40 Burst results for "Elizabeth Warren 'S"
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from US Government Succeeds in Criminalizing Bitcoin Privacy | EP 867
"You You're against freedom Yeah, welcome to another episode of simply Bitcoin live your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution car breaking news culture medic warfare We will be your guide through the separation of money and say and today is one of those episodes We're gonna talk about the separation of money and state the US government's attack. Well, I can't say that that's not a fair characterization Some members of the US government took advantage of the tragedy happening in the Middle East to and their allies in the legacy corporate media to Take advantage of what's happening to really pass through this narrative that a Bitcoin and crypto was being used to fund terrorism and Then that led to the FinCEN which is part of the Treasury to recommend these Broad regulations that I have no idea how that is gonna be enforced But whatever that essentially would make it so that every single Basically every single Bitcoin transaction how it currently stands would have to be reported now after the fact it came out that the article Was blatantly false it was misrepresented and misrepresented the data, but that didn't matter right the FinCEN proposal stayed There's currently an open comment period which I highly suggest you get involved in just like leave your thoughts But it seems like they got away with it because essentially Without the proposal even being introduced. What ended up happening is that already some financial institutions are already blocking Certain Bitcoin transactions that are involved in coin mixing so if you samurai if you use wasabi and then you send that Bitcoin to a An exchange it might get flagged right now. There was a huge amount of backlash over the last week Basically putting the blame on the exchanges Or on some exchanges in particular But the thing is what you guys have to understand is that exchanges aren't banks right as long as there's the on and off -ramp choke point and as long as People are using legacy banks to buy Bitcoin That is a choke point and that is a choke point that governments are gonna take advantage of I think moments like these highlights the importance of really understanding How to use Bitcoin peer -to -peer how to download peer -to -peer or how to use peer -to -peer alternatives like bisque And like a steco huge fan of a beauty on is doing with the steco But yeah, this is part of it. This is part of the separation of money and state and the thing that aggravates me the most is The fact that they were able to really pass this narrative even though is completely false and Without it being even introduced Banks and financial institutions are taking these preemptive measures which is absolutely crazy and then it's the continuation of privacy, which is Completely against the fourth amendment in the United States, which is no unreasonable search and seizure That just completely got thrown out the window But I mean look this is Exactly what you would expect As you know, the the the example that I always bring up is like a wounded animal trapped into a corner That's when they get most vicious, right? and I think that whether is Elizabeth Warren's Freudian slip a couple weeks ago where she's Christine desperation Lagarde's when she's saying that the CBDC is coming and it's here to stay and there's absolutely nothing you could do about it Or whether she even gets caught saying the quiet part out loud saying that Bitcoin is an escape valve, right? There's multiple signs that show you That the powers of be the people that want you to use fiat currencies in the future of fiat currencies which are central bank digital currencies are Absolutely terrified of Bitcoin but most importantly not only are they terrified of Bitcoin They're terrified of people taking self -custody of their money which won't allow them to confiscate it easily either do either either through direct confiscation or Confiscation through inflation because that's really what inflation is at the end of the day.
Afternoon News with Tom Glasgow and Elisa Jaffe
Fresh "Elizabeth Warren 'S" from Afternoon News with Tom Glasgow and Elisa Jaffe
"Head into Thursday afternoon. In the Comerford Weather Center, I'm meteorologist Shannon O 'Donnell. some Right now light we've rain got in 47 degrees in Seattle. Northwest news time 6 35. A pregnant woman in Texas is suing for access to an abortion after learning that her fetus will almost certainly be stillborn. ABC's Jim Ryan says this is the first lawsuit filed by a pregnant woman since Texas will heartbeat law. The statute does allow for an abortion if the mother's life is threatened by continuing her pregnancy. 31 year old Kate Cox says her situation fits. She's trying to put her own health first and the Texas law standing is in the way of that. Attorney Nick Cabot is with the Center for Reproductive Rights which filed suit. Kate Cox who's 20 weeks pregnant could leave Texas for an abortion. Ms. Cox certainly is considered it but she should be able to access care in her home state. That's the argument he'll make before a state district court in Austin. Jim Ryan, ABC News, Dallas. The CEOs of eight prominent banks testifying before senators seeking answers about the health and future of the U .S. banking system. Major topics in Wednesday's Senate banking hearing including preventing repeats of that series of regional U .S. bank collapses earlier this year and a proposal for banks to boost capital holdings to absorb greater losses. Senate Democrat Elizabeth Warren questioning Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf with concerns about how cryptocurrency has been linked to global crime and terrorism. Do you think that crypto companies facilitating financial transactions should have to follow the same anti -money laundering rules that your bank has to follow? Absolutely. Justin Finch, ABC News, Washington. President Joe Biden says tribal nations in the U .S. have gotten record investments under his watch. These Informational are investments going to help tribes but they help all Americans. We know the federal dollars are vital to your communities in order to be able to thrive. Speaking at the Tribal Nations Summit in DC today, the President says his administration is doing more for Native Americans than any other president. He adds he's working to cut down on the red tape to get that funding to tribes even faster. It's 637 and sports with sports is right around the corner. 3, 2, 1, Happy New Year! Count down to cash at the Squally Red Wind Casino and win your share of $30 ,000 cash in the New Year's Eve cash party drawings on Sunday, December 31st at 4, 6 and 8 p a .m. Win $10 ,000 cash during our New Year's Eve cash party drawings. The Nisqually Red Wind Casino. Your VIP here. See redwindcasino .com for full details. For all things automotive repair and maintenance, Tom Turner knows where to go. Performance prep is one of the region's top automotive repair shops and welcomes even the most challenging automotive problems on all makes and all models of domestic and import vehicles. Certified expert technicians. Years of experience, but they're also really good at something
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from BREAKING: Bitcoin Spot ETF to be Approved Friday!? | EP 866
"It's all going to zero against Bitcoin. It's going up for everyone. Bitcoin! You're against Bitcoin, you're against freedom. Yo, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin Live, you're your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution covered breaking news, culture, and medic warfare. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state. Today is November 13th, 2023. I hope everyone had an amazing weekend. Breaking news, it seems like the deadline for whether or not the spot Bitcoin ETF will be approved in 2023 is going to be November 17th. It's coming up. It's coming up in a couple of days. What are they going to say? Are they going to approve it? Are they not going to approve it? I definitely think it's going to be one of those things where it's like pump up on the news and then giant sell off, you know, because that's what always happens if you've been in the space for a while. But it's it's absolutely bonkers that we've we've gotten to this point. Now, we've talked a lot about what the downsides and what the upsides of of a Bitcoin spot of a spot Bitcoin ETF are going to be. Obviously, a lot more liquidity going into the market. I definitely believe it will make number go up. But like Caitlin Long said when she came on Simply Bitcoin IRL and Lawrence Lippard, you know, it also risks for for rehypothecation of Bitcoin in the selling of paper Bitcoin. Now, obviously, I don't think it's going to be as easy to do than how they did that in the gold market due to gold's physical characteristics and due to Bitcoin's unique ability of being able to be transported and custody very easily, you know, for pennies on the dollar, you could send it anywhere around the world. You could take self custody of Bitcoin, millions, billions, theoretically trillions of dollars by writing down 12 words, 24 words, not to mention, you know, using multisig if you want to beef up your security setup. So actual the ability for you to take custody of it very quickly and very efficiently, I think is going to protect it from what they did to gold. But that's not to say that they're not going to try. Like I think the long term play here based on the FinCEN, you know, what's going on with FinCEN, which we're going to talk about tomorrow, how they're demonizing mixing services. But the things are so broad that it's like a single use address counts as of some type of mixing. And then the words are what I would call the Freudian slip from Elizabeth Warren, basically finally saying the quiet part out loud because Bitcoin exposes all incentives after all, finally admitting that, you know, self custody is some type of this highly sophisticated way of money laundering, of skirting regulations. Right. Like and of course, they're planting the seed. That's why they come up with these words, unhosted wallet, you know, custody wallet, non custodial wallet. Right. They're trying to plant the seeds in the uninformed populace that somehow self custody is dangerous. Well, the reason they're doing that is because self custody is the revolution. And if enough people take self custody will win and there's nothing they can do about it. So it's pretty crazy that the that the date to come is on Friday. But again, all of this would be rumors. All of this would be a big nothing burger. But actually, the CEO of Grayscale, which is one of those companies they hold up, not only do they hold an F ton of Bitcoin, but it's also one of those companies that have applied to file a spot Bitcoin ETF, has been hinting at some things on Twitter. He tweeted it out very, very early this morning before right before eight a .m. Eastern Time. So, I mean, it looks like. There could be a potential approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF on Friday. And if it was one, it wouldn't just be just one approved. There'd be multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs approved. Right. So that's what's going on right now. That's the breaking news. We're going to cover it like always. We're going to analyze it. We're going to show you guys all the details. We're going to make the case like we always do. Anyways, no more delay. I want to bring up my legendary co -host, always optimistic, already smiling, giant smile. The chat's on point. The chat is losing their mind today. It's totally irrelevant to the conversation. Don't go look in the chat. It's probably inappropriate for you guys at work. But yeah, chat's undefeated over here. They're cracking me up. Anyways, yeah, Nico, what a crazy weekend. And it really just goes to show what we've been talking about on the show for months now that we are in the then they fight you stage. This is the separation of money and state and things are getting frothy, not only the price, but everything going on around Bitcoin is starting to become a point of contention. I think we've been talking about this all year, that the stance on Bitcoin from any quote unquote authority figure is the defining conversation right now. Of course, this was all going on behind the scenes and now it's becoming public and it's all happening publicly. And this is why I think there is so much uproar about it all, because now finally, everything from behind the scenes is being made public and being brought to light. So I think it's more important than ever to do what we always tell you guys to make sure that your Bitcoin is in cold storage, that you don't have Bitcoin on exchanges, that you are huddling them Bitcoin because we know that they don't want us to be in the escape route. We've said it before. You know, they don't want an exit route. And Bitcoin is that exit route. And we've been telling you guys constantly the on and off ramps are the chokeholds, like we've known this for a while and now it's heating up. So hopefully we can move forward. Hopefully there will be pushback. And as an individual, if you're on the Bitcoin standard, the Bitcoin circular economy already, what's this mean to you? Just some roller coaster rides and part of the Bitcoin fund. So we'll get a wine. All right. I'm getting trolled. I'm getting trolled. Go. That's another thing to kind of bring up. And we'll bring up the latest development on the FinCEN and stuff that happened over the weekend. We'll cover that on tomorrow's episode. But one thing's for sure, guys, we say this in the beginning of the show. It is our motto. We'll be your guide to the separation of money and state. We are definitely entering the Then They Fight You stage. That's for sure. You have to take action. Get involved. Don't be just a bystander looking at what's happening. Get involved. And unfortunately, I think over the long term, I do agree with the theory from the book The Sovereign Individual, where information technologies and the ability for individuals to opt out, opt into whatever money they choose to use is going to make politics irrelevant over the long term. I completely agree with that. But what worries me and what keeps me up at night is the transitional period. And during the transitional period, I do think that politics are somewhat important. I do think that they can make life very, very difficult for you if you are holding Bitcoin and you live in a certain jurisdiction. So unless you want to keep moving from place to place, to place and place, it's important that you get involved, right? Whether that is making memes, commenting, making videos, just highlighting the lies and the misrepresentations, like what happened with Elizabeth Warren in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. The more attention we call to that, the better we position ourselves, right? And the key is to win over the adoption race. We have to orange pill as many people as humanly possible, as quickly as possible, so that there's enough people holding Bitcoin in the US that if any politician tries to recommend anti -Bitcoin legislation, it becomes unpassable. And then the example that I would give to this would be the gun lobby, right? Any time you tried to pass a gun law in the United States, because so many people own guns, it just becomes impossible to pass, right? Hopefully we get to that much Bitcoin adoption in the United States very quickly, that any type of Elizabeth Warren type of regulation, any type of maneuvering and scheming just gets shut down just because it's so unpopular with everybody. But we're not we're not quite there yet. Bitcoin right now is still in the shadows. Like that's the reality. Like people know about Bitcoin. People know about crypto. They know about these things. They still think crypto and Bitcoin are the same thing. But it really comes down to us to really educate the masses. And I'm not talking about just me and Opti. I'm talking about everyone in the chat. Take it upon yourself. Take agency, take action. Orange pill as many people around you. Right. This is all about the individual pushing this forward. That's how we win. We win over the hearts and minds of people. It's not left versus right. That's the divide and conquer strategy. It's really the party of orange, party of peace, Bitcoin, opportunity, prosperity, versus a party of green, which is a party which is the future they want us living in, which is a party of central bank digital currencies, nihilism, slavery, confiscation, all of that bad stuff. So you got to decide what future do you want your children to be living in? I want my children to be living in a Bitcoin future. Well, we got to stand up and stand up for your right. Anyways, everybody, let's let's move on to the numbers. Yeah, I know, right. It's a good line. It's a good line. All right, everybody, let's move on to the numbers. We got a lot to talk about. Let's check it out.
Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
Fresh "Elizabeth Warren 'S" from Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
"Defend their territory. And it includes more air defense capabilities to protect Ukrainian cities and infrastructure from Russian missiles. I said the other day we fully expect the Russians to go after the energy infrastructure. So this air defense capabilities meant to help them defend against those attacks. Now Kirby says this could be the last package unless Congress acts. Earlier in the day, President Biden said the world is watching and that this is a battle for freedom. Now meanwhile pivoting to the Middle East, Kirby says aid is managing to into get Gaza. Conducted yet another US military airlift of 36 ,000 pounds of food assistance and medical supplies. I think in the coming days you'll see yet another US military assistance going into Egypt to then to get trucked into Gaza. And says it's up to Hamas as to whether more aid can get in. This is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli forces have surrounded the home of the leader of Hamas Yaya Simwar and Israeli forces are moving deeper into the south. Five Democratic senators are urging the Biden administration to impose more oversight over Israel's use of US supplied weaponry to make sure they don't cause more casualties among civilians. Mass at shooting the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Head of University Police Adam Garcia says the situation has been changed. Officers immediately responded, engaged the suspect. The suspect at this point is deceased. A sheriff's department says at least three people injured. The shooter was at Beam Hall, home of Lee Business School near the Student Union. Leaders of the nation's biggest banks on Capitol Hill today, interesting clients in one area formed. Senator Elizabeth Warren says Congress, as well as the banking industry, very concerned about crypto funding, every kind of criminal activity including funds in Iran and funding terrorism. When it comes to banking policy I am not usually holding hands with CEOs the of multi -billion dollar banks, but this is a matter of national security. And as we've been reporting, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says if he was in position to do so, he would Trump critics focusing on his appearance on Fox last night at a town hall with Sean Hannity where he said he would he would only be dictator for one day, day one. And he referenced no no no other than day one. And he referenced Al Capone. I often say Al Capone he was one of the greatest of all time if you like criminals. He was a mob boss the likes of which Scarface they call indicted him. once. And he I got got indicted four times. So back to dictator, no? Except for day one. Except for day one. He's going crazy. Except for day one. Meaning? I want to close the border and I want to drill. That's not at all. Trump has long vowed retribution against his foes. Global News 24 hours a day and whenever you want it with Bloomberg News Now. In San Francisco, I'm Ed Baxter and this is Bloomberg guys. Alright Eddie, thank you. We were talking a moment ago about this hearing before a Senate committee in Washington where the CEOs from the big Wall Street banks seemed to be a bit in attack mode. They were taking aim at proposals to require some of the banks to hold more capital. You may recall rules proposed back in July would require big banks to increase their cushion by nearly twenty percent as a way of ensuring they can survive another financial crisis. Today the CEO said the proposed rules would likely increase pricing or reduce availability of loans. Here is the CEO of Citigroup, Jane Fraser, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee. The most likely result of increasing the cost of banks to offer a variety of products is that it would move more activity into the less regulated non -bank sector, which carries its own risk for consumers and the stability of the financial system. It would also diminish our industry's ability to compete internationally, especially with our European counterparts. City CEO Jane Fraser there. One by one these banking executives also confidently told lawmakers their institutions were safe and that everyday Americans would ultimately pay the price if those tougher rules were to be enacted. Well, it was certainly a big day today for advanced micro devices. As the company unveiled its new MI 300 accelerator chip, AMD CEO Lisa Su says the market for these chips will climb to more than $400 billion over the next four years. And she told us these chips will help develop artificial intelligence models. You know, if you're running these models, you can actually run more models or you can run larger models, you know, with MI 300. and right now, you know, the key to AI is GPU compute. I mean, that is absolutely what everybody says and so we're here to provide lots of GPU compute. That is AMD CEO Lisa Su. Now the company's chip launch today is one of the most important in the company's five -decade history. AMD is hoping these new chips will help it compete with NVIDIA and that red hot market for AI accelerators. the news today, Despite AMD shares were down 1 .3 percent in the regular session. We are hearing that SpaceX is looking to sell insider shares. The tender offer could value the company at about $175 billion or more. Now that would be a big premium to the $150 billion valuation SpaceX obtained this summer through a tender offer. Moody's Investor Services is now going after Chinese financial institutions. Moody's cut us out. Look for eight Chinese banks to negative a day after unveiling a bearish stance on the nation's sovereign bonds due to concerns about debt levels. Moody's also lowered its outlook on Hong Kong and Macau and placed 26 local government financing vehicles on for review downgrade. China has been defending its debt status with state media running articles citing experts denounced who Moody's understanding of the economy in Washington and Kate's Bloomberg Radio. Well, the European Union is expected to take a tough line with China later today when talks begin in Beijing. We have on man in Hong Kong. It's the first in -person summit in four years. Sources tell Bloomberg EU the will push hard on issues ranging from industry overcapacity, market access, EV subsidies and data flows. The EU wants to level the playing field with China. China is expected to push back on the EU probe into subsidies and it will show opposition to the EU's drive to de risk with Beijing on overcapacity. Europe is concerned that Beijing's flagging economy will push China into exporting even more and that would threaten critical industries in Europe and their workers. Ukraine is also expected to be a critical issue. In Hong Kong I'm Yvonne Mann, Bloomberg Radio. Also today Italy officially telling China it will exit the Belt and Road Initiative. That from story Bloomberg's Joan Wong in Hong Kong. Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Maloney has been preparing for to months put an end to her country's involvement. Italy's Foreign Minister said the pact has not produced the desired effects and is no longer a priority. Italy was the only G7 country to join the pact as it looked to boost economic ties with China but it has been caught in the middle of escalating tensions among Washington, Brussels and Beijing. Italy had until the end of the year to decide whether it would renew its involvement after its participation expires in March. The exit now may risk angering Beijing. In Hong Kong, I'm Joan Wong, Bloomberg Radio. We are at eleven minutes past the hour as we welcome our guest Ross Mayfield. Ross is investment strategist, analyst at Baird. He joins us from Louisville, Kentucky. Ross, thanks for stopping by. I think we have to begin with the interest rate environment. The market seems wholeheartedly convinced that the Fed is done. The debate right
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from Michael Saylor: Mainstream Bitcoin Awareness is EXPLODING | EP 865
"It's all going to zero against Bitcoin. It's going up forevermore. Bitcoin! You're against Bitcoin, you're against freedom. Yo, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin Live, your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution, color -breaking news, culture, medic warfare. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state. Anyways, Michael Saylor is just, he's just taking it all in. He's having a victory, victory dance right now. He's up on his Bitcoin investment. I saw a tweet the other day, did you guys know that every thousand dollars Bitcoin goes up in price? The Michael Saylor's Bitcoin investment goes up like 158 million dollars. It's just some like absurd amount like that. So yes, Michael Saylor is vindicated and more importantly, we're going to play you guys a clip today where he's making the case that we've been making for this last week, really for the last couple of weeks, that Bitcoin awareness is going mainstream. You're seeing that. You're seeing that when Natalie Burnell, we played you guys the clip on yesterday's episode, where she went on Fox Business and she's literally saying how Bitcoin is the money of peace and fiat is the money of war, how Bitcoin gives the opportunity to the younger generations and millennials and the Gen Z -ers and she's saying this on legacy mainstream media, right? So yeah, I completely agree with with Saylor, Bitcoin is going mainstream. It is the legal tender of a nation state, of a country. And I think that in the next cycle, there's going to be so many public companies, there's going to be so many countries, they're going to be looking at what Michael Saylor is doing and looking at what Naeem Bukhale is doing and just come to the inevitable conclusion that, OK, the Bitcoin strategy is obviously superior. It's obviously the way to go, right? So anyways, very, very exciting times. We are ending the week with a bullish episode, but in the montage as well, I added some other things because I can't just be full, you know, bulltard all the time. We are going to talk about CBDCs and digital IDs that they're planning to roll out in Europe and all over the world. Make no mistake. And you're seeing the attacks by governments, you know, the CyUp attack by Elizabeth Warren and co -intermedia allies to try to shove down the throats of Americans, these crazy, insane proposals by the FinCEN that would basically make it like look down upon for you to use a single use Bitcoin wallet address, which is like by default, that's how they work. Right. So like, obviously, you can make the case that there was more sinister intentions when they made these crazy proposals, right? So anyways, you don't call it the separation of money and state for no reason. That's exactly what we're living through, ladies and gentlemen. And the way that you protect yourself through all this chaos, all this madness, the great disintermediation is by taking self -custody of your Bitcoin. Anyways, everybody, no more delay. I want to bring up my legendary co -host. He is optimistic today. He must have spent the night with Chrissy. How are you doing? No, I did not stop spreading fake news, Niko. I'm doing well, man. It's Friday. It's Friday. What's up, everyone? Hope you guys are going to have a good weekend. And then I have to I have to off the rip combat something you said, Niko, I stay bulltarded, always stay bulltarded. This is the way. Always stay bullish. But of course, be conservative and make sure people don't get wrecked out there. That's that's always some good wisdom. And before we go on, guys, we apologize for starting a little bit late. I see some people complaining, you know, we had to take care of some business, had to deal with some technical issues to get our guests on point today. Like, hey, we do our best to make sure we're on time. So forgive us, guys. We don't do it often. I get it. You know, we will respect your time. We love you guys. It is what it is. Sometimes we're a little late, you know. Hey, we love you. We love you. But there's things that happen that are outside of our control. Anyways, on that note, let's bring in our guests. Shouts out to Tony Miltenberger, a Bitcoiner. And I think he's going to drop some wisdom on us about connecting the dots and inflation today in the culture. So I'm excited for this one. You know, we love to spread that wisdom and try to get our minds right when we have these conversations with our Normie friends and family and everyone out there that tells us we're wrong. Anyways, Tony, how are you doing this morning? Very good. Thank you very much for having me on the show and happy Veterans Day. Let's go. So it's and it's Friday, so let's make it a good one. Absolutely. It is Friday. It is Friday after all for 100 percent. We have made it through the week. Let's finish it. Let's finish it off very, very strong. All right, everybody, no more delay. Let's jump straight into the numbers.
Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
Fresh "Elizabeth Warren 'S" from Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
"Were about an hour away from trading in Japan. Then if you look at the equity market we were weak across the board particularly in the NASDAQ arena, composite index down today by 6 .1%. The S &P 500 off about 4 .1%. If you look at the broader market the retreat here led by the energy producers we had crude oil tumbling in New York 4%. We broke below 70 bucks. We were down for a fifth straight session. In that period of time those five trading days WTI is down 11%. of A lot skepticism about the efficacy of the latest output cuts from OPEC plus because you have measure to that against the fact that non -OPEC supply is on the rise. WTI right now steady pretty here. We're trading 69 .53 in the electronic session. Dow Industrial average weaker by two -tenths of 1 percent and we'll take another look at market action for in about fifteen minutes. Brian. Alright Doug thanks very much. Time now for global news. President Biden's request for Ukraine and Israeli funding blocked in the Senate. Head back with that story and more from the San Francisco 960 newsroom. Yeah that's right Brian did not make it very far a block kept the aid package from even advancing to the floor. Republicans have insisted of course that foreign aid must be paired with major border security policy changes. They've not reached consensus but the White House says it is not time to cut aid for Ukraine and something will be done and go out now. National Security Council coordinator John Kirby. This package includes more artillery ammunition to help Ukraine defend their territory and it includes more air defense capabilities to protect Ukrainian cities and infrastructure from Russian missiles. I said the other day we fully expect the Russians to go after the energy infrastructure so this air defense capability is meant to help them defend against those attacks. But Kirby says this could be the last package unless Congress acts. Now earlier in the day President Biden said the world is watching and that this is a battle for freedom globally. Meantime in the Senate Republicans have the votes to block it and meanwhile Kirby says aid is managing to get to Gaza as well. ...conducted yet another US military airlift of 36 ,000 pounds of food assistance and medical supplies. I think in the coming days you'll see yet another US military airlift of aid and assistance going into Egypt then to get trucked into Gaza. And says it's up to Hamas This as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli forces have surrounded the home of the famous Yahya Sinwar and five Democratic senators are urging the Biden administration to impose more oversight over Israel's use of US supplied weaponry to make sure they don't cause more civilian casualties. Mass shooting at the University of Nevada Las Vegas head of University Police Adam Garcia says the situation is contained. Officers immediately responded and engaged the suspect. The suspect suspect at this point is deceased. There are multiple victims though the shooter was at Abim Hall home of UNLV's Lee Business School near the Student Union. Leaders of the nation's biggest banks on Capitol Hill today and an interesting alliance has formed now. Senator Elizabeth Warren says Congress as well as a backing industry very concerned about crypto funding every kind of criminal activity including funds in Iran and funding terrorism. When it comes to banking policy I am not usually holding hands with the CEOs of multi -billion dollar banks but this is a matter of national security. And as we're reporting JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says if he was in position to do so he would shut crypto Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has announced today he is going to resign from Congress. We'll have more on that later this half hour. The last GOP debate before the Iowa caucus tonight. And Trump critics are focusing on his appearance on Fox last night at a town hall with Sean Hannity where he said he would only be a dictator for one day day one. He says you're not going to be a dictator are you? I said no No no other than day one. Yeah and referenced Al Capone. I often say Al Capone he He was was one of the greatest of all time if you like criminals. He was a mob boss the likes of which Scarface they call him. And he got indicted once. I got indicted four times. So back to dictator. No. Except for day one. Except he's going crazy. Except for day one meaning I want to close the border and I want to drill. Global news 24 hours a day and whenever you you want it with Bloomberg News Now in San Francisco. I'm Ed Baxter and this is Bloomberg. All right Brian. much. Thanks very Time now for the top business and economic stories. Well our headline calls it attack mode on Hill. Capitol Wall Street bank CEOs opposing US regulators proposals for them to raise capital. proposed Rules back in July would require the big banks to increase their capital cushion by almost 20 percent. This would be to ensure that they can survive another financial crisis. Goldman Sachs CEO David advised Solomon here before the Senate Banking Committee. We can always have debates at the margin as to whether or not there are things that we can do that can strengthen the system but a wholesale increase of 25 percent on capital the largest banks with lots of individual provisions that affect different activities. I think is ultimately punitive to economic growth and doesn't strike the right cost -benefit analysis. David Solomon. One by one banking executives confidently told lawmakers their institutions were safe. They say that everyday Americans will ultimately pay the price if these tougher rules are enacted. It certainly was a big day for advanced micro devices. The company
Bankless
A highlight from ROLLUP: The Bull Market is On | Ethereum ETF | Near Layer2
"Bankless Nation, it is the second Friday of November. David, tell them what time it is. Oh, it's bull market time, Ryan. It's a bull market. It's a bull market. It's also, what's up? This is a special edition of the weekly roll up. And you told me not to ruin this title, this theme for you. So I'm not going to do it. Go, you say it. It's the, we are so back edition of the Friday bankless weekly roll up where we cover all the weekly news in crypto, especially focusing on the markets this week because God candles are happening. Coins are moving. We're getting the double digit price movements. Markets are alive. And NFTs are no exception to that. Everything is up. Every single listener of this podcast has more money today than they had last week. So congratulations. Pat yourself on the back. I declare that we made it. We made it through the pair. We made it. The bear's over. You're saying it? It's official now? It's official. All right. Well, so everybody is up on the week, except for those, those few Fiat Maximists. Except for the short sellers who are idiots. Do you think any Fiat Maximus and short sellers listen to bankless? How dare they? Just hate listens. Hate views, hate listens. Guys, in addition to the markets though, we've got a few other questions that we're asking. I'm going to rattle them off. Did BlackRock just file for a new spot? Eth ETF is near moving to Ethereum. Did Elizabeth Warren apologize for lying about crypto? I bet you can guess that last one. There's so many questions today. There's a lot of excitement going into the episode. David, before we get in, want to shout out our friends and sponsors over at Linea. They are inviting the bankless nation to go on a voyage. This is a DeFi voyage, a crypto voyage, because they have a new ZK EVM that you absolutely have to check out if you want to pioneer the frontier. David, tell them about Linea and what is the voyage? The voyage is six weeks of 10 ways of activity, 10 core tasks, some optional bonus tasks as well, with over 60 DeFi apps all to engage with. Why would you engage with them? Well, you know the points mechanism. FriendTech did this. They're giving out points. Linea XP, Voyage XP, is like a game, non -transferable ERC20 token that you accrue for going on the Linea voyage. So there is a link in the show notes to explore what is a new ZK EVM layer two on the scene. So you can collect some Linea XP by doing the Linea voyage. There's a link in the show notes. I think this is where we're going to spend the bull market, David, is on roll -ups and layer twos because Ethereum gas fees are going up, my friends. Oh, they are not low. We got to migrate. We got to migrate, but let's talk about the markets. All right, these charts look so beautiful today. This is the Kraken Bitcoin chart from Kraken Pro. And look at this candle up, this big green candle, followed by a candle down a little bit, but I'm still happy because it's still up. Tell me about this candle, what's going on? What's the price on the week? Yeah, Bitcoin started the week at 34 ,600, trying desperately to get its head back above 35 ,000 and not fall resistance to that, not fall back down. And then it just like blasted through right before we started recording, touched ,000 $38 going from right below $35 ,000 where it's been all week to $38 ,000. It is now at the time of recording at 36 ,500. So coming back a little bit, but 36 ,500 is real nice. Really, really nice. It's really nice. And this is the highest Bitcoin has been. I mean, I'm just scrolling out on the Kraken chart here. Like 24 months, how long has it been? I got to keep scrolling. It's been a very long time. You can't keep scrolling because your candles are one hour candles. So if you go up to the top one day, yeah, this is how you use Kraken charts. How I trade. Okay, yeah. Here we go. So look at the line, see where it intersects. May of 2022. Okay, so we killed the FTX liquidation. Bitcoin replaced that pretty early, in early 2023. And then halfway through 2023, we erased the three arrows capital liquidation. So three arrows capital is now in a distant memory. Those are no longer relevant parts of the market. And we are in process of finalizing the removal of the Terra Luna dump, which happened in May of 2022. We're almost there. I think if we just get maybe up to back, if we hold $38 ,000, Terra Luna is in the rear view mirror. It's also the season where you're starting to get, you're gonna start to get text messages from your friends and family. You have? My very dormant crypto chat that was dominant throughout 2020 and 2021 is now like, oh, we're back, baby.
