BTC Sessions
BREAKING: Trump and Louisiana Make History With Groundbreaking Bitcoin Transactions! ep441
🔴 LIVE: Trump & Louisiana Make Bitcoin History, El Salvador & Bhutan’s Stack Above Their Weight, Saylor Expands MSTR Offering, Gensler Under Fire, and More!
In today’s action-packed episode, we’re diving into the hottest stories shaking the crypto world:
• Trump & Louisiana’s Historic Bitcoin Move: For the first time ever, a U.S. President and State have transacted with Bitcoin, marking a monumental milestone in Bitcoin’s evolution as a currency.
• Trump’s Sh*tcoin Phase: Despite his Bitcoin engagement, Trump’s campaign has embraced World Liberty Coin. But does this short-term blip even matter compared to his broader Bitcoin promises?
• Bhutan & El Salvador Stack Above Their Weight: Bhutan quietly joins El Salvador as a surprising Bitcoin heavyweight, revealing its significant Bitcoin holdings. Is this the beginning of a new trend among smaller nations?
• Saylor’s Latest Bitcoin Play: Michael Saylor is at it again—MicroStrategy just boosted its Bitcoin stash by $175 million! Is there any stopping him?
• Gensler Under Fire: SEC Chair Gary Gensler is facing backlash, accused by Congress of undermining self-custody rights. What could this mean for the future of personal Bitcoin ownership?
• BlackRock’s Bold Take on Bitcoin: A new report from BlackRock calls Bitcoin a “unique diversifier” for investors. Are we watching the full embrace of bitcoin by Wall Street in real time?
All this and more in today’s LIVE show! Don’t miss out—hit the bell for notifications, join the conversation, and stay ahead of the s-curve!
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- Broadcast on:
- 19 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
[Music] >> Yo. >> Yo. >> How's it going? >> Dude. >> It's going really good. >> All right. I feel so disconnected from you. >> Yeah. >> Our tips are definitely decent. >> Yeah. It's got to happen again. It's happened. But we're here. We're in Vegas. We're in the loft. The real world season 845 is filmed or whatever it is. We've been attending Unconfiscatable, put on by the legendary tone phase. It's been a good time. You've been having a good time? >> Yeah, man. I had a great time. We hosted the scammies yesterday. >> Yeah. >> That was the first. I had at least five or six tequila's in me. So, yeah. It was very memorable. >> Yeah. It's been a great time. I've been having a lot of fun. And we get to do, I mean, it's always great when we get to do a live show together and hang out. And so, here we are. We're going to be bringing you, of course, the latest and greatest in everything Bitcoin. And I'm going to be hitting you with some tech updates. And make sure you stay tuned for why are we bullish tomorrow because I'm going to be chatting with a few people in and around here over the next day. And you'll get to see some of that coming up. But, of course, this is live. >> Anything can happen. >> Anything can happen as Bill will tell you right now. We'll do it live. Do it live. I can all write it and we'll do it live. And things sucks. >> And if you have not already, like Subshare, all those things super important. I am Ben. This is Nico. And this is your simply session. Let's go. [MUSIC] >> Before we hit the news, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. And dare we say that it will never be 58K again? >> I don't know, man. I've had bad experiences with Dennis. And I feel like we're just destined to be at 58K forever. >> Very possible, very possible. But for the time being, at least for the next 15 minutes, we're sitting currently at $60,000, $63,082 per coin. A single US dollar will snag you 1,585 cents. In terms of fees, 8Sats per byte, the first time I've seen it in the higher end of the single digits, it's been a while. It's been cheap, but 8Sats per byte, next block. And in terms of Bitcoin mine, $19.75 million, that is 94.07% of the total supply. We're going to hit our sponsors super quick here and we will be right back to get into everything that's been going on this week. So we'll see you in just a second. Bitcoin Well is on a mission to enable independence by being one of the easiest and quickest ways to purchase Bitcoin in Canada and the US. The best part about it, every buy goes directly into your own self custody. They never hold your coins. You can add a Bitcoin address as part of onboarding. There's a transparent 1% spread, no hidden fees, no withdrawal fees. Plus they have KYC free sales and bill payments on their website. They're also a publicly traded company under the ticker BTCW on the TSXV. Check them out over at bitcoinwell.com. Check out my full tutorial on how to use them and you can check out the links in the show notes down below and sign up today. Keeper is a mobile Bitcoin application for managing and securing your funds for the long term. Keeper is a mobile Bitcoin application for managing and securing your funds for the long term. You can set up hot wallets for day to day spending or create digital vaults for deep cold storage. They also offer assisted multi-sig options as well as inheritance planning. And on top of that, Keeper boasts a long list of support for Bitcoin hardware longer than I've seen for any other mobile application. You can check them out today by searching Bitcoin Keeper in your App Store or heading to bitcoinkeeper.app. It would seem that anything can happen when it's live. Yeah, man, I mean, we are in Vegas after all and we are the real world suite. I don't even want to think about the things that have happened here. It's already things have happened to us already. But it's enough said in that department. We're still grappling with the trauma. Yeah, I don't think I'll forget that. It's a very memorable, you know, Vegas experience, but it's not one of those things that stays in Vegas. You know, it will stay with me for the rest of my life. Yeah, and it may be blasted on social media even. Yeah, maybe, just maybe, just maybe. It might. Well, we're going to, I guess, we'll dive into what's been going on with everything. And I better pull up, I better get in here with your news. And I'll just let you take it, man. What's been going on in the realm of Bitcoin? What's exciting? There's been a lot. Yeah, I mean, there's been, so there's been a couple things, right? So first historic day and that historic day was Trump actually giving away, giving away burgers at the pub key. I believe that is the name of the bar. And dude, I mean, like, I can't even imagine what that's like for, bro, it's a US president, you know, doing this, which is absolutely gnarly. Here's a clip of it real quick. It's about a minute and 47 seconds. You'll clearly notice that Trump hasn't seen any of Ben's videos, but we all have to start somewhere. So let's check it out. Historic moment in Bitcoin's history. On Donald Trump, he is in a bar, I believe, in downtown New York called the pub key in downtown Manhattan. Maybe we can play up some sound here, guys, and see if he says anything. I'm going to scan this QR code here with his phone if you don't take that message. Scan the watch of our code right here. Right there. There's that one. