allowed him to groom himself and change his clothes, other things. This seems possible. I mean, he's pretty major criminal. You got to let him dress up. So he makes a nice mugshot. There's other people saying perhaps he intended for this to happen to get away from the Pulse people who are hounding him for some kind of upgrade release or something, or perhaps that he would fake his death in the Turkish prison.
It certainly seems like something that's happened before. Ben Ark, Moran, Richard Hart, and the emptiness of these watches, the wealth clothing, just all this kind of wealth chasing. I just don't get... I think that's why he's such an interesting character in the whole Bitcoin story. because he's very bright, had a lot of potential. But he's just, it's like he's like he had every deadly sin. It was like pride, there was greed, there was lust, there was, and it was all of it. He had all of it, all like gluttony. And he was just a very corrupted human. And it was a shame because it's just kind of a waste of potential, really, because he was bright. And he could have done stuff, like useful stuff, productive stuff.
And it's an example of what not to do, you know, like so. Yeah. It is sad, Ben, how epically empty he must have been inside because here on the World Crypto Network, when we, and you could go back to our archives or whatever, when we had Richard as a guest in the old days and he'd talk about Bitcoin, he spoke some well, he knew stuff, he was friendly, he had complex theories. He, you know, he called the bottom one time. He called the bot top another time. He made some good predictions. And he would do that. He would do the Bitcoin conference circuit and people would have him on stage because he's very eloquent. He's good of doing a talk. And, you know, he could have.
gone on to built some project or company or something it probably had money from before so if love was enough he could have gotten it but there was some kind of emptiness that needed all these watches and needed these fancy clothes when they make the when they make the non-linear netflix bitcoin series there'll definitely be a couple of episodes i think on on old dicky old king dicky it was also funny to the way see how much people like knew this was going to happen there's a uh a picture of all the famous bitcoin alleged scammers and then richard ascending to the heart to the heart ascending to the top and it's like welcome home king and it does seem like the whole time if you look at it in hindsight and you're like oh who's that guy with the candelabras and the crystals and the louis Vuitton clothes and the fancy watches and whatever and you know all that fronting it seemed like it was going to go here the whole time it does not seem like a surprise to me or anybody else watching these shows that we're talking about Richard Hart in jail.
But I just don't know. If everyone can see it, why can't he see it? Or was it worth it because he had such an incredible flame before he burned out, but did all these horrible things, I'm sure, and spent all of his money horribly. I just don't understand it. I mean, I think when you accumulate loads of money, then you have loads of sycophants around you telling you that you're great. And it's very easy to kind of distract yourself, isn't it, from the fact that you're a loathsome. scammer who's just taking other people's money. And that's what all the accumulation of crap is about is to distract yourself away from the fact that you're empty, shallow human.
Even the other crap that he's traveling with, he's got some kind of a cryptocurrency mining rig. So he still needs more money or maybe they have some scam. They're going to print an alt coin or something. And just all he's just empty watches. It wasn't like he was traveling with a fantastic a guitar or incredible tennis racket or some kind of like he'd achieved a high level in chess uh from playing chess every day i'm with you thomas there's something like perversely interesting about the whole story watching it unfold over the years there is there's something there's something i don't know what it is but there is something perversely interesting about it you know that they have that thing after a certain point like wealth doesn't matter like after a certain point you can buy so many watches and so many cars and whatever and what are you going to do with it what was richard's dream and it seems that his dream was all these watches and fronting in this turkish apartment you say like like we're saying you could have been in japan he could have been a better country for someone with a great amount of wealth uh who likely expects to be tried they had a interpull red notice there's some trouble in finland i don't know the details of course um but it just seems again just like with ross olbrecht uh as they said in the silk road song maybe next time you won't be on our shores He was caught in the United States.
It's shocking now on the other side that he got a pardon by President Trump, and it doesn't matter now. But it certainly matters. He spent years in prison. But yeah, maybe next time he won't be in Turkey, which is part of the EU. It's just a very surprising take down for Richard Hardin. And you guys weren't here, so I wanted to get your opinions. All right, we run out of time. We went way too long. Predictions or Story of the Week. Victoria Jones, do you have a prediction or a story of the week? Go ahead. I've started publishing newsletters on my website again after about a year's hiatus. The Bit 110 drama definitely brought my efforts to a halt. I was working with Darren to put together some how-to videos, but once that all came about, it was time to kind of take a new direction.
So, yeah, I'm kind of pivoting a bit. I'm not focused as specifically on Bitcoin anymore. It's more about the issues around decentralisation and the history of money. So I'm going a bit deeper into those subjects and developing a series of letters on that. And so my website's now kind of categorised them. I've got some of my old newsletters and then I'm kind of starting a new series with a different... focus. So yeah, if you're interested in that, check out my website. Sign up to the newsletter and it will automatically, in the past, if you've bought my book, if you put the Amazon order number onto the website, you can, it'll take, put you automatically through the series before it then automatically updates you with the most recent one.