Bloomberg Markets
Fresh update on "elizabeth warren s" discussed on Bloomberg Markets
"It's like Festivus come early and see if they can try and get of some the pressure on that Fed because they're certainly airing it. The Republicans are certainly receptive to it and you know with Elizabeth Warren about to come up in the next few minutes it'll be really interesting to see what she has to say. Any sense that these Wall Street CEOs and their lobbying efforts can in effect water down to some degree some of the proposed legislation whether it's you know in terms of capital requirements and so on? Absolutely. The Fed is on the ropes here. You know the Fed is skating it. Oh yeah. Because they put this proposal out and there is I think a lot of disagreement both on the you know you have the capital requirements increased but then you also have this standardization model. So there's three pillars to the Basel III endgame. The operational risk, credit risk, and market risk. And that operational risk, this is something that the banks have never had to have as binding before and there's a lot of downlayer impact here. So we've seen it from Senator Warner in his statement today. There's concerns about the impact of mortgage lending. Now the Fed has a challenge. So they've put this proposal out and everybody I think is agreement that there needs to be changes here but can the Fed make all these changes and not have to re -propose the rule? Because if they do and they finalize it, there could be an Administrative Procedures Act violation here. So I think there's general agreement that there are amendments coming. can they find that right amount of just making it right so that the moderate Democrats are happy, the progressive Democrats are happy, and eventually the courts won't rule against them? I'm not sure. So the Fed is really on a tricky path right now. We'll see probably in around February, March after the comment deadline where they're feeling. One point that of was the raised points that during these hearings so far, the parts that we've listened to has been that why are we doing this now? We're seeing high interest rates and this is just is going to going to eliminate some of the funding in the system and therefore that's going to mean credit conditions are tighter. Is that Is something that's salient, you think, with that, I guess, key moderate Democrat there any contingent that needs to agree to this in order to see it really move forward? So I think there's two hot thoughts here. One, this was something the regulators always wanted to do. Remember, this is something that Europe and UK have already implemented. The Americans are just about three to five years behind. But also let's remember that it took President Biden several years to get his people in place at the regulators. You know, there was a woman who was a candidate for Michael Barr's position at the Fed. She withdrew, couldn't get the votes. And so that took time that delayed things. But you know, to the regulatory defense, we had a regional bank turmoil issue earlier this year. It's hard to focus on policy when you're doing that. this So this proposal came out at the tail end of the administration. And so, you know, I think it's just one of those unfortunate timings where the economy and the policy goals just didn't line up. Uh, Nathan Dean, Senior Policy Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence in Washington, DC. President Biden is scheduled general to speak at noon today, Wall Street time to discuss a of key number issues, including the war and funding in Ukraine. Nathan, and we will bring that and he does speak. Nathan, there's a lot of items on the agenda for Congress here and they're getting ready to leave, I'm guessing from the holidays at some point soon here. Should we expect anything of note to actually get, you know, to move to get some movement here in terms of legislation. You know, it's looking less and less likely it's going to happen before the holidays. I mean, we have Ukraine aid, we have Israel aid, we have border security, industry. You know, FAA reauthorization does have to happen by the end of the year. So don't be surprised if they do a quick kick the the can down the road bill on that. But it's looking like all this is going to be roped up into this funding funding fight that we're seeing in January, I mean, you've got, you know, four out of the 12 appropriation bills going under or at least going offline on January 19. And if we haven't made a decision on Ukraine or Israel or border security at that point, and I don't think we will because I think policymakers are ready to just go drink their eggnog and head home. I just think January is going to be this month where they come back and it's all going to come together. Now, I do believe that can a deal be made. I mean, there are enough folks that want Ukraine aid, that want Israel aid, you know, whether border security in is there or not, that's still to be determined. But, you know, the problem that's happening right now putting is there's pressure nothing on policymakers that says you must do this right now. The government funding fight could potentially be that catalyst in January. Yeah, we were talking to Billy House earlier, who's also in C D about what the potential facets of that deal might look like. Do you have any sense of exactly which pieces of the border security and which pieces of Ukraine the aid or the monitoring of it could, you know, at least we could see some people compromise on both sides of the aisle? Yeah, you know, what we're looking for at B .I. is the Ukraine overall number. know, You know, President Biden proposed in his 100 around $43 .6 billion for Ukraine specifically, my and colleague Will Lee, who covers the defense contractors, put out a great piece talking about how that could be a single digit revenue gain for those, you know, large publicly traded defense contractors. So what we're looking for is can the Ukraine aid go ahead? And what's the overall dollar amount? You know, the Israel aid, the dollar amount is much smaller. It doesn't have as of much an impact on those defense contractors. So, you know, as we think of like investment decisions in January, notwithstanding the whole government funding issue, you know, that's our key priority. it's So interesting. There's so much so many moving pieces down there, Nathan. I mean, I guess at the end of the day, something will get done. But what? But what? I mean, I just, I don't, you know, it's really hard to say where we're going to go on this, but there's so much that needs to be done in terms of funding, including some of the foreign aid. I'm not even sure who's in the driver's seat here. So, it's going to be Speaker Johnson, obviously, from the Republican side, and it's going to have, it's going to be Senator Chuck Schumer in the White House. But just also remember this, we have an election next year. There is going to be a point where the policymakers are going to say, look, I don't want to with deal this anymore, I've got to run for re -election. Senator Sherry Brown, even in the hearing today, was a much angrier Sherry Brown that we had ever seen in recent hearings, I think, because of that re -election fight. So, when it comes to the government funding, and so forth, January and February, there's going to be a lot of negative headlines, a lot of we don't know what's going to happen. But, ultimately, we do think something will come together because nobody wants to be in these types of fights three, four, five months before the election, for two reasons. One, you want to show that you can govern. if But, two, you're here in Washington fighting, you're not out in your district campaigning. And if you're running against somebody who's not in Congress, that's a lot of air time that that person's going to have to spend in the district. So, look for Congress to actually come together and get something, get this stuff done, kick it off their plate, send it to 2025 and say, I'm just focusing on the election now. Just in quickly, the last 30 seconds or so we have left, there seems to be some distance between Speaker Johnson and his counterparts in the Senate, how do we narrow that gap? You know, there's always going to be differences. I mean, this distance never comes closer. I mean, I can't remember a time where, you know, other than kicking the can where they just say, oh, yeah, you're good, you're good. No, it doesn't happen like that. But what does happen is pressure the and Speaker Johnson has pressure. Senator, you know, Chuck Schumer has pressure.
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from Why MrBeast NEEDS to Adopt Bitcoin | EP 864
"It's all going to zero against Bitcoin. It's going up for everyone. You're against Bitcoin, you're against freedom. Yeah, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin Live. We're your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolutionary, groundbreaking news, culture, and matter of warfare. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state. Today, we're going to talk about the most famous and most successful YouTuber on the face of the planet, MrBeast. And I know what a lot of you guys are thinking. This Bitcoin show, what are we like? Why are we talking about that? Well, we talk a lot about the concept of breaking the Bitcoin echo chamber. Bitcoin content creators and just Bitcoiners in general, we talk a lot about Bitcoin because we love it and we understand how it's going to fundamentally change the world. But what happens more often than not is that we're preaching the gospel to other Bitcoiners. Our challenge is to break through, break through that so -called echo chamber so that the ethos, the ideas of Bitcoin start to seep into mainstream consciousness. We win over the culture. We win over the information war. Our challenge is how do we get Bitcoin culture into the mainstream? That's our battle over the next five, ten years. Corey Clipston, CEO, founder of Swan, wrote the race to avoid the war. It is vital for us to orange pill as many people as humanly possible before the inevitable clash happens between the nation state governments and Bitcoin. You're seeing that with Elizabeth Warren. We have a thread today about the European Union. They're so happy. They announced the rollout of the digital ID that's going to be paired with a digital wallet. Remember how they said that that was a conspiracy theory for so long? That's coming. You have Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, basically getting all giddy talking about the introduction of the European Central Bank digital currency. You have the Fed now that's being rolled out here in the United States. They just sued Bitcoin magazine for making fun of them, right? So it might seem like it's a big nothing burger. It might seem like noise. But the reality is that as Bitcoiners, we have to break this Bitcoin echo chamber because the reality is that our opponents, right, central banks, fiat money, really, they don't really have the truth on their side. Like if people had all the facts and they're like, OK, you're completely informed. You get to choose between one and the other. Ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of people would pick Bitcoin. Obviously, it's deflationary and it's censorship resistant. Governments are always going to want to censor and they're always going to want to inflate because that's how they pay for themselves. So when we talk about Joe Rogan, we talk about Russell Brand, we talk about Mr. Beast, even though it might not seem Bitcoin related, it's really, really important that these people use their platform because it's a lot of normies, a lot of people that are not necessarily into Bitcoin. And they use their platform to talk about Bitcoin. You've seen Tim Pool do this. You've seen Joe Rogan do this all in a positive light, of course. I'm not sure if Russell Brand has mentioned Bitcoin. And this has all happened because the likes of Max Keiser have done the rounds on these shows. And Max Keiser was telling people to buy Bitcoin since 2013. And they heard this and they chose not to listen. And then the number go up, does its thing. Right. And eventually number go up. You know, it's a very harsh teacher. And then people are just like, you know what? Max was pretty right about this Bitcoin stuff. And then they see what's going on with the government money. And they're like, OK, this is crazy. Now, we did have confirmation that Mr. Beast did mention that he owned one point five million dollars with the Bitcoin on Logan Paul show. So he does have Bitcoin. I don't think he takes it very seriously. But what I wanted to cover today is this legacy media hit piece on Mr. Beast, basically criticizing him for him making a video where he. Made wells and he supplied water, clean drinking water to five hundred thousand people in Africa.
Tech Path Crypto
Fresh update on "elizabeth warren s" discussed on Tech Path Crypto
"OK, so, man, Emer is all over them. I mean, he absolutely is not is not given up. What are your what are your position? Do you feel like we're going to get legislation or at least a little bit of a bandaid on the SEC overreach this this round? No, because we have an extreme and I'm cheering for them, but extreme vocal minority that is making these points, Emer, Davidson, Flood, McHenry. Right. We know all of them. I would have loved to have seen Emer become speaker of the House. I think that would have been extremely impactful. And there was a moment there when it seemed like that was a realistic possibility. But yeah, listen, I think that this isn't an indictment of crypto policy. I think it's an indictment of our government. If you ask me if I think anything will get done in the next year, I would say no. Right. I mean, it's election season and everybody's just trying to get reelected. They're worried about their jobs. Nobody really wants to pass any controversial legislation at this point. I don't think I think everybody's just kind of biding their time, getting their talking points. Listen, once again, Emer McHenry, these guys, they come out, they're so amazing with all this bluster. They poo poo all over the SEC. But then we don't see any movement. Right. And most notably, I think, is you don't see any fear in the eyes of the SEC people that are getting grilled, including Gensler himself, because his mandate comes from a higher power. It's not about him. It's about Elizabeth Warren and the Biden White House, obviously. And until it becomes so politically unpopular to take the stance that he does or until they tell him to change his mandate, it's very clear he doesn't care what anyone says. He doesn't care about public opinion. He's going to do exactly what he's going to do about crypto and everything else, for that matter. That's not unique to crypto. So I think we could get some very basic stablecoin legislation potentially before we get to a presidential election. But that's about it. I don't think we're going to see these market structure bills passed. I talk to guys at the Blockchain Association all the time. They're not optimistic that any of this is going to happen. We even saw these bills passed through committee. They don't even get brought to the floor of Congress and Congress is Republican. Right. And imagine that passing Congress. We're going to get through the Senate and the White House to get any of this legislation passed into law. I just don't see it. I think that our government is too fundamentally broken. That said, it's amazing that we have these people on our side, that they've made it a major talking point, that they truly do care about it. And more importantly, they actually understand it. Right. And they're out there willing to sort of bang heads with the regulators. But listen, the SEC is going to continue to regulate their enforcement. They've crushed a number of coins, at least temporarily, a number of platforms. They basically outright killed Binance U.S. without ever proving a single thing just by making accusations, getting their bank access cut off, you know, making retail run away because they were scared. And in the end, we don't even know if they did anything wrong as a platform. You know, so it seems that going back to what we talked about earlier, there's a lot of people in crypto that are getting killed without due process, you know, or basically the SEC opens their mouth and your coin goes down 30 percent that protecting consumers that hurting them. There's Americans that own all of these things that Gary Gensler has a vendetta against and he's doing nothing to protect those people. He's literally just hurting the value of their investments, you know. And so I think that it has become wildly unpopular. I think it's very encouraging to see the justice system continually dunk all over the SEC, but I just don't see the SEC changing as a result of it. They're just going to keep doing what they're doing, take their bruises and move on. Yeah, well, I think, you know, obviously now we're dealing with courts that are starting to kind of give that up with it. But at the same time, I just feel like this is a huge embarrassment to Congress and the general public that is starting to understand it and the exposure that may come in a true presidential race where crypto most likely will start to be on the debate stage. And that in itself could open up some very intriguing elements. Obviously, we'll see this in the presidential landscape as it comes up in the next few months with I think the Republican. No, the DNC is in Chicago, I think, in March or something. So it could happen fairly quickly, for sure. Hey, Scott, it's always fun having you on. Thank you so much. If you guys want to check out Mr. Scott Melker, go over to his YouTube channel. And that's over at Scott Melker, the Wolf of All Streets podcast, for sure. It's a dope mess. So again, thanks for stopping in. We appreciate it. Thank you so much, Paul. Always an honor, man. We got to get told you we got to get you on our channels, man. We've had you on spaces a couple of times, so we got to do it more. Thank you. Anytime. All right. You guys are tuned in maybe over on the on our podcast. Jump over here to the YouTube channel. Get subscribed right now. Make sure to like a couple of videos. It's going to get it in your algorithm. You're going to start learning a little bit more about blockchain, Bitcoin, crypto, Web3, all that stuff that really is the innovation of technology. So hopefully this is a place or one of the places that you go to for your best alpha. Of course, if you're not in our diamond circle, get in now. It's a free newsletter that we do, but it's also a couple of podcasts that we do over there as well that do not make it here on YouTube. So it's a great place to get additional content. And of course, if you guys want to get me out there on X, it's just at Paul Barra. We'll catch you next time right here on Tech Path. We'll see you next time.
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from One Step Closer to Banning Bitcoin Self-Custody | EP 862
"It's all going to zero against Bitcoin. It's going up for everyone. Bitcoin! You're against Bitcoin, you're against freedom. Yeah welcome to Simply Bitcoin Live. We are your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state. Make no mistake, that's exactly what we are living through these days. Pretty, pretty crazy news. Gemini officially announced that they're going to block Bitcoin transfers to and from non -approved exchanges. This is huge news and of course they're following the recommendations by the FATF, the so -called travel rule. This is something that we've been covering for a couple years now because they've been trying to roll it out for a couple of years. And we've been making the case for a couple of years that they were going to use these regulations in order to clamp down on people's ability to take self -custody of their Bitcoin. They're going after the escape valve essentially. Elizabeth Warren last week, because again if you see the news by itself without connecting the dots it's a big nothing burger. But if you connect it to the other news then it starts to paint a bigger picture. Elizabeth Warren was on record testifying in the banking senate committee. She literally said the quiet part out loud. She said that crypto users were using even more sophisticated methods of circumventing sanctions by using technologies such as self -custody. And I'm paraphrasing but that's essentially what she's saying. And she's criminalizing it. She's criminalizing this idea that if the government doesn't have the ability to freeze your money at the flick of a switch, it's a danger to society somehow. Right? The reason that they were able to confiscate Americans gold in the 1930s, the infamous 6102 order, was because of the centralization of gold. Right? You had a large amount of gold, more than likely you custody it in a bank. But what happens when millions upon millions of individuals are taking self -custody of their wealth? It becomes a lot harder for the government to confiscate on a massive scale. And I think that is what this fundamentally comes down to. I think they're using money laundering as a straw man. I think they're using terrorism as a straw man. I think they're using drugs as a straw man. But in reality what they truly want is they want to take away the escape valve. While they continue with the reckless monetary policy that is impoverishing everybody, specifically if you're under the age of 35, their own fiat propaganda is literally telling you you will own nothing and be happy. They don't want you having an escape valve. It's as pure and simple as that. And if you don't believe me, look at their reaction to El Salvador making Bitcoin legal tender. Look at their reaction to the candidate Javier Melí, which by the way is up in the polls. Don't get your expectations up, but I did want to say that.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from SEC GARY GENSLER CALLED OUT FOR CRYPTO FAILURES!!
"The SEC is having trouble hiring crypto experts, you don't say? And SEC Commissioner Mark Ueda is calling out the agency on their lack of rules and regulations around the crypto industry. Also the UK has released their staple coin regulation ban, and a bunch of NFT goers at the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT convention went blind? Let's break it down. Welcome to the Thinking Crypto podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. Well folks, we've got a report here from Jeff Roberts, who is a crypto editor at Fortune magazine. He said the SEC is having trouble hiring crypto experts because of a rule they must sell all their crypto. He said, would make more sense to allow staff to hold a modest amount. This would also make them better at their job. So the SEC unbelievably is saying you have to sell all your crypto, right? It's not that they have to sell all their crypto, they should obviously have to disclose it and they should understand the technology and be able to use it and test it out. But of course we're dealing with scumbag regulator, Gary Gensler, who's making up all kinds of buddies can come in and take over. Matt Hogan of Bitwise, who I've had on the podcast quite often, he weighed in on the matter. He said, an obvious but unspoken implication of this is that the SEC will be staffed by people who dislike crypto. The only people with crypto expertise and a willingness to divest 100 % of their crypto are deep seated skeptics. This rule enforces a strong bias in hiring. Paul Grewal of Coinbase said, believe it or not, as a federal magistrate judge, I used to have a traffic ticket docket, think national parks, defense bases, VA hospitals. Imagine if the parties had learned a person deciding their auto accident case was forbidden from driving a car. Great points here. Now, Mark Ueda, who's one of the sitting SEC commissioners, and he is a Republican, him and Hester Peirce have both been vocal critics of the agency and on their lack of rules and clarity around crypto, also against many of the enforcement actions. So here's the headline, SEC should consider proposing rules to regulate crypto, Republican commissioner says. So I'm glad Mark Ueda is coming out and saying these things because it can't just be Hester Peirce. And right now, for the most part, it seems like Hester Peirce is outnumbered. So Mark needs to be more vocal, I'm glad he is speaking up. So here's a quote from him, unfortunately, the SEC did not take this approach and instead is pursuing a case by case approach through enforcement actions. As a result, it will take years to reach any type of legally binding precedent as matters will need to wind their way through the courts before reaching the court of appeals level, Ueda said on Monday in prepared remarks in London. So I hope he continues to speak on this, to show the agency is not in a good place, they are not providing clear guidance, they are operating by regulation by enforcement, which is really asinine. While the rest of the world is moving ahead, providing clear regulations. Now Eleanor Terrett of Fox Business highlighted the following, she tweeted, the House Appropriations GOP financial services and general government bill is up for vote before the rules committee at 4 p .m. Eastern before it heads to the floor. It includes an amendment from Tennessee Congressman Representative Tim Burchett to reduce the salary of SEC Chair Gary Gensler to one dollar. It also includes an amendment to defund the SEC for crypto enforcement. So shout out to Representative Tim Burchett, who's bringing the fire here on Gary Gensler. And we got to do these things, folks, to put some pressure. Gary Gensler should be fired and the SEC needs to be revamped. Congressman Warren Davidson has put out a bill, of course, that would revamp the entire structure of the SEC to make it less political and to make it more efficient. So let's see where this goes. But I love that these bills are coming out more pressure on scumbag regulator Gary Gensler. Now here's an interesting update around the Federal Reserve, and it just speaks to government and the lack of knowledge and education in government about crypto. So Matthew Seigel, who's head of crypto research at VanEck, he said, I met a Federal Reserve crypto researcher at a conference last week. He doesn't own any digital assets. He's not allowed to and didn't understand the difference between an exchange and a custodian. Folks, I'm face palming right now. I know you can't see me. And if you're listening on a podcast platform, trust me, I'm face palming right now. He doesn't understand the difference between an exchange and a custodian. God help us, right? These are the people who are trying to regulate crypto and putting out rules and recommendations and papers and so forth. It's unbelievable. But I know there are folks working to help bring education to Congress, and that is blockchain association, the Chamber of Digital Commerce and so forth. So we'll see, folks. We got a lot of work to do. This is why we have to use social media to our advantage to keep tweeting out, sharing the facts and exposing lies and false information like from the likes of Elizabeth Warren and others. Now, the juxtaposition of that is the UK's Bank of England releases stablecoin regulation plan. Remember, the UK had passed crypto regulations, so did the EU. So the US is lagging behind. And folks, stablecoins are going to be part of the token economy and will be a big part of how people transact. So there needs to be regulations. And we're seeing here in the United States, the SEC sending a subpoena to PayPal over their stablecoin, right? It's unbelievable what's happening. So the United Kingdom Central Bank, the Bank of England, has released a plan to govern the stablecoin market. The BOE and the Financial Conduct Authority plan to follow the rules released by the UK government last week to oversee the digital asset industry. As per the UK government's proposal, regulations for fiat backed stablecoins will begin in early 2024. As per the paper, the BOE will regulate systematic stablecoins while the FCA will govern the larger crypto market. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sanak had announced that he wants the nation to become a crypto hub, introducing clear rules for digital assets and crypto firms falls within the UK's goals. The UK's latest plan follows the European Union and Japan's similar moves. Folks, I love that crypto is not a specific asset class to the United States. So even though we're dealing with scumbag regulator Gary Gensler and all kinds of idiots in the government who have not educated themselves, the market will continue to grow and expand globally. So we can at least put our hope in that. Now we got some really weird news coming out from the Bored Ape Yacht Club and full disclosure, I don't own any Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, but apparently they had an NFT convention and there was some UV lights and folks who were blasted by this prolonged UV light went blind apparently. So, I mean, this is just wild, right? I don't know what to make of it, but just so you guys know, I don't know if any of you went to any of these conventions or this convention, I should say, but, or, you know, somebody who went to this convention, but this is just some wild news coming out of 2023. So heads up on that folks, I want to end it by highlighting our sponsor and that is Uphold, which is a great crypto exchange this month, they're giving away 50 ,000 XRP. All you got to do is complete at least $20 in trades to be eligible to win and Uphold is a great platform. I trust them. I've been using them since 2018. So if you'd like to learn more, please visit the link in the description. Thank you.
Bitcoin & Crypto Trading: Ledger Cast
A highlight from Begging for bubbles
"Hello and welcome to LectureCast, my name is Brian Crossguard, here with the one, the only Josh Olszowiec. Mr. Brian. Josh, how you doing, man? I'm fully engaged. Training goes on. Fully engaged. Fully engaged. That is a readiness state I wasn't prepared for. We have charts on my end that are - Yeah, you did preparation. I'm impressed. I did not. That's okay. But you encouraged me to look up some stuff that I want to talk about on the show. We're going to talk about bubbles today because I titled it Begging for Bubbles. Well, you mentioned my moving average video and clearly that just set off - Listen, I just need the price. I need the price to separate from the fast moving averages and the slow moving averages to the upside, of course. We need some bubblicious behavior. And listen, if you're feeling some FOMO, don't worry, you're not alone. You're just like Isaac Newton. We were talking about people who had gotten fleeced in bubbles and I really enjoyed this one. Even smart people struggle with FOMO. Isaac Newton invests in the South Sea stock, exits with the profit, then his friends get richer than him and then he re -enters with a lot of money at the top and then goes broke. I don't know. A year later. It's almost like the investor sentiment chart or Wall Street cheat sheet. It is except for the whole re -entry component and he's just like you. So if you're feeling FOMO, don't worry, there'll be other trades. There'll be trades. Take your time. I was going to ask you this too. What do you think is the most important thing about trading? Trade management. Discipline. I'd go even more basic. I'd say just make sure you have a seat at the table. There's always another trade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't go broke. So that's part of trade management, right? Don't blow up. Yeah, it is. Don't blow up. Like the Solana stuff, we can talk about Bitcoin in a second, but Solana with the 45 and all you had to do was wait, you know, all you had to do is be patient. And you had your entry. I think it was a great setup. Most of us paying attention caught that. Same thing with LINK, right? It was hard to mis -trade that, I think. I hope, but I don't know. We looked at LINK for... Everybody looked at LINK. I thought. I don't even like the token. Anyway, I don't like Solana either, but that's another conversation. Point is, there's always another trade. There's always a trade somewhere. Be patient. Pick your battles. Be super choosy and look for specific stuff, right? If you're looking for a fastball, don't swing at a curveball, you know? Oh, baby. Speaking of baseball, did you watch the World Series at all? I did. I didn't. I saw it was the lowest rated World Series in history. Dude, what happened to frickin' Twitter's pasting URLs on to TradingView? I used to be able to do that. Oh, I have my drawings turned off. There it is. Classic. Oh, yeah. You knew what I was looking for. Yeah. I mean, look at this. I've pasted it on here like 17 times now. There we go. Do it one more time. There we go. Look at this. I mean, beautiful. I mean, the divergent top. Arthur, what are you doing, man? Well, I woke up and saw that and I was like, what? I hope he's kidding. Like, I hope he's not just now buying all the way up here. Sometimes I wonder, like, did he really buy back here and then he's just, like, saying this stuff at the top? I don't know. He seems too smart for this. But has he a great success of calling tops when he does these types of tweets. Yeah. That was in the high 40s, wasn't it? Yeah. I mean, this is an hourly chart. It was literally, like, 45 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. That didn't make sense to me. So, I hope he... He's immediately down 20 % if that's where he bought. I hope he's a little joking around with that, but maybe not. I don't know. But long term, like, that entry is probably fine. If you're trapped, quote, unquote, trapped in a spot position, I think you're fine. But you're holding for a while. If you're in a leveraged position, I think you're sweating it a little bit. You're not good. Your entry is 45. Yeah. The thing is... Tell us what the thing is. How many days was this? Let's just say from the breakout. You entered the day after to today. Two weeks. For two weeks, Solana, like, traversed this range. I've had this range for a long time, this 25 to 50, basically, 25 to 47, 50. That was the old range before FTX blow up. And then it spent a long time below that on its way to eight. And so, it got back in the range and then floated right back to the top of it. Why would you buy it at the top of that range? I really hope that wasn't the case, but maybe he's got a different time horizon. A lot of people... I'm not just calling out Arthur. A lot of people were feeling FOMO. I haven't really seen anybody on Twitter talking about anything. I don't know if that's just because Twitter's broken or what, but... I feel like a lot of people have been talking about the move that we've had over the past week or so. I haven't seen anybody saying, like, Sol, the 500. I haven't seen any of that stuff. No, not Sol, the 500. It's more like just, I told you so type stuff. Maybe you don't follow Z. Who's that? He's... I don't know. Maybe all my friends are liquidated. I don't know. I just... Handsome. Handsome. I call him Z. No, I haven't. I don't know who that is. Sorry. You're missing out. He's got a good call. He's going off about Coinbase now. Coinbase is at 200. His handle is BlackNoise06, but with a different spelling. He's a good trader, and he's been early on some of these, like, loud beliefs of something's going to happen. I mean, what? We said... Maybe he's just been talking about Solana so much that I'm like, everybody's talking about Solana. It's really just Ansem retweeting it, like, 35 times. Okay. I mean, we said what? Bitcoin, 28k was the level. I don't know if we said it on here, but 25 was the level for Solana. These are just horizontal levels, right? They're not like anything crazy. Yeah. I talked about this, I guess, on Bankless. Just like... The benefit we have right now is we're neither at all -time lows nor all -time highs, so therefore there's horizontal levels that you can compare it to, and you can just trade level to level based on daily, weekly closes, whatever floats your boat, and play it that way. If you're trying to really risk off and take it one trade at a time or whatever, if you're not looking at things with a longer -term lens, you can do that. What I would say right now is goodbye. Buy the retest at 30k if you get it. That would feel rough for a lot of people, 15 % drawdown, but if that occurs, that would be a good entry, right? I don't know what people are waiting for. I guess you're waiting for a COVID -style drawdown, because what's next in the economy? What's it going to take to bring Bitcoin back down is the question. If you're waiting for an entry still... A little bit of bad news, some kind of regulatory thing. There's plenty of things that can pull you back 15%. We can go to 30. You mean we're going to all -time lows type stuff, or not all -time lows, but multi -year lows? No, I'm just asking, if you haven't allocated or whatever into Bitcoin yet, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for a yearly low? Are you waiting for 15k? Is that what people are waiting for? I don't know, I can't get in the head of bears. It's hard for me. Because we've got halving in less than six months, ETF in less than six months. Unless you just assume those things are priced in and or are bearish. I don't know. I don't know what you're waiting for at this point. I'm not saying we won't go lower, I'm just saying like, what is it going to take, you know? Yeah. If you're trying to think of... It's hard when these are hypothetical people of who's not deployed or whatever. But what would you be waiting on? Wouldn't you be looking for re -entry opportunities where you appear to have value? I mean, I don't think there's that. You think there's a lot of people in our ecosystem of active participants that expect like new multi -year lows? Or do you think most people are looking to just accumulate a little cheaper, if they're not all the way in right now? I just haven't seen enough to even gauge what sentiment even is, on Twitter at least. There's this macro out the yin -yang on Twitter, but I haven't seen too many people discussing crypto targets. I just haven't. Maybe I'm just following the wrong people, but... Yeah. Well, thankfully, the legacy media is kind of avoiding us right now, at least in terms of price action. They're all focused on Sam getting convicted, which he did. People, I'm sure everyone's seen this, but SPF was found guilty on all seven counts of, I don't know, different types of fraud. Well, that's the thing. You have a legacy media saying, I told you so about Sam, some of them, and the other half of them... Meanwhile, Bitcoin's up 100%. Right. They're saying, I told you so, crypto's dead, it's all a Ponzi. And I'm like, what? Am I living in a parallel universe? Am I looking at the wrong chart? So by the time they wake up to the fact like, oh, Bitcoin's at 50K. What happened? I thought it died. You know? SafeMoon people were arrested. Yeah. Good point. Oh, yeah. Lying on a what? It said SafeMoon guy was arrested yesterday. I saw they brought charges. I didn't realize they arrested anybody, but Josh, I mean, who would have thought? You named something SafeMoon, and it turned out they didn't have the best intent. Well... Apparently, it was even quite egregious. So I've heard, I don't know anything about their charges, but it's more than, we created a coin and we want to sell it. It was sneakier. They have had more egregious levels of crime they wanted to commit, I guess. I don't know. Anytime someone, it's like hex, right? Anytime someone tells you they're going to lock up tokens for X number of years and give you yield and no. SafeMoon. Can we just remember what happened last cycle and not repeat that this cycle? We just all collectively say we're not going to do that shit again, please? Yeah. But it keeps not your coins. If yields are higher, then the risk -free rate in the United States is probably not real. Okay. And what else did we learn? You know what is on the up and up right now? You tell me. Crypto books are coming out left, right and center. Like real books? Yeah. Like people are interested in the crypto story, the crypto boom and bust. We talked about the... Well, I think if you're not in it and you don't have a podcast empire like yourself, it's fascinating. Like I have real friends who they've been reading them like the Michael Lewis book, for example. And I kind of roll my eyes at that one. But buddy of mine that owns a local bookstore was telling me he kind of liked the Number Go Up. I think it's what it's called. Number Go Up, I think is what that one was called. So that was pretty good. More of a skeptical lens. But I saw another book. I think it came out like at the same time as The Conviction. And yeah, the outside world is interested in the story, but they are disinterested in the price action. And I find that fascinating. That's a good sign, I feel like for crypto. Well, people are still telling them it's for criminals and going to blow up. And don't I know what I was going to say about Solana relative to SafeMoon. If Solana pops off, they got to dodge some regulatory heat from the SEC or settle or something. Yeah. And I think that kind of stuff could definitely affect, especially, the altcoin landscape for how aggressive do regulators want to be in terms of who they go after, how they go after them. What's the expectation? Even in light of Ripple winning a huge portion of its case, I don't mean it's a free for all. No. And it doesn't mean Solana gets a free pass either. Or DeFi. DeFi. The UK wants to destroy DeFi. So does the United States. We need to stay with Bitcoin legislation. We don't have that either. There's an Elizabeth Warren video going around about basically just self -custody should be illegal. That was the moral of the story of our video. And the SEC just went after PayPal for their stablecoin. Yeah. What's that about? Well, you got to wonder, didn't they see that coming? I don't know. I don't know if they launched that thinking we need to be a part of the conversation. I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me, but good for them for fighting the good fight, I guess. Should we talk about the list I made? Yeah. I made this list. It's going to trigger people. Josh prepared a list. I just usurped it and started talking about random crap. Trigger warning. Okay. Okay. It's talking about politics, religion, and war. Let's go. I didn't even know those things were on the list. Let's hear it. I think you have to have some sort of opinion about this stuff because it's related to markets, you know? I think you have to have an opinion. So this week... Where are we starting? We'll start with macro because we had a ton of macro stuff. I don't know if we need to explain each little thing here, but the UJ, the Bank of Japan, they stopped their yield curve control mechanism and let UJ weaken further or strengthen further. And potentially that just means they're going to stop selling United States Treasuries potentially. There was also bullish news on the refunding announcement that they weren't adding a bunch of long -term debt. They're going to veer from their historic plans of like 22 % short -term and go above that. So that made yields really happy. That made TLT get excited. This was before unemployment. You mean it made bonds happy? Yeah. Like yields went down, bonds went up. Right. Yeah. Right. Because the narrative before that was, hey, they're going to issue all this debt. It's going to be long -term because it has to be, because that's what the historical percentages were, blah, blah, blah, whatever. They're deviating from that. Okay. So that's maybe good short -term, but long -term, maybe not so much. I don't know. It depends on your viewpoint there. But then we had the Fed come out and say they're not going to raise rates. Rates probably topped for now. Again, that's like reading tea leaves and Rorschach tests. There are people saying the Fed can't hike anymore, they're done, but that's going to go out of control. You keep reading the list while I show the charts. Sure. Yeah. So 30 -year came way down. 10 -year came way down. I haven't checked the yield curve. I'll pick it up in just a minute. Basically all this is relevant because of its relation to risk -on -risk -off sentiment. It's certainly relevant for TLT, but then today we had unemployment. And you got to remember bad news is good news for risk because risk wants rates to come down. I don't think risk wants a recession, but I think the quicker we get there, the better. If we get there, again, you hear people on both sides of that argument, whether or not this is actually headed for a recession or not. It certainly feels like we are, but unemployment ticked up to 3 .9%. Job numbers were 30 ,000 less than expected. But if you consider the striking numbers, that actually evens out to reaching expected 180K. Anyway, point is bad news was good news. Dollar's way down. Yields are way down. And non -crypto risk markets are up on the news. So kind of a shift in the very near term, it's a shift. Long -term I think we're still in trouble because of the debt spiral, but high long -term yields have come down. Go ahead. Lining this up, if people aren't familiar with what's happening on this chart, the yield curve is inverted when it's red, and then the area filled portion is essentially how wide is the spread between the two and the 10. So we could be facing a scenario where yields are starting to go down, and then you create the, you uninvert as yields go down and start to see the spread widen and yeah, kind of a steepener effect. Historically, we get a recession after the un -inversion, unemployment also goes up after the inversion. I mean, this looks, there's a few recessions on here. This chart doesn't go back before 1988, so it's not that useful. Well, I don't think with the recession stuff, like why are we afraid of that happening? You know? Of a recession happening? Yeah. Like it's part of the business cycle. It's part, it's like life and death. You know? I don't know. It's like, we're afraid of talking about death. It's okay. You have to choose recession versus, you know, like sustained 8 % inflation. Most people would choose recession, or not most people, but like the holistic body would choose recession because they'll say, I'll be fine. It'll be other people, but I don't want inflation to be that high. Well, you're either in the camp that we're too restrictive, inflation's already come way down, enough's enough, bring rates back down, or you're in the camp that, hey, we're not to our 2 % target yet, PCE is still elevated, CPI is still elevated. All these other metrics still elevated and unemployment is still quite low. That's the other side of that coin.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from BREAKING! SEC SUBPOENAS PAYPAL OVER PYUSD STABLECOIN!