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. It went through. He has absolutely no idea what happened when they said it went through. He just said, right. And it also has been confirmed. Someone put a screenshot of the Zapprite receipt. He bought Trump bought over $1,000 worth of burgers. Nice. For the entire pub key bar, which was absolutely hilarious. And then you just see him handing them out. One burger for you. One crypto burger for you. Everyone's like, "Boo!" And he's like, "Okay, a Bitcoin burger for you." So, yeah, absolutely historic moment. Also, Trump on Monday actually hosted a Twitter spaces. And it was actually held by this all-coin shitcoin company called World Liberty. It's called World Liberty Financial Business. But I think the things to pay attention regarding that news is the fact that he said that his son Barron was the one that was actually holding the wallets for him. And that he was just getting into it. And again, the talking points, and I actually tweeted this out not too long ago, I can't emphasize enough how important this election is going to be for the regulatory environment in the United States for the Bitcoin industry. And here you have Trump that I believe the reason that he's doing this, the reason that he's showing up to these bars, is because now the Bitcoin industry is part of the donor class. And that is incredibly important. It is official Republican Party platform. We have it right here that they made it part of their platform. So, if you go to where is it, and this is live, anything could happen. There we go. There we go. So, part of the official Republican Party platform is that they'll say that Republicans will have Democrats unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a central bank to a currency. We will defend the right to mind Bitcoin and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their digital assets and transact free from government surveillance and control. And this is in stark contrast to what the Democratic Party is offering. It was just announced today that Gary Gensler continues his crusade against the industry. So, despite all that talk of crypto for Kamala and all those things, if you pay attention to their actions, not their talk, it's very clear that one party is pro-Bitcoin, anti-CBDC, and the other party is anti-Bitcoin, pro-CBDC. And I don't think you can be a politician and be pro-Bitcoin and pro-CBDC. Hopefully, and again, guys, you have to look at it from this perspective because I'm a single issue voter. I'm sure Ben, you are too. You have to look at it from this direction. I truly believe that Bitcoin will fix the world, fix the world, fix the money, fix the world. You guys have heard that a million times. And I'm just looking at it from, I don't care what politician from what side of the aisle, if they're going to be pro-Bitcoin and pro-Bitcoin regulation, I'm going to support them. And in the US, because it is a two-party system, Trump isn't perfect. He's a bit of a shit-pointer. But a lot of us were when we got into the industry. If you contrast that with the other side, it's a stark contrast. So, it's a clear decision. This November, this is the first Bitcoin election. And one side is pro-Bitcoin, and one side is anti-Bitcoin. So, Trump continues to go down. The rabbit hole made his first Bitcoin transaction. He's hosting spaces with, you know, it wasn't the Bitcoin industry. It was the crypto industry. Maybe him showing up at cub pub key was his way of redeeming himself for what happened on Monday on those spaces. So, another thing that I got to say as well, this is a little bit of a stretch, but, you know, it is, you know, I'm going to stick with it. I don't think it's a coincidence that the first pro-Bitcoin presidential candidate has now faced two assassination attempts. Also, another thing to keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, is that Trump has promised to free Ross Ulberg. So, I'll leave it at that. I know we've been talking a lot about Trump recently on Simply Sessions. It is an election year. Bitcoin is on the ballot. The freedom of the samurai guys is on the ballot. The freedom of Ross is on the ballot. The right to self-custities on the ballot. The right to mine is on the ballot. So, yeah, man, I mean, I can't make a clear case. I understand that people still feel certain ways about Trump. But I think the alternative is 100 times worse. Yeah. Well, yeah, when you look at it, you've got, it's a two-way street. It's either, and neither option is the best. But at the end of the day, it's, do you want a little bit of open road to be able to build the tools that make Bitcoin impervious to the state and then add in a side of shit coin degeneracy, because that's just how it's going to be served up. Or do you want to re-elect the people that are throwing developers behind bars? So, that's kind of where we're at. You know, that's going to be a personal decision for everybody. But I know what I would prefer. And, yeah, let's make it so that we have some time to build out what we truly need. 100%. And then we were talking about this earlier on simply Bitcoin. This isn't just happening in the US. Actually, you broke the news to me first, because I was like, oh, this is the first presidential candidate. And then you were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you understand the