So that's one way of doing it as well. Very cool. Everyone can check that out at Satoshi. page.com. Shout out to Dan 7b in the chat. He sent us $20 says thumbs up down below. Yeah, let's see it. And a comment, especially if you made it this far, I should tell people earlier. But yeah, we always read the comments and we don't get that many. So it's a real easy to read them. But Ben Arc, prediction or story of the week, what are you up to this week? Story of the week. I've been spending most of my time working on Anagram. So Anagram is, always wanted to drop in replacement for telegram and it works and I use it and it's great and it's all built on Noster and it's all so you have public groups you have private groups this is a public group the public Canagram group and it's all built on Noster and then we also use IRO for phone calls so you can call people we have it's safe to do I think it's probably safe to do this is our private group where we talk about L&Bitt stuff and it's using encrypted gift wrapped private messages over Nostr So unless you're a member of the group, you can't see the chat.
And it's a way to our telegram without having, you know, all that information going through servers, which you can't really trust and it being proprietary software, you can't really trust. And already some people have started to build bots, which is fun. So there's a dad jokes bot, which is pretty fun. And you can just like message the dad jokes bot. This is on anagram. And then after a second, you should message me back. Come on, dad jokes. Do it. There we are. mullies away if you throw it hard enough. There we are. On form, dad jokes. And then someone else made an even naughtier bot. Let's have a look. I think I've linked to it in here, actually. Oh, God. Jesus.
That was someone posting. We can see it gets deleted though, so that's good. So we have some moderation in there. But this is another public group. This is the LNBits public group. I have a telegram bridge. So in our telek, which is also a bot. on our telegram ellen bits chat it just pushes all the chat all the messages to the anagram um ellm bits chat and uh i wanted to show you this this is a cool i mean this is a cool little bot which someone made which i don't endorse actually it's not a cool bot and you shouldn't shouldn't use this bot but it's a pirate babe bot so you could like give me uh give me a film also watching uh mobland the tv show mobland's pretty good so you can just type in the name of a tv show or a film um you shouldn't do this but then it just goes and gets the magnets for you for torrents and you can even open it in web tour so you can just stream it directly in the browser um so i don't know who made it and it's it's naughty because it's piracy and you shouldn't do piracy and you should definitely not use this bar this is a bit like you know that example um when they used to talk about bitcoin and they'll show you how not to use the dark market it's a bit like that um so yeah it's it's so we built it the lmbits team built it because we wanted to use something which looked like telegram like telegram telegram has a billion users um and they they love the i mean yeah they love the ui they love the way it feels but they hate the the the privacy practices of telegram um in fact i can make it look a little bit more like telegram looks let's go it's go dark mode shall we here and then so you can access that i've got a version of it installed here but you can access at an anagram dot chat and then to create an account it's really easy just you'll create some lost of keys for you can download the if you want to log in now next call yourself something bob here we go and then start using the app you can enable notifications and then yeah they are you can you know you can start you can start getting the dad bot to give you some some bad jokes and then you can join the anagram group as well and you see how quickly it loads and it's just pulling all this stuff from Noster relays and it just works great and like finding people's easy too so you can find me dot com there i am oh hello and then i say hello and then if i go over to ben arc at nosser.com i get a request there's bob hey bob hello bob there we are see that it's pretty cool isn't it and then what else i can do look at this so we use um i don't know how well this will go down with the internet but i'm going to show you anyway if i if i cut out then if it thralls my internet then but we use iro so iro is another protocol which creates like an encrypted web socket but it means that bob can now phone ben so if i if i has bob phone ben there's ben and then ben can answer with audio we're using the site let's see connecting hello there we go um so you can have encrypted phone calls you can also do group calls as well um and it could just do everything the telegram can do i just replacement and yeah it's great we're using it and we no longer need to use telegram and other people have been enjoying it as well and we've seen the community growing already and people already building bots for it so check it out on anagram.chat we're still working on it so some of the calls like are a little bit choppy sometimes but we've got fixes for that in the works which we're working on but it's been exciting to like build something get it out there and then people see value in it then people using it too so very cool ben i think that people could use a telegram replacement it sounds like a winner i'm trying to pull up mine here ben you have to turn off your screen share because i can see myself it's me let's see one more image sorry thomas everything's beeping let's see oh this thing has a new feature i don't like all right just a second while i load up this image i'll show you guys what i've been working on with a i let's see all right so here we go almost share screen uh like ben said you can make anything with the ai and i've been making comic strips i've made a comic strip called thomas and the a i it's about me talking to the ai but it kind of gotten taken over by the dogs here's a sample strip this is kind of like a sunday strip and it's got the dogs and it says two defenders one narrow pass we hold the line whatever comes whatever comes and then there's a tennis ball and the dogs chase the tennis ball and then thomas says i said stay and mylo says the line moved so it's fun jokes like that and it's a comic strip and it's amazing the breadth and uh depth of what people work on i'm making comic strips uh it says starship in the chat is making a tunnel shooter vr game that sounds cool and uh I've also made some fun side-scrolling kind of a hack and slash type games.
I love it when you can make a game that's like, you know, make a game like Double Dragon, but with a mad Bitcoin's character, stuff like that is mainly what I'm making. But it's pretty fun stuff. And you guys should check out the AI clawed or chatGBT or OpenClaw or whatever you like. There's a lot of models available now. But I think we're running out of time for today. We went a little along. But it's good to have Ben and Victoria. back with us today have a full crew for the bitcoin group uh starship and skeptic in the chat shout out to our chatters give us a thumbs up down below and leave a comment we'll read them we'll even check the comments on the mad bitcoins channel and next week we'll get both chats going so we can talk to both of our viewers on both of our channels at the same time so thanks so much to everybody for joining us until next time bye bye Thank you.