"The SEC subpoenaed PayPal over their new stablecoin. A Swiss bank launches Bitcoin and Ether custody and trading services. The UK releases new crypto marketing rules. And Japan is about to start QE. And this is a sign of what's to come globally. Let's break it down. Welcome to the Thinking Crypto podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button, as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, the big news this morning is that the SEC served PayPal a subpoena related to the firm's stablecoin. PayPal also said in its quarterly report that it is cooperating with authorities in its request for documents relating to its stablecoin. Now, the headline can trigger some folks. The SEC is going after another firm, but a subpoena is not necessarily a bad thing. They just want more details. The question is, what do they do with those details? Because we've seen the SEC act unlawfully and they've done things politically to try to slow down many crypto companies, which haven't done fraud. Just there's no fraud happening, but the SEC is trying to roadblock and we've been talking about it. It's because Elizabeth Warren is working with a lot of the incumbents and they're trying to kill these crypto startups. So the big players can come in and take over. So let me give the details here. Here's a quote on November 1st, 2023, we received a subpoena from the US SEC division of enforcement relating to PayPal USD stablecoin, which is P Y USD. The subpoena requests the production of documents reads the report. The payments firm said it is cooperating with authorities. So a subpoena from the SEC is a legally enforceable request for documents, testimony, or other evidence issued as part of the agency's investigative authority into potential violations of federal securities laws. Now, folks, I've often said on this podcast, it's not the underlying asset. That's the issue, right? It goes back to the ripple case intrinsically as stablecoin is not a security. You can launch a stable coin today. It's pegged to the dollar one -to -one that does not make it a security. What does, what can make it a security and the potential scenario is the packaging, the scheme, right? It goes back to the Howie test. Was it the oranges intrinsically by nature securities oranges on a tree or in the supermarket? Of course not. That's asinine, right? It's the packaging. What was Howie offering? He was saying my orange girls come invest in mine and you'll get X and X returns and all these things, right? He, it was a whole packaging scheme. That was the issue. Same thing with crypto and stable coins. They're not intrinsically securities. It's rather Howard, a package. So that's the distinction. But, you know, Gary Gensler is a clown scumbag regulator who would lie and say, Oh, they're all securities by nature. And so, but the courts are shooting him down. I'm giving him the big fat L's. So the subpoena itself, like I said, not necessarily a bad thing. They want more information. What they do with it next is the key because, uh, will they go political and unlawful and use lies and hypocrisy like they've done in these previous lawsuits to try to take down PayPal stable coin that is to be seen. So we'll see where this goes. And, uh, the fact that the sec is trying to say stable coins are, are securities is even crazy. Like it, because they're just pegged to the dollar. It's ridiculous. Now, neither Paxos or PayPal has, uh, you know, have, have replied to any comments or, or release any new updates. So Paxos is the company that helped PayPal to launch their stable coin. Remember Paxos also helped, um, be USD to go live finances, stable coin, which, you know, the government shut down essentially. So we shall see where this goes. And in August PayPal and crypto infrastructure provider Paxos announced that the duo would enter its stable coin race with their P Y USD offering reportedly backed by treasuries, dollar deposits, and other cash equivalents. The stable coin is expected to be pegged to the U S dollar and run on Ethereum. So let's see what the sec does after this. The ironic thing here though, folks, right. Is that Congress is threatening subpoenas to Gary Gensler and the sec for delaying the release of all communications and paperwork. They were dealing with, with FTX, right? Patrick Henry's like, I don't want to be the first, uh, you know, uh, speaker here to threaten, or I should say issue a subpoena against the chair of the sec. But this is the unbelievable hypocrisy we're dealing with. Right. And we know that the sec it's a mixed bag. They're doing a lot more bad than good. Yes. The sec has a job to do. Yes. They have to protect consumers yesterday. They filed a lawsuit against these safe moon folks. That's clearly a scam, but at the same time, they're fighting Coinbase, right? And they're delaying the Bitcoin spot ETF. And they're trying to stop many different things that are not fraud related or have anything. They're not scamming people like going after PayPal. I don't believe there's any fraud here. I could be wrong. Maybe there is. Right. I'm not saying either way, but let's see what they go. Will they Sue PayPal? I think that will be a big red flag asking for information. No problem here. Right. And PayPal sounds like they're cooperating. You're like, Hey, you want to see the documents? Here you go. Right. We have nothing to hide. So, uh, let's see what the next step is, but you know, I don't trust scumbag regulator, Gary Gensler. I think you all see what this guy's doing. He's a gimp on the leash. Uh, Elizabeth Warren has control over him and you know, both of them are working on behalf of incumbents. So, uh, interesting news here, folks. Now let's move ahead. Swiss bank launches Bitcoin and ether custody and trading services in partnership with Seba folks. We're seeing stock exchanges, banks, and the largest financial institutions around the world adopting crypto. And you know, some people are still bearish, right? I'm sure you sure you can be bearish this week and in the short term, but long -term I hope you're bullish. I just reported on Monday, guys, that Thailand's fourth largest bank buys $103 million taken a new crypto exchange, or I should say an existing crypto exchange by the name of satang. So I hope you see what's taking place here. Uh, let me give you the details. Um, so one of Switzerland's largest cantonal banks has launched digital asset custody and brokerage services for its clients in partnership with Seba bank this week, St. Gaylor cantonal bank, if I'm saying that right, announced the launch of custody and training services for Bitcoin and ether to select group of clients as GKB added that it has plans to expand its digital asset offerings with the addition of more cryptocurrencies based on client demand as GKB is using Swiss based Seba bank to provide digital asset brokerage and custody services. Here are some quotes. We are very pleased to be able to support St. Gaylor cantonal bank with our expertise in expanding their services around digital assets. Seba bank had B2B and custody solutions. Christian beer said St Gaylor cantonal bank and Seba signed the contract earlier this year after a short implementation project as GKB is now ready to offer access to cryptocurrencies to a selected group of clients in the first step, Bitcoin and ether other currencies will follow shortly. Barry told a block folks huge, and this is primarily to institutional clients. So a lot of capital is going to come into this market. This is why I'm bullish. This is why I don't care if the price crashes by 10K today. It doesn't phase me because I know it's all market cycles and from the macro, right? The two to three year view, the market cycles playing out on the four year cycles, you will make money by the blood industries, by the dips, huddled, you know, don't, don't look at the price every day. And then as we run up, take your profits folks, it's playing out right before our eyes. And if you're here listening, you're here early, you're taking a position, buying the lows you're on, you are on the side of smart money because there's billions of people not paying attention and they will eventually come in and buy the top, right? It's the dumb money crowd, but that's the age old tale, right? It happens with stocks and other markets. It is what it is. This is why education financial education is important. And I'm glad I'm here early now, quick word from our sponsor and that is Uphold, which is a great crypto exchange that you can buy all the top cryptocurrencies. They have 260 plus cryptos on their platform. They have a lot of great features, full functional app, full functional website. They're safe to use. I've interviewed the CEO, the CFO. I've been using them since 2018. You can also trade precious metals on this platform, as well as 37 Fiat currencies. And they're available in over 150 countries. They are 100 % reserve. They don't commingle your funds. They don't lend out your funds. So they do audit. So your funds are safe. So if you'd like to learn more about Uphold, please visit the link in the description. Now we've got news that the UK regulator publishes guidance on new crypto marketing regime, the financial conduct authorities new ad regime took effect in October under the new rules firms are required to include appropriate risk warnings on all their communications to UK customers that have a promotional element. The regulator has already added 221 firms. It deems non -compliant with a new regime to an alert list and has promised enforcement action on companies that are not careful with approving ads. So folks, I don't have a problem with this because they're not banning crypto and they're not banning crypto companies. What they are saying, Hey, follow these rules and regulations when it comes to marketing. So you can't make, you know, and maybe any outlandish promises, or you don't exaggerate the truth on what users can expect to earn or get a return. So I don't have a problem with that, right? They're not saying you can't market. They just think, follow these rules and stick to these guidelines. And most likely it's, you know, around verbiage and things you can say so this, this is rules that are applied to the stock market and, and, and loans and credit cards and still port, right? You can't say certain things you have to abide by the rules. So I, I'm totally fine with this, but I think we're going to see more and more of this around the world that people can make, you know, outlandish the promises. And, and this is good because look, you have these like safe moon scam projects and these things that pop up around the world. And if they say, oh, you're going to get this and that, and that, and it's just like, that's not reasonable and that's not a factual then. Yeah, that's not good for consumers who may not know better and they can get caught up in scams. So I think this makes sense now, folks, Japan stimulus package to include 144 billion in spending a draft plan show spending at around two, excuse me, 21 .8 trillion yen funding in extra budget to reach around 13 .1 trillion yen. You may say, Tony, why are you telling us about Japan stimulus package? What the hell does it have to do with crypto? Well, folks, it's the cowbell, right? If you saw my interview with Rao pal recently, and we talked about M2 global M2 money supply, the liquidity is coming back. Folks. What have I been saying? Beating the drum, the quantitative tightening will come to an end, right? There's quantitative tightening happening in the U S as well as all the parts of the world. We're seeing quantitative easing starting to come back, right? Just about a week and a half ago, I told you about China injected in the tons of capital into there. I think it's a real estate market and the banks and so forth right now, all of a sudden Japan is planning to print money and offer stimulus folks. What have I been saying? Right? I hope you see what's happening. It's they can't help themselves. They have to do it. We live in a debt based system. So what does that mean? Assets will rise. The price of assets will rise as liquidity and they continue to print money increases once again. And this is why you diversify. Yes, crypto, yes, stocks, real estate, and so forth. I have an investment property. I own some stocks. I have, a retirement account and so forth. And then I have crypto folks, assets will rise again. So I hope you understand this because it's very important to know these fundamentals and these principles of what's happening and how the money supply works and how that impacts asset prices. And like I said, I shared with Raul Pal's chart from just a couple of days ago, where he highlighted Bitcoin is moving. The price of Bitcoin is moving with the global M2 money supply. And we are seeing a move upwards. Folks, I want to give you a quick note here. Joe Biden, the president of the United States will most likely follow this game plan that Japan is doing. Watch the money printing come back next year. Why? It's an election year, right? They have to come out of this really bad situation. We're in with recession, high rates. I definitely think we're in a recession. They may try to skew the day to say, we're not, we are in a recession. And I think they're going to go back to money printing next year. And then we're going to see assets go up folks. And funny enough at times with the four -year cycle of Bitcoin. So just get ready. Like I've been saying, buy the dips, dollar cost average, obviously be smart. Don't put your life savings into investments. You need to have emergency cash. You need to be diversified. Like I said, I got money in stocks and investment accounts, also crypto. Crypto is the one doing the best for me, of course. So just keep these things in mind. I'm sharing these things because once I understood these principles and what was actually happening with money printing and how you can use assets to outpace inflation and grow your wealth. That's when I started making money. That's when my retirement accounts started growing because I figured it out. Like believing it in a bank and getting next to nothing from an interest rate standpoint. I was wondering, is this it? You get what 0 .01 % return on your money in the bank. It's nothing. It's garbage. But when you understand assets is the way to go. And as Paul Tudor Jones said, Bitcoin and crypto is the fastest horse in the race. So crypto is moving at a much rapid pace from a growth standpoint. And if you look at the data, Bitcoin is the top performing asset over the past 10 to 15 years. It's pretty incredible. Well, folks, that's the news. Let me know what you think. Leave your thoughts and comments below. Hit the thumbs up button. Don't forget to follow me on the social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Links will be in the description. Also sign up for free newsletter. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. And I'll talk to you all later.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"Lace up your boot steps, you know, bootstrap yourself into a better world. If you are only focusing on the negative, then you are a part of the problem. I hate to say it. Focus on the positives. Things are getting better. Things will get better because we are staking and we're winning. We're winning. Look, that video by Elizabeth Warren, the video by Christine the guard, all the actions by the most vocal detractors of Bitcoin, whether it's the IMF, tells you that they are scared. They're worried, right? Because Bitcoin, ultimately what it is, it's a forcing function. They can't, they're not, they're not able to get rid of it the way that they've been able to get rid of any competition. Look at what they did to Facebook's cryptocurrency, Libra, right? They got rid of it because of centralization. They can't get rid of Bitcoin. So they're forced to compete with Bitcoin. And that's why they're terrified because they know in a fair competition, people are just going to pick the better money, right? So anyways, yeah. You know what Opti said, you know, fasten up. A little Saint Opti for today. It's going to be a great ride. And yeah. Anyways, ladies and gents, I will be traveling Thursday and Friday. So Opti is going to be holding it down with Rustin. It's going to be some great shows. I do have to run. I got some stuff to take care of. I'll be back on Monday, guys. Opti, hold it down. Make me proud, bro. Peace. Dog burning in house. This is fine. This is fine. Do not say that.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"So think about that for a second. She's willing to not talk about the actual source of funding for these terrorists that committed atrocities. Because she wants to kill the industry because she wants to protect her moat. Is that really a politician that's for the people by the people? Or is that a politician for herself and by herself? Because that's what it looks like to me. She calls herself a so-called progressive. I don't know about you guys, but Bitcoin is the most equitable, equal money the world has ever seen. It doesn't care where you're from, where your skin color is. Anybody could download a Bitcoin wallet, even in the most repressive countries like Afghanistan. Where women were barred from having bank accounts. You know what they could do? Download a Bitcoin wallet. What about in communistic regimes like Cuba? You know what they could do? Download a Bitcoin wallet. If Elizabeth Warren is for the little guy, what she's pushing is for fiat currency. And fiat currency disproportionately affects the little guy the most. Because the lower and middle classes do not have the means to save in assets, so they save in cash. And every time the government prints money. It's a wealth redistribution mechanism from the lower and middle classes. Back to the very wealthy and back to the government. So Elizabeth Warren, you call yourself a progressive, but it looks like what you're really doing is supporting the wealthy elite that benefit from all the money printing, that benefit from all the inflation. Elizabeth Warren, my opinion is that you're a fraud. That's what I got to say about that. This is kind of, this is messed up. This is messed up. And the fact that you're doubling down using lies and misrepresentations is not cool. We've put all the source material here. Of course, that is my opinion. It doesn't represent simply Bitcoin. But at what point can you not say she's not being sincere? She's not telling the truth. Clearly, it has been exposed without a doubt. And Senator Cynthia Lummis' graphic perfectly represents this. That crypto assets only account for less than 1% of global illicit finance. Absolutely ridiculous. Now, this calls into question the legitimacy of all the proposals, whether it's the FinCEN proposal that would essentially demonize single use addresses. Here's a quote. This creating and using single use wallets, addresses or accounts, sending CVC through these wallets, addresses or accounts in a series of transactions. Quote, this method involves the use of single wallets, addresses or accounts colloquially known as a peel chain in a series of unnatural transactions that have the purpose or effect of obfuscating the source and destination of funds by volumetrically increasing the number of involved transactions. Here's the thing. Bitcoin wallets work by default. And now that she said the quiet part out loud. Is it really about obfuscating now that we know the actual numbers? Is it really about obfuscating? Do they really care about obfuscation? Or is it really about making it hard for individuals to take self-custody because the regulations are so burdensome? Now, let's move on to her bipartisan bill that she has in the Senate. Also calls into questions the real motives. And this bill is absolutely crazy. Extend the bank secrecy. These are some of the passages, some of the proposals from the from the bill, which is called the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act. Extend Bank Secrecy Act responsibilities, including KYC requirements to digital asset wallet providers, miners, validators and other network participants that may act to validate, secure or facilitate digital asset asset transaction. I don't know if miners can KYC. I don't know if nodes can KYC. She's also proposing that software wallets and hardware wallets implement a KYC. Is that even feasible? I don't think so. I don't think the purpose of this bill. Is to address the Anti-Money Laundering Act. Now that she's been exposed misrepresenting data. This calls into question, what is the real purpose of this bill? It goes on to say address a major gap with respect to unhosted wallets. There it is again. Which allow individuals to bypass AML and sanctions checks by directing FinCEN. FinCEN, which was the institution that proposed the FinCEN proposals. It's kind of all ties together to finalize and implement its December 2020 proposed rule, which would require banks and money service businesses to verify customer encounter party identities, keep records and file reports in relation to certain digital asset transactions involving unhosted wallets or wallets hosted in a non-BSA compliant jurisdictions. So all of this stuff, whether it's her bill, the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, whether it's her taking advantage of an absolute tragedy happening in Palestine and Israel. Which led to the proposed regulations by FinCEN. I think none of it was sincere. I think none of it was based on truth. I think all of it had to do with the fact that she does not want the separation of money and state. She wants to maintain the privilege of benefiting from being able to create money for free that the rest of us has to work for. Caught in 4K, and I love the fact that Bitcoin, it's like one of its best features, unknown features, is that Bitcoin eventually exposes all incentives. And here is Elizabeth Warren exposed in 4K. Is there a higher resolution than 4K? Exposed in 8K for the world to see. That is what she really wanted all along. It was never about money laundering. It was never about the things that she's proposed.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"The Bitcoin numbers. Is your Bitcoin and cold storage really secure? Is your seed phrase really secure? Stamped seeds do it yourself kit has everything you need to hammer your seed words into commercial grade titanium plates instead of just writing them on paper. Don't store your generational wealth on paper. Paper is prone to water damage, fire damage. You want to put your generational wealth on one of the strongest metals on planet Earth titanium. Your words are actually stamped into this metal plate with this hammer and these letter stamps. And once your words are in, they aren't going anywhere. No risk of the plate breaking apart and pieces falling everywhere. Titanium stamp seeds will survive nearly triple the heat produced by a house fire. They're also crush proof, waterproof, non-corrosive and time proof. All things that paper is not allowing you to huddle your Bitcoin with peace of mind for the long haul. Stamp your seed on stamp seed. All right, guys, we made it super easy for you guys. You could scan the QR code on your screen, take you directly to the stamp seed website where you can get yourself a titanium seed phrase storage kit. You can use promo code simply to get a 15% discount. Don't store your generational wealth on paper. I'm gonna let you finish, but guys, we're almost at 21 K on YouTube. We've been talking with stamp seed. We're going to do a giveaway with them. So you saw the stamp seed kit. We're in talks with the boys over at stamp seed. That's going to be our grand prize for you guys hanging out in the chat, but go follow them on Twitter at stamp seed. Follow our Twitter, drop in our telegram group. Of course, subscribe to YouTube. Once we hit 21 K, we're going to do a giveaway for you guys. It's going to be a massive prize. You guys are going to be shitting bricks out there. So it's going to be a solid one. Shouts out to stamp seed. Go follow them on Twitter. Yeah, it's going to be a special edition plate, simply Bitcoin plate. So yeah, it's very limited edition. And yeah, so just to celebrate you guys helping us get to 21,000 subscribers. Of course, 21 is a very special number in Bitcoin. And we also might be giving away some simply Bitcoin merch as well. So stay tuned. Anyways, at the time of recording, the Bitcoin price is 34,515 per dollar, 2,897 block height, 814,860 having estimate April 20th, 2024 total lightning network capacity, 5,294 Bitcoin capacity value, 182 million U.S. dollars realized monetary inflation, 1.74% market capitalization, 674 billion dollars Bitcoin versus gold market cap continues to creep up 5.10% the grand scheme of things. Bitcoin still baby once Bitcoin reaches the market cap of gold that puts the price of Bitcoin at $500,000 per coin anyways. So let's kind of go back the series of events and I, you know, to use the Chad sailors reference to cyber Hornets, Elizabeth Warren stirred up the hot, the Hornets NAS. Pierre Richard said, Elizabeth Warren spread this information to exploit a crisis it's backfiring and now undermines her misguided anti Bitcoin agenda to say it blew up in her face is I think it's an understatement. Here's the wall street journal, which was pivotal in her. You know, she, she used this as the source material for her letter to the white house. In fact, the FinCEN proposal actually included some of the language included in the wall street journal article, right? And it's interesting because when she was confronted, you know, she didn't even acknowledge it. She says, it's not about that one report. Well, Elizabeth Warren, you only used one report in that letter, right? So again, you could tell, you know, she was caught in 4k and here is the Bitcoin Senator, Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"It's all going to zero against Bitcoin. It's going up for everyone. Bitcoin! You're against Bitcoin, you're against freedom. Yo, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin Live. We are your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution. We cover breaking news, culture, and matic warfare. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state. And today is one of those episodes where we're going to be talking about the separation of money and state. One of my favorite features about Bitcoin is that eventually it exposes all incentives. And what we've seen over the last two weeks is Elizabeth Warren, her allies in the media, and her allies in government take advantage of the tragedy happening in Palestine and Israel to try to circumvent the legislative process to enact these crazy regulations that would essentially attack Bitcoin, make it very difficult for Bitcoiners, particularly in the US, even though this movement is happening worldwide. Now what happened is that this ended up backfiring, and the reason that ended up backfiring is because social media has allowed the common man, the everyday individual, the rise of media. And that's exactly what happened. The Wall Street Journal conceded on Friday, they retracted their statements, they offered a correction, and the Wall Street Journal article was the pillar of Elizabeth Warren's letter to the White House, which prompted the White House to tap on the Treasury, specifically the FinCEN, to enact these crazy regulations. Now it was exposed, the Wall Street Journal article got it completely wrong, therefore Elizabeth Warren, she was using false information or misrepresenting information in order to achieve a certain political end goal. She was caught in 4K, we said this yesterday. She did not retract her statement, she doubled down. She said, okay, maybe that that article was incorrect, but there's other sources, but she only used one source in that article for the White House, right? Now what happened though, and this is beautiful, and this goes back to my initial statement, is that Bitcoin exposes all incentives. And what we've seen is essentially Elizabeth Warren, first, you know, she lied, first she gets caught lying, then she doubles down, and then she finally says the quiet part out loud. And what is that quiet part? Basically she's making the case to criminalize self-custody. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is where we are in the movie, this is not rhetoric, this is not me exaggerating it in the title, this is exactly what she said in the video. And then that really calls into question the FinCEN proposal and the bipartisan bill that Elizabeth Warren has introduced in the Senate, even though it has a very low likelihood of being passed. But this is what she really wanted. And this coincides with the exact same words coming out of the head of the European Central Bank, who was previously the head of the IMF, who I might add is also a convicted felon, she calls Bitcoin an escape valve. So really what you're seeing from Elizabeth Warren is fear. What you're seeing from Christine Lagarde is fear, because they know that their money cannot compete on the free market with a better money, with a superior money. And why is Bitcoin superior to state-issued currency? Because it does two things that they cannot help themselves but to do. It offers censorship resistance, and it's deflationary. Governments are always going to want to do those two things, they're always going to want to censor, and they're always going to want to inflate, because without inflating they cannot pay for the endless wars, they cannot pay for the things that we cannot afford on income tax alone. The money printing is how the United States continuously spends over a trillion dollars, deficit spending, year after year, even though the government, you know, you hear the rhetoric from the politicians, we must tax the billionaires, we must tax more, tax, tax, tax, tax the income tax. But what they fail to tell you is that the US government collects more tax revenue year after year. But why is it that they want to collect more tax? It's because of the spending. This is why you have to separate money from state. It's a question of aligning incentives. As long as politicians don't have to go to the populace to raise money for any ideas that they have proposed, and instead they can get they can fund it through the hidden tax of inflation, the incentives of society will never be aligned. And I truly believe that's why we're seeing the moral degradation of society. That's why you're seeing the cultural degradation. That's where you're seeing the infrastructure degradation. All these things, because the people in charge are not incentivized to do good by their constituents. They're incentivized to get as close as humanly possible to the money spigot. And they're willing to say anything and everything. But blame themselves for the circumstance, for the situation they themselves have caused for spending money they didn't have and debasing people's money in order not only to enrich themselves, but to pay for the spending that people can't ignore. I mean, for the spending that they cannot afford. But here it is, once again, Honey Badger don't care. And it forced Elizabeth Warren, whether she realized or not, to finally, finally say the quiet part out loud. Self-custody is a crime. If you choose to put your money in a way of which I can't easily seize it, I can't easily confiscate it, I can't easily censor it, that's a problem. And that is a problem for politicians that have been using that privilege, abusing that privilege to not only pay for themselves, I mean, enrich themselves, but also pay for things that we can't afford as a country. And of course, we're speaking from an American sense of view, because we live in the United States. But this applies to all countries around the world. Look at what's happening in Venezuela. Look at what's happening in Argentina. Look at what's happening in Turkey. So this is crazy, and this is a very historical moment. And I'm telling you, in a couple of years, I think they're going to get so desperate that they're going to just keep saying this, that the whole thing of self-custody is dangerous. And if you think about that, like if you think about it from like a foundational level, like that is so absurd, because we can't debase your money, because we can't easily confiscate your money. That is dangerous. And you have to look at the historical precedent here. Back in the 30s or in the Great Depression, FDR implemented the famous 6-1-0-2 order, where he made it illegal for American citizens to own gold. So countries, nation states, have had a history of when they default on their debt, they have a history of confiscating their populace's wealth in order to keep it going. But with Bitcoin, this is why Bitcoin is so unique. This is why Bitcoin changes everything. For the first time in human history, you can store vast sums of wealth, millions, billions, trillions of dollars, by memorizing a 12 to 24 word seed phrase. And that makes it incredibly difficult for government to confiscate on a mass scale, whatever their justification is. And it has them scared shitakulous for the sake of not cursing in the first couple of minutes. So this is crazy. This means we're winning. Let's keep up the pressure. Let's color within the lines. And most importantly, our most important weapon in this narrative trench warfare is just to expose their lies and misrepresentations so that the world can see them for who they are. Anyways, it's going to be a great show. I want to bring up my legendary co-host, always optimistic, giant smile on his face today. How are you doing, Opti? I am doing wonderful. In the face of this very, very sober monologue, I was just thinking, of course, I think my reigning role here on the show is to make light of everything in regards to it getting very serious. And I have officially changed my view on my favorite politician. It is no longer Brad Sherman. It is now officially Elizabeth Warren. Absolutely love to see the politicians, the powers that be, the unproductive class squirm like this. And we say it all the time, Bitcoin exposes people's incentives. And you love when they say the quiet part out loud. And it's not just us like talking about it. It's them actually terrified of what is happening. You just love to see it. You know, it's going to go into what we're going to talk about on the culture. This idea that we're winning so hard, guys, it's absolutely incredible. In the face of all the fear, just remember that Bitcoin just stays winning as long as you are taking Bitcoin into self custody, the game is going along exactly as planned. And you just love to see it. This was inevitable. And it's actually happening a lot quicker than I thought it would, Nico. I'm really surprised that this is where we are. Of course, Elizabeth Warren seems to be the canary in the coal mine for the powers that be. So we'll see who else starts to come out as our also third and fourth and fifth, second or wait, six favorite politicians. You love when politicians get scared. I'd love to see it. Love to see it. Anyways, guys, so in these types of moments in history, right, it has never been a more important time to take self custody. The sponsors that support the show, make this show possible. We're very, very picky who we choose. Right. So, yes, of course. And this all kind of goes to Bitcoin's aligned incentives. We choose to partner up with Bitcoin companies that make it easy for you to stack SATs, make it easy for you to withdraw those stacks from that said exchange. We give you exposure to the best Bitcoin hardware wallets in the industry so that you can take self custody. And we also emphasize the fact of, you know, not your properly securing your Bitcoin wallet backup seed words. Don't store it on paper, store it on metal. And then not to mention the fact that we also bring up, you know, if you got it, you guys want to take the next level, run your own node. If you don't run your own node, you're trusting someone else's. And that's why we love start nine. We have all of that in the video description. So when we're talking about self custody, you guys are covered on all fronts of Bitcoin products to use it to really achieve your sovereignty as an individual. Anyways, everybody, let's jump into the show. I think this is a historical episode. I can't believe this is where we are in the movie. So many things have happened this year. Holy cow. And I suspect my intuition is telling me it will continue to accelerate as we're living through this pivotal moment in human history. We are living through the disintermediation of information and we're living through the disintermediation of money. And it's happening all at the same time. Strap yourself in. It's going to be a hell of a ride. And of course, simply Bitcoin will be here to cover it for you guys. All right, everybody, let's start the show. Let's do it.