conservative, the conservative, the conservative who's running for prime minister, Polier Polyvar. It always butchers. Pierre Polyev. Pierre Polyev. He actually beat Trump to this. By yours. Yeah. So what did he do? Exactly. So he went to visit Ali at the Real Tahini's. And he went to a Bitcoin meetup, chilled out with everybody. And he bought a shwarma with lightning. And this was two, three years ago, I think three years ago. Yeah. And so, and beyond that, another one up for, for Polier versus Trump is that as Polier's messaging continued to evolve, he went from saying crypto and things like that to specifying Bitcoin. So he definitely has been learning. He's obviously, he quieted down about it through the bear market because it was all of the ammo that the other side of the aisle could expend at him. But they don't have those talking points anymore because, you know, like it was since he started talking about it, it has continued to grow even though it dipped in between. Yeah. 100%. And like the, I remember seeing a clip of Trudeau and he was just making fun of people about the inflation stuff. And then like fast forward like three or four years later, like he was just proven completely wrong. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, this is a global worldwide phenomenon. This is happening in El Salvador. This is happening in Argentina. This is happening in, in the United States and in Canada. Also, I just interviewed a presidential candidate for the country of Suriname, which is actually very close to Venezuela. And she actually wants to make Bitcoin not only legal tender, but the unit of account of the country. Right. So this is a global phenomenon. You know, we're, I think we're on the, on the verge of something absolutely huge. But anyways, moving on to the next piece of news, El Salvador has reached financial independence. And if you want to have an idea of why the IMF was so passionate about, you know, so passionate about El Salvador and making Bitcoin legal tender. The reason for that is quite simple. And they saw that El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender, they see that now El Salvador has an alternative to the IMF loans, which you're very familiar with Gladstein's work. Yes. They essentially enslaved these developing countries with these crazy terms and these loans. And in return, they're just giving them, I believe the term is SDFs. And it's essentially something that they could just print out a thin air too. It's like Fiat. And they enslaved these countries. And the terms are so favorable for the West. It's like they're extracting the resource of these, of these countries, they're enslaving them. And now Bitcoin comes along. It provides an alternative. I believe that's the main motivation as to why I believe that's the main motivation as to why the IMF was so hell bent on attacking El Salvador. And this, this message right here from Nain Boukele basically saying financial independence announcement on Independence Day is a shot across the bow. And basically saying, hey, United States, hey, IMF, hey, Bank of International Settlements, hey, World Bank, we don't need you anymore. We can stand on our own two feet because of Bitcoin. And that is an incredibly powerful message. Yeah. So again, first off, Kudos to Boukele, Kudos to El Salvador for the amount of change that has taken place in such a short period of time. It's a massive accomplishment. It flies in the face of all of the detractors that said that it was destined to fail. And that's huge. And maybe this is what we see out of countries that have the wherewithal in the future to move towards a Bitcoin standard. Now, I wanted to show, and I'm just going to in the same tab here, I'm going to bring up something that is directly related to this and just shows the directionality of different nations in namely the directionality of my own country versus El Salvador. And I tweeted this out just the other day. But that story alongside another one came across my news feed. And I just thought to myself like, wow, look at the contrast of these two countries and what they're doing. So President Boukele says El Salvador no longer dependent on debt. Meanwhile, in Canada, Ottawa to expand 30 year amortizations and raise insured mortgage cap, meaning that Canadians, so many Canadians cannot afford to buy a home that they needed to extend the amount of time and the amount of debt that Canadians take on in order to maybe be able to eventually own their own home. So it's just like, directionally, he's saying, Boukele's saying, hey, we're no longer dependent on debt. And then Canada's saying, hey, you know, we realize it's hard to get a home. So we're going to saddle you with lifetimes of debt. And it's just, it's such a contrast. Yeah. I mean, and that's like the only, you know, solution these politicians have, which is just more debt, more money printing. One of the things that I've been seeing in American politics, where I've seen this happen to Trump and Kamala, they get questions from like the audience, which is basically like, what are you going to do to bring down the grocery prices? And then I'm just looking at that, I'm like, like, that's insane. Like the government is the sole cause of inflation, right, through their fiscal policy. You don't have to ask permission anymore. All you have to do is take your destiny into your own hands again, opt out of the system entirely and change the money that you're using. And then all of a sudden, not only is life going to be more affordable over time, it's everything will get cheaper compared to if you were living on a fiat standard. One of the things that, one of the talking points that you hear, which is the American dream is dead. And I would say, no, the American dream is dead on fiat. The American dream is alive and well on a Bitcoin standard. And now it's been exported anywhere around the world. It doesn't matter. You don't have to live in America anymore. You can live the American dream. You work hard, you save, you stay disciplined. And over time, your purchasing power will continue to grow. And that's the beauty of Bitcoin. Yeah, it's again, the formula that I love going through, the formula for a happy life is create value for others, spend less than you earn and save in a money that nobody else can print for free. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. All right, everybody. So moving on. So back to El Salvador and them setting just like they're just bad asses. So they made their reserves public. That causes a couple of things. So as you can see, Nayamucala is kept as promised every single day. He buys one Bitcoin and he puts it into El Salvador's, you know, balance history. That's number one. Number two is when you make your reserves public, it makes it very difficult for politicians to skim a little bit off the top. That's in stark contrast with how most countries treat their reserves. So whether it's the UK or the United States or Canada, I'm most familiar with the United States. I'll give context to that, but you it's like trust me, bro, like, oh, we audited it, but trust me, bro. So in the United States, most of the gold is now held in New York. But when FDR passed the 6102 order and confiscated Americans gold in exchange for paper, he actually built Fort Knox to house all that gold. The last time Fort Knox, apparently it's audited every year, but there's no picture. It's not public like this is. The last time there is video footage of a vault at Fort Knox was in the 1970s. And they only showed one vault. Yeah. So I don't know what's happened from 1970 to now, but it's still trust me, bro. We have this and this is the same government that's sending billions of dollars overseas. Right. And let's just say they've made questionable decisions over the years. Forgive me if I don't trust you, bro. And now we have a technology which is don't trust verify, don't trust, don't trust name bouquille. You could verify it yourself. You could see the address yourself. And if this balance starts to go down, bouquille is going to be held accountable. People are going to have some hard questions. Hey, what's going on here, right? So yeah, I mean, I think it's in stark contrast. By the way, it's not only El Salvador that is accumulating Bitcoin, the kingdom of Bhutan came out of nowhere. And this was only revealed because Celsius during the lawsuit had actually revealed that some of the companies and some of the people that interacting with them and somehow people were able to connect that with the kingdom of Bhutan. Ben Forbes released an article basically announcing that BitDeer and the kingdom of Bhutan partnered up to mine Bitcoin. First, they started out with 100 megawatts. And then right two weeks before the halving, they actually increased their mining capability and capacity up to 600 megawatts. So they added 500 megawatts on the verge of the halving. So they knew that the rewards were going to get cut in half and they said, I don't care, we're going to keep mining Bitcoin. The reason for that is El Bhutan has a tremendous amount of hydroelectric power and also it's a country with not that many people, right? So they have a tremendous amount of excess energy, which is the key point here. Now what's really crazy about this article, we were actually talking about it yesterday on some of the panels before the scammies. I'll redo this for the audio listeners, the headline for Bitcoin magazine, Bhutan's Bitcoin holdings revealed, kingdom owns 700 million dollars in Bitcoin from mining. South Asian country, Bhutan, a Buddhist kingdom on the Himalayan Himalayas eastern edge has been revealed as a major Bitcoin holder, owning 13,011 Bitcoin worth around $780 million US dollars. It goes on to say, Bhutan is the fourth largest government with Bitcoin holdings on our platform with over 750 million in BTC. Unlike most governments, Bhutan's BTC does not come from law enforcement asset seizures, but from Bitcoin mining operations, which have ramped up dramatically since early 2023. They actually have satellite footage of the farms being built out, which is absolutely cool. It goes on to say, Bhutan's Bitcoin mining activities are conducted by the kingdom's investment arm, drug holdings. According to Arkham, the country has constructed mining facilities at multiple sites with the largest on the grounds of a defunct education city project. We were able to corroborate the timeline of on-chain mining activity with time-lapse satellite imagery of facility construction. That is so freaking cool. You can see the difference here, everything's being built out. In May 2023, BitDear partner with drug holdings and investments to develop the 100% carbon free Bitcoin mining operation in Bhutan. Now, what's really interesting, and here is the increase in capacity, like I told you guys, but what's really interesting is I was talking about this yesterday and I saw one of the articles just to kind of give you an idea, $780 million is one third of that country's GDP, and it's in Bitcoin. It's just insane. I mean, again, like they've got, were you saying they had a lot of hydro or like? Yeah. So they have a tremendous amount of hydroelectric capability. So here we go. So abundant hydro power resources. So they have like basically the rivers that are coming down from the Himalayas as they melt and all that water is going through Bhutan and they just build like dams and power plants. So basically what you're saying is they're taking energy that just freely existed and was not being utilized for anything else and said, Hey, we can monetize this to the tune of a third of our GDP. How insane. And get absurdly wealthy in the process. Yeah. Right. Yeah, good for them. Man, these Buddha Buddhist Buddhist kingdom bullish on Bhutan bullish on Bhutan anyways, moving on. So here the Fed cut rates for the first time in four years. And of course, a lot of people are speculating that's the reason that's one of the major reasons as to why Bitcoin had this major run up from. I think we were in the 58 K region. I think we talked that at 64 recently we're down to like 63 or so, but they had this major run up. And a lot of the reasons that people are saying that this happens was because the Fed cut rates. They actually cut it from to 50. They cut rates by 50 basis points. People were anticipating 25 basis points. But I was talking to Tone Bay's the other day, and he's saying that unfortunately when they cut rates by such an extent, it's a possible indication that the economy might be in trouble. So there