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from Elizabeth Warren Wants to Criminalize Bitcoin Self-Custody | EP 858
"It's all going to zero against Bitcoin. It's going up for everyone. Bitcoin! You're against Bitcoin, you're against freedom. Yo, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin Live. We are your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution. We cover breaking news, culture, and matic warfare. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state. And today is one of those episodes where we're going to be talking about the separation of money and state. One of my favorite features about Bitcoin is that eventually it exposes all incentives. And what we've seen over the last two weeks is Elizabeth Warren, her allies in the media, and her allies in government take advantage of the tragedy happening in Palestine and Israel to try to circumvent the legislative process to enact these crazy regulations that attack would essentially Bitcoin, make it very difficult for Bitcoiners, particularly in the US, even though this movement is happening worldwide. Now what happened is that this ended up backfiring, and the reason that ended up backfiring is because social media has allowed the common man, the everyday individual, the rise of media. And that's exactly what happened. The Wall Street Journal conceded on Friday, they retracted their statements, they offered a correction, and the Wall Street Journal article was the pillar of Elizabeth Warren's letter to the White House, which prompted the White House to tap on the Treasury, specifically the FinCEN, to enact these crazy regulations. Now it was exposed, the Wall Street Journal article got it completely wrong, therefore Elizabeth Warren, she was using false information or misrepresenting information in order to achieve a certain political end goal. She was caught in 4K, we said this yesterday. She did not retract her statement, she doubled down. She said, okay, maybe that that article was incorrect, but there's other sources, but she only used one source in that article for the White House, right? Now what happened though, and this is beautiful, and this goes back to my initial statement, is that Bitcoin exposes all incentives. And what we've seen is essentially Elizabeth Warren, first, you know, she lied, first she gets caught lying, then she doubles down, and then she finally says the quiet part out loud. And what is that quiet part? Basically she's making the case to criminalize self -custody. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is where we are in the movie, this is not rhetoric, this is not me exaggerating it in the title, this is exactly what she said in the video. And then that really calls into question the FinCEN proposal and the bipartisan bill that Elizabeth Warren has introduced in the Senate, even though it has a very low likelihood of being passed. But this is what she really wanted. And this coincides with the exact same words coming out of the head of the European Central Bank, who was previously the head of the IMF, who I might add is also a convicted felon, she calls Bitcoin an escape valve. So really what you're seeing from Elizabeth Warren is fear. What you're seeing from Christine Lagarde is fear, because they know that their money cannot compete on the free market with a better money, with a superior money. And why is Bitcoin superior to state -issued currency? Because it does two things that they cannot help themselves but to do. It offers censorship resistance, and it's deflationary. Governments are always going to want to do those two things, they're always going to want to censor, and they're always going to want to inflate, because without inflating they cannot pay for the endless wars, they cannot pay for the things that we cannot afford on income tax alone. The money printing is how the United States continuously spends over a trillion dollars, deficit spending, year after year, even though the government, you know, you hear the rhetoric from the politicians, we must tax the billionaires, we must tax more, tax, tax, tax, tax the income tax. But what they fail to tell you is that the US government collects more tax revenue year after year. But why is it that they want to collect more tax? It's because of the spending. This is why you have to separate money from state. It's a question of aligning incentives. As long as politicians don't have to go to the populace to raise money for any ideas that they have proposed, and instead they can get they can fund it through the hidden tax of inflation, the incentives of society will never be aligned. And I truly believe that's why we're seeing the moral degradation of society. That's why you're seeing the cultural degradation. That's where you're seeing the infrastructure degradation. All these things, because the people in charge are not incentivized to do good by their constituents. They're incentivized to get as close as humanly possible to the money spigot. And they're willing to say anything and everything. But blame themselves for the circumstance, for the situation they themselves have caused for spending money they didn't have and debasing people's money in order not only to enrich themselves, but to pay for the spending that people can't ignore. I mean, for the spending that they cannot afford. But here it is, once again, Honey Badger don't care. And it forced Elizabeth Warren, whether she realized or not, to finally, finally say the quiet part out loud. Self -custody is a crime. If you choose to put your money in a way of which I can't easily seize it, I can't easily confiscate it, I can't easily censor it, that's a problem. And that is a problem for politicians that have been using that privilege, abusing that privilege to not only pay for themselves, I mean, enrich themselves, but also pay for things that we can't afford as a country. And of course, we're speaking from an American sense of view, because we live in the United States. But this applies to all countries around the world. Look at what's happening in Venezuela. Look at what's happening in Argentina. Look at what's happening in Turkey. So this is crazy, and this is a very historical moment. And I'm telling you, in a couple of years, I think they're going to get so desperate that they're going to just keep saying this, that the whole thing of self -custody is dangerous. And if you think about that, like if you think about it from like a foundational level, like that is so absurd, because we can't debase your money, because we can't easily confiscate your money. That is dangerous. And you have to look at the historical precedent here. Back in the 30s or in the Great Depression, FDR implemented the famous 6 -1 -0 -2 order, where he made it illegal for American citizens to own gold. So countries, nation states, have had a history of when they default on their debt, they have a history of confiscating their populace's wealth in order to keep it going. But with Bitcoin, this is why Bitcoin is so unique. This is why Bitcoin changes everything. For the first time in human history, you can store vast sums of wealth, millions, billions, trillions of dollars, by memorizing a 12 to 24 word seed phrase. And that makes it incredibly difficult for government to confiscate on a mass scale, whatever their justification is. And it has them scared shitakulous for the sake of not cursing in the first couple of minutes. So this is crazy. This means we're winning. Let's keep up the pressure. Let's color within the lines. And most importantly, our most important weapon in this narrative trench warfare is just to expose their lies and misrepresentations so that the world can see them for who they are. Anyways, it's going to be a great show. I want to bring up my legendary co -host, always optimistic, giant smile on his face today. How are you doing, Opti? I am doing wonderful. In the face of this very, very sober monologue, I was just thinking, of course, I think my reigning role here on the show is to make light of everything in regards to it getting very serious. And I have officially changed my view on my favorite politician. It is no longer Brad Sherman. It is now officially Elizabeth Warren. Absolutely love to see the politicians, the powers that be, the unproductive class squirm like this. And we say it all the time, Bitcoin exposes people's incentives. And you love when they say the quiet part out loud. And it's not just us like talking about it. It's them actually terrified of what is happening. You just love to see it. You know, it's going to go into what we're going to talk about on the culture. This idea that we're winning so hard, guys, it's absolutely incredible. In the face of all the fear, just remember that Bitcoin just stays winning as long as you are taking Bitcoin into self custody, the game is going along exactly as planned. And you just love to see it. This was inevitable. And it's actually happening a lot quicker than I thought it would, Nico. I'm really surprised that this is where we are. Of course, Elizabeth Warren seems to be the canary in the coal mine for the powers that be. So we'll see who else starts to come out as our also third and fourth and fifth, second or wait, six favorite politicians. You love when politicians get scared. I'd love to see it. Love to see it. Anyways, guys, so in these types of moments in history, right, it has never been a more important time to take self custody. The sponsors that support the show, make this show possible. We're very, very picky who we choose. Right. So, yes, of course. And this all kind of goes to Bitcoin's aligned incentives. We choose to partner up with Bitcoin companies that make it easy for you to stack SATs, make it easy for you to withdraw those stacks from that said exchange. We give you exposure to the best Bitcoin hardware wallets in the industry so that you can take self custody. And we also emphasize the fact of, you know, not your properly securing your Bitcoin wallet backup seed words. Don't store it on paper, store it on metal. And then not to mention the fact that we also bring up, you know, if you got it, you guys want to take the next level, run your own node. If you don't run your own node, you're trusting someone else's. And that's why we love start nine. We have all of that in the video description. So when we're talking about self custody, you guys are covered on all fronts of Bitcoin products to use it to really achieve your sovereignty as an individual. Anyways, everybody, let's jump into the show. I think this is a historical episode. I can't believe this is where we are in the movie. So many things have happened this year. Holy cow. And I suspect my intuition is telling me it will continue to accelerate as we're living through this pivotal moment in human history. We are living through the disintermediation of information and we're living through the disintermediation of money. And it's happening all at the same time. Strap yourself in. It's going to be a hell of a ride. And of course, simply Bitcoin will be here to cover it for you guys. All right, everybody, let's start the show. Let's do it.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from SHOCKING: SEC & Gary Gensler's Lawbreaking Assault on Crypto (SAB 121)
"Welcome to the Thinking Crypto podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, we got huge, huge SEC Gary Gensler news. Folks, the Government Accountability Office, also known as GAO, this is a government agency, has concluded that the SEC's controversial staff accounting bulletin, SAB121, which requires crypto custodians record customers' digital assets as liabilities on their balance sheets, is considered a rule, not merely guidance, and therefore require the SEC to submit to Google, which it did not. In short, the SEC is now in violation of Congressional Review Act, CRA. Folks, this is big because we continue to see Gary Gensler and the SEC acting unlawful. And you may say, well, Tony, these guys in Washington, DC are not doing anything to Gary. But remember, folks, they're trying to build the case. They're trying to build a record of all these failures. Gary Gensler losing in the courts the grayscale and ripple, right? And he's fighting Coinbase right now. And the courts, the judges are tearing the SEC a new one. So as they're building this case, they'll be able to take action. And that's the insight I've gotten from many of them right now, because Elizabeth Warren is backed by the Biden administration and she has Gary Gensler the gimp on a leash. They have a lot of power because the Biden administration is in power, right? And Gary Gensler is appointed by the Democrats. So many folks don't understand this dynamic that even if the Republicans and the House Financial Committee want to take action, they have to tread lightly because Elizabeth Warren has so much power. And there are other things at play here, like other legislation, other rules they're trying to make for other industries and things that are happening overall. So that's the insight I've gotten speaking to lobbyists and politicians as well. So, folks, another black mark here for the SEC showing they are not abiding by the laws and they are hypocrites and liars and they have fallen far from their core mission, folks. I've been saying it for years now, right? I know some of you probably get tired of me hearing me say this, but I am out here exposing Gary Gensler and the SEC. I'm drumming up as much noise because I'm a crypto investor and this guy is using unlawful tactics to try to stop crypto, try to kill the gains that I would get, right? Trying to say, I can't stake my coins and all these things, right? I'm not going to stand for it and I'm here to fight and I'm going to spread the news. And I think many of you agree with me and it's going to take all of us to drum up as much noise on social media and put out content there to build the record of all the bad things the SEC is doing and hurt their optics and hurt Gary Gensler's narratives. You see, Gary Gensler is much more timid these days. He's not as aggressive because he's losing. And I smell blood and I hope you smell blood too. And we got to keep going, folks. Now, a lot of people weighed in on this. Ripple's chief legal officer, Stuart Eldorado said, while Mr. Gensler is making bad Halloween jokes on X, so Gary was tweeting about Bitcoin and Halloween and all kinds of things. His agency is being shamed for ignoring the law that requires agency rules to be reviewed by Congress. Seems the SEC has become the lawless Wild West Gensler loves to talk about so much. He's absolutely right. And remember what Judge Sarah Netburn said in the Ripple lawsuit, the SEC lacks fateful allegiance to the law, not to mention they were called as the SEC was called hypocrites. And there's different cases where the judges are just coming out saying, what are you guys doing? You're not providing any clarity, right? We know the SEC lawyers, they're hypocrites, they're liars, they don't respect the law. They just want to go around shaking down companies. And we've talked about the reason for that is that the Wall Street crowd, those incumbents are getting disrupted, have weaponized the SEC to go after these crypto companies to kill them. They want to kill Coinbase. They want to kill Grayscale and Ripple and Binance and so forth so that they can come in and take over. And I think we're seeing the cards on the table now, right? Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and these folks launch a crypto exchange. PayPal launched their own stable coin. BlackRock wants a Bitcoin ETF. BlackRock is investing in Circle USD and much more. So we are seeing the move from Wall Street to enter this market. They want it. They want to control it. They want to make money off of it, but they don't want Coinbase to be leading the market. They don't want Grayscale to be the first to get the Bitcoin spot ETF. Can you imagine that? They don't want that. They're sitting in their boardrooms and they're like, wait a minute. These guys are coming to steal our lunch here. We got to get control of this. So they have weaponized Gensler, who's a, you know, Goldman Sachs guy to call them Goldman Gary Gensler. So it's clear as day what's happening. Now Jake Traversky of the Blockchain Association weighed in on this. He said, this is huge. The GAO reviewed SAB121, an illogical anti -crypto accounting bulletin issued by the SEC last March and found that it's a rule under the CRA and APA. The SEC didn't comply with either. This is a clear statement from a federal agency that the SEC broke the law. SAB121 basically required crypto custodians to double count digital asset liabilities on their balance sheets. It has done extraordinary damage to the crypto industry and costs untold millions in legal and consulting fees over the last 18 months. It was illegal from the start. The SEC should immediately withdraw SAB121. If it does not, the GAO's analysis makes a slam dunk out of a lawsuit against the SEC, alleging a violation of the APA's notice and comment requirement. The Blockchain Association will be watching closely to see what the SEC decides to do next. So, I hope, folks, the industry sues the SEC, I hope multiple crypto custodians and companies sue the SEC and put them in litigation hell and they start fighting back. We know Coinbase and these folks have been fighting back and this is going to put the SEC in a lot of trouble. Marissa Tashman -Koppel, who I've had on the podcast, she's also at the Blockchain Association, said, huge in all caps, one of the means by which the SEC has tried to unfairly strap crypto. SAB121 not only was illegally published as guidance, not subject to notice and comment, but it makes no sense and has seriously harmed market participants. Representative Mike Flood, who I'm hoping to get on the podcast soon, said the GAO has spoken. Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 is a rule, not mere guidance, as the SEC claims. Rest assured, Congress will act to rein in Chair Gensler's overreach on this issue. So I hope to have him on the podcast and talk about this and find out what steps they're going to take. Now, Attorney John Deaton weighed in on this as well. He said, ever since the Ripple lawsuit, the SEC has consistently not followed the law. A federal judge literally stated that the SEC's enforcement lawyers and the leadership they report to are not only hypocrites, but they also lack a faithful allegiance to the law. It was an incredible statement for a federal judge to make. I was shocked at the little attention mainstream media paid to such a shocking statement. Here's what I can say with great conviction. Today, the SEC does more to hurt investors than it does to protect investors. It has become both an inept and corrupt organization. Full stop. I absolutely, absolutely 100 percent agree with John. And I think you all know that listening to me over the years. Folks, the power is in your hands to fight back. And we have social media. We can drum up a lot of noise and expose the SEC and Gary Gensler. They are paid by our tax dollars. It's time that we held them accountable. Now quick word from our sponsor, and that is Uphold, which is a great crypto exchange that I've been using for years. They have 260 plus crypto currencies. You can trade precious metals on this platform. They also have over 37 fiat currencies that you can trade. They are transparent. They are safe. They have a full app and full functioning website. They don't commingle your funds. They don't lend out your funds. Everything is 100 percent reserved and they have audits, which they do to show that these things are in place. So it's an exchange that I trust and I use to this day. And I've interviewed the CFO, the CEO, and many more. So if you'd like to learn more, please visit the link in the description. Now, lawyer Jason Gottlieb shared the following analysis regarding the SEC versus Coinbase lawsuit. And it was a great thread, a great writeup that he put here. I highly recommend you guys go read it and follow him. He highlighted that the SEC charged SolarWinds and chief information security officer with fraud internal control failures. He said, let me explain how this is relevant to the SEC versus Coinbase case. From the press release in its filings, the SEC, SolarWinds allegedly misled investors by disclosing only generic and hypothetical risk at the time when the company and Brown knew of specific deficiencies in SolarWinds cybersecurity practices. In Coinbase, the SEC allowed Coinbase's S1 to go effective at a time Coinbase was actively allowing crypto trading on its platform. The SEC knew fully the business model at the time and allowed Coinbase to be publicly traded. Thus Coinbase correctly argues the SEC didn't think the business model violated securities laws at the time. The SEC responds, well, approving an S1 isn't approving the whole business. And the SEC adds Coinbase disclosed the possibility of regulatory risks as was proper, but that's just it. The disclosure was of a generic and hypothetical risk, just like the SEC's beef with SolarWinds. If at the time a company is making a disclosure, there's an active materially bad thing the company is aware of. It can't just disclose that there could be a risk of a bad thing. It has to disclose the bad thing itself. He says, I had to litigate this issue, a case where the risk of a bad thing happening was disclosed and the SEC went to litigation alleging that the bad thing was actually happening, which wasn't disclosed. No more comments on that case, which is settled. In Coinbase, if the SEC corporate finance staff actually thought a purported bad thing allowing securities trading without registration was happening, they would have never allowed a disclosure of only the generic or hypothetical risk. They could have required Coinbase to say, our entire business model is predicated on securities laws violations, otherwise a material omission. But come on, no company is going to say that in an S1 because corporate finance would never allow an S1 with that language going forward. So as you can see, the SEC is getting caught on their hypocrisy and lies, right? They greenlighted Coinbase saying, you can go public. And they knew what Coinbase was about. No one had a question, what is Coinbase doing, right? And Coinbase had to go through multiple hoops. They had to jump through multiple hoops to go get an S1 and prove and go public, right? They had to be audited. They had to have certain things in place like other companies that go public. So the SEC is getting caught with their lies here. He said, the reason why this is obvious is because the SEC isn't going to bless public investment in a company predicated on securities laws violations, which it would then think it needed to put out of business, hardly investor protection. Great, great thoughts here by Jason. The only possible conclusion the SEC correctly did not believe at the time that Coinbase's model, which was fully and amply disclosed, violated the law. Something changed. There was no change in the laws or regulations or guidance. That's an important fact there, folks. He said, there was no change in the laws or the regulations or the guidance or the case law. The change was political. There it is, folks. Elizabeth Warren, Wall Street crowd pulling the puppet strings behind Elizabeth Warren and Gary Gensler, that's what's happening, right? I hope you see what's taking place here, folks, and why we gotta fight. So Jason continues, he says, it was frustration at an industry that didn't merely accept the chair's illegal dictates of what the digital economy should look like. Yet that same chair, remember, was promoting crypto before he joined the SEC. He said, Algorand, you could build Uber on it. The man was teaching crypto at MIT. He tried to go work for Binance. Then all of a sudden he's saying and doing these things. It's because he is a puppet. He was just doing the bidding of his puppet masters. So regardless of how he felt before or how he still feels about crypto, he's a gimp, right, as I've said before. So let's move ahead. Today at the Breaking Point Conference, it was revealed that Solana nodes are now available for deployment on Amazon Web Services. So I have some sole tokens. I'm not hugely bullish on Solana. And look, I'll have a swing traded and make some money, which is fine. I'm still weary of Solana. And you know, some people have said this is a VC pump and dump coin. I honestly don't know. It seems that way, but look, just be careful, folks, because be prepared for some sort of dump. I see a lot of people pushing Solana. So we'll see where this goes. Finally, in the Sandbank Murphy trial, Jacqueline Melanick of TechCrunch is reporting that the case has rested. Closing are arguments coming tomorrow. The jury deliberates to determine whether he's guilty or not on the seven charges related to fraud and money laundering. So this guy needs to go to jail. Let's hope that he does. And let's hope he doesn't get off lately. He is the Bernie Madoff of crypto. And he has to go to jail just like Bernie Madoff had to go to jail. Well, folks, that's the news. Let me know what you think. Leave your thoughts and comments below. Hit the thumbs up button on the podcast platforms. And I'll talk to you all later.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1447: Max Keiser: Bitcoin will reach $10,000,000 per coin
"In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest Bitcoin technical analysis and this just in, there are now nearly 40 million Bitcoin addresses in profit, which is a new record. So congratulations and shout out to my long term hodlers. Also in today's show, as I shared, the Bitcoin white paper turns 15 years old today as Satoshi Nakamoto's legacy lives on. Let's go. Also in today's show, crypto asset manager Valkyrie amends their spot Bitcoin ETF filing. I'll be breaking down this latest update, as well as a Bitcoin rally to $50 ,000 per coin is now on the cards as the Bitcoin bull market arrives. According to top crypto analysts, I'll be sharing his timeline. Also in today's show, Max Keiser joins the Alex Jones show to predict the latest Bitcoin trends and price predictions and warns of suicide bankers that will destroy the world. Not only that, but Max Keiser gives Alex Jones a simple, very simple five question Bitcoin quiz for 10 ,000 Bitcoin worth $350 million in today's terms. I'll be breaking all this down for you. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show. Yo, what's good crypto fam? This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at Cryptonewsalerts .net. Again, that's crypto news alerts dot net. Welcome, everyone, to podcast episode number fourteen hundred and forty seven of the Cryptonewsalerts pod. Today is Bitcoin's birthday, October 31st, 2023. Bitcoin is 15 years old and I'm your fearless host, JV. We have lots to cover, as we always do. So let's kick it off with our market watch. As we can see, you should be able to see Bitcoin barely in the green, holding on to thirty four thousand four hundred support. We also have ether barely in the green, a little bit of boring trading sideways action. But if we check out, you know what they say, when in doubt, zoom out. Right. Let's check out the seven day coin 360. Bitcoin's now up four percent. You got XRP up nine percent. Let's zoom out a little more and check out the one month price gains. Let's freaking go. This is a testament that October in full effect, Bitcoin is up almost twenty eight percent this month. Let's freaking go. That's pretty massive. And let's not forget, we're moving into moonvember tomorrow. So do you think we're going to surpass forty thousand? I think so. In fact, if I was a betting man, I'd bet on it. Now, if we zoom out, can we even zoom out a little more? Let's see here. Well, let's switch it up. Let's go to coin market cap dot com. We can see the crypto market cap currently sits at one point two eight trillion with Bitcoin dominance at fifty two point eight percent and the ether dominance at seventeen point one percent and checking out the top one hundred crypto gainers within the top or in the past twenty four hours. We got Celestia, which I've never even heard of before. Up sixteen percent. We got XDC up six percent trading at five cents, followed by TonCoin up five percent trading at five dollars and thirty three cents and checking out crypto bubbles. We can see the top gainers for the past week. We have a mixture. Some are in the red, some are in the green. And let's zoom out. Let's check out the weekly massive gains in the green. Let's check out the monthly. Wow. Incredible. Some of these alt coins are up 50, 60, 70 percent, which is pure insanity. E -Hacks is up one hundred and forty five percent. What about the annual? Holy moly. And let's check out the market cap plus the week and we can see Bitcoin and a big bubble at three point three percent, followed by ether at two point nine percent and checking out the crypto greed and fear index. We're currently rated at sixty six, which is greed. Yesterday, a sixty eight. Last week is sixty six and last month a forty eight, which is neutral. So there you have it, fam. Yeah. So let's kick it off with our Bitcoin technical analysis. Check out the charts with the Bitcoin price action is likely to go next. Here we go. Bitcoin's price trying to push towards the coveted thirty five thousand level. The current high for the year is thirty five thousand two hundred, but has so far been unable to progress. The rest of the crypto market seems to continue with its consolidation, with some of the alts performing better than others. So let's start with Bitcoin here. The Bitcoin price was trading above thirty four G's and seemingly pushing for the thirty five level. And right now we're right in between those two marks. Today, the price remains above thirty four, roughly thirty four five at the time of the live, but is unable to reach the coveted resistance level and is currently at a loss, but barely. We're, you know, kind of tinkering. And liquidation data is also interesting to monitor. According to Coin Glass, the total liquidations for the past twenty four hours are just short of one hundred million bucks. Most of these were long positions accounting for sixty three percent of the total. This shows that the bears were more dominant over the period. Now, the majority of the liquidations, as always, happened on Binance, which is the largest crypto exchange in the world, followed by OKEx and Bybit. And I'm curious, what's your go to recommended crypto exchange? Do you use Binance? Do you use OKEx? Do you use Bybit? Do you use Coinbase? Do you use Kraken? Let me know, fam. And let's now check out some of the technicals specifically for Bitcoin. Right now, as you can see, the oscillators on the left, we have three cell signals. We have seven neutral and one buy signal. And that one buy signal is the MACD, which you can see here on your screen. Now, if we scroll to the right a little bit, we can see for the summary, there's currently eight neutral signals. There's four cell signals and 14 buy signals, which is definitely a bullish indicator. And for the moving averages, which may be cut off on your screen, but I can read it to you. It shows you sell signals, only one neutral, only one. And we have freakin 13 buy signals right now. The market is ripe and ready for continuation of some momentum. So let's freakin go. Now, let's break down our next story of the day and discuss some technicals, which are definitely bullish for Bitcoin. As you can see here, there are now nearly 40 million addresses in profit. If you're one of those 40 million Bitcoin addresses in profit, make some noise in that live chat and let's freakin celebrate. I mean, that's a massive victory, to say the least. Bitcoin has more wallet addresses and profit than ever before. Despite Bitcoin's price being 50 percent below the all time highs. That's right. Right now, you can buy Bitcoin two for one special, but it's not going to last for long. So seize the moment, fam. The latest data is from on chain analytics from Glassnode showing a record number of addresses in the black. Bitcoin may be nearing 18 month highs, but its recent gains were already enough to spark the significant changes in investor profitability. Shout out to relaxing and meditation music. I the appreciate ten dollar super chat. Much love, much respect. Keep it coming. Let's go. Per Glassnode data, the number of addresses in profit as of October 30th was thirty nine point one million. This is the highest number ever recorded for the Bitcoin users and beats the previous peak of thirty eight point one million seen back in November of twenty twenty one. And does this date ring a bell? That's at the time we hit the all time high of sixty nine thousand. Now, at the time, Bitcoin itself traded at those all time highs and thus 100 percent of the addresses in existence with a non -zero balance were obviously in profit. And while the current spot price remains 50 percent lower than those levels, the total non -zero addresses now number forty eight point three million, as you can see here in this chart. And it's just likely to continue soaring and rising. Bitcoiners taking over the world. Yeah, I mean, in percentage terms and profit addresses, they have yet to match their performance in absolute numbers, but nonetheless, at 18 month highs of eighty one point one percent. Let's go. The tally has gone from 60 percent to over 80 percent over the past two months, as Glassnode shares here in the chart. And by contrast, addresses at a loss currently stand at just over nine million at their peak in December of twenty twenty two. Following the FTX meltdown, the total was over 20 million. Now, as reported, the past week has seen the Bitcoin price action pass multiple resistance levels while returning both the long term and short term hodlers back to profit. This in turn sparked profit taken at the much more speculative end of the hodler spectrum, especially as the market passed thirty four G's. Now for crypto analyst Van Stratton, research and data analyst at Crypto Insights Crypto Slate. This underscores the difference in mentality between the cohorts, quoting him here. Bitcoin has shown remarkable strength above thirty four thousand for the past five days while witnessing one of the strongest profit takings in the past two years for the short term hodlers. Now, long term hodlers have barely budged the six largest profit taking this year, but minimal in the grand scheme of things and accompanying the charts from Glassnode tracked these inflows to the exchanges from the long term hodlers and in profit to the short term entities as outlined here in these charts. Now, let's break down the 15 year birthday, the 15 year anniversary of Bitcoin. I mean, this is phenomenal that Bitcoin has been in existence for 15 years. Imagine if you would have knew about Bitcoin back on October 31st, 2008. Talk about a small circle. But yeah, today marks 15 years since the synonymous creator of Bitcoin, the one and only Satoshi Nakamoto, who Alex Jones claims Max Kaiser is maybe because Max holds as much Bitcoin as Satoshi. Who knows? But anyways, shared the Bitcoin white paper to the mailing list of cryptographers on October 31st, 2008. This was after the financial collapse, fam, and a date also annually celebrated as Halloween, quoting the the white paper here. I have been working on a new electronic cash system that is fully peer to peer with no trusted third party, as Satoshi famously said in the opening sentence before linking the document titled Bitcoin, a peer to peer electronic cash system. Holy moly. I mean, again, this is legendary. This is history in the making. You're witnessing firsthand the white paper proposed the decentralized system that could facilitate peer to peer transactions, which can solve the double spending problem often associated with digital currency in which it did. It proposed to achieve this via a network of nodes, validate and record transactions through the proof of work consensus mechanism, launching just two months later, officially on January 3rd, 2009. Satoshi's computer science breakthrough came on the back of other impressive developments in the cryptography and e -money spaces. The first reference cited the Bitcoin white paper is Wade's invention of B money, an electronic peer to peer cash system that never launched, but nonetheless played a key role in Satoshi's plans for Bitcoin and like Bitcoin B money. And I'm curious how many of you have ever heard of B money? We have all heard of B rabbit from 8 Mile, but B money, I've never heard of that one, proposed that participants in the system maintain a database of account balances, which keep track of the ownership of money. Transactions would be initiated and completed by a broadcast message to all participants, which would update the account balances of those involved in a specific transaction. In many ways, it could be seen as a precursor to the nose of the Bitcoin protocol, which keeps a record of the constantly growing blockchain. And I'm curious, how many of you run your own Bitcoin node? Let me know in that live chat. Fam, this process requires proof of work, a form of cryptographic proof in which one party proves to others that a certain amount of the specific computational effort has been expanded. Now, Satoshi implemented this into Bitcoin, citing Adam Back's invention of hash cash in 1997. Shout out to Adam Back, the creator of, I believe it's Blockstream, now, which incorporated proof of work to limit the email spam of denial of service attacks, as shared here by Crypto Leroy, the cypherpunks and fathers of Bitcoin, Hal Finney, he created the reusable proof of work. We got Adam Back, who created hash cash, Wei Dai, who created B money, David Shum, who created DigiCash. We have Nick Szabo, who created BitGold, Phil Zimmerman, who created PGP, Bram Cohen, who created BitTorrent, and Tim May, who is the crypto Antichrist Manifesto, and of course, the one and only Satoshi Nakamoto, who gets credited for the discovery of Bitcoin. Now, Bitcoin's timestamp server works by taking a hash akin to a unique serial number, a block transactions and time stamping, and when the block is added to the Bitcoin blockchain, which we all know. And as Crypto Shama points out here, also giving credit to everyone involved with some of the early developments for the technology that led to Bitcoin. So shout out to all of them, including Max Keiser. If you didn't know, Max Keiser has a patent, I believe the first one for digital currency back in the 90s. That's all on record, fam. So this is pretty amazing. Now, the genius in Satoshi was the puzzling of these pieces into a fully functional system. According to Lop, quoting him here, there is no single piece of the puzzle that I think is more important than the others. Nakamoto's genius was not any of the individual components of Bitcoin, but rather the intricate way in which they fit together and breathe life into the system. Preach. Now, mainstream media highlighted Bitcoin's increased use by criminals, which we know is nothing more than FUD. We got Senator Elizabeth Warren, also Cynthia Lummis pushing those FUD narratives, which suck. We also know Bitcoin became a legal tender in El Salvador, which was the country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender, which has been a game changer for their entire country. And I feel we're going to have many other nations lead in the footsteps of Bukele as well as, you know, El Salvador in adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender. So, yeah. Happy birthday, Bitcoin. I'm wishing you another successful hundred and fifty years after these 15 years. You know, the final Bitcoin is not going to be mine, I believe, until the year 2140. Crack me if I'm wrong, but that's a very long time from now. Now, let's break down our next story of the day. Valkyrie updated their ETF filing. We all know right now all eyes on spot ETF. So let's break down this latest development. Digital asset manager Valkyrie Investments, the latest firm to amend its spot Bitcoin ETF filing with the US SEC Valkyrie filed the updated spot Bitcoin ETF with the US SEC October 30th, which is yesterday, according to the SEC database. Now check it. The updated form as one registration statement from Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund aims to offer investors the opportunity to invest in common shares backed by Bitcoin. The shares represent units of fractional, undivided beneficial interest and ownership of the trust and are expected to be traded under the ticker symbol BRRR, just like money printer continue to go kind of cool on the Nasdaq stock market, quoting them here. The information in this prospectus is not complete and may be changed, according to Valkyrie, stating in the filing, adding the firm is not allowed to sell BRRR securities until the registration statement is officially effective. The amended filing comes about a month after the SEC delayed its decision on the Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund in late September. Meanwhile, Valkyrie's updated spot Bitcoin ETF joins at least six others recently amended spot Bitcoin ETF filings made by the following Bitwise, BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, VanEck and ARK Invest. And according to online crypto ETF analysts, the ongoing Bitcoin ETF amendments can be translated as a good sign, definitely a good omen, in my opinion, of the progress and impending approvals. Valkyrie's latest spot Bitcoin ETF update is yet another evidence of movement happening behind the scenes. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Safart believes, quoting him here from X Update, Valkyrie joins the prospectus amendment train for the spot Bitcoin ETF. Things are still moving behind the scenes and following the recent amendments, at least five of the rest of the known spot Bitcoin ETF filers have not updated their filing. So expect them soon, including firms like Wisdom Tree, Invesco, Galaxy, Global X, Hashdex and Franklin Templeton. The SEC currently has a whopping eight to 10 filings at the desk of the chairman, Gary Gensler. But the million dollar question becomes, will Gary Gensler do anything about this and accept any of these spot Bitcoin ETFs? Congress is putting the pressure on Gary. He says you need to prove the spot Bitcoin ETFs immediately, with that key word being immediately. There's some deadlines that are due soon, including ARK 21. I believe it's January 10th. I personally feel we're going to get the green light from the SEC before the Bitcoin having creating the perfect storm. Let's move on to our next story of the day. We covered the ETF filing. Now let's discuss a potential $50 ,000 Bitcoin rally here incoming, according to crypto analysts, Michal Benday Pop, before I break down the latest with Max Kaiser recently on the Alex Jones show. Here we go. A widely followed crypto analyst believes Bitcoin has officially entered the bull market territory and is now primed for a rally towards $50 ,000 per coin. Send it and let's go. We got Michal Benday Pop, who shared on X that the Bitcoin bull market is here. I would agree. What are your thoughts, fam? Benday Pop predicts the Bitcoin will rally as high as $50 ,000 per coin in the coming months before witnessing a pullback and surging to a new all time high. Quitting the analysts here, I think we'll see Bitcoin hit resistance at 38 Gs, baby, but most likely will continue towards 45 to 50 ,000 per Bitcoin pre having after that consolidation and sideways action for a long period before we start making new all time highs. And this is the chart which you can see here in your screen, which if you analyze it, he appears to predict Bitcoin will see $50 ,000 in January of 2024. What is that? November or November's tomorrow. So December, two months. Send it. I love it. Right in alignment with Credible Crypto, who's predicting $48 ,000 in the next two weeks. Let's go. I hope they're both right. The halving, which had historically coincided with the Bitcoin bull run, slashes the Bitcoin mining rewards, as we all know, in half, which is slated for April 2024, under six months out. And for now, Benday Pop thinks Bitcoin's in the midst of a consolidation period and a dip below $33 ,000 is still on the table. Quoting him again alongside this chart, Bitcoin technically constructing a range here slight correction towards $33 ,300 and quickly bought up if the lower boundaries are reached. Probably sentiment will flip bearish the $32 ,800, but that would signal a great long opportunity touche. Now let's break down our featured story of the day and discuss Max Keiser, who was just recently interviewed on the Alex Jones show. He was invited back. And let me share with you a little the back story, just in case you don't know the back story. Now, back in the day, maybe it was 2014, many years ago, Max Keiser, being a kind hearted gentleman, went on the Alex Jones show and he gifted Alex Jones 10 ,000 Bitcoin. I don't know the exact value of the Bitcoin at that time, but I can tell you what the value of 10 ,000 Bitcoin is in today's prices. If you run the math, that is freakin 350 million dollars. Long story short, Alex Jones claims he lost the laptop that Max put the Bitcoin on. Therefore, he has none of it. So Max being the kind hearted gentleman he is, he said, let me come back on the show now. And he actually just released this episode yesterday. So this is brand new, breaking all these predictions and everything I'm sharing with you. And I'm going to give you a basic quiz on Bitcoin, Alex. And if you can answer these five questions, I will give you another 10 ,000 Bitcoin valued at roughly three hundred and fifty million dollars per coin. And so Alex invited Max on the show. They did the quiz. Here are some of the highlights of the show I'm going to be sharing with you. However, if you want to watch it live with me, we're going to be doing a live JV react session exclusively on Rumble after the show stream ends on YouTube. We're going to be watching it together where Max is quizzing Alex and I'll be reacting live to the video. It's something I've never done before. Live reacting to these videos, but I think it's going to be phenomenal considering it's brand new content. Many of you have never seen it before. So make sure you're following me on Rumble because it's going to be lit. But first and foremost, here are some of the highlights from this recent interview. I posted it yesterday exclusively. I was the first one to post the entire interview on X. I already got over 500 hearts, 166 retweets and over fifty two thousand people viewed it. Here's what I wrote. Max Keiser joins the Alex Jones show to predict the latest Bitcoin trends and warn of the suicide bankers that will destroy the world. And here are some of the quotes regarding his predictions when Alex Jones asked them, so where's Bitcoin going to go next? Where do we go from here? Here's what Max Keiser shared. All fiat money and gold eventually goes to effectively zero against Bitcoin because it's demonetizing gold. The same way gold demonetized silver, Bitcoin will be demonetizing gold. So sure, gold will be maybe two thousand, three thousand, four thousand dollars announced. But we're talking about Bitcoin eventually going to five million to ten million dollars per coin. So you're purchasing power in gold terms is almost basically nothing compared to what's happening in Bitcoin. Preach very powerful words. And there is another quote I believe that I shared here. Let's see if I can find it. I click back on here.