is an immediate sugar high, but then people come to realize that, oh crap, why are they cutting rates at such a rate, we actually might have a recession potentially coming up. Nobody knows for sure, but that is the word on the street. Also here it is. A billion dollars on Bitcoin. Sorry about that. MicroStrategy also raised 800 million, yeah, 800 million dollars. They continue to use their infinite money glitch. Michael Saylor has found it. And essentially it works like this. They basically borrow against the company at very, very low rates. The last time I saw the rate was 0.695%, which is crazy. They use that to buy Bitcoin. As the Bitcoin price goes up, the stock goes up, and then they do the exact same thing again. And actually, based on the stock price, the amount of Bitcoin per stock continues to go up using the infinite money glitch. Saylor is literally using their system to speculatively attack their system using the debt system that they have. It's absolutely hilarious. And by the way, it's not only Michael Saylor doing this, other companies have followed suit. So we had Saylor Scientific announce it. We have countries like the Kingdom of Bhutan. We have El Salvador, of course. You have Tesla that holds about 10,000 Bitcoin roughly, give or take, SpaceX as well. So, and I forgot what is the name of the company at Dylan LaPrayer Meta Planet. I believe that's the name. So you're seeing other countries, other companies and nation states follow the strategy of Bitcoin accumulation. The next year is Cathedral Bitcoin, and they're shifting their focus from mining to Bitcoin acquisition. So after seven years in the mining business, Canadian Bitcoin miner, Cathedral, is altering its focus. The company is now shifting to developing data centers and plans to use the profits to purchase Bitcoin instead of mining it. It goes on to say, quote, "The last three years have demonstrated to us that Bitcoin mining is not a reliable way to grow shareholders Bitcoin per share." That's the key word. That's what I was saying in regards to Michael Saylor. Indeed, nine of the 10 largest publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies hold less Bitcoin per share today than they did three years ago. The company stayed in the meadow, Memo, adding that companies like MicroStrategy, which focus on increasing Bitcoin per share have been rewarded by equity markets. That is the signal there. People are interested in how much Bitcoin is per share. Michael Saylor has found the infinite money glitch. He's used that to his advantage. But you'll see this other company following Suther say, "Hey, wait a second, we'll provide more value to our shareholders if we change strategy to a Bitcoin acquisition strategy." So the Chad Saylor is winning, other companies are looking. And I think by the time this epoch is over, we're going to have one of the major seven tech companies. This is already there. But I'm saying Google, Microsoft, you see Michael Dell hinting at it, potentially follow in the footsteps of MicroStrategy. I'm very confident that one company will bend the knee. And the great thing about this is your company actually has to make money for this to work. You can't be like a zombie company with no income to really pull this off consistently because eventually shit hits the fan. But if you are a company that provides a service, provides value for others that actually year over year makes profit, then yeah, you can partake in this and you can do quite well for yourself. And again, it's another flavor of my favorite formula, provide value for others, spend less than you earn, and save in money that no one can print. Yeah. I mean, isn't that simple? It's a very simple and effective formula, but you know, it seems like Fiat has just brainwashed a lot of people. Anyways, moving on to the next piece of news, Ben and I were talking about this earlier, Louisiana state government now accepts Bitcoin as payment. Now what's really interesting about this, we were making fun of this. Louisiana state government accepts first cryptocurrency payment, or they say cryptocurrency. But if you read the text, it says, Louisiana residents will now have the option to pay for state services from their private secure crypto wallets. These popular types of cryptocurrencies will be accepted Bitcoin, Bitcoin lightning and USD coin. In fact, the first cryptocurrency payment was made today to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Now Ben, you were saying this earlier, I agree. Now before everyone's like, why are you giving your money to the state? We're winning on both fronts here because check this out. A unique service converts incoming cryptocurrency payments, depositing US dollars into state government accounts like a credit or debit card transaction. The service protects the state from previous worries about accepting cryptocurrency and promotes the adoption of new technologies in the state's infrastructure. So it's great. You send the Bitcoin, they sell it immediately, give it back to the private market, and then they keep dollars of which they can print. To sell it, it's a great deal. I love how they they frame it as it protects the state, like they're protecting themselves from having sound money and instead dumping it for fiat cuck bucks, it's so great. It's nuts and they're drinking their own Kool-Aid, like they really, really believe in the cult of fiat, like without a shadow of a doubt. Anyways, to kind of end the news segment today, I do want to focus on Warren Davidson. Once again, talking about Gary Gensler, and again, the reason I'm emphasizing this, ladies and gentlemen, I'll play it at 1.25, the speed because it is quite a long clip. But the reason I'm emphasizing this is what I was saying about the election earlier. We have two options in front of us, pro-Bitcoin, anti-Bitcoin, and what I don't want people to get confused about because we've seen this crypto for Harris articles written and like these things being done, don't pay attention to what they say. They don't want to lose the voters. They know that people that hold Bitcoin are part of their voter demographic. You have to pay attention to what they do. And what they're doing in the background is malicious, don't take my word for it. Here's Congressman