The Dan Bongino Show
The Exploitation Narrative of the Democrat Party
"Need to use fancy euphemisms and terms. It's very simple. The exploitation narrative is very simple. If you are a Marxist, like most of the left are, Marxists do not believe that material wealth, whether for a country or an individual, is acquired through legitimate means, they hate it. They believe that everybody is created equal, not a constitutional sense. Basically you're unconstrained and the only limits placed upon you are in a governing system. It's as simple as this. If you got your wealth and you got wealthy you got rich of someone else. You hear it all the time. Remember Barack Obama? You didn't build that. Remember Elizabeth Warren? If you built a business, you didn't build that. The police and fire services, it's everywhere. Listen to the words of AOC, Palestinian leaders over there talking about it, The the Israelis exploited them, the exploitation narrative is everywhere. The old school ocrat, which is very few of them left, what we used to call the blue dogs, there's almost none of them left. They differed from the Republican Party on social issues. Some of them had firearms and abortion, but they generally believed in the power of America and the capitalistic They would have some probably some regulatory reforms and maybe a higher tax level, but believed they that the United States was generally a good place and meritocracy was the way to go. The New Democrat doesn't believe that at all. Here's the problem in the conflict brewing for them. It's Social that media is the great equalizer and the democratization of information and video where everybody's got a cell phone camera. It's not easy to pitch the exploitation narrative anymore and Democrats up on the hill are eating themselves alive
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from Code Carbone Interview - Will Elizabeth Warren Apologize For Crypto FUD? SEC Gary Gensle Coinbase, IRS Rule, US Bitcoin Miners
"Optimism is at an all time high as it relates to the courts and Gary Gensler following the XRP case, following the grayscale decision. People are looking at this like, man, anything can happen. And if Coinbase is going to be successful with their motion to dismiss and they're going to move on from the SEC as enforcement action here, you're going to get a lot of questions in DC. This content is brought to you by Uphold, which makes crypto investing easy. I've been a user of Uphold since 2018, so I trust this platform and I can vouch for it. They have a full functional app, a full functional website, and they carry Bitcoin and all the top all coins, including stable coins. You can also trade precious metals on this platform and as well as 37 fiat currencies. So Uphold is available in over 150 countries and they are a safe platform. They have full reserve of customer assets. They don't commingle or lend your funds out and they provide audits of their reserves. So it's a safe platform and I trust it. I vouch for it and I've interviewed the CEO, the CFO and other representatives of the company. So if you'd like to learn more about Uphold, please visit the link in the description. Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. With me today is Cody Carbone, who is the Vice President of Policy at the Chamber of Digital Commerce. Cody, it's great to have you back on. Tony, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. So Cody, it's never a dull day with crypto in DC and there's been a lot going on, but I want to start with the digital chamber or the Chamber of Digital Commerce, excuse me, meeting with the Digital Power Network. I saw a lot of tweets and a lot of talks about Bitcoin mining, meeting with different members of Congress. Tell us about that and what the goal of the Digital Power Network is. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. This is something we're super proud of and excited about, the potential of this new Digital Power Network. So what it is, it's an affiliate of the Chamber of Digital Commerce and people are probably wondering like, why is a digital asset trade association starting an affiliate? Well, as you know, and I know many of your viewers and listeners know, there are a lot of financial services related issues in crypto. We're always tackling what's going on at the SEC, the CFTC, what's happening with the different bills in Congress. Bitcoin miners have a little bit different of an agenda. They have a little bit different of an issue set. And so as we were looking at all the miners, we realized that the best way to serve them is really giving them a dedicated home that just focuses on their issues, focus on the issues related to energy and energy security, to national security, to supply chain. And so we started the Digital Power Network to make sure that we had this dedicated entity that just focuses on advocating for Bitcoin miners. And we started about a few weeks ago. And what you were referring to last week on Capitol Hill was our first introduction to the halls of Congress. And we went and we brought a lot of our miners and met with almost 40 members of Congress, which is awesome. The DPN represents about 50 percent of the U .S. hash rate of mining. So I like to say the largest collective of Bitcoin miners in the United States and that new affiliate will be their advocacy and education home for all things Washington related to their issues. That's great. And to your point, it makes sense to segment the Bitcoin miners because they're a segment of the market or industry is so unique. It's not like other all coin projects and NFTs and DeFi, but it's a lot of energy and job creation locally and getting the infrastructure and all these things together. So that's really awesome. Yeah, I mean, you just said it. You said it best. Energy security, community revitalization, all the jobs that they're bringing into usually these somewhat depressed communities and how they are taking over, you know, former coal plants and fossil fuel plants and truly revitalizing them. And they're creating something great out of it, their energy use, and they're creating Bitcoin. It's pretty awesome to see. And it's awesome that they now have a dedicated home to advocate for them in D .C. Question for you, you know, historically, there's been a lot of pushback on Bitcoin mining because of, you know, the energy FUD and different things that people have brought up over the years. But it seems to be less of that around Bitcoin money. Now, is it because like the work you folks are doing, educating, getting members of Congress up to speed, dispelling incorrect reports and headlines that are based on sensationalism? It seems like there's being more of an embrace around Bitcoin mining, especially in states like Texas. And, you know, I've been talking to various Bitcoin miners and they're expanding across the United States. I like to think so, that it's from our work and it's from the great work of the miners and, you know, kind of dispelling these misconceptions and bad narratives. It's hard to argue with facts. And if you look at the facts, if you were going to remove Bitcoin mining from the United States, it would have virtually zero impact on the climate. The fraction of energy and electricity that Bitcoin miners are using really does not make a difference on the climate, but they are doing really cool things, methane mitigation with using renewable energies. And we talked about already the community revitalization and providing jobs. And so when you lay out, some of the publications we've seen in some of the other sectors, take away those headlines and you look at the facts of what Bitcoin miners are doing for the United States, especially while China has shut down Bitcoin mining, it's hard to argue or come up with any issues related to Bitcoin mining. And that is what our effort is supposed to do is addressing those misconceptions and making sure members of Congress are educated. They're starting to wake up and that's the beauty of it. I saw you met with Pete Sessions, if I'm not mistaken, I had interviewed him a couple of years ago and then also Mike Flood. And did those meetings go well, you know, were they open all those things? They went awesome. Pete Sessions, I saw that interview you did with him a while ago. He is he's a character. He is fun to talk to and he can go on tangents, he is great and he has truly been a champion for Bitcoin mining. It helps that Riot has their Rockdale plant in his district. So he has witnessed firsthand the benefits of Bitcoin mining for the community. And then Congressman Flood, it was interesting. You know, we went in there to advocate for Bitcoin mining and all of a sudden it felt like the tables had been turned and he's advocating for the miners to come to Nebraska. It was like, I see the benefits of this and I've got these young Nebraska kids who are hungry, who want good paying jobs. And the first thing I think of is Bitcoin mining. And we have the cheapest power in the whole country in Nebraska. And we've got a ton of renewable energy because we've got all these data centers coming in to use our cheap power and they're offsetting by putting up wind turbines and hydro dams and nuclear. So Bitcoin miners come to Nebraska. And that was an interesting dynamic you don't usually get in really cool. So the meetings could not have gone better. And both sides of the aisle, truly, Republicans and Democrats were embracing Bitcoin mining. We had a few Democratic offices that said, I had no idea, you know, Bitcoin mining can do all these things. Like I thought Bitcoin mining was hard hats, soot on their face, coal mining. And so if we have any takeaway from the day on the hill with the digital power network, it's, I think mining is just a bad term. And maybe there should be a campaign around addressing that term and trying to change it. Maybe it should be just Bitcoin processing or data processing. I don't know. We can, we'll probably figure that out later on, but we addressed a lot of those misconceptions and we were good. We were happy to see the positive reaction on both sides of the aisle. That's awesome. That's great to hear. And you know, I've spoken to quite a few Bitcoin managers and you know, some of the things they mentioned is that to what we're talking about, bringing jobs back to the United States in a sense, replacing some of the manufacturing jobs that have left the country permanently and which the United States as a macro geopolitical thing is trying to bring back. So it's creating jobs. And I think that's important. So it's a win -win. Absolutely. I mean, you look at some of these communities where they had these smelting plants or these coal plants, when they shut down, all those jobs went away. And then those people, I mean, those were huge job generators for the community and huge revenue generators for the community. Because when you lose those jobs, you lose barbershops, you lose restaurants. And so having these miners go in there and take over some of those plants, doing something good for the economy and the environment, and then also creating jobs, it really revitalizes whole communities. For sure. All right. Let's move ahead to Elizabeth Warren, the wall street journal and crypto fun. Favorite topic. So the wall street journal based on elliptics updated data, they did issue a correction. Some would argue it's not a full correction, but they did address some of the issues. Elizabeth Warren has not issued an apology or retracted any letters. What are you hearing about this? And do you expect her to do anything along those lines? I do not. I think she is a, to her credit, a masterful lobbyist and a masterful messenger and communicator. And when she sees a crisis like what is happening in Hamas and before Hamas, it was North Korea using bitcoins for weapons proliferation, she will use it to her advantage to push her agenda. And that is exactly what is happening here. So there was a hearing last week in Senate banking on illicit finance and terrorist financing. And this was shortly after the elliptic statement came out. It was when a lot of the community started to push back on the facts and the data from that initial wall street journal article. And instead of showing any kind of contrition or retraction in her testimony, Senator Warren doubled down and said, this is a problem and we need to address it. The only way address it is my bill. If you look at her bill, it doesn't do anything to address it. It does nothing to solve the terrorist financing aspects of what is happening. And we agree from the chamber side, and I think the entire industry would agree, there is a problem here. We don't want any terrorists or any bad actors using cryptocurrency because it makes all of us look bad. And we only want this to be used safely by consumers who want to solve problems with the technology or they're looking for a new financial system. So will she retract? Absolutely not. She's building a coalition and she thinks she's right. The hurdle that we need to get over with Senator Warren and some people that signed on to her coalition and her legislation is that they still don't believe digital assets, cryptocurrency, blockchain technology should exist. That's the hurdle we're trying to get over is, there's a lot of people in government in Washington now and say, okay, it's here. I might not like it, but I think it should exist and we should regulate it. Those people are easier to work with. The people who say, I don't like it. It should never exist. Send it overseas. That's the Warren camp. And those are the people that are signing onto her bill and her letter. And those are the people that are harder to educate. Yeah. I find that really incredible that they don't ... This is not 2009, 2010. We're not in 2017 where you could have made those statements and maybe had some credibility, some validity to them. But in 2023, where BlackRock is filing for a Bitcoin spot ETF and all these other countries are opening up finance and regulations, the EU passing regulations, they're actually saying that. Is that a ... I know how politics works. Is that purely the lack of education or is that grandstanding optics and things like that? I think from, I would say 90 % of the people who are signing on to Senator Warren's effort, lack of education. It is, I call them blank slate members of Congress. They have no understanding of the technology. And to their credit, they're very busy. And the only time that they read about the technology is usually in a headline. And so they probably only associate Bitcoin cryptocurrency digital assets with FTX and now Hamas. And if that's all you know about this technology, you're probably like, oh, I don't like this either. Why should this exist? And that is where Senator Warren is a masterful lobby or be like, I agree, I've got this bill, sign on and we can get rid of it. I think that's the lack of education component. I think for Senator Warren and some of the other members of Congress who are clearly more sophisticated on this, but they don't believe it should exist. They viewed digital assets as a threat to the US regulatory system. They believe giving people an opportunity to have a new trustless financial services ecosystem where they can transact peer to peer without relying on the government or these super regulated intermediaries is a direct threat to everything they've been building, creating more and more financial regulations. They don't like that. That scares the heck out of them when their solution for most things is more government. There needs to be more government involvement. And so when they see something that's popping up and their constituents are getting interested in it and big institutions are getting interested in it, and it is the antithesis of everything they're advocating for, more government regulation, more and more and more, they see it as a threat and they want it gone. And that's the mindset I think that Senator Warren and some of the other more sophisticated members of Congress who truly don't like this stuff and want to remove it. That's where they're coming from. So obviously the Chamber and many other crypto advocacy groups are working on educating and doing a lot of groundwork in DC to try to change that. But how can the listeners, the average Joe and Jane who are listening, how can they help steer, help you guys steer the ship in the right direction with these people who are working with Elizabeth Warren? There's one way. It's really simple. You have to make your interest in this technology known. You have to call your members of Congress. It is really easy for a member, especially those like that 90 percent of blank slate members to ignore something they're not hearing about from their constituents. If their constituents start calling them and saying, hey, I have Bitcoin or I have XRP or I have Ethereum and I really like I'm using this stuff and it's helping me send money to my family overseas or name what problem and then name a solution that the technology is helping you solve that problem. Raise that with your member of Congress. It's hard to ignore that. Now, when you're not hearing anything from your constituents and this seems so foreign to you, it's very easy to ignore because then all it seems to them is, oh, it's this kid billionaire who committed this scam or it's this terrorist group in the Middle East who's doing this. And my constituents don't need any part of this. Let's remove it. That's when it's easier to ignore. So call your member of Congress, educate them, tell them why you're using this technology and start and really once you start to light up those phones in the and they'll answer. I promise you, the staff will answer your calls if you call them. They always do write letters, call, visit the district offices, tell them why it is so important that we keep this technology in the United States and why you're using it. That makes a world of difference and will help all of the different advocacy groups in D .C. Hmm. Yeah, that's that's a great call to action. So everybody listening, get on those phones, email.
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from Gary Gensler ADMITS there Should be a Bitcoin Spot ETF | EP 856
"Yeah, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin Live, we're your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution, breaking news, culture, medic warfare. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state. Speaking of the separation of money and state, there is literally a video, Gary Gensler caught in 4k basically saying it's kind of weird how there's a futures ETF, but there isn't a spot Bitcoin ETF. Strange, right? Like why the change in tune? Why the change in tune? And the case that we've been making for you guys over the last couple of months is that we believe that this is politically motivated. There is a, we played you guys a video last week on Simply Bitcoin Live of an SCC commissioner herself saying, I have no idea why this thing's why this thing hasn't been approved. And then if you, if, if you just analyze it from those single data points, maybe you'd say, okay, there's nothing there. But if you connect it with operation choke point 2 .0, if you connect it with Caitlin Long's bank, custodia bank being denied a federal banking charter to make her competitor competitive with other banks around the United States, if you connect it with the psyop campaign that happened last week, where Elizabeth Warren and co tried to circumvent the legislative process, going straight to the treasury so that the treasury would implement these broad regulations on the industry. It was so broad to the point that, because they try to say, Oh, this is we're going after coin mixing, coin mixing is bad. But when you actually look at the document and Shinobi did a great job breaking this down on Bitcoin magazine, like it was so broad that single use addresses were targeted. That is by default, how Bitcoin works. If you have a, if you have a Bitcoin wallet, if it's a good one, it will give you a new address every time. So like it was clear Lee, a psyop attack on Bitcoin, social media played to our favor because we were able to react very quickly. And what happened over the weekend was that the wall street journal actually retracted. There's so much pressure. They actually retracted. It was a ha it was a half -assed retraction, but they did retract it. They did retract the article. They admitted that they made mistakes. So a couple of things that that's showing here. I do believe that the ETF has not been approved for political reasons. At this point, if Gary Genzer himself is questioning, why is there a futures ETF and there isn't a spot ETF. The other thing is it's a example of how much your voice matters. It's an example of the fact that your memes, your likes, the fact that you're sharing videos, the fact that you're sharing press and pitches article, that all counts. It all makes a difference. And I was worried in the beginning of last week, but when I realized we had one was when Congress people themselves and the, and the banking Senate committee were literally calling out the BS. And I realized, okay, we, we mounted, we, we put up so much pressure that they folded, that their lives were exposed or misrepresentations were exposed. Thank God for the internet for us to be able to do this. Because if it wasn't for social media, if it wasn't for the internet, we would have been toast. That's just the reality of it. So crazy, crazy stuff. But it also makes me extremely optimistic. Speaking of optimism, how are you doing Opti? What's up, man. Because we won this one. We won this battle and I tweeted this out. I think I was on Friday or Thursday. They're gonna, they're not going to try to do this again. They're not going to try to use the legacy media the way that they used it before, because they would have been able to get away with this before social media existed. But after social media, when people have a, have a, have a platform or an ability to clap back and to be like, Hey, like what you're saying is BS. It's very difficult for them to control the narrative. And I think that's really what we saw last week. And then it coincides with the theory that I've been talking about for many months now, which is we're not only living through the disintermediation of money and state, we're also living through the disintermediation of money. I mean, of information, right? Anyways, Opti, how you doing? Doing good. I'm good. No smiles, no smiles. What's going on? I'm just, I'm watching the chats and stuff over here. Your boy's working over here. I want to disagree with you, Nico. I, I think that we will see more attempts of this nature. I I'm convinced that this will not stop. Uh, obviously we didn't make enough noise and we have yet to make enough noise. And, um, I just, I, I don't think those, those, uh, gaslighting attempts will stop with just this one news story. I think they just got caught and they had to make some kind of statement, retracting it anyways. Anyways, totally other topic guys, before I forget, I want to say this right now, before I keep forgetting to say this, uh, we're going to do a giveaway at 21 K on our YouTube channel. So we have prizes from, from our sponsor. We're going to give you guys some gifts. So, uh, like, subscribe to our YouTube, our Twitter account. And, uh, I still have to get all the rules, but we're about to hit that 21 K and I, and I want to, I want to get it out there so that you guys know, we're going to give you guys some stuff. We're going to give back to you guys. And, uh, the mega big prize guys is going to be a gift for a special, special gift to everyone that hangs out in the chat. So I am writing down names and I'm checking it twice. I think the mega big prize is going to go to you guys in the chat that are always with us every single day. We want to, we want to, you know, make it special for you guys. So give you guys more reason to hang out with us in the YouTube chat. We will be giving more giveaways moving forward, but for everyone else, if you can't make it to the live show, we will be doing some giveaways and, and you guys will, we'll, we'll get in touch with you. I think we're, I don't know, maybe like a week away or something, maybe a little longer, maybe less. I don't know. But at 21 K we're going to do a giveaway. So, uh, you know, good luck. Good luck. And also shout out to DAF because we did give away, we did a sat giveaway over the weekend to celebrate Halloween or before Halloween. Uh, so yeah, we're going to be doing many more giveaways on this channel to kind of, you know, to give back to you guys for, for supporting us and keep keeping us on air. Uh, the, the main gift I think is a bad -ass gift. Uh, so I'm really looking forward to that and, uh, some merch as well. So some simply Bitcoin merch. Anyways, it's going to be a great show. Let's start Monday off strong. Let's let's do this. The Bitcoin numbers. Is your Bitcoin and cold storage really secure? Is your seed phrase really secure? Stamped seeds. Do it yourself kit has everything you need to hammer your seed words into commercial grade titanium plates. Instead of just writing them on paper, don't store your generational wealth on paper papers prone to water damage, fire damage. You want to put your generational wealth on one of the strongest metals on planet earth, titanium. Your words are actually stamped into this metal plate with this hammer and these letter stamps. And once your words are in, they aren't going anywhere. No risk of the plate breaking apart and pieces falling everywhere. Titanium stamp seeds will survive nearly triple the heat produced by a house fire. They're also crushed proof, waterproof, non -corrosive and time -proof. All things that paper is not allowing you to huddle your Bitcoin with peace of mind for the long haul stamp your seed on stamp seed. All right guys, I literally made it super easy for you guys. You can scan the QR code on your screen. It will take you directly to the stamp seed website. You can use promo code simply to get a 15 % discount. Don't store your generational wealth on paper store on one of the strongest metals on planet earth, titanium. At the time of recording, the Bitcoin price is 34 ,535 stats per dollar, 2 ,896 block height, 814 ,548 blocks to having 25 ,452 having estimate April 21st, 2024 total lightning network capacity, 5 ,269 Bitcoin capacity value, 182 million us dollars realized monetary inflation, 1 .74%. The total market cap of Bitcoin, $674 billion Bitcoin versus gold market cap, 5 .04%. In the, in the grand scheme of things, Bitcoin is still a baby.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Bitcoin and Freedom
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, October 29th, and that means it's time for Long Read Sunday. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends. Happy Sunday. You know, some weeks when I look for LRS stories, I really have to stretch it a little bit. I have to find something that I'm going to have a lot of commentary on or maybe connect with a different piece, and that's fine. Obviously, I like the analysis. Some weeks, however, there is something that so clearly stands out as the obvious thing to read that it just screams at me and practically drives its way into this show. This week, as you might have guessed, we have one of those. The piece is by Preston Pish and is called Bitcoin is Anti -Totalitarianism. I, or rather the 11 Labs AI generated version of me, is going to read this piece and then the real non AI me will come back with some analysis at the end. In the face of ongoing challenges to our cherished freedoms, it is imperative to critically examine the forces at play that threaten the very fabric of democracy. The ideals of freedom and open markets are at risk of being undermined by influential political forces seeking to impose oppressive order and control in the name of security. This article delves into the pressing need to fix our manipulated markets, protect Bitcoin and its inherent anti -totalitarian qualities, and inform US policymakers that democratic values are what's at stake. Section the erosion of free markets and capitalism. People who think we currently have capitalism and free and open markets haven't been paying attention. The American economic landscape, once a paragon of capitalism, has undergone a seismic shift, particularly since the 2008 financial crisis when lawmakers selectively bailed out the bankers at the expense of the broader economy. The central banking system's pervasive influence has led to a distortion of free markets with quantitative easing, QE being employed as a tool to manipulate the bond market, artificially lowering the cost of capital and thus distorting the prices of everything. This manipulation has had far reaching consequences, including the gutting of the middle class and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. In the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank failure this March, the deployment of tools such as the Bank Term Funding Program, BTFP, has further exacerbated these distortions, providing de facto yield curve control for banks while leaving ordinary citizens to grapple with soaring interest rates and inflation. This divergence from naturally occurring economic markets and the suppression of a free and open cost of capital has pushed us closer to an economic model reminiscent of you name it, communism regime, threatening the foundational principles of capitalism and democracy. Section. The newest assault on financial freedom and Bitcoin. In a recent letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren and numerous congressional members, they leverage international crises to further their own political agenda and curtail financial freedoms. Armed with a freshly published Wall Street Journal article that falsely suggests Hamas raised a significant sum of crypto funding to attack Israel, the truth couldn't be more obscured. The irony of the claim is that the public Bitcoin blockchain provides evidence that anyone can dispute, which is exactly what happened the day following the senator's letter to the president. On October 18th, blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis clarified that while some terrorist organizations, including Hamas, do leverage cryptocurrencies for funding, the scale is extremely small relative to traditional fiat banking means. They emphasized that the transparency of blockchain technology makes it a less suitable medium for illicit activities, including terrorism financing. Additionally, Chainalysis pointed out that government agencies and private sector organizations can collaborate using blockchain analysis solutions to trace and disrupt the flow of funds to these terrorist groups. They also highlighted the importance of understanding the role of service providers in these financial networks and cautioned against overestimating the scale of terrorism financing in cryptocurrency based on flawed analyses and misinterpretations. Delving deeper into the facts revealed by Chainalysis, it becomes increasingly evident how Senator Warren's letter dramatically skewed the situation. The detailed analysis zeroes in on a specific address that conducted over 1 ,300 deposits and 1 ,200 withdrawals within a mere 7 .5 months, with a total inflow of roughly $82 million in cryptocurrency. However, a mere fraction of this amount, approximately $450 ,000, can be linked back to a wallet associated with terrorist activities. This represents a mere 0 .3461 % of the purported $130 million claimed in the letter, a staggering discrepancy that lays bare the deceptive nature of the narrative being pushed to the White House. Not only has Business Insider reported on October 21st that Hamas operates with an annual budget of $300 million, but a significant portion of its funding also stems from taxing imports into Gaza, as well as international connections with Iran, a country to which the U .S. government recently and rather ambiguously may have released $6 billion in fiat currency 2 in September, just a month prior to the attack on Israel. Unlike Bitcoin, which offers a publicly accessible audit trail, citizens are left in the dark about this substantial financial transaction. The narrative on what was actually released depends heavily on the news outlet or political interest one consults, often resulting in biased and self -serving points of view, the irony. This stark contrast between politically manipulated numbers and the transparent reality a public blockchain provides underscores the urgent need for thorough, factual analysis and the adoption of publicly verifiable monetary units like Bitcoin. Section. Why is this so concerning? Knee -jerk policy reactions based on false information and poor reporting can have devastating long -term impacts to the U .S.'s competitive economic position and more importantly the liberties and freedoms of the citizens. In what appears to be a coordinated policy response one day after Senator Warren's letter, the U .S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN, came out with a proposal for special measures regarding convertible virtual currency mixing and labeled it a primary money laundering concern. Based on all the information contained in the FinCEN proposal, it opens the door for expansive policy to infringe on the rights of individuals. For example, the increased surveillance and potential loss of privacy could subject individuals running Bitcoin full nodes to unprecedented scrutiny. They might find themselves burdened with regulatory requirements that are not only onerous but also infringe upon their personal privacy and the privacy of users transacting through their nodes. The uncertainty and legal risks associated with running a full node under these proposed measures could discourage individuals from auditing their property, thus increasing their risk and reliance on bad actors. Bitcoin holders that ran their own node and took custody of their property in 2022 were not impacted by fraudulent centralized gatekeepers like Sam Bankman -Fried and third -party custodians that acted maliciously. Additionally, a policy attack on node operators creates less financial freedom for U .S. citizens and an incentive for businesses in this new sector of finance to move offshore. Developers might be discouraged from creating and implementing privacy -enhancing features, limiting the potential and the very essence of American citizens and builders within this country.