Warren Davidson bringing up that they're attacking self custody. Let's check it out. Mr. Reiner, I hope no one's listening to you about this market, especially as a student trying to understand the space, it's over a trillion dollars just for Bitcoin. The market's over two trillion dollars. Clearly, lots of consumers find value in this space and, frankly, the idea that you could point out that there's only one time that the SEC was even partially wrong has to be willful ignorance. I mean, I don't know how it could be anything other than to see. It's hard for me to understand because on August 29th, 2023, the Circuit Court upheld the position that the SEC violated the Administrative Procedures Act when it denied grayscale's application to convert grayscale Bitcoin trust into a Bitcoin ETP. Following that decision, the SEC waited until January of 2024 to actually approve the conversion. And they basically was a pure rebuke of the actions. If you look at debt box, another pure rebuke, lawyers would normally get disbarred for the conduct of SEC in the debt box case. So there are lots of cases where they've been caught and told that they were wrong by the courts. The market continues to reinforce that there really is value just looking at Bitcoin alone. People right now believe that it's a secure way to store value with a level of confidence of around $60,000. I mean, that's a new security product on the market that you could digitally secure a unit of value and people believe in it enough to put almost $60,000 into one unit of measure in a Bitcoin. And they don't just want to store it there. They want to be able to transfer it in a permissionless, peer-to-peer way. So if you read the Bitcoin white paper available at Bitcoin.org, you could see the concept, even if you just read the abstract. It's not just meant to be parked there or speculated on. It's meant to be able to be moved in a permissionless way. And we don't know how much of that trillion dollars of market cap in Bitcoin is self-custody versus third-party custody. But the SEC under Gary Gensler's leadership has willfully undermined the ability for anyone to custody digital assets, not just Bitcoin, but the rest of the space as well. So they've decided that if they can't completely end the entire space, they want to push custody of it to some third-party that they can control or manipulate. They certainly don't want individual American citizens to custody their own wealth and be able to move it amongst others. So Mr. Fizarro, when you look at this space and the special-purpose broker-dealer path that we saw, people saying, "We'd love to try to custody digital assets for others. What kind of problems did you find with the current framework offered by Mr. Gensler?" A few of the challenges related to this framework are that relate specifically to Bitcoin and crypto exchange traded products that I can mention. One is that as an issuer and someone wants to offer these products, the larger and well-established custody banks that typically participate in custody of assets in collective investment vehicles are effectively barred from participating in the space. They don't have a way to bring custody services to the market. That's one challenge. A second one that I'd like to mention is that in the ETF structure itself, or the ETP structure itself, typically the funds have a creation and redemption mechanism that works through what is known as an in-kind process where the fund exchanges shares in exchange for the underlying asset itself because broker-dealers are not able to handle Bitcoin and crypto. We can't have that type of mechanism in the exchange traded products. Is that a consistent way that it's applied for ETP/ETF products? Are they treating this differently? In overseas jurisdictions, we have in-kind transactions that occur in ETFs and ETPs, but it's consistently applied here in that we're not able to bring that type of structure to market, which is the thing that we think slightly increases costs for end users. The thing about what they just said, that's the end of the news segment for today, but think about what he just said. They don't want in-kind redemption, meaning they want you to stay in the ETF. They don't give you the ability to get out of the ETF for spot Bitcoin, right? And they're essentially in their minds, they're just like, "Okay, maybe we can't get rid of this, but at least we can get rid of self custody." And that's what they're trying to do. Caught in 4K, make no mistake. This is what it's all about, and that's why I got to say this election is quite important, in my opinion, and shout out to Warren Davidson for really bringing that to light. Yeah. 100%. I mean, the great thing about everybody watching this is you guys already know that the tools exist to self custody right now, and I'm certain that everybody watching this is already going down that road and is already learning the tools, if not using them actively. So you guys are ahead of the curve, you know what's up, and yeah, we're going to come back with a few tech updates to kind of round out momentarily, but you know, discussing these very tools that give you the power to take self-sovereign wealth into your own hands. Not your keys, not your chains? Absolutely. Absolutely. So we will be back in just a moment. We're going to do a quick shout out to sponsor the show, and then also, when we get back, we're going to give away some SATs. So get those lightning wallets ready, we're going to throw a coin in the Bitcoin wishing well over at bitcoinwell.com/btc sessions, bitcoinwell.com/ simply bitcoin. We will be back in a moment. See you guys in a sec. Speed wallet is a Bitcoin lightning wallet built with simplicity in mind, spend and receive with ease, claim your own lightning address, shop your favorite gift cards, and even earn rewards when you spend. Head over to speed.app to download the app on your mobile or desktop today, and use the link down below to get 5,000 SATs for free, and have the chance to win even more. Coinkite.com has some of the best hardware on the market today to secure your Bitcoin. The coldcard queue is an absolute powerhouse and is my daily driver. Not top of this, they have plenty of other goodies including the mark 4, the tap signer open dimes, the