The Breakdown
A highlight from SBF Testifies; WSJ Errors; Bitcoin Booms - The Top 5 Crypto Stories This Week
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Saturday, October 28th, and that means it's time for the weekly recap. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends. We are back with another top five most important stories in crypto this week. This of course is the conversation that I have live with Scott Melker on Friday mornings. Now this week, there are two big, big blaring things that stand out. One is, of course, the SPF testimony, and the second, which is way more significant in many ways, is the attempt to blame crypto for Hamas's attack on Israel a couple of weeks back. Now, we got a lot more information in that story this week. Elliptic basically said that The Wall Street Journal had misinterpreted what it said, but of course, we've gotten no corrections from The Wall Street Journal, and even if we did, the damage would likely already have been done. We also talk a little bit about the big pump this week. All in all, a very dynamic and exciting week. So let's dive in. Quite a week that we've had, huh? Indeed. It's been a week. It's funny because we always talk about how hyperbolic and exaggeratory our titles are allowed to be. Yeah. And this time you're actually like, take it off, do whatever you want. Have at it, man. It really did skyrocket, right? I mean, obviously, we have Bitcoin sort of consolidating here under 35 ,000. Meme coins like Pepe and Flocky do 100 % plus gains. Is there real money and interest coming back into this market right now? Are we back in the washing machine and we're going to see it rotating? What do you think? So two answers to that. On the one hand, I still think that the vast majority of it is just our money internally and people moving things around and people kind of putting more of their own capital back in, moving out of stablecoin, stuff like that, right? It is excitement that's predicated on the community itself that's already here. However, the big, big caveat to that is that every institutional fund, every Bitcoin onboarding firm, if you watch like anyone who works in Swann's institutional management, all week they've been talking about just phones ringing off the hook, people coming in. I think Matt Hogan tweeted that there are, that the conversations this cycle have started to move from, hey, you should have a 1 % allocation to, hey, you should have a 5 % allocation to Bitcoin. So I do think that while when it comes to sort of like this vicious rip up that we had on Monday, that's market structure dynamics playing out with regard to this particular community by and large. But it does seem like this one may have finally triggered alongside all of sort of the narrative stuff we've seen, the phone calls to start coming in for people to actually kind of move in from outside. So I think that for the first time when we're asking this question in a long time, it actually is potentially some amount of a mix of different types of buyers. Yeah, I mean, Matrixport being the analyst here that they're referring to, fifth bull market has further to run. That's coming from Matrixport Research. They're saying that this is officially now the fifth bull market for Bitcoin. Of course, they say 125 ,000 by 2024. We don't care about that, right? We don't really care about the hyperbolic price predictions. But to your point, I think that something's different this time. I know those are dangerous words, but we can see that the market cap has risen dramatically. We can see that both Bitcoin rose and things like meme coins rose at the same time. That can't happen with the rotation of capital. That means that there has to be new money in the system. I've spoken with quite a few people. I had James Butterfield from CoinShares on and he said, yeah, we're seeing some inflows definitely at 300 million this year, institutional inflows. He said, interestingly, we're seeing a bit of outflow from the futures ETFs. What that tells me is that everybody now is ready for this ETF's approval. I'm not surprised that we haven't seen billions flowing in already, because why would you start throwing money into this market if you're an institution today, if you think that there could be a Bitcoin spot ETF that you can safely invest in in a month? Yeah, 100%. I think that the other thing, going back to this contention of, is it a bull market yet? Listen, analyst papers love to call those things. They're very useful. They're good for selling research. When it comes to the gut check on this question, because I think from a community perspective, that's in some ways more enlightening, I think that we are just starting to be in a phase where in the long in -between, between a bear market and a bull market, you have the first part in which the little spikes that look like bull markets feel like the exception and then you return back to the rule, which is either down or sideways. Then you get to the second part, where it feels like the retraces back down and the slight move sideways are the exceptions to the larger momentum. I don't want to say this for sure, but it does feel from a psychological standpoint in this space that we maybe have just flipped over into that, even if we saw the first half of November going slightly down, we get back down to 30, 29, I think that it would still feel like, yeah, whatever. It's not going to change. It's not a return to the norm. It's now sort of like, that's the exception, not the rule kind of a thing. No asset in the world loves to leave people behind more than Bitcoin, right? So if we get the retrace, it'll be shallower than people think. It'll bounce a thousand dollars higher than everybody has their orders. We love to talk about the meme of which direction is Max Payne and what can the market do to punish the most people. Right now, it feels like anyone sidelined is really hoping that they get that dip to buy, which means to me they probably won't, that Max Payne perhaps in this case finally is up. And speaking of Max Payne, look at this guy, in a Bitcoin -free trial, live updates from the courtroom. I know looking at him gives me Max Payne. I'm sure even every ex -FTXer is just calling their therapists off the hook for the last month. I'm quite sure that the therapists, that service crypto clients are probably making almost as much money as bankruptcy attorneys who are service crypto companies at this point. But some wild stuff happens here. Maybe you can explain why he testified, but not in front of a jury. Even the judge seemed somewhat confused at why that was happening. They asked the judge a question, frankly was like, I've never done this before. So I don't know. And SPF went on to say things as wild as I had no idea it was wrong to use customer funds. So a couple of things. One is it's worth noting that I don't think that there has been a lot of meaningful progress in the case besides this. I don't even really think that the defense had a chance to make a lot of its cases. I don't know, there's just not much there. And I think that that's sort of what gets us to the situation. There are two reasons that SPF is testifying. One is because he was always going to testify because it's a person who is the biggest thing that he suffers from is narcissism. And there was never a chance, I think that at the end of the day, he wouldn't testify. So that's one. The second though, is that it really is the only chance he has left. Even if it is a literal snowball's chance in hell, it's better than the definitive verdict that he was looking like he was heading towards. And so I think on some kind of perverse way, it makes sense that he asked to at least try. Now what my read on the situation was in terms of why the jury was dismissed. The government said something like there's data that the government doesn't think that jury should hear, but it seems more like the situation was the judge was trying to figure out what Sam was actually going to say because they called it sort of a mock testimony. And he wanted to see like if Sam was just going to be evasive and not give answers, because I think the judge has to rule on whether he's going to allow Sam to testify in front of a jury. And so yesterday was this very weird, there was a lot of obfuscation, there was a lot of, someone noted, I think it might've been Laura Shin or someone else, it was Sam or maybe it was Tiffany Fong, but someone noted that Sam was doing exactly what he was doing during his media tour, which is when asked a question, he slightly sidesteps it and answers something else. Yeah. And unfortunately for him, courts don't work like that. When you do that in court, they say, you know, answer the actual question asked. Right. So it's sort of TBD on how that's going to play out. A second thing that Sam did a lot is they very clearly, the defense very clearly and has from the beginning, wants to make this an issue of FTX counsel. Right. That Sam was just doing what he what he was legally told to do. Every other answer was Dan Friedberg. Right. Who's the name of the general counsel who was formerly involved in a big sort of poker scandal as well. And it's very clear that Sam is desperately trying to throw Dan Friedberg under the bus and say, I just did what he said. Now, I don't know if you have this tweet pulled up or if we can find it, but there was one moment where the judge literally asked Sam's attorneys to explain to him how blaming counsel was different in this case versus if you laundered money from a bank, like the judge was basically trying to figure out. It's like, look, you did a crime and then later the attorney told you how to deal with the crime. Doesn't that mean you still did the crime? And and it's just this sort of very weird moment where, again, the judge is still trying to figure out if he is going to allow the way that the defense is trying to present the case, you know, because it's not a for sure. Yeah, he wants to blame his lawyers for everything and play claim ignorance, but nobody's going to buy that. There was even a point in the trial where they objected and it was sustained and he decided to answer anyway and his lawyers got missed. I mean, this guy is off the rails. I don't know if he got his Adderall or not. To me, that's the bigger story, right? He needed Adderall if he was going to testify. I wonder if I wonder if they gave it to him. Do we have any insight on that important story? That was I mean, that was the most I think that was the most remarkable moment for kind of anyone watching or reading along about it is Sam deciding to that he said he felt he needed to answer a question to which his attorney, you know, after an objection was sustained to which his attorney said, have you not been here for four weeks? Just wild, dude. Chill. Yeah, I loved, by the way, that in this quick summary from inner city press that we had the inclusion of Sam China Bribe, Trabuco and Dan illegal narcotics, Friedberg. This is the first time that we've seen Trabuco's name. He's been the missing man this entire time. I mean, he was the head of Alameda with Carolyn Ellison and it's like he never existed. I think this is still this is still super confusing. I mean, it seems like there has to be something more going on because it's just it doesn't make any sense. No one has ever offered an explanation. No one's ever tried to offer an explanation that the complete silence around it is, you know, as as sort of dubious as anything else. Deafening, as they said, the silence is deafening, you know, we get to move on from SPF because I think that's enough. We all know where that's headed for today. And we get to talk about something much more favorable. I believe we touched on it actually last week. Hamas militants behind Israel attacked raised millions in crypto. Obviously, the bigger story that that was a Wall Street Journal article that referenced data by Elliptic, we saw Chainalysis come out and say this is completely wrong. And then Elliptic themselves, who were the basis for this article, said, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're setting the record straight on crypto crowdfunding by Hamas talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, not tens of millions of dollars. But the bigger story is that we're not seeing a retraction from the Wall Street Journal and we're certainly not seeing Elizabeth Warren and 100 plus senators and Congress people retract their statement that was made based on this article. And then to dig even deeper into it yesterday, Senator Lummis, who's been very, very favorable, she's the one writing the stablecoin legislation that's being proposed, saying the DOJ needs to do their job and go ahead and charge Tether and Binance for their role in things like this. It's a lot. Yeah, so this is I mean, this has been this is actually one of the most probably the most significant story going on in crypto right now, because there are a bunch of different dimensions to it. There is obviously a larger media story of, you know, the incentives of press. You know, you've kind of seen the journalist who wrote the piece or one of the journalists who wrote the piece on Twitter defending himself. And effectively, his argument has been, well, no, I buried these caveats later in the piece and it and it makes sense. Now, if you go back and read that original piece, the headline and the first paragraph could not make it clear that the thesis of the piece is that Hamas was able to carry out this attack, this specific attack, by the way, because of cryptocurrency financing. Now, by the end, there is a lot more doubt into that. The journalist isn't wrong, that there is more questions by the end than are there in the beginning. But one, it's a fair question of does that matter when you scream out the headline the way that you did? And two, the way that he did these caveats sort of like with with, you know, journalistic, you know, his journalistic covers are things like they raised as much as ninety three million from crypto. It's like, come on. You think that adding and as much as and like that that doesn't imply that it's ninety three million? Like that's not a reasonable journalistic take, I don't think. And so there's the whole media side of the story. But obviously it's even more complicated because it comes at a time when the crypto industry is being absolutely assailed and has been for the better part of a year now for the opponents have been looking for anything to cast doubt on this. This was the sole source of information for a letter that was signed by a fifth of Congress. That's totally, totally inappropriate. And so, you know, the question has been, will the Wall Street Journal issue a retraction? But I don't think that there's any chance on the planet that they will. It also doesn't matter if they do, because we know that it's already seen proliferates so much faster. And once it's seen, the retraction never is that damage has been done. Absolutely. Yeah. There's no coming back from that. Obviously, I also pointed out here that Sherrod Brown calls for crackdown on the use of crypto to fund terrorism. I think what's just most interesting to me is that this Senator Lummis letter comes after we already know that this is a fake story. It was one thing for Elizabeth Warren, I guess, can claim plausible deniability. I read the article. I trust the Wall Street Journal. It was right there. We wrote the letter. Lummis, who we all love, who we all love, she wrote this letter seemingly after it's very clear that this isn't true. So I'm just trying to figure out what the potential angle there would be. My instinct is that the angle there has more to do with a prioritization around where we are, you know, what threats we're dealing with. Like she clearly wants the emphasis to be on offshore, non -American regulated sort of institutions and their role, rather than sort of like targeting the better part of the or the sort of controllable, you know, regulatable part of the American crypto industry. So, you know, listen, it could just be literal politics. You know, instead of trying to say, hey, don't go after crypto, it's instead saying go after this very different part of crypto, you know, go, go after non -American crypto. Right. I mean, that's basically what they're saying. They're saying we're going to pick the winners, which we understand. Maybe this is saying, hey, use USDC. We're regulating the hell out of it. Don't don't use Tether, use Coinbase for regulating the hell out of it. Don't use Binance. I mean, Paolo from Tether and Bitfinex responded. We at Tether are proud of the work we do to stop illicit activity. Tether proactively collaborated since inception with tens of law enforcement agencies, including US, Ukraine and Israel. Crypto used by malicious actors accounts for a small drop. You get it, right? I mean, he very quickly said the same thing they've been saying all along. Listen, we're literally working with you guys to freeze these wallets. Everybody sees it. They're actually doing that work. So it just kind of kind of blows my mind to see that. But I think you actually have it correct, which is that we're going to get rid of the foreign actors in this industry so they can be better controlled by the United States. I mean, I think that that's a fair sort of way to approach this. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's reasonable to not like that approach. It's just this is very clearly there are let's put it this way. If on the one hand you have crypto antagonists and on the other hand, you have like the full on sort of crypto industry, let markets decide, you know, figure it out, folks in the middle, especially in D .C., there is a big space that says, you know, we've got to make some compromises. We have to exert some control. And so the compromises that we're going to make are things like, you know, focusing on, you know, pushing out the unregulated, uncontrollable stuff and, you know, and sort of enshrining and holding up the things that that are sort of, you know, regulateable. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. The next story, I believe this is number four, BlackRock Bitcoin ETF in August got on the DTCC site that just belatedly moved markets. That is a mouthful of a headline from Coindesk. I'm not even sure if they wrote that in English. But the idea here is a story that we've all been discussing, which is that the reason because we need a reason for the last move of Bitcoin from thirty one thousand to thirty five thousand was because BlackRock's Bitcoin spot ETF had been listed on the DTCC was BlackRock that is advancing. They're taking the next steps. They wouldn't do this unless they thought they were going to get approval. And further, once you do that, you start to actually seed the fund, meaning that you have to buy the underlying asset for that ETF, meaning even if in small amounts, BlackRock's going to start buying Bitcoin. We all know what happened next. Apparently, it disappeared from the website. Then the website itself disappeared because so many people went to check if it was still on the website, which actually crashed it. Then when it came back, it was there. It wasn't there. This all, of course, according to Twitter and the ARK ETF was there. But then that wasn't there. Apparently, that was fake news. So basically, we had this massive, confusing, nonsensical story and it turned out when someone actually just bothered to call DTCC that it had been there since August. I personally I just love this story. Everything about it is I mean, listen, what this story tells you more than anything else, hold aside the details, is that one, this is now two weeks running where we've had a Monday fake news story around the ETF. So let's see if we can make it three. And then two, it's that there is so much pent up energy, excitement, anticipation. I mean, look, it is it is very clear that people believe, rightly or wrongly, that this ETF is going to be the starting gun on the next bull market. And anything that hints that we are there is pushing people in. What I would be interested in is knowing sort of how much it's new market participants versus just more new capital from existing market participants, because it feels like it's a lot of that. But anyways, listen, I think it was hilarious that ultimately it was just something that we didn't notice for two months, drove the market that way. But I think that that speaks less to us being insane, although there's obviously always a little bit of that and more to just the the anticipation of what is seen as a absolutely catalytic event. That's right. It shows you that this market wants to go up. It wants to believe and it wants to continue to continue. And so I think you're right. It really doesn't matter what the news is, real or fake. It's giving us a huge hint as to what we can expect from this market when we do see a real approval. My favorite, just to wrap up on that one, was this final take from Philback, my brothers in Bitcoin. I spent six years managing new ETF launches for NYSE 2010 to 2016 and about 15 years in ETF product development and management. The DTCC thing means absolutely nothing, nothing. Get offline and spend time with your loved ones. So just to just to give you the context, all of that, even if it was just there since August, apparently even the takes about how important it was that it was there were false. And this is literally an entire nothing burger. But the bigger nothing burger it is, the bigger the story it is to me on how it was treated and handled by crypto, the crypto world and media. Well, you know, it was interesting. I mean, I think that like so we had this crazy rip up and then when the next day on Tuesday morning, when this ticker symbol was suddenly gone, everyone freaked out and Bitcoin three retraced or four percent. Right. Not not nearly the entire move, but but meaningful. Then when it came out, when it came back, and even when it was revealed that it was nothing, people were like, oh, no, you know what? We like that higher level better. We'll go back to the thing. You know, this this asset wants to be, you know, somewhere around where it is now for the moment, you know, and sort of clinging to that, I think, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure what would knock it off. I guess, you know, another ETF denial entirely if the SEC came out and, you know, kind of wiped off the slate, maybe that was sort of, you know, really, I think it would have to be the January denial when there's actually a final deadline for I think that would probably be it. I think until then, we're just going to sort of maintain this hype. Maybe it'll float down if we hear nothing for a bit. Maybe my favorite actor in this whole story, I don't know if you saw today that Jay Clayton, who's been on his road show, the SEC chairman, saying that we should approve a Bitcoin spot ETF, saying if he was chairman now, he would approve a Bitcoin spot. ETF is the most fair weather clout chasing human I've ever seen in my life because he was literally SEC chairman and had the opportunity to approve a Bitcoin spot ETF. I guess we can say, hey, it's changed. The environment is different. Yeah, it's actually a lot worse. Like we're in a bear market. So I don't really get that. The life of an ex -regulator, it's very good work if you could get it. Living in the sun, man. Just like sunny 24 -7, got a great tan, having a beer and just getting to fight. It's kind of like being the party that's not in power in politics because you don't have to do anything but be critical and say what you would do if things were perfect. So much fun for him. But man, it just aggravates me. He's literally the guy who could have done it. But hey, what are you going to do? Now, moving on to the fifth and final story is not just the approval, but what would happen if we do actually get it, right? Bitcoin spot ETFs could see inflow of $14 .4 billion in first year. This is from a pretty comprehensive report by Galaxy, which we can accept and enter the site. You can see that here on galaxy .com. But we're starting to get the analysis, we can call it research. It's really hard because it's all projection on just how big this could potentially be for the market and how much money we could see coming in. I think the only real reference point we have is BITO, the Bitcoin futures ETF that was approved a couple of years ago. We saw over a billion in less than 72 or 48 hours of inflows, assets under management. That was the most successful ETF of all time. Launch any ETF, obviously, not just crypto ETF. And Valkyrie, which didn't launch for another 48 or 72 hours after that, even being second was still, I believe, the 14th most successful ETF launch of all time. So that was in a bull market. There was huge demand, obviously, for a futures ETF. Now you have 8 to 10 of these, including the biggest names in the investment world. What can we expect and how can we come to that sort of conclusion as to what we can expect? Well, to your first point, it's all just projection. So there's no certainty here. A couple of things worth noting. One, obviously, Mike Novogratz himself is a huge bull. He will always show up in the arena with a price prediction. That's sort of his thing. His team at Galaxy Research are not that. They're super serious. Alex Thorne was at Fidelity. He's been an investor for a long time. These are very serious people. If they're coming out with a $14 .4 billion projection, and that's in their first year, they think it goes up to $21 billion in the second year and $39 billion by the third year. They're looking at that. Listen, they still could have the rose -colored glasses that we all have in the Bitcoin space, but I think that you can take it more seriously than just some sort of errant CEO pumping up this space. So that's one thing. The second thing is, I think that these big numbers are predicated upon either an assumption or a bet that what's different this time is that, one, because you have an instrument which is accessible to a huge array of investors, and two, you have the providers of that instrument being some of the biggest giants in traditional finance, that all of a sudden those messages of get off zero, basically, the stuff that people have been talking about for six, seven years now or more, actually start to resonate. When you start to have some meaningful portion of people who wouldn't allocate before there was an ETF say, sure, 1 -5 % going in, it doesn't take all that much to add up to these seemingly big numbers. So I think that the question will not be, in some ways, so much to me what the actual number is because that's arbitrary. It will be, do the things that we anticipate happening because this instrument exists, i .e., this new set of investors allocating a little bit to it, does that actually happen? That's the big question. And if it does, it's game on in a huge, huge way. Yeah, do registered investment advisors actually say, okay, now that we can, we're going to? Do institutions say, now that we can, we're going to? Is the real demand there? All of these calculations, as you said, they're based on a theoretical, if we get 1 % from all of the investment managers in the world, it breaks down to X number. Mark Yusko came on, he did it. Yeah, it's like, we have some 3 trillion, if we get 1 % of those and they do 1%, it's this number, we're going to see. But I would tell you that the price action in the market is showing that at least that demand is there.
Tech Path Crypto
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Tech Path Crypto
"Other traditional channels are also being being used. This is all just I want to say. Is the one major reason why crypto exists is to finance things that are either illegal or they wouldn't want to be attached to that kind of a thing. Is that is that a fair question? By the way, there are some cryptocurrencies that you could actually confiscate from a far from a distance just by disabling them. So this is something like one of the solutions that some actors from private sector came up with in order to to minimize the options to misuse crypto. Again, it's not that I'm supporting the industry. I'm just in a place in which it exists and we have to find a way to deal with it, because outloading that altogether just will create a black market that will not be able to supervise at all. And that actually I'm more afraid of than, you know, having some monitoring tool and working on improving them and making sure that law enforcement authorities may have the option of doing that. It's like if you're able to effectively track it, would it really be attractive for anyone to traffic in that, especially because how volatile it is? So we're definitely hearing a lot of use cases in the market of people that are using that, you know, in order to make sure that they are not attached to a certain currency, but have something that, you know, is fixed to the dollar that they want to put their funds in places or to transact with lower cost to have more financial inclusion options. So there are some legitimate use cases for that. And the blockchain technology, generally speaking, has its advantages in the way that it's you know, it's easier to to transact around the globe. All right. I'm going to play this last clip for you. And this is Elizabeth Warren. We rarely get her on camera going head to head on the topic of crypto or blockchain. But this was one of those cases. Listen in. You don't want to miss it. Terrorists have found ways around those rules. One big one, crypto. Dr. Levitt, as a Treasury official, you saw firsthand how terrorists structure their transactions to evade detection. Do you think that government authorities know the full extent of all the crypto funds that Hamas and Islamic Jihad received over that time period? By definition, they can't know all of the the extent of it. But I do think that number is very likely exaggerated. But the experts who follow this closely think that number is inflated. Now, obviously, the industry's claim is false and that the amount of crypto flowing to terrorist groups has, quote, super increased since the attack began. And now it's time for Congress to act. Dr. Wegman, you were the director general of the Israel Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Prohibition Authority. Do those wallets pose a particularly high risk of attracting terrorists and other very dangerous people? Most of its budget and funds are still going through the traditional channels. And I want to put that clear because crypto is a problem. But this is not the major problem. And we have to look, you know, on other traditional channels like banking and exchanges and money exchanges and cash and so forth. So let's not forget that crypto it is a technology like any other technology that could be used for legitimate and illegitimate purposes. And even when we're getting to defy and all other technologies, there is a way there is a technology that could also inspect that. And because of everything is transparent on the blockchain, which is we should focus on what efforts. Therefore, I think that it is really important to make sure going forward that we are creating those environments that we could actually inspect and put forward the relevant technologies to ensure compliance. OK, so I appreciate that. OK, I'll be really quick. I just want to point out you wrote that decentralized finance and peer to peer transactions between unhosted wallets are, quote, higher risk structures. We have the power to choke off that lifeline. And I think that's what we should thank you to the panel for being here. Thank you for writing testimony and your responses. All right, so there you go. Basically, they don't really want to hear it. They don't want to hear facts. They don't hear, you know, the real root of the problem, because that would be the truth. You know, those are the problems that sometimes our lawmakers have. Anyway, they're going to get a chance to hear this in other places. I think now mainstream media, including the mainstream satire, is going to hit it. Here's Babylon Bee, Janet Yellen proposing a tax cut on the coins you can acquire in Mario. Maybe. I think so. On the real note to end, and that is I'm kind of upset at this whole thing. The fact that we have mainstream media putting out fake news, not retracting stuff, data, full on analysis that shows these things are, you know, false and inaccurate. And then our very lawmakers that could care less about this kind of information, they just have agendas. And that seems to be the case. So if you want to change those agendas, just go over to standwithcrypto.org. And we keep, you know, we're shilling this like crazy. And of course, it's not an ad from Coinbase. But the point is, you can go over there and you can call your congressman, you can go in and email your congressman. You can even go in and talk to the IRS on the commentary period. So all this is available to you guys. Check it out over there. Drop some comments down below. Make sure and let me know if you like this video, if you like these kinds of breakdowns, these clip rundowns, these arrays, these carnivals that we're holding here every day on Tech Pad. Let me know. I'd love to hear down below. And if you want to hit me on X, it's at Paul Barrow. Catch you next time right here on Tech Pad. We'll see you next time.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Elizabeth Warren Crypto Hearing FAILS! | Crypto FUD vs. Facts
"All right, I just want to set the stage here about what's been happening that's been causing all this turmoil about fake news and Elizabeth Warren not really caring. Well, we're going to show you all that good stuff. It all started kind of with this Wall Street Journal article. They put up some nice fake news saying, you know, terrorism is financed by crypto, yada, yada. Didn't have the real story. In fact, they ended up having to eat a little bit of crow, but yet have retracted this. This was a company, the data company, that went in and set the record straight on their own data analysis. So that's been pretty much set. But it all boiled down into Senator Warren and a Senate hearing onto whether or not they even believed it. Let's take a look at this first clip. On this committee, we've raised the alarm about crypto and its role in illicit finance, including the use of crypto to fund terrorists and enable rogue nations financing them. Last week, Senator Warren and I, along with more than 100 of our colleagues of both parties, wrote to the administration to voice concern about these issues. I'm glad that members of this committee, including Senator Reid and Senator Warner, have put forward bipartisan plans for closing gaps around digital assets. I do want to highlight, let's don't lose sight and focus from the big picture. Crypto is currently a very small part of the puzzle. The major funding channels are where and remain state funding, Iran and others. Those are the major players. Most of the funds are still being transferred by the traditional channels that we all know from the past. Banks, money transmitter, payment system, hawala, money exchange, trade based terrorism, financing, charity, cash, shell companies and crypto. The big, big money in this terror financing story comes from Iran and specifically from its oil sales. Iran's total revenue from oil exports since 2021 is between 81 and 91 billion dollars. Go after the big money funneled to the terrorists by Iran. Go after the oil sales. Go after the terrorist enablers. That is what fuels the savagery of October 7th. Thank you. All right. So some good statements in the fact that the Senate hearing actually included, you know, reality. It included truth. And of course, this is Dr. Wagman. Just to give you an idea, this is her LinkedIn page. She's the former director in general of the Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority, the IMPA. So essentially that was her job, was to track this down. So clearly she already was ahead of this and understood where this was going and that it was not crypto that's involved in this. In fact, it's the traditional fiat, fake fiat systems that we've always had out there funding all of the bad things that happen, of course, in our environment. I want to jump over to another clip that goes into tracing funds. Listen to what they have to say. A few years ago, the way terrorist groups exploited crypto is pretty simple. They raise money with Bitcoin. How are they innovating and how they use crypto? How do our legal and technological tools need to evolve so that we can keep up? The law enforcement community developed tools to investigate that, trace that and follow that. And for example, the Israeli authorities were able to seize and freeze about seven million dollars from Hamas in fundraising campaign that they ran. Because most of the activities is going over the blockchain and there is a lot of transparency, we could actually use this technology in order to trace the bad actors. One of the things that we've recently seen is the Hamas stop its fundraising through Bitcoin the because Israeli authorities were able to trace that. And perhaps to add to that, it's not only the intelligence community that is able to do that. But here, because everything is transparent, we could do a lot of work by the private sector. And we see a lot of crowdsourcing activities of people that actually go after and try to find those networks and then report that to the authorities. So that's a very interesting balance that changed intelligence communities. It's interesting, too, because the likelihood of crowdsourcing, I think, is going to be a real force in the future, especially around blockchain, around some of these bad actors. And in fact, I think it's going to continue to push a lot of these bad actors off of the blockchain and back into traditional methods called fiat, running all this. Here was Dune Analytics, their mission to make crypto more data accessible. But the Wall Street Journal could have signed up to Dune and queried the data themselves. I loved it. But yeah, here we are. And of course, they put out basically a bounty on the idea of, let's go trace this down. And at several bounties, it's been piling in for quite some time. And of course, all of this started right here. Break the fake news and crypto, of course, outperformed Wall Street Journal chain analysis. That'd be pretty easy, actually. I think anybody could outperform the Wall Street Journal in terms of their analysis of just about anything. Then you had Nick Carter come in and says, hey, a couple of updates. We've already got many submissions. I'll make first payouts. So already there's starting to be a flow of content moving into the space here. And when you look at actually one of the, I won't say winners, but one of the people contributing to this, they start going down and you can start seeing this literally live on Twitter, all of this X happening right now in terms of all the transactions. This is where it gets interesting right here. I'll zoom in on this a little bit more. But you can kind of see this on the 180 ,000 transactions going through. This is the matrix that we end up with. And look right there. Pretty sure that there are some innocent parties here that are unrelated to terrorism. Look at this. This is the flow. This is the only one place that you can do this. And remember, she mentioned, Dr. Wagner just mentioned 7 million, 7 million. She also mentioned 90 billion through traditional means in terms of oil funding that is financing a lot of these things. So this is where it gets me just out of sorts on all of this stuff. Around the validity and the fact that we have places like the Wall Street Journal that continue to do this kind of reporting. I want to go to our next clip that gets into a little bit more of, well, this is more of a joke. Listen in. I do not accept the premise that there is no father or mother of any DeFi system. Somebody is making money off of that. And we try to, we try to grapple on that.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"All right. Well, shout out to you, Will. But actually, let me let me read the note he wrote for me here when I saw him at Pacific Bitcoin. He goes, Opti, you bastard. Love you. The Bitcoin dog. Shouts out to you, Will. Yeah, I can read. Yes, this is true. Better than you, too. All right, James, your turn. I'm going to give it one Bitcoin. Oh, dang. Yeah, these are made by a little local artist here. Sick. So come to Bitcoin country and grab yourself a pair. Yeah, that's nice. Do you only have one? Do you have both? Is it custom? Is it like, did you did he paint it? Yeah, yeah, you're never going to wear those. Well, these are actually for my lady. These are way too small for me. But no, I don't think she's ever going to wear them either. Yeah, collector's edition. Absolutely. You don't want to crease your Air Force 1s, bro. That's mad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. Definitely not. Well, great, great scores today. Before we before we get before we get into the meme review score, I want to give a shout out to to wine, really. Shout out to wine. Get our merch or wine will get upset with us. He he's he's our merch guy. And I'm yelling at him to get you guys had to wear in the works. We're talking about it. I know. I know you guys are going to yell at me in the chat. It literally says Bitcoin or slavery in the stitching. It's super frickin nice. Opti's wearing a represent. Represent are the ones who made it for us. Very high quality merch. We're working on the dad hats. We're working on the on the back as well. Let me know. Let me know the chat on the female merch or in telegram. What do you guys want? Snapbacks, dad hats, female sizes. I get it where we're going to. You could really support the show by by really getting some of our merch. Anyways, Opti, it's time for the meme review. All right, Justin Ball, even meme score, BTC peer to peer paradigm adoption completed 100. Well, close, not not completed yet. OK, Will Wethenheim says the process of opting out is backing out, always keeping an eye out on the lizard class. Oh, Philip, I don't know, Niko, you make your meet. Philip Russo says Lagarde looking away for any way to gain access to Opti. That's a good one. That was that was a good sensation. Narwhal tacos meme score. Liz Warren's ledger gets rugged by her own department. Yes. Oh, man. Uh, next one, I think there's a delay. There's the delay. No, there isn't a delay because we ran out of time. We ran out of time. There's just we just ran out of time. Anyways, guys, if you enjoyed the show, make sure to smash that like button. Consider subscribing if you feel like we provided you value. But the number one thing you do to help this movement share Bitcoin content. Share projects that Bitcoiners are working on. Share Bitcoin art. That's we've got to change the culture. We got to fundamentally change the culture, change the culture. We win this thing. And I think we're going to win this thing anyways, but it will just make it a lot faster. I want to give a shout out to our guest, BTC Farmers Market. Thank you so much for joining us today, man. Really, really appreciate it. And shout out to you moving to the shining country on a hill, El Salvador. I'm so glad that you're having a great time. And it makes me really, really happy that Naeem Bukhale is, you know, doing good things over there. Well, thank you very much for having me on, both of you. It's a pleasure to be here. And sorry I don't get to watch the show as much as I would like to. Too busy, but fan of the show. It's an honor to be here. So thanks very much. The honor is ours, man. Thank you so much for coming. And hopefully we'll have you back on soon and see see how your project is developing, man. So thank you so much again for joining us, appreciate it. All right, guys, have an amazing weekend. Everyone take care and, you know, some some well needed rest. Relax, go outside, get some sun, eat some good food, you know, hang out with good people. Love you all. And we'll be back on Monday, 1215 p.m. Eastern Standard Time for another episode of Simply Bitcoin Live. Peace out, everybody.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"The daily culture brought to you by swan bitcoin.com. Swan is the best way to build your Bitcoin stack with automated Bitcoin savings plans and instant purchases serving clients of any size from $10 to $10 million. We love Swan because they incentivize self custody and dollar cost averaging. What are you waiting for? Visit swan bitcoin.com today. All right, James, this is where we talk to our guests about the cool stuff they're doing. And for those that don't know, James, what are you working on? Let the people, actually, maybe you can, uh, combine how you got into Bitcoin into what you're working on and why you're in El Salvador in a cool little rabbit hole story. But James, what are you doing? Um, well, mine is a fairly cliched Bitcoin story. 2017 came for the gains, actually started reading and, you know, stayed for the revolution, um, was also living and studying in Canada in 2020. And that place, uh, went a little crazy, shall we say. Then the legal tender law changed here. It kind of became a no brainer, um, kind of fell in love with the place, been here for a couple of years now. Um, and an extension of that, as we were just talking about before, in terms of the off-ramps, off and on-ramps being an issue and, uh, you know, the parasites in charge are going to do everything they can to clamp down on that. Uh, it made sense to get the peer to peer circular economy going as quickly as possible, which does exist here. Um, but it is intermittent, I would say. So there are some places, you know, you can go and spend your Bitcoin. There are other places where it's a luck of the draw. Maybe one day they do, maybe another day they don't. Um, that was something that I saw as a bit of an issue. So we've started doing a guaranteed venue event, recurring event of a farmer's market where people that are either visiting obviously, or people that live here that want to use Bitcoin, they know they can come there and they can spend their stats, spend and replace. Hopefully that's what I'm a, I'm an advocate for. That would be, that would be it in a nutshell is it's a fortnightly market. We have a really increasingly diverse range of products on offer. Anything from grass fed beef, you know, organic vegetables, amazing coffee producers, locally made honey, fishermen, uh, oysters. There's craftspeople as well attending now. It's been going for about five months. And generally it's starting to really tick over. We've been doing it really consistently. So it's getting bigger and bigger. And, uh, yeah, it's been a really fun, fulfilling little side project, I guess. So this is in El Zante, right? At Bitcoin beach? Sweet. Okay. Uh, if you could do like, you know, a guesstimate by average, like how many people are, are at the farmer's market? You mean in terms of vendors, merchants or people attending? Yeah, maybe, maybe both. Like you kind of run around the merchant, but like how many attendees do you have? The last one we had about 200 people come. Wow. Yeah. Are they, are they only Bitcoiners or are there some other people that aren't necessarily Bitcoiners and are going to get orange pilled? It's majority Bitcoiners, but there are people that do come that are just curious. I mean, who doesn't like a good little market on a Sunday when you're out having a stroll? Um, we're not Bitcoin only, I should clarify that. So we do get some people that come in and spend USD, um, with the vendors. And there is, there are some people that do get orange pilled. It is, it is quite a fun little effective way of orange, orange pilling people. Cause they just, it's just right there. Nice and simple. Download a wallet. We have had an exchange services. Um, so sometimes people have come in and actually just, Oh yeah, all right, I'll try this Bitcoin thing, exchange some USD. And then they go and spend it somewhere else. I actually did that with my mother last week. I was like, mom, don't do that here. And you can go hit 50 bucks and go buy yourself something pretty. Um, yeah, that's the, that's the project. Love it. Okay. So I, uh, I've recently become a farmer's market, uh, local. I try to make it every, every week or every other week and go get meats and, and, uh, my, my roommate gets like raw milk and you know, they got, they got cheese and breads and all that good stuff. And I noticed that there is like, um, and you kind of just touch on it. Usually at the farmer's markets, they'll have like some kind of exchange there where like, you can use your credit card to pay for like tokens and then they can, you know, turn in those tokens for dollars. So like how, how exactly does the mechanism work there? Like you kind of hit on it with your mom. Is there like a Bitcoin exchange or are people just downloading Bitcoin wallets and it's peer to peer like that? It's peer to peer. Um, I'm, excuse me, I'm pretty much the Bitcoin ATM there. I will, if people want to exchange, I'm happy to do that. Uh, we did have a, they're called Achiever Achiever ATM in El Zonte, but that just recently had some technical issues. So it's not here at the moment, but that was another service that we would have, especially for some vendors. If they want it, like we require the vendors to accept Bitcoin, but maybe they don't want to hold onto it because it's intimidating, right? Especially if it's your first time. So we would be taking people to those, to that ATM and helping them get USD out at the end of the day, which thankfully has not been used very much. Quite often people who get into it and they want to hold onto it, which has been really nice to see. Love it. I'm going to get roasted in the chat. Love it. Um, awesome, bro. Well, I think maybe now, uh, is the time where, where we do the, the tricky conversation of the circular economy of, uh, you know, spending sets. And I love the, I love the initiative. I wish my local farmer's market would take Bitcoin. It'd make my life that much easier and obviously would improve, uh, the, the vendor's lives. But I find it just so difficult to like get the conversation started with people. I just like, I just want, I just want to buy some meat. I don't really feel the need to like change your whole worldview here, but okay, let's, let's do, uh, let's do HODL versus circular economy and spending your sets. What's your thoughts on this? I don't understand why people can't just HODL and replace. If you have set up with however you buy your Bitcoin, if you are willing to support Bitcoin businesses, I think that's really important. And whatever you go and spend, just replace it. And, and, and that's cold storage. I don't see why you can't do both. Obviously, you know, HODLing is, it's what got us here in the first place, right? There's, there's no disrespect to the HODLers of last resort. Uh, uh, but we are aiming, in my opinion, Bitcoin, we should be aiming to move not just from a store of value, but also to a medium exchange, a unit of count, et cetera, et cetera. We all, we all know those talking points. Part of doing that is supporting businesses that accept Bitcoin and spend and replace. That, that would be my take on it. Okay. I love it. Yeah. I mean, I, if you're still kind of, you know, one foot in the Fiat world, one foot in the Bitcoin world, then I can see why you're going to spend that dirty Fiat first. But if you're just completely all in on Bitcoin, Hey, it's your money. You have to use it somewhere and you want more merchants and more vendors to accept it so that it becomes what we know it is. And it's money instead of just a store of value. But I understand, you know, the, like the tax concerns for most people and you know, not, not to judge you, but I hear an accent there. So I'm guessing you're not an American. No mate, I'm an Aussie. I guess, yeah, that is something I don't know a lot about is the tax implications in other jurisdictions. So it's probably pretty easy for me to sit on my high horse in Bitcoin country where it's legal tender. So, you know, I think that's probably fair enough. I guess there's extra layers of complication there for people. So, yeah, because it's, it's so like a lot of people don't know that. I mean, if you're American, you know this, but no matter where you are as an American, you have to pay taxes, right? That isn't the case or basically every country on planet earth. They're introducing that in Australia now. Are you going to give up? Are you going to give up your citizenship? I am. Yeah. That's. Wow. Amazing. So how are individuals playing out in real time? Yeah. I'm lucky enough to have another citizenship, which I probably won't say, but yeah, yeah, I'm in the process of renouncing because I don't even know if I'll ever go back to that country. I'll go back when the government collapses and, you know, they're breaking out the guillotines maybe. And my favorite black and white costumes, not prison uniforms. Use your imagination. Okay. All right, James, one more question or actually kind of two. What is the future for the Bitcoin farmer's market and how excited are you to be living in El Salvador currently and just seeing where the country's going? You said you've been there for at least five months, so I'm sure you've seen some advancements. Oh, no, we've been doing the market for five months. I've been here for a couple of years, actually. Oh, let's go. Yeah, yeah. After the tender law changed, I was here fairly quickly. In terms of the market, we are just aiming to get as consistent as possible so that it becomes a recurring event with a bigger and bigger following. We are doing some pop-up markets in other places. Actually, on this Sunday, we are doing one up in a little town called Berlin, which is up in the mountains in El Salvador. So anybody watching, if you are in the country, it's about an hour northeast of the capital. Please come and check it out. That's going to be a really big day. We're not just doing the market. We're just a small part of a bigger festival up in that town. They've invited us. They're doing their own circular economy. They're bootstrapping their own thing up there. So, yeah, please, if you're in town, come and check it out. In terms of El Salvador, it is a bizarre and beautiful place. I really like it. It's not for everyone. It depends where you live. If you live in the city, you might not notice a great difference. I'm out in the jungle, so you kind of have to be prepared to... And I love that. For me, that's fantastic. But I think we've met some people where it's a bit of a shock for them. In terms of the actual climate in the country, it seems like there's a lot of hope. This country's been through a lot. It's been through a civil war 30 years ago, and then the gangs were obviously horrific. There is a lot of optimism in the air here. It's palpable. It's really nice to be honest. That's awesome. That's so inspiring, bro. Holy cow. Wow. OK. You are an expat. Chose to move to the shining country on a hill. Savior El Salvador. You don't live in the big city. You live in the countryside. And I'm Latin American. I've lived in... I haven't lived in Central America, but I have lived in the Caribbean, have lived in South America. So I know exactly what you're talking about when you mean it's different. But to me, what's surprising is, you know, I speak Spanish. So that's like like I it's I would say it's not that it's normal to me, but I am. I know that world. But for someone who lived in a developed country like Australia, leaving, and then finding comfort in the countryside in Central America, I think that speaks volumes for how much progress Naeem Bukhale and El Salvador have have made. And that is extremely promising. Like, I'm I'm I'm surprised. Right. I'm surprised. Well, man, when you come visit, we'll have to go out to the ranch. We'll ride some horses and stuff. It's fun. It's fun out here. Sounds like a plan. Wait, Nico, before we go to meme review, James, we didn't tell people where they could find the farmer's market, the one that you do biweekly, let the people know where they can find you. And if they're in El Salvador currently or they're going to make a Mecca trip out there, where exactly are you guys located and what days do you usually run the market? Right. Yes, we do every second Sunday, second and last Sunday of each month, basically. So check it out on Twitter. We have a Nostra, which I don't do a good enough job keeping updated because I'm still getting in the habit of using that over over Twitter. We have an Instagram as well, which my lady runs. So, yeah, just the regular socials shoot us a DM. If you have any questions, we update them pretty regularly with posters, et cetera, date, times, location, et cetera, et cetera. That would be the easiest way if you wanted to find more info and hopefully come along. Love it. Love it, bro. Well, really appreciate your time. Great story. Can't wait to get back down there and actually hit it. I was there I think it was last August, and I can't wait to get down there and see how it's improved and see more Bitcoiners. And yeah, man, I'll definitely be hitting up the farmer's market when I'm down there. Go if I plug one more thing, actually shoot it. Thank you. We were doing another market on the 9th of November. That's coinciding with like the third day of the conference. And that one's going to be a really big one. We're getting bands. We're going to have a little dirt bike track. We're going to have skating competitions, prizes and stats, things like that. We're also shout out to Winakist. Let's go! Shout out to Winakist because he coined the term plebicue. So we're going to do a big plebicue as well. We're going to do a big, big fire pit and smoke a whole bunch of meat and do that as part of the whole market. That's going to be a really, really fun day. Love it, bro. Love it. Well, shout out to Wine. Yeah, he hates when I say it, but he is the influencer's influencer and he's behind the scenes. And, you know, I know he wants to be more of an influencer, but he's just, you know, he's got his tentacles everywhere. Shout out to Winakist. Well, thank you guys very much for having me on. Great to have the opportunity to, you know, kind of spread that market. This is what it's all about. You know, this is what the culture segment is about, is highlighting Bitcoiners doing cool stuff and continuing to push that Bitcoin culture forward and, you know, giving attention to a bunch of cool projects so that people know that there is more Bitcoiners out there doing cool stuff and maybe they should get involved or maybe create their own farmers market. I don't know. You know, hey, I'm just a top of your own. It's a decentralized movement, right? I want to see more of these things around. In fact, if you have any, if someone's thinking about it, DM me because I've learned a few lessons along the way. You know, I can help you not make the mistakes that I've made. Love it. Yeah. So but dude, I love that, man, that it's that makes me, Opti, we haven't just been talking crap, bro. Do you understand? Listen, so do you understand? No, people don't understand. You don't understand. OK, Latin America is not like the US. OK, like it's not like the US, like it's the type of place where you can't wear certain watches on the street. You don't want to pull out your iPhone, right? You don't want to pull out your phone, right? You kind of want to just be wary of your surroundings and stuff, right? So it's kind of a little bit of a different environment. And the fact and I agree with you, bigger cities are depends, right? But, you know, they tend to be, let's just say a little bit more developed. But the countryside, no, no, no, no. That's a whole different world. And the fact that you're having a good experience as an expat, someone not Hispanic, how's your Spanish, by the way? Estoy aprendiendo, pero it's Mel. Casi esta digando, esta digando. OK, so so. But yeah, man, that that to me is is that's awesome. That that's it's. Oh, man. Naeem Bukele, absolute legends. Bukele 2024, Kele 2024. All right, everybody, let's get to the memes. Let's do it. The Daily Meme Review. All right, guys, you already know the deal. This is the meme review where you tag me in memes on Twitter, Simply Bitcoin TV, or, you know, my personal one, Optimus Fields. I'll keep doing that for a little bit until it gets to too much notifications or drop them in our telegram group T.Me slash Simply Bitcoin TV. I look through them every morning, guys. You guys are still just giving me you're still just stealing memes. They're not giving me the Twitter account. I'll take the Noster tweets or posts or burps or whatever, whatever you call them on Noster now. Tweets are the bullets. Memes are the artillery. As we've constantly been reiterating on this show. We are in an information war, and it's upon us to spread the signal, to ridicule the corporate press, to get the humor out there, because if you tell people the truth and you don't make them laugh, they may just kill you, as George Carlin usually said. No, go back to the memes. Go. What is going on here? Anyways, guys, this is the meme review. Get your meme review scores ready because we've been delayed too long and dropping on the last one so that we can. You can't vote for me for twenty twenty eight. It won't work. It won't work. Get your meme review scores ready because we've had delays and then we want to keep it going. All right, guys. All right, all right. First theme is by Michael Saylor. I just love when billionaires meme with us on Twitter. And this is something I've been saying. This is a theme I've been hitting on all week. And James is a part of this. Engineer a better future with the Bitcoin standard. And you can see here Bitcoin logo with, you know, the atoms and mathematical equations behind it. And, you know, I don't know who I don't know who's doing the AI for a sailor. I doubt he's the one using it himself. Maybe he's got his secretary doing it, but constantly making the AI memes. Engineer a better future, guys. This is the way. This is what we're all doing here. Figuring out how we can all participate and further push. The Bitcoin standard. Anyways, next meme is by Maxis Club, and we got a bear here crying with its red candle and we have a bull stealing its chart of my first market and some green candles. Guys, I'm not fully confident that I can say we're in a bull market yet. We might have one more dip in, but it feels like we're in a bull market. You know, 35K feels pretty good and the green candles will come soon. So make sure you're stacking. Make sure your Bitcoin is in cold storage. Stacking. Make sure you are in a good position before the bull begins its run. OK, next one is by our boy Vikingo, aka at Vikingo Bitcoin 9. And he just goes hashtag BTC. And we got a classic NPC, Wojak here. And he goes, Bitcoin isn't worth anything. And the context here for Vikingo is he keeps trying to get paid in Bitcoin. He keeps having these conversations. He's getting very black pill. He's like, I don't even want to have these orange pill conversations with people anymore. I'm kind of the same way like we do the show. I let them come to me now. You know, sometimes us Bitcoiners can be unbearable. I don't even try to orange pill the vendors anymore. I'm just like, OK, you want fiat? Fine. Like I got Bitcoin, but whatever. Fine, fine, fine. We get it. You know, the Wojak out there, the NPC out there is going, Bitcoin isn't worth anything. Well, guys, it's 35K. And as we move into the bull run, more people will wake up to the fact that Bitcoin is worth a lot. It's actually worth thirty five thousand dollars. Who would have thought? OK, next one. Shout out to Big Sean Harris. Because he's the GOAT and he just got his unpopular opinion. Bitcoiners, when you buy Bitcoin from an exchange, they don't like. And we have Dwight from the office. This might not even be from the office, though, but he's in a wife beater looking very concerned. And also, I want to add to this one. It's what Big Sean says, and I say this all the time as well. So shout out to Big Sean. He says, I don't care where or who you buy your Bitcoin from, as long as you have the ability to move it into your cold wallet where you own your own key bars. This is the way, guys, like we all have, you know, our favorites. Maybe you're an OK, YC advocate. Maybe you just don't even care. Maybe you're a peer to peer guy. All that really matters is that you take your Bitcoin into cold storage, that you own the private keys. And as more and more people get on the Bitcoin standard. All of this will be for naught. And it really won't matter, in my opinion. Maybe I'm naive. I understand the threats from authoritarians, tyrants and all that stuff. But in my opinion, they can barely control their own monetary network. You think they're going to control ours? No, not going to happen. Anyways, a side tangent. Next meme in my Rory Highside. Shove that to Rory. Also an Aussie, a GO, in my opinion, been around for a long time. Hold on, hold on. James, could you say kangaroos? Kangaroos? Wait, wait, wait. Can you sing? We actually just call them roos. Oh, OK. Can you say no? Can you do a no? Nah. No. Where does the R come from? I don't get it. OK, anyway, side tangent. There's not much to do on that big pile of sand, so we have to get creative. Oh my goodness. OK, Rory Highside goes, All wars are banker wars. War is expensive. Burr is inevitable. Opt out with Bitcoin. And we got a picture here of Jerome Powell with a burning pile of cash in front of him. And the Bitcoin, or not the Bitcoin flag, the American flag in red or is this orange? I can't tell. I'm colorblind. Is this orange or is this orange tinted? Is it red? The fire, the fire is tinting it orange. OK, there you go. What do you see? It looks kind of orange, but like kind of red to me. I don't know. OK, interesting. All right. This last one is by RDBTC, aka RD underscore BTC. And it goes, It's a way of life. Hashtag Bitcoin. And here's all of the new Bitcoiners. Here's all of us, basically. We got a guy here sitting, you know, on a platform in a suit and his laser eyes. He goes, When you first find Bitcoin and you just sit there with laser eyes like, this is who I am now. I guess I'm a Bitcoiner. I guess this is my life. I guess my whole life purpose is to try to orange pill people to hide all these coins, to continuously interject Bitcoin into every conversation possible, because Bitcoin fixes this. This is who I am now. I've accepted this. I am OK with this. I am the unbearable Bitcoiner. It is what it is. It is what it is. All right, guys, drop your meme review score in the chat as we cover ours live and we will get to yours. And Niko, you have yours out. Let's go with you first. Yeah, I see Sophie is in the chat. So I'm going to give it a fucking dancing squirrel. Three dancing squirrels. Let's pop up. Yeah, I was going to say, where's the music, bro? Where's the music? All right, that is my yeah, that's enough where we get copyrighted. That is my meme score. That is my meme score.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"Um, but now obviously, you know, it's Bitcoin only wallets clearly, you know, cause I think that Bitcoin only wallets and, and uh, you know, and Rustin says it right there, he's, he's in the chat, the Bitcoin way, one of our sponsors too, for our Swan, for our simply originals, uh, they, their whole business model is onboarding. So you could literally set up a call with them and they will onboard you and they'll make it easy for you. So yeah, check out the Bitcoin way, check out simply originals, check out rust and he's dropping some hot fire. Uh, and uh, you could see it. So like there's literally no excuse as to why you want to use, you know, you want to pay to have a backdoor into your hardware wall and here's the thing because ledgers, I'm not making any allegations or anything, but ledger is closed source so you don't know what's going on behind the hood. How did they make that backdoor happen? Right. Do you trust that there isn't a backdoor with anything else? I don't know about you guys, but I want my hardware wallets to be open source, right? Which is what we recommend to you guys on this show always. Right. So yeah, man, uh, Opti, I mean, I got to say, bro, I'm, I'm disappointed. I was a, I was a big fan. I was a big fan, bro. Big fan. Let's say James jump in first and then, and then I'll, I'll rant for a little bit. James, what's your thoughts on this? Uh, well, excuse me. Yeah. Nico just touched on it right at the end there. Great. That was, I would completely agree with all of that. I don't know if it's malicious or not, but that bit at the end, I want to know how they can just roll this out in a supposedly an air gaps device that, and it being closed source software that makes me think, doesn't mean it's malicious, but maybe something in their code allowed them to do that. I don't, I don't know. I'm not technical enough to fully understand how that works, but that is a little fishy to me. Um, I guess the other thing I would say about it is I think plenty of people are going to use that service. Um, unfortunately people are lazy. Um, so probably for, you know, a couple of years, people are going to use that service and then someone's going to discover a really bad exploit. Everyone's going to get wrecked. Uh, and then they're no longer going to have that service. Um, but unfortunately that's, that's human nature. So we'll see. I mean it's, it's, it might end up being a fantastic advertisement for, for a pure version of self custody. A hundred percent. I 100% agree with you. Um, yeah man, it's a, but it, but it, but it, um, uh, it's like, yes, pure. The question is, are people really going to wake the fuck up enough to be like, okay guys, it's time to like, like stop outsourcing, personal responsibility. Like it's so inconvenient for me to write down fucking 12 words. It like, it is so goddamn inconvenient for me. I'm going to have to pay this company to back up my, it, in my opinion, this defeats the purpose of self custody. This is self custody. Like this is, it's not as bad as an exchange, but like it's, you know, like if she hits the fan, they could just take your shit. Right. So, oh man. Anyways, Opti, what's your take on all this bro? Yeah. So first and foremost, of course we talked about it in the beginning. We know that on and off ramps will be strangled. And that is a point where people will rather than governments and, uh, you know, bureaucrats will try to hamper Bitcoin adoption. And the second one is what I always say here on the show, you know, custody in your Bitcoin is the revolution. And it's so simple to us. Bitcoiners like I don't, you use the email to me, using Bitcoin is no different than using email. Yes. There's a little more responsibility. Yes. There's no 800 number that I can call if I mess up my Bitcoin, but I don't know about you. I, you know, I trust myself more than a banker. And I have, I have a little faith in myself that I will remember and back this up. You go through the process. It's not that hard. It's just a new step. And it's, it always just reminds me of when you had to use new technology, there's a learning curve. And once you get over that learning curve, it's second nature. And I think this is where we are right now. It's just like a lot of people put up mental roadblocks to this learning curve because it's so different. They're so used to having trusted experts custody their Bitcoin, or rather their other assets, like their stock, et cetera. And people are lazy and for better words, kind of what James says and what people are saying in the chat as well. It's like people will use this, which is probably the saddest part about it. And the whole point was, you know, eliminating trusted third parties. And yet I find it interesting that some, I wouldn't even call them Bitcoin companies anymore. Shitcoin companies are basically like recreating the broken wheel of trusted third parties within Bitcoin. And yes, I know people will want trusted third parties like it's part of human nature. I get it. I get it. But trying to eliminate the trusted third parties as much as possible, I think are some of the most important things to be doing and following the Bitcoin ethos. And hence why we embrace and support the companies that do do that, because we do think that that is the most important thing to be doing is to take custody of your Bitcoin. Next to that UK law stuff. I said it last week, or maybe it was this week. I don't know. It's all a blur now. I find it amazing that the computer illiterates, the bureaucrats and politicians and the powers that be that don't understand what the hell they're doing are trying to regulate what they don't understand. Again, like it hasn't worked in the past and it won't work this time. And I just, it just never gets old to me. And, and the irony of it all never, never gets passed on me. You know, these, these geriatrics out there that don't understand how the world works, don't understand how technology works, obviously don't understand how Bitcoin works. And we laid it out and completely destroyed their narrative. And yet they're here to protect you. Again, we say it all the time, the very people you need protection from are the people here to quote unquote, protect you. Like, this is why we Bitcoin is to eliminate their, their, their attempt to even try to protect you. But again, this is the paradigm shift that we're moving through that we're working through is people waking up to the true nature of the beast that we are dealing with. And then again, last point, well, actually a couple more points. Sorry. Uh, the double speak of the name of this bill, you know, economic crime and transparency bill. Like it's just, it's so Orwellian, you know, we say it all the time. Economic crime is not being done on Bitcoin and Bitcoin is fully transparent. It's literally an open transparent ledger where you can see everything is happening on the ledger by design. This is a feature of the network. Again, it just goes to show that they don't know what the hell they're doing. Well, rather they know what they're doing, but they don't know what they're trying to regulate. And then I was reminded of a meme I made for simply Bitcoin. Um, you know, hosted wallets. Uh, there's a hand with a parasite or a leech on it. Unhosted wallet. The leech is gone. I'm parasite your money today. It's so simple. Just saving Bitcoin. You know, of course, I got to bring a meme into this. Okay. And you have to, and then, and then of course, um, back to the ledger at the very end, you know, I wouldn't don't use this ledger feature. I I've been, I haven't been able to endorse ledger for a long time. Again, shout out to our boy Pedro, who's been thoroughly destroying ledger live. Uh, we can't recommend ledger anymore, even though that was my first hardware wallet. Like they do kind of have, you know, a place in my heart because I remember when I first took self custody, I was so proud. I bought a ledger, you know, I like took my, my Bitcoin into custody. I'm like, yeah, man, you know, I got my first hardware wallet. This is so tight. And then, you know, you realize all the complexities of having a hardware wallet that has shit coin, firmware, and then all of the debacle sense. It's just like, man, you know, I can no longer endorse ledger. And, uh, this, this move again, people are probably going to use it, which is even sadder. And I just, I just like ledger. And again, we're going to move into a bull market and most people are going to do the same thing that I did. They're going to take those steps into custody in their Bitcoin. They're probably going to go into a ledger. They might learn the hard way that they should have used something else, you know, hence why we recommend foundations, passport, like this is why we work with Bitcoin only companies so that we, we do our best to ensure that people are doing the best practices upfront, because you do not want to get yourself in a position where, you know, potentially, uh, ledger has a backdoor to your Bitcoin. Like that is, it's, it's so it, it's, it's almost ridiculous that we're talking about this right now. Like, oh my God. Anyways. Anyways, I could probably rant on this for way too long and get way too flustered about it. Just guys don't look, I hate to do this, but don't use ledger. I mean, look, it's as simple as that. All right, everybody, before we move on to the culture segment to talk about what's, what our guests proof of work is, uh, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor. They're the best place to buy, sell and host mining equipment. You got to check out kaboom racks. You could check out their inventory on telegram. You could do it by scanning the QR code on your screen or check out the video description. You can connect with a member of their awesome sales team. They they're so good. Those guys, they make purchasing Asics easy and transparent. You could also sell, uh, miners with them. They have a vast network of domestic and international customers that you could sell your mining equipment with. So check out kaboom racks. They're the most trusted place to buy, sell and host mining equipments. Check out the racks. All right, everybody, let's get onto the culture.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"The recovery process can be replicated on any new and compatible Ledger device following the identity verification process. Read a more detailed explanation on how recovery works here. Quote, depending on your personal needs, Ledger Recover may or may not be for you. For most users, having no backup for their secret recovery phrase is a risk that they don't want to take. And again, this is your outsourcing personal responsibility, but what they, they fail to mention is that there are cons to that. And history has shown that when governments get put in a rock and a hard place, like the 1930s is a great example. The country, the government, the state was in a hard place and what did they do? It justified the theft of people's gold. So the whole point is that that option isn't even there. And when that option isn't even there, that's why I said my quote. That's why I said what I said. If enough people take self custody, if enough of the population, right, especially in a country like the US with the second amendment, take self custody of their wealth, the only option the government has is to go door to door and be like hand over your money, essentially. And again, that's not really like, in my opinion, like that's not really a viable solution for millions upon millions of people doing this. This is why it's so vital. And here's Seth for privacy, by the way, shout out foundation. They're one of our sponsors. He's, he's with, uh, he's with foundation devices. He says, please do not use this service. If you use this service, you're signing up for simple seizure of funds. If ledger willingly or unwillingly due to government pressure decides to collaborate with one of the other storage providers, friends don't let friends use ledger recover. First image shows that ledger owns the common encryption key that is used to encrypt shards. Second image shows that ledger themselves saying how they can give over funds in the event of a subpoena. Now here's the thing in the UK, they could just seize it without even proving that you've committed a crime based on this last law. And I bet you Elizabeth Warren is salivating at the mouth when she saw what the UK did, what she's like, I wish we could do this in the US. So also shout out to foundation shout shout, cause you know, they're, they're really, they're really speaking the truth there. So when you get yourself a passport hardware wallet, now you know who the people are behind that. They don't like that shit, right? They're actual fucking Bitcoiners, right? It's Bitcoin or slavery. Um, so yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think ledger, I don't believe they were malicious. I don't believe they were pressured to do this. I think the CEO and the company genuinely thought that this was a way to increase their revenue with the subscription service. However, like you're paying for a back door because you don't feel like you can write down and properly secure 12 to 20. If you can take care of a child, you can take care of 12 words. You can, you can take care of 24 words. There's so many awesome Bitcoin companies that have made this easy for you. There's awesome Bitcoin content creators, like a friend of mine BTC sessions that dedicates his life to making tutorials for people that don't understand how to do this. Foundation devices has an onboarding service. They will literally help you set up your hardware wallet. If you get a passport like literally also Swan private as well, you sign up with Swan private, you become a member of Swan private. You can call any of the Swan private representatives and Hey, they'll help you set up your self custody where you actually have self custody. So look, the road, the road to hell is paved in good intentions and the reality is that look, if someone has a backdoor to your money and they're put in a bad position and that bad position incentivizes, incentivizes them to take your money because that is the easiest way they're going to use that way. Right. So yeah. Um, I'll be honest with you. Ledger was one of my favorite wallets and Opti knows this when I got into this and because it was so easy to use, it was so convenient.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"The daily news. I want to give a shout out to our sponsor foundation devices. It's self custody done, right? They built a premium grade hardware wallet called passport right here in the U S it's fully open source and verifiable. It's the most intuitive Bitcoin wallet designed with the UX reminiscent of a simple feature phone. So you will know how to navigate it and use it the moment you pick it up, get your Bitcoin off exchanges and into your, into your own hands in just a few minutes, experience a peace of mind that comes with taking ownership of your own keys. After a massive sellout during Bitcoin, Miami, 2023, the passport is back in stock at foundation devices.com Bitcoin only open source, verifiable completely air gap security model, gorgeous design craft premium grade materials. If you're thinking about getting your Bitcoin off exchanges, this is the one for you. Check out the passport link in the show notes below to learn more. All right, everybody. So, um, the next two news topics are going to be seemingly unrelated, but they are related and there's really two attack vectors governments have against Bitcoin attack vector. Number one is attacking, uh, Bitcoin's energy use. So they go after Bitcoin miners, right? We know what happened when the CCP banned Bitcoin mining within their borders. Uh, all the hash rate dropped by 50%. I believe that it was on purpose. I believe that's why we didn't hit a hundred K last cycle. Uh, but because of Bitcoin's incentives, those, my, those miners migrated to more favorable jurisdictions. I think it was one of the biggest stress tests in Bitcoin's history and it also proved Bitcoin's irresistible incentive structure that makes it very, very difficult to kill, right? Bitcoin literally pays you to keep it alive, right? Does Fiat pay you? No, I would say Fiat extorts you if anything. Um, and then the second attack vector, which is what we're going to focus on today and, um, is the, uh, the, the right to self custody, the self custody aspect. This is why it's so important to take your keys into self custody. We made it easy for you guys. You can scan the QR code on your screen, go directly to the foundation website. You can get yourself a passport, hardware wallet, not your keys, not your Bitcoin. So I'll break it down like this. In the thirties in the United States, when they passed the six one FDR passed the six of the six one Oh two order with an executive order. It was Congress after the fact that really made it a pass it into law, but it was an executive order that made holding gold illegal for American citizens. The reason that they were the reason they were able to, uh, do that so successfully was because of gold's physical characteristics because of gold's physical characteristics. There was centralization. Anyone that held a considerable amount of gold held it in vaults in bank vaults, right? So all the government had to do is they pass this law from one day to the other and then all the gold that were in vaults that belong to people, all of a sudden belong to the government. That sounds like theft to me, but Hey, you know what? Uh, I guess it was legal and there was a thing, but that sounds like theft, right? And then what were American citizens hell, uh, gave, given back in return. They were given back dollars, paper, paper money, right? So those are the two attack vectors. I think they're not going to be as successful with the first one, with the mining one, the energy use one, because the fact is that mining Bitcoin mining makes otherwise useless energy, stranded energy. You're able to monetize it because of mining. I would say that mining makes renewable energies viable without government subsidy. And I would say that the incentives of mining are so strong that people are just going to keep relocating to more favorable jurisdictions. Look at what Max and Stacy are doing recently in El Salvador, they're in, in Bitcoin country, they're setting up the volcano energy initiative where they're going to use, um, first they're going to start with solar and wind, and then I'm sure they're going to migrate to geothermal. And they're going to use some of that to mine Bitcoin. Last time I read, it was a billion dollar initiative. So I'm not really worried about number one, even though that's the one that gets the most noise. But number two is a little bit more sinister, which is they're going to make it difficult for people to withdraw. They're going to make it difficult for people to take self custody. They're going to demonize self custody. And you've heard this in the laws proposed by Elizabeth Warren, Senator Marshall, under the guise of money laundering and they literally mentioned unhosted wallet. There's a gap in unhosted wallet. So basically what they're saying is self custody is a problem. And then they really pulled the curtain when, uh, the FinCEN laws were, you know, were, were proposed in the FinCEN laws. It literally says that every, that you cannot use or they will make, they'll force you to report single use addresses. That's nothing to do with coin mixing. Single use, that is by default how your Bitcoin wallet works, right? Literally every time you use a Bitcoin address and there's a balance there, your wallet will automatically change to a new address. So it's so broad and it's brought on purpose to give them, like the Senator said, not my words, an effing sledgehammer, right? So that being said, here's another move towards, I think what is going to be the inevitable, right? Which is government's last step and last hope is to shut off the escape valves completely, right? And this is one more step in the United Kingdom to do just that. So here's an article by No BS Bitcoin. UK's law enforcement can now seize Bitcoin linked to criminal activity without conviction. The economic crime and corporate transparency bill became law on Thursday after receiving the King's approval. Users with robust self custody setup remain unaffected. I can't emphasize this last part enough. Guys, the two Bitcoin companies that want some of our sponsors, right? We're very picky with the sponsors that we choose, right? We want to provide value for you guys as well, right? We literally have a way for you to take self custody robustly, back up your seed word on titanium, take self custody of your Bitcoin, get yourself a hardware wallet. Obviously we recommend the passport by foundation. They can do all of this. They can do this with the BlackRock spot ETF. They could do this with custody Bitcoin on an exchange. But remember, the key word in this is users with robust self custody set up remain unaffected. So anyways, it goes on to say, quote, provisions in the bill give broader powers to local cops and will let them seize crypto they believe was used in launder money, traffic drugs, commit cyber crime and terrorism without conviction. Do you guys see the pattern? That's an entirely different country, but they just pressed broad powers to give local cops and the government the ability to seize crypto under the guise of laundering, laundering money, trafficking drugs, committing cyber crime and terrorism without conviction, not legal, not innocent until proven guilty, guilty until proven innocent. Sometimes experts would come in handy, particularly in time sensitive cases prior to this law, digital assets linked to illegal activities were a, were a subject to freezing, but couldn't be confiscated in criminal cases unless an individual has been arrested and convicted. So like freezing, it's like, okay, this guy's a suspected criminal. We're going to freeze his assets on the exchange. Now it's like, we're just going to take it. And then let's see if he proves himself innocent, right? It goes on to say, quote, separate provisions to help authority seize other assets that can help identify crypto linked to crime were also added. It was passed by parliament on Wednesday. And again, I'm not going to read you guys the passage from the sovereign individual cause I've been reading it every single day this week. But again, once again, they hit on the head governments, even in traditionally civil countries will turn nasty because they were losing their monopoly on money, right? And that's exactly what's playing out here in my opinion. But once again, how do you protect yourself against that? Take self custody. You have no excuse. We literally recommend you guys, uh, ways to do that every single day. And in terms of software wallet, you have blue wallet, you have Electrum, you have Sparrow, you have Specter. You have so many wallet of Satoshi. You have so many wallets that you can use. There's so many hardware wallets that you can use. Speaking of hardware wallets, here's Ledger. Now Ledger introduced a very interesting feature, um, which I think can, the road, the road to hell is paved in good intentions, right? Very interesting feature, but essentially it's kind of like a back door to your seed phrase. But of course there's trade-offs to that backdoor, because if there's a back door, let's say you lose your seed phrase and you're like, I lost my seed phrase. And then you go to Ledger and you say, I lost my seed phrase and they can recover it for you. If they can recover it for you, who else do you think can recover it for you? Connect the dots with this law in the UK, right? And this Ledger proposal. So it goes on to say, Ledger now lets you pay $9.99 per month to ID your cold wallet seed and send it to trusted third parties. It goes on to say, quote, today is the day. I'm glad to announce that our secure wallet recovery solution Ledger Recover provided by Coin Cover is now available for Ledger Nano X users. You can subscribe to this paid and optional service here. The service, which notably failed to launch earlier this year due to community backlash will cost its users nine, uh, months. Quote, when you subscribe to Ledger Recover, a pre bit 39 version of your private keys is encrypted, duplicated, and divided into three fragments with each fragment secured by a separate company, Coin Cover, Ledger and Escrow Tech. When you want to give access to your wallet, two of the three parties will send fragments back to your Ledger device, reassembling them to build your private key, uh, your private key. Ledger Recover compromises extensive identity, identity verification process performed by Coin Cover with a secure element billed by Ledger. It goes on to say, your identity details are collected by Ledger Recover ID verification service providers, Coin Cover and Ledger Store are an encrypted excerpt of this data. Coin Cover will never pass your information to third parties unless it has a legal obligation to do so. I'm going to go back to this. They now can seize your Bitcoin without proving that you, without proving in court that you're a convicted criminal. Put the pieces together and then just use common sense and think about how this can, and I'm calling it right now, will be exploited by governments to seize people's money. And yes, I'm sure like I ha- look, I don't think Ledger is approaching this in a nefarious manner whatsoever, but you know, it's still a, call it for what it is. It's still an open door in my opinion. It's still a backdoor in my opinion. Ledger Recover is currently compatible with Ledger, Ledger Nano X. Soon it will be compatible with Ledger Stacks, Ledger Nano S+. Ledger Recover isn't compatible with Ledger Nano S. Ledger Recover availability depends on the country in which your passport, national identity card, or driver license was issued. At the mass, at the moment a passport national identity card issued by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States or driver's license issued in the United States is required to subscribe to the service. As an added layer of protection subject to investigation, $50,000 compensation may be available from CoinCover in the unlikely event that something were to go wrong.