block clock, and much more. If you head over to their website, make sure you use code BTCSessions at checkout to get a nice discount. Links are in the show notes down below. Debify.com allows you to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Collateral is held in a three or four distributed multi-sig with trusted parties, it provides institutional liquidity providers, loan periods of up to five years with flexible conditions and the best rates. And best of all, no re-hypovocation of your funds. If you want to check them out today, head over to Debify.com or hit the link in these show notes down below. Alright, we are back in, we're going to give away some SATs right now, been a while since we did this together. Yeah, I know, right, I mean, that's not true, we did it this morning. Did we? We did. Yeah. It's that Vegas, I haven't had a drink yet today, but it's like just through osmosis of being in town. It's like you're half drunk the whole time, so anyways. So we are going to be giving away some SATs right now, pull out those lightning wallets. So what am I doing right now? This is a Bitcoinwell.com and this is a great place where you can stack SATs. They have everything you need to take instant Bitcoin self custody. In fact, they never hold your coins. And on top of it, they've got this wishing well and it's incredible. So when you sign up, you earn points. When you purchase SATs and take them into self custody, you earn points. When you refer friends, you earn points and you can use those points to then toss a coin into the well and we're going to do that right now. You can win between 500 up to a million SATs in some cases. So we're going to play now, again, get those wallets running and redeem 500 points. We're going to toss it into the well and we'll make it, there you go, 500 SATs, so get scanning. One person will be able to snag those SATs away and congrats to whoever does. Let us know in the chat or on X or Noster or YouTube comments or wherever you're watching this. Please do let us know if you snagged those SATs. So really quick. I just want to go down the line. Thanks here. H.R.A.F. Bitcoin Development Fund grants have given grants 10 Bitcoin to 20 projects worldwide. A billion SATs going out to some incredible entities here, just to name off a few African Bitcoiners, Stratosphere, Coracle, Harbor, the 256 Foundation, Kyve Claire, Jeff Gardner, Solentium, BTC, Shul, Edo wallet, Tor Relay operator associations, that name, Richto. I don't know. I'm going to just decimate it. So regardless, Richto, congratulations, yes, Bitcoin, Haiti, Bitcoin, Indonesia, Bitcoin plus plus, Tabconf, Baltic honey badger, Lebickconf, and Decentralizer, SaaSconf, and Solidarity Summit. I got to say, I love what H.R.A.F. is doing, going out, finding projects and giving grants to them for those that are deserving, that they've funded a lot of great things over the years. I've seen it firsthand as well. Good for them. They're doing the Lord's work, for sure. 100%. One of the things that I'm originally from Venezuela, I know that they supported a lot of the opposition candidates, and they actually spoke at the H.R.A.F. conference, specifically Leopoldo Lopez, and also the current opposition leader, I know that Alex Gladstein has had her back as well. So he actually did an interview with her. And she promised to him that Venezuela, if they take power again, that they were going to use Bitcoin to bring Venezuela into a bright orange future once again. So yeah, shout out to Alex Gladstein and H.R.A.F. doing great, great work. Oh, yeah. Well, let's move on here. Keeper desktop. So obviously you guys are familiar with Keeper, sponsor of the show, awesome, awesome resource to be able to not only have hot wallets, but cold wallet support for a ton of different hardware and, you know, multi-sig and inheritance, blending, all of that. But up until now, you know, a lot of people would primarily use on mobile. But they now have a desktop app that it's cross-platform support. And what this allows you to do is, normally, if you're on mobile, you'd be using mobile-friendly devices. But some devices out there are natively primarily used, plugged into a computer. So they get past this by having a special linkage between this desktop app and the mobile app, and it allows you to have support for things like Trezor, Ledger, Bitbox, and plenty of other desktop native devices that require you to plug in via USB. And it just makes the whole experience much more able to be set up as you please. If you're dealing with Trezors or Bitboxers or whatever it may be, there you go. You can just use your desktop app. I think it's a great move forward and a way to bridge the gap of some people that maybe had devices that they couldn't previously use with Keeper. So, Kudos to them. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. One of my other favorite desktop wallets. Aah. Electrum. Oh, yeah. You're a big Electrum fan. I'm solidly Sparrow here. And this is a big update. So this is a big overhaul version 2.0.0. It introduces the ability to recover slip 39 shares. So what this is, is the Shamir secret sharing. So instead of having a single seed phrase, you can shard it into multiple pieces, kind of like a multi-sig, and you need X number of those pieces to reconstitute the original seed. So it allows you to recover something that is in that form as a backup. It also adds support for the Trezors save five, which is brand new. The new ledger devices, which are called the stacks and the flex, and also has some updates to Java and everything else, amongst other improvements. I have yet to play with it, but I'm going to be messing around. I'm curious to play with the slip 39 stuff. So that should be pretty cool, but we'll move on to the next one here. Blue wallet, advanced mode, unleashed. So what's up here, version 7.0.4 is now available in iOS, Android, and Mac OS. This release makes advanced mode options available contextually on each screen, right top right options. It's so nice because like before, and blue wallets, like my favorite mobile wallet, right? And before, if you had different wallets, it wouldn't give you the total sum of all those wallets. So now, like if you scroll down a little bit, you'll see, I don't know if they