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"A hundred percent. I think you, I think you hit the nail on the head, man. It's not a government by the people for the people. It's clearly Fiat has Frankensteined it to a government by the government for the government. Thankfully, this is one of the things that Bitcoin fixes. Anyways, I saw BJ Ditcher in the chat, had the pleasure to have dinner with him in Miami. So shout out BJ, absolute, absolute freedom fighter. So thanks for, thanks for joining us today, my friend. Anyways, I do want to give a shout out to one of our sponsors. It's going to be the largest Bitcoin conference on planet earth Bitcoin 2024. It's not going to be in Miami this year. It's going to be in Nashville, Tennessee, the year of the halving. You definitely don't want to miss the Bitcoin conference. The year of the halving it's July 25th through the 27th, 2024. You want to get your tickets quickly before the prices go up for a GA ticket. It's only three 49 for an industry pass that gives you access to three days of the conference, including industry day. It's only eight 49 and for a whale pass, it's 4,749. That'll give you access to the deep backstage VIP lounge. You'll see your favorite, you know, legendary Bitcoiners and speakers just kind of hanging out there and, and, uh, you know, chilling, uh, Bitcoin 2023. I, you know, I got to take a picture with Tulsi Gabbard, shake her hands, you know, in, in the, in the deep backstage VIP lounge. So that was really cool. Opti and I will be there at Bitcoin 2024. It's going to be the biggest Bitcoin celebration of the year. You can use promo code simply to get 10% off your tickets. You don't want to miss it. But anyways, guys, no more delay. Let's jump straight into the news.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"So the Republicans barely have a majority in the house and the Senate, same thing, the Democrats barely have a majority, right? So it's just crazy that like, you know, we've reached this point where they find it so threatening. They're willing to go to these types of lengths to try to get their way. This is the separation of money and state buckle up and get ready for the ride. Take self custody. If enough people do it, we'll win. And there's, there's nothing they could do about it anyways. Um, so I want to get our guest thoughts, James. Uh, I'm sure if you've been on Bitcoin, Twitter, um, or maybe you've been on the beach, maybe, maybe this is the first time you're hearing about all this, um, bit of both. Okay. So you've been on, if you've been on Bitcoin, Twitter this past week, you've definitely have, uh, definitely read up on what's been going on with all this. Uh, so my question to you is, does it surprise you at all? I wish I could say that it, that it did. Uh, but no, I mean, they're painting a narrative here. They're threatened as, as you've said, um, they can never going to let a good crisis go to waste. And if they can add to the regulatory burden, if they can introduce anything that's going to make something they consider a threat less viable, that's what they got to do. Um, bless them, bring it on. Uh, but that, that just seems to me to be what the, the parasitic cluster, they see something that, um, is a threat to them and they will use underhanded means to kind of paint a narrative of why it's bad and, and use that as a justification to, to suppress it. A hundred, a hundred percent beautiful. Oh man. Opti, what's your take on this, bro? Um, yeah, so let's go back to the beginning first and foremost, again, this is the opinions of Opti, not necessarily a representation of simply Bitcoin. Uh, Liz Warren is a mouthpiece for big bank, like convinced me otherwise. Uh, but really politicians for the most part, I'll be generous here for the most part are completely bought and paid for. And I really wish we could have like, uh, you know, patches like race car drivers. So we can be transparent and see who, you know, who's paid for and who's bought by who that would make this so much easier. And I mean, we've been covering it for the last two weeks. Like misinformation is the norm guys. Like here's why it's so important for all of us to make content and to have these conversations on the daily with our friends and family and try to do our best to explain the real nature of the beast going on around here. And I saw a tweet yesterday and it really, it really hit home and maybe the numbers are off a little bit, but it was something on the lines of a mainstream media's job is to manufacture consent and make it seem like 90% of the population have the viewpoint of 10% of the population. And it's probably less than 10%, but like, once you understand that this is the game here, you really start to look at the government propaganda or corporate propaganda a lot differently. And you realize just how much power independent content creators really have in today's world. And I think a lot of us forget that independent content creators are the real signal. Like that's where the real conversation is happening. But people still, for some reason, believe the people on the suits on the television. But this just goes to show that Bitcoin is crossing that Rubicon into mainstream adoption, mainstream consciousness. And it's almost getting too big for anyone. Well, it's already too big for anyone to control and stop it. But I mean, what's that guy's name Haggerty or whatever, like shout out to that guy. You know, I don't know who he is. I've never heard of him before, but Hey, he's going to be on the right side of history. And it's just funny to me to watch and hear the politicians try to grapple with Bitcoin. They're so used to their little, you know, walled gardens that, that when this new technology, this change gets thrusted upon them like Bitcoin, they're just scrambling and try to figure out ways how they can distort the truth and distort this for their own benefit. And we're just here like, yo, Bitcoin can't be stopped. You can't stop the truth. The truth wants to be set free. And you know, as the meme goes, Bitcoin is for anyone. Anyone can use Bitcoin. It is what it is. But the fact that they are manufacturing these lies just goes to show how afraid they really are of Bitcoin. And shout out to Ms. Wagman, I believe was her name. She's stating the obvious that we always state here on Simply Bitcoin, but she's, you know, at the halls of Congress or at Senate or wherever that was saying what we always say on the show, you know, dollars are what criminals use the most guys. It's like, this is the receipts. This is the standard quo. And the more, what do you always say, Nico? Uh, they project onto us what, what they themselves are doing and the more they project and the more they fear monger on Bitcoin and the more they go to try to ban Bitcoin, the more I just know we're doing exactly what we need to be doing by opting out of this and opting into Bitcoin and using a money, a monetary network that is outside of their control. You know, as the high quote goes, a slight roundabout way that they cannot control. This is the way guys, we say it every single, every single day, it's Bitcoin or slavery. It's a total CBDC central bank digital control mechanism or it's freedom money, Bitcoin on the other side. And we all have that choice today. And I think this is the most important choice to be doing, to be making rather. And I think for our generation, I'm guessing that James is roughly a millennial. You look roughly around the same age as us. I think fighting for freedom on the monetary level is the most important thing to be doing for all of us. We've been saying this for a long time. You know, Bitcoin is purpose engineer, a better world. This is the most important fight to be doing. And yes, I know that for the most part, Bitcoiners are still kind of, uh, put in the corner, you know, like, uh, just like toys that no one wants to play with where we're just like, Oh yeah, okay, whatever. You're on the dark web. You're, you're one of those weird internet nerds. Like no one cares what you're doing. It's becoming very clear that this is the fight and more and more people are waking up to the fact that it's always about the money guys. It's always about the money and now they can't control it. And so they will use whatever mechanism they can to control the narrative. They will try to manufacture consensus against Bitcoin. They will FUD it. They will probably stack in private and as number goes up, they may endorse it. But in the meantime, this is the, then they fight you stage and we are just in the early innings of that, that saga. So prepare yourself, make sure your Bitcoin is off exchanges. Make sure, you know, like James will be talking about today. Make sure you're a part of the peer to peer economy, however way you can, like make sure you are protected because we know they will try their best to stop the on and off ramps to Bitcoin. So just make sure you're prepared for that. It is coming. It's a matter of time. Not, it's not if it's just when, and hopefully, you know, I, I, I am hopeful here slightly a slightly hopeful that the U S will get their head out of their ass and they will stop trying to fight Bitcoin. This is freedom money. I thought we were a freedom nation, and this is a global phenomenon. So look, I say it all the time. You can't ban Bitcoin. You can only ban yourself from Bitcoin. And even though the U S is the reigning empire of the world, it would benefit its citizens to embrace Bitcoin. And all I'm seeing is politicians and bureaucrats shoot themselves in the foot and hurt average everyday citizens. And it absolutely pisses me off.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"Um, also Chrissy Legard's, you know, meme video, basically saying the digital hero is coming and it's here to stay. Right. Um, that tells me that I think that they understand they're under, they're, they're, they're on the clock and they're trying to roll this out as much as possible. And that tells me that we're winning. That tells me that we're over the target, but let's talk about the backfire because that's what we're going to talk about today. So here's Pierre Richard and he says Elizabeth Warren spread disinformation to exploit a crisis. It's backfiring and now undermines her misguided anti Bitcoin agenda. Here's another one. Neeraj, he's part of Coin Center, which is a, a crypto lobbying arm, right? The Bitcoin Policy Institute, shout out David Zell is the, is the Bitcoin lobbying arm. Uh, but sometimes, you know, the incentives do align not on everything, but, um, Coin Center was, has been there for a while. And at least it presented some type of voice in Washington, DC. Um, he said, watching the Senate banking committee, uh, banking hearing on Hamas financing, I must say it was refreshing to see the panel of expert witnesses repeatedly fact check Senator Warren's assertions that crypto should be the focus in combating Hamas funding. Now let's check out some of these clips because it was an absolute massacre. Uh, so let's check out this first one. It is by Senator Haggerty. Um, let's check it out. And another thing guys pay attention, right? Neeraj said Senator Warren's assertions, right? And again, once you connect the dots, you know, did Senator Warren have something to do with that wall street journal article? No way to know for sure. But again, lots of coincidences are happening these days. Um, so anyways, let's see what Senator Haggerty has to say. The wall street journal recently reported that Hamas and Palestine Islamic jihad since 2021 have received roughly $130 million in crypto financing of the offshore exchanges and platforms like finance. It's important to note that these figures are disputed and per independent analysis that was released just this week could be overestimated by as much as 99%. The data analytics firm cited in this wall street journal report has even disputed the estimates that were reported stating that there is no evidence to suggest that Hamas fundraised anything close to this $130 million reported. Make no mistake. Any such funding is unconscionable and should be addressed in a thoughtful targeted way in order to choke off these terrorists. But we should do this without pushing the crypto industry overseas. In this case, we need a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. The wall street journal recent report. In this case, we need a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. And make no mistake. The FinCEN proposal is a sledge hammer. Now, that discrepancy number 99%, how did this Senator get that number? That is the same number that Sam Callahan reached with his viral tweet. That is the same number, roughly the same number that Preston Pish reached in his article that he released for Bitcoin magazine. So clearly make no mistakes. The efforts of all of you guys on social media to bring attention to this at the speed that it, that it happened in, right? Because remember before social media, we'd not, we would have to go through those gatekeepers of information and hope to God that they would find the story interesting and then publish it. But the community, the Bitcoin immune system reacted very, very, very quickly. So it wasn't only Senator Haggerty. Here is another expert and let's see what she has to say. So Senator, that was Senator Haggerty. So that was an actual politician. Here is an expert who, who was offering testimony. Let's don't lose sight and focus from the big picture. Crypto is currently a very small part of the puzzle. The major funding channels are where and remain state funding, Iran and others that those are the major players. Most of the funds are still being transferred by the traditional channels that we all know from the past. Banks, money transmitter, payment system, hawala, money exchange, trade based, terrorism, financing, charity, cash, shell companies, and crypto. The efforts should be global and focus on imposing global sanctions on Hamas and their sponsors as was the case with ISIS. Let's don't lose sight and focus from the big. Okay. Lots of breakdown there, right? The vast majority of the funding and it's not coming from crazy Bitcoiners online came from what? The traditional financial system. It did not come from, they say crypto Bitcoin, you guys know the deal. So yeah. Uh, like what, what else do you got to know at that point? Like clearly, clearly the fact that the wall street journal has not reject, uh, retain, uh, retracted the article or offered a correction, even though the analytics that they used, the own analytics company said, wait a second, you misrepresented the information. The fact that they haven't retracted it tells you everything you need to know. That article was pivotal in their strategy to try to shove down the throats, this FinCEN proposal, which would circumvent the normal legislative process, which they know they can't pass because they don't have enough support.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"The Bitcoin numbers is your Bitcoin and cold storage really secure? Is your seed phrase really secure? Stamped seeds? Do it yourself kit has everything you need to hammer your seed words into commercial grade titanium plates. Instead of just writing them on paper, don't store your generational wealth on paper papers, prone to water damage, fire damage. You want to put your generational wealth on one of the strongest metals on planet earth, titanium. Your words are actually stamped into this metal plate with this hammer and these letter stamps. And once your words are in, they aren't going anywhere. No risk of the plate breaking apart and pieces falling everywhere. Titanium stamp seeds will survive nearly triple the heat produced by a house fire. They're also crushed proof, waterproof, non-corrosive and time proof. All things that paper is not allowing you to huddle your Bitcoin with piece of line for the long haul stamp your seed on stamp seed. All right, guys, I made it super incredibly easy for you guys. Once again, you could scan the QR code on your screen right now. I'll take you directly to the stamp seed website. You can use promo code simply to get 15% off anything on their website. Don't store your generational wealth on paper, store it on titanium. Oh God. I think I, Oh, I regret it. I think the Chrissy meme was enough, but like that mean, dude, you throw me under the bus for everyone, bro. Oh man. Oh man. Taking it for the team Opti. Okay. At the time of recording, I cut, Oh, I'm just picturing. God damn it. What did I do? Okay. I have the time of recording. The Bitcoin price is 33,985 sats per dollar, 2,942 block height, 814,083 blocks to having 25,917 having estimate April 21st, 2024 total lightning network capacity, 5,240 Bitcoin capacity value, 178 million us dollars realized monetary inflation, 1.74% the market capitalization of Bitcoin, $663 billion Bitcoin versus gold market cap, 4.97% the grand scheme of things. Bitcoin is still a baby when Bitcoin reaches the market cap of gold. And I say when and not, if that will put one Bitcoin at five hot $500,000 per coin in the grand scheme of things, Bitcoin is still a baby. Anyways, this is what I wanted to talk about today. This is the issue at hand. Uh, and you know, uh, the Chad sailor calls us the cyber Hornets, the last line of defense for Bitcoin. Um, and I felt like it was very appropriate, especially, you know, it, at first is the wall street journal. I was like, okay, you know, like maybe they got it wrong, but the fact that they didn't retract the article and the fact that the article was cited in the letter to the white house and some of the language in the article was actually used in the FinCEN proposal. And the fact that we know Elizabeth Warren's bipartisan bill with Senator Marshall has very similar kind of, you know, maybe they're taking a different path, but the outcomes would be the same. Um, has my suspicions that I think Elizabeth Warren played a big role in this. It's not the first time that the legacy media has given her a platform, her media allies. When Russia invaded Ukraine, we had a very similar article coming out from the New York times, essentially saying that Elizabeth Warren thinks that Russia is going to use crypto to circumvent us sanctions. Right. But I guess that crisis wasn't enough. I guess they needed a bigger crisis, right? They needed a more, a bigger emotional response. But the fact that they're going to these lengths tells me that they're worried, they're scared.
Simply Bitcoin
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"And then that's Bitcoin Twitter. Okay. But in the banking Senate committee yesterday, multiple people called out Elizabeth Warren's BS. They called out the wall street journals BS. So I think they're going to have a much harder time imposing the, that FinCEN proposal, right? And that FinCEN proposal was, it was so broad. It included stuff like single use addresses, right? Which is like by default, how Bitcoin wallets are set up. That's like privacy best practices. It would fall under that FinCEN proposal. And of course, this was on purpose. This was to circumvent the legislative process, right? Make no mistake. This was an attack on Bitcoin. What they needed was a crisis. And that's why I read you guys that famous quote by Winston Churchill, who was the prime minister of the United Kingdom during World War II, never let a good crisis go to waste. They needed that crisis. And in American history, this has happened before, back in 2001, you know, with the terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act was, it was introduced into law, which the, by the way, the FinCEN, the FinCEN proposal is using the Patriot Act to implement this. It's like literally mentioned in the proposal, but also the New York Times released an article back in the 2000s that claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Later, we found out that that article, that information was total bogus. And that information actually came from the intelligence agencies themselves. So history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. What I saw this week was a very similar play, using a legacy media institution to propagate a false narrative and using that false narrative as a justification to take away the freedoms of Americans. What was different between 2001, 2000, the early 2000s, and now is social media. So now people were able to talk back, to refute the BS in real time. And that's exactly what happened. And I think that quick reaction, that quick response was the reason that Elizabeth Warren's narrative and the Wall Street Journal's narrative was absolutely massacred yesterday in Congress. We have a couple clips for you guys of Congress people even saying, look, this is BS, right? So at least there's some good news because I'm not going to lie, you know, I covered this yesterday, multiple times on Cafe, on Simply, on BTC Sessions, on Simply Sessions. And then I covered it on an unconfiscatable spaces later on, later in the evening, four times. And I was just like, wow, this is, this is, they're not effing around with this proposal, right? But I was pleasantly surprised the reaction by the Bitcoin community, then that led to, you know, the reaction from certain Congress members saying, you know, basically the report was BS, right? So there is a happy ending to this. Let's see how, you know, it all culminates. But what it looks like right now from my perspective is that Elizabeth Warren's attack on Bitcoin backfired in epic proportions. This isn't just me saying this, Pierre Richard said this as well. And you know, I'm not going to lie, that puts a, puts a smile on my face. Anyone who's against Bitcoin is against freedom. You guys know the drill. All right. I'm going to want to, I want to bring up my legendary cohost, always optimistic brother in arm in the trenches with me every single day. How are you doing Opti? What's up guys? We're back! As you can see, I had enough time to get my caffeine intake in. I'm back home. I got the green screen. It was a, it was a fun time back home with my family. Good to see all, all sides of my family, but Hey, we're back here. We're hanging out. I got, I got time to make sure my blood has a good caffeine to blood ratio. So we're good to go. We're good to go. But yeah, man, uh, Nico, actually, I'll say, no, I'll say no. Um, I'm so glad that Elizabeth Warren back this stuff because everything she touches just burns and goes up in ashes. And you know, I know I tell you guys constantly that Brad Sherman is my favorite politician, but I'm starting to lean that maybe Elizabeth Warren is my favorite politician because her screeching and her absolute fear of what Bitcoin can do for humanity is just, it's so glorious to see it get just, you know, slap back in her face. But, but we'll go through all of the details for you guys. And on today's culture. I think I just might've just figured out Opti's. Like, was it, was she before yelling or before Augustine? You know, I'm just trying to climb up the campion ladder as much as possible. I'm not starting that meme. Okay. The Chrissy meme, open Pandora's box. I'm not starting that. Anyways, I'm just trying to get close to the money printer, whatever I got to do. I'm trying to be a good Cantillon Fiat insider guys. This is the game. Don't you understand the game? I'm just trying to play it. All right guys. Sorry for blowing your eardrums. I guess I'm jacked up this morning again. Anyways, anyways, culture, uh, we gotta, we got a good guest, James, AKA Bitcoin farmer's market. Let's bring him in. He's doing circular economy, a farmer's market in Bitcoin beach in El Salvador. Love to see it, but we'll get all into that during the culture. James, how are you doing this morning? Good morning, lads. Yeah, I'm doing good. Thanks. How are you doing? Wonderful, bro. Doing wonderful. Thanks for joining us, man. Really, really appreciate you coming on the show. Huge fan of the Bitcoin beach project and a really excited to talk about what you're talking about. I mean, what you're working on these days. That's what the culture is all about to highlight Bitcoiners from all walks of life, from everywhere around the world and really highlight, you know, their contributions to Bitcoin, their insights to Bitcoin, their perspectives on Bitcoin. Cause every single human being, even though we might run, we might come to the same conclusion. We all approach different. We all approach Bitcoin from, uh, from different perspectives based on our life experiences. Right. Anyway, it's going to be a great show. I'm absolutely pumped. Uh, I found out a couple of things about what simply is doing next year and, uh, I'm going to hold it in. I'm going to hold it in, but we got a lot of big plans for simply Bitcoin next year. And I hope to see a lot of you guys in person, uh, while we do some of these trips, uh, it's going to be a lot of fun. The having party is also going to be good. It looks like we're going to be doing a lot of traveling next year, Opti, which, uh, has me extremely excited. Anyways, anyways, everybody, let's jump straight into the show. Like I said, we have a lot to talk about. Let's check it out.
The Breakdown
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on The Breakdown
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, October 19th, and today we are talking about the latest salvo of Elizabeth Warren's anti-crypto army. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends. Today is blissfully not a Sam Bankman free trial day, and instead we're going to be talking about the other big topic that has lurked for the last couple of weeks, which is of course crypto's role in terrorism financing. Now as was completely expected, Senator Elizabeth Warren has used the Warren Israel to renew her calls for tighter anti-money laundering controls to be applied to the crypto industry. On Tuesday, Warren wrote letters to both the U.S. Treasury and the White House calling for officials to quote, take strong action to thoroughly address crypto illicit finance risks before it can be used to finance another tragedy. Alongside Warren, over 100 lawmakers co-signed the letter. These signatories were largely Democrats from both the House and the Senate, and the letter said, as Congress considers legislative proposals designated to mitigate crypto money laundering and illicit finance risks, we urge you to swiftly and categorically act to meaningfully curtail illicit crypto activity and protect our national security and that of our allies. The letter leaned heavily on Wall Street Journal reporting from last week, which had framed Hamas as quote, one of the most sophisticated crypto users in the terror finance domain. Also unsurprisingly, Warren's letter did not mention that Hamas had announced the suspension of their use of Bitcoin to receive donations in April, citing concerns that the ability to easily trace Bitcoin transactions would put supporters at risk. It did however acknowledge that authorities have successfully seized dozens of crypto accounts owned by terrorist groups over the past year. The letter set out a series of questions, quote, regarding Treasury's plans to address the serious national security threats posed by the use of cryptocurrency to finance terrorism. The questions largely related to steps currently being taken and asking for the administration's estimates of the size of the problem. Wall Street Journal reporting had estimated that over 130 million in crypto had been raised by Hamas and the affiliated terrorist group Palestine Islamic Jihad since August 2021. Now it is notable that support for this letter was much broader than Warren had previously gathered for her crypto anti-money laundering efforts. For example, crypto-friendly Democrats Josh Gottheimer and Jake Auchincloss were included in the ranks of co-signatories. Republican Roger Marshall, who has provided support across the aisle for Warren's anti-money laundering bill, also signed on to the letter. And as an indication of support within senior Democrat circles, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown also signed. Brown will of course be a significant decision maker on whether the Warren bill progresses through the committee stage, and he tweeted yesterday, Hamas's terrorism is fueled by cryptocurrency. We need to crack down on illicit crypto and stop terrorists from moving money around, evading sanctions, and funding their acts of evil. We must curb this emerging threat and protect our national security. Now alongside the letter, Warren penned an op-ed in, once again, the Wall Street Journal with Roger Marshall as a co-author. The article laid out what has been reported about the use of crypto and terrorist financing to date. It claimed that, quote, Crypto has become a crucial pipeline for financing terrorist organizations, and researchers agree that the publicly reported numbers are likely a small percentage of the actual total. This revenue stream demonstrates the dangerous gaps in our oversight of international money flows. Terrorists, rogue nations, drug traffickers, and other criminals are using cryptocurrency to endanger our allies and U.S. national security. It's past time to apply the same anti-money laundering rules to crypto that already apply to banks, brokers, check cashers, and even precious metal dealers before these loopholes allow terrorists to finance more attacks. The lawmakers asserted that, quote, Decentralized finance companies should be subject to the same anti-money laundering rules as banks. Now that is essentially the proposal in the Warren-Marshall bill. The DeFi protocol should have KYC requirements placed on them in line with the rules applied to banks and large financial institutions. Industry figures have called the proposal entirely unworkable for small DeFi startups. And of course, it's generally believed that the bill would be more likely to result in U.S. users being banned from accessing DeFi rather than leading to ubiquitous on-chain KYC. Today's episode is brought to you by Kraken. For far too long, the whole financial system has been standing still. Too slow. Only on for certain hours. Overly designed for some types of people, but not for others. Crypto, at its best, represents progress. It asks the question, what if? It invites people in instead of leaving them out. It's on 24-7, 365, and moves at the speed of real life. Not everyone believes it. We've got our fair share of detractors. But that's the way it always is when you're building something new. Kraken is a crypto company that has been through the highs and lows of the industry, facing forwards towards progress throughout. And now they're inviting us to see what crypto can be. Learn more at kraken.com slash the breakdown. Disclaimer, not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Cryptocurrency services are provided to U.S. and U.S. territory customers by Payword Ventures Inc., PVI, DBA, Kraken. As you might imagine, the industry had a lot of commentary on this letter and the surrounding issues. G. Kim, the head of policy at the Crypto Council for Innovation, said, In the U.S., we have clear AML-CFT rules and requirements for U.S. exchanges. From there, Kim pushed back on Warren's bill, noting that the issue is largely an international one which isn't addressed by domestic laws. He said that the crypto industry wants to work with lawmakers to, quote, stamp out illicit activity and that, quote, the industry can be a helpful partner. Then there was Norbert Michel, who wrote a piece for the Cato Institute this week called A Crackdown on Crypto Won't Stop Hamas. A key quote from the piece was, In a perfect world, it would be out of bounds to use incidents of horrific violence against innocent people to revive an otherwise unrelated political agenda. Nonetheless, it seems that Senator Elizabeth Warren and her colleagues are going to use the recent violence in Israel to gather support for the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, a bill Warren's been hawking for months. Now, one really important thing to note here is that this bill is not focused on exchanges that have been caught processing Hamas transactions. It's about a seemingly unrelated issue of forcing KYC onto DeFi protocols. Former CFTC commissioner and now head of policy at A16Z Crypto Brian Quinten said, No serious policy maker would take a view on crypto and illicit finance without addressing the arguments of this piece. But maybe serious policy isn't the goal of some in D.C. when it comes to crypto. Alexander Grieve, who does government affairs at Paradigm, wrote, Crypto opponents will continue to tie crypto to illicit finance, despite that being a small subset of a larger industry and an order of magnitude difference relative to illicit finance in opaque tradfi in order to fit their narrative. Regardless of these opponents' motivations, however, crypto needs to play our part in pushing out any bad actors. So it is up to us to come up with policy solutions and practical technical ones where possible. Until we do, we're going to keep seeing these kinds of letters. Austin Campbell responded, The irony is that cracking down forces more of this offshore, which is where the problems are. Hamas has a nexus to offshore exchanges in Tether, not onshore. Just ban things is the tech-illiterate answer. Blockchain Association wrote a long thread, basically saying that of course the crypto industry does not support terrorist activity, but that Warren's letter was just wrong. They write, Here are the facts. Claim, crypto financing is responsible for the horrific actions of Hamas. Fact, crypto networks are transparent and for this reason Hamas ceased to accept Bitcoin earlier this year, citing the success of law enforcement efforts to track down donors. Only a small fraction of Hamas's funding has come from crypto. And what portion of that small amount was directly used to fund the attacks is unclear. Claim, Hamas evaded U.S. sanctions by raising millions of dollars in crypto. Fact, Hamas and non-U.S. entities have no obligation to follow U.S. sanctions laws. And they go on, but you get the gist. Now, one thing to note is that if you think it's just crypto folks who are making some of these arguments, assistant law professor at Willamette, Rohan Gray, who's no big fan of crypto but is a big fan of privacy, wrote, It's bad that we haven't built such a perfectly surveilled financial system that oppressed groups cannot fund themselves is not the progressive angle on this issue in my opinion. This isn't a Hamas-specific issue, it's an architectural issue. In the 1950s, it was the NAACP getting donations and the racist governor of Alabama trying to use that process as a weak point to demand donor lists and harass its supporters. In a separate tweet, Gray said, There are significant civil liberties costs and broader social risks of repressing dissent and marginalized communities by building a financial system that allows centralized actors to surveil and censor all transactions. We've been trying to make this point to the Warren wing for a while. Unfortunately, most of them are too busy hating on crypto to realize they've taken the wrong side of the financial privacy debate. I don't have all that much to add here, other than the things that people have already said. It is clearly on the face of it preposterous to say that these attacks happened because Hamas had access to money via crypto. It's just not true. It's not true in terms of a percentage of money that Hamas had from crypto in general, and it's certainly not true that they have some magical insight that those dollars were used to fund this attack. Using that sort of rhetoric is clear political opportunism, but it's very unlikely that a lot of people are going to call it out given the sensitivity of these issues, which is exactly why folks like Elizabeth Warren use these opportunities. Frankly, this is exactly the type of interaction that shows why people get so frustrated with American politics, but I digress. Now, speaking of sanctions, on Wednesday, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control once again expanded the sanctions list in response to illicit crypto usage. While Hamas is already designated as a terrorist group, this update added 10 new members, operatives and financial facilitators operating in Gaza. Crypto wallet addresses were identified, including one Bitcoin address owned by a Gaza-based exchange known as Buy Cash Money and Money Transfer Company. The business, along with its owner and primary operator, were alleged to, quote, be linked to Hamas and were also added to the sanctions list. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement, Now, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic reported on Wednesday that several designated terrorist groups had used that particular exchange. They claimed that over $25 million in Bitcoin and Tether had been moved through it since 2015. At the same time, as some pointed out, one of the sanctioned wallets has around $16 worth of value in it and made its last transfer 18 months ago, bringing up the question of just how much this is for show versus an actual effective policy. Speaking of just for show, on Wednesday, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis published a blog post titled, Correcting the Record, Inaccurate Methodologies for Estimating Cryptocurrency's Role in Terrorism Financing. Chainalysis is, of course, one of the premier firms for providing statistics on illicit funding flows through crypto networks, as well as in assisting authorities to disrupt, freeze, and seize assets. Their blog post stated that, quote, Chainalysis noted that terrorism financing is, quote, They recognized that, quote, And yet, in spite of this, they point out that, quote, Chainalysis walked through the newly sanctioned exchange by cash as a case study. They dug into specific transactions flowing to and from the exchange and concluded that it functioned more like a street-level money changer rather than being exclusively used for terrorist financing. According to Chainalysis, 82 million had flowed through the recently sanctioned address since February. Of those flows, Chainalysis found that only 450,000 worth of crypto was transferred to other addresses affiliated with terrorist financing. They noted that rather than the full amount which has been cited in recent reporting, Neeraj Agarwal from Coincenter summed it up this way, It looks like those estimates assume all flows through service providers that process illicit transactions are illicit. That's probably not the case. To simplify, if there's a rogue exchange that does a billion dollars in volume and they process one $1,000 Hamas transaction, it shouldn't be counted as $1 billion to Hamas. Neeraj also poured some cold water on a statistic that's been floating around that suggests that the UN estimates that cryptocurrencies account for 20% of terrorist financing. Neeraj said, Basically, a senior legal official at the UN Counterterrorism Committee, Svetlana Marinovay, said in an interview from last year that a few years ago, 5% of terror attacks were believed to be financed using crypto and she added that, In other words, this thing that is reported as fact is just a made-up source. Now, whether or not there is dubious information going into all of these things, it doesn't matter in how it's impacting crypto's place in Washington. A new research report from Berenberg Capital Markets claims that the reported use of crypto to fund Hamas may have set back crypto lobbying efforts in Washington. The report stated that efforts to pass crypto legislation could be quote, Complicated by recent media reports that put a spotlight on Hamas's use of crypto as a means of fundraising in recent years. And that quote, So friends, there you have it. If that's the latest, what we will be keeping an eye on is the extent to which this picks up particular momentum or whether this was the type of thing that was a one-time flag signaling for these 100 signatories who just wanted to be associated with the anti-terrorism team, which is how this letter tried to portray itself. To the extent that this does pick up and this bill becomes more of a going concern, I will of course let you guys know here. For now, I appreciate you listening as always. And of course, one more big thanks to today's sponsor Kraken. Go to kraken.com slash the breakdown to see what crypto can be. Till next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
"elizabeth warren s" Discussed on CoinDesk Podcast Network
"Featured story is an opinion piece by CoinDesk's Daniel Kuhn. Our piece today is entitled, Why Elizabeth Warren is Wrong about Crypto and the Fentanyl Epidemic. For a while, crypto's role in the illegal and gray area drug trade seemed swept under the rug, or at least it was not getting the attention it could have, which is good and which the Fed shuttered back in 2013. It's good because some people have a tendency to moralize about drug use, and the less crypto is linked to crime in general, the less the entire industry will be stigmatized. However, it would arguably be better to be upfront about such things, assuming they're going on, as data now suggests. If crypto ever has a shot at finding a killer use case, or mass user base who understands why blockchains are important. U .S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is calling for a greater crypto crackdown following new research from blockchain analytics firms Chainalysis and Elliptic that found Bitcoin and Tether, or USDT, have become cornerstone to the global fentanyl trade. These are the same research companies that put out annual reports showing a fraction of a fraction of crypto transactions can be tied to illicit use. Quote, crypto is helping fund the fentanyl trade and we have the power to shut that down, Warren said, continuing, it's time. End quote. The Senator is a longtime critic of crypto, who recently made an incomprehensible anti -crypto army campaign part of her re -election bid. But does the Senator have a point? I already know what the crypto faithful will say. Chainalysis estimates less than 1 % of total crypto transactions are related to crime, so it doesn't matter if Chainalysis is now saying there's evidence. At least $37 .8 million worth of crypto was sent to drug manufacturers in China since 2018. But hold that thought, we'll get back to it. First, let's try to place crypto's alleged use for drug sales in the context of the global drug trade. To start, it's difficult to judge just how large the fentanyl economy is, because it is, by nature, kept mostly out of sight. But if Chainalysis and ellipsis figures are to be meaningful, they need context. According to one source Chainalysis cited, total quote chemical exports, end quote, from China, assumed by most authorities to be the largest manufacturer and exporter of black and gray market drugs, surpassed $100 billion in 2021 alone.