have a screenshot of it. Anyways, if you download blue wallet, you'll see the total sum of all the wallets at the top. Nice. And then if you click, it allows you to switch between USD or the fiat currency of your choice, Sats, and Bitcoin. So it's like, it's obvious, but it's not so obvious, right? Yeah. So yeah, definitely big improvement and huge fan of blue wallet. And they also allow you, by the way, to connect with your own node too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's sunset. They're custodial lightning option, which makes sense because there's a lot of work for developers to host a service on the end, and on top of that, there's regulatory uncertainty right now with, you know, pre-election and all that. But you can plug into your own L&D node and host it and all of that. And of course, all the on-chain self custody, they have bolts, they have all that kind of stuff. And with this update, they also found that a lot of people, there's a lot of advanced features, but they had pushed them so far to the background that a lot of people didn't know that those features were even there. So this one is an effort to bring some of those features back into the foreground so you can see them as options because a lot of people were requesting that. So Kudos to Blue on the update check out that update. And I wanted to share this final one here because silent payments, this is, again, in response to a lot of stuff we've seen, we've seen some pretty cool privacy tools come out of it as well as some privacy tools be sunset and disappear, which is unfortunate, but silent payments is a big one and it allows you to post a static address that is not being able to be audited. So you can have a static address posted anywhere. Anybody can use a silent payment supporting wallet to send to it, it will serve them up a unique Bitcoin address for them to pay, but publicly facing, nobody can say, "Oh, here's an address, let's just audit it and see what they got." They will only get their own address, so yeah, and it serves a unique one to each person. So either way, Dana Wallet, mobile silent payments for Bitcoin donations is the first public release of Dana Wallet, a simple silent payment native Bitcoin wallet available on Android. Basically all it is is, again, a static payment code, you can receive on-chain transactions and it's done in a more private way than previously. So I love to see that. We've seen some other mobile wallets implement it, Blue Wallet included, as well as Sitalentium and Cake, I believe, so awesome, awesome on the front of Bitcoin Privacy. Now, last thing, and we were just talking about this beforehand, but in hosting your own Bitcoin node, you're saying, "I got to do that, that looks cool," and it is cool, but last week, very end of the week, I dropped a tutorial on AlbiHub and so this allows you to use something like your own Start9 and set up your L&D node. Very simply, it walks you through, it actually says like, "Hey, you know what you might want to do first? Is this step?" And then you should do this step and it hand holds you. One of the clever features that I saw too was that it allows you to use your custom URL as well. Yeah, so you're talking about your lightning address where it's like, "Hey, I am BTC sessions at getAlbi.com," but it goes to my node. Dude, that's so cool. No, but hold on, no, no, no, but what I mean is like, for example, like Nico@simplybighorn.com. You can indeed set that up as well. AlbiHub itself, they try to make it very simple for you and they will host like a get Albi address for you, but you can, in the background, on your own website or whatever, you can host that information so that will go directly to your own node as well. So if you haven't checked it, AlbiHub, for those that are pushing hard for the self sovereignty angle and around lightning and you want to self host and you want to have your own channels, but it's previously been a nightmare, AlbiHub is a leap forward, like leaps and bounds easier than my previous experience in setting up lightning nodes and it just, it works beautifully. It's linked. I can browse or plug in so I can pay from there. I've got it linked to my mobile wallet. I've got it linked to Zaprite for invoicing. So literally everything, all my lightning stuff with all of this can go directly to my own node when that's the tool that I'm using. So definitely worth checking out. Pretty sweet. Yeah, no, Ben knows I'm a convenience maxi. So this is another step in the right direction for making lightning, self custodial lightning, being able for it to be used by the masses. Yeah, and again, like if you're just doing a few bucks here and there and you're using it lightning casually, like use what works for you. But again, for those that are really pushing to kind of self host, then here's a solution for you. For those that aren't, you know, like primal app for noster has a baked in custodial lightning wallet. Speed wallet is like the one of the simplest things to use. But you know, like people will have their own choices and their own preferences and there you go. So anyways, we're going to we're going to wrap it up there and and and round it out. I hope everybody enjoyed the show. Make sure you smash that like button, give this a share wherever you are, shout it to the nostrages that have been joining in on the zap.stream, appreciate that, zap zap zaps. If you want to help the show in another way, of course hit the previously mentioned sponsors down below. And also, if you've been sorting through the channel, you've been hitting up the tutorials like that, I'll be hub one or others. And you need a bit of hand holding, you hit a snag or you're just a Bitcoiner that realizes that you don't want to be a Bitcoin Luddite and you want to level up a little bit. Check out Bitcoin mentor dot IO. I've constructed an incredible team of educators and they can help you through anything you need from wallets to hardware to multi-sick, delighting to nodes to hobbyist, home mining, all of it, reach out Bitcoin mentor dot IO and they will have you covered. So with that, we are out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening and we'll both see you next time for your Simply Excession. Bye. for now. for now. [BLANK_AUDIO] [ Silence ]