Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Trumps BITCOIN WARNING: Is China Being FORCED To Adopt Bitcoin? | EP 1245

Transcript

Trumps BITCOIN WARNING: Is China Being FORCED To Adopt Bitcoin? | EP 1245 · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  In the same week that America came to a trade deal with China,
• 0:04
  Donald Trump just said a massive warning to China about Bitcoin.
• 0:09
  But it looks like China isn't going down without a fight,
• 0:12
  because we got some big news coming out of Hong Kong
• 0:15
  suggesting that the secret accumulation of Bitcoin in China
• 0:19
  could be accelerating. And on top of that, we got
• 0:22
  another global superpower central bank that just said the
• 0:26
  obvious about Bitcoin. But before we get there, let's
• 0:29
  play the clip of Donald Trump and chat about it an.
• 0:34
  Emirati government backed. Firm did a $2 billion deal using
• 0:38
  the Trump digital voids. How did that deal come about?
• 0:44
  I don't know anything about it. I really don't know anything
• 0:49
  about it, but I'm a big crypto fan.
• 0:50
  I will tell you that from the beginning, right from the
• 0:53
  campaign, I'm a believer in crypto and we're not going to do
• 0:55
  it. China's going to do it.
• 0:56
  The way I look, it's like AI. I'm a believer in AI because we
• 1:00
  have to have it. We're leading China by a lot
• 1:02
  and. In crypto, we're leading China
• 1:04
  by a lot, so. So you guys heard it there a
• 1:10
  little hard because he was on Air Force One, you know, the
• 1:13
  audio was a little rough. But one, he said I am a huge fan
• 1:16
  of crypto and two, which is the big thing.
• 1:19
  We are leading China in crypto. So we'll we'll be talking about
• 1:23
  the global game theory, global FOMO playing out.
• 1:26
  But of course, I am not alone. I got Nico in the Co host seat
• 1:29
  today. And then we have Fernando
• 1:31
  Nikolich, which is the vice president of marketing and
• 1:34
  communications at block stream. So we got a great show for you
• 1:37
  guys. We got we got some good stuff.
• 1:39
  I'm I'm very excited to get into the culture.
• 1:41
  Anyways, let's get into this story.
• 1:43
  As you can see, I got the initial tweet here.
• 1:45
  But first of all, it would be remiss if I didn't go to
• 1:48
  bitcointreasuries.com. And this is the official numbers
• 1:51
  here. Of course, the big kahuna in the
• 1:54
  room here is what we've been talking about on the show for a
• 1:56
  while. We were supposed to get an audit
• 1:59
  of the United States Bitcoin holdings and we have yet to get
• 2:02
  that. A lot of people are speculating
• 2:04
  what is going on. Maybe they're waiting to
• 2:06
  announce this because they're accumulating more Bitcoin, which
• 2:09
  is I think more more of the the optimistic take of this.
• 2:13
  And the more cynical take is maybe the US doesn't have as
• 2:16
  much Bitcoin as we claim they do.
• 2:19
  As we've heard from Senator Lummis, she believes that the
• 2:22
  Biden administration was most likely selling a lot of Bitcoin,
• 2:26
  which could explain why, you know, the the whole Bitcoin
• 2:30
  price is being suppressed meme has been taking legs lately.
• 2:33
  Anyways, we're here on Bitcoin treasuries.
• 2:35
  As you can see, the official number, or rather the unofficial
• 2:38
  official number is the US holds about 207,189 Bitcoin and China
• 2:44
  holds 194,000 Bitcoin. Now, we don't get much news
• 2:49
  coming out of China. Of course, we have been covering
• 2:51
  this on the show. As you guys know if you're
• 2:54
  simply Bitcoin listener, there is a lot of interest coming out
• 2:57
  of Hong Kong in regards to Bitcoin ETFs.
• 3:00
  And we know that there is this two countries, one system policy
• 3:04
  there. So what happens in Hong Kong is
• 3:07
  obviously or at least from our perspective being approved from
• 3:09
  mainland China. So it looks like they are
• 3:13
  tentatively allowing Bitcoin to be accumulated through the ETFs.
• 3:16
  And of course, we all know in 2021, the whole China mining ban
• 3:20
  was probably probably 1 of the catalysts for the last end of
• 3:24
  the bull run. Well, the interesting news
• 3:26
  coming out of China is coming up from Bitcoin Magazine, a huge
• 3:30
  Hong Kong based investment firm Avenir Disclose owning $857
• 3:36
  million of Bitcoin ETF. And as we've been saying, this
• 3:40
  doesn't happen without the approval of Mainland China.
• 3:42
  So the fact that they're letting these institutional firms, we
• 3:45
  also have HK Asia, I think that's also publicly stated that
• 3:49
  they are owning Bitcoin. We don't have much news of
• 3:52
  public disclosures on what companies in China actually own
• 3:55
  Bitcoin, but we do know that there is an appetite for Bitcoin
• 4:00
  in China, whether that's from Hong Kong or you know, from
• 4:03
  retail individual investors in mainland China.
• 4:06
  Now, the interesting kind of caveat and wrinkle to this is
• 4:10
  this news that we got out of Russia here.
• 4:13
  So as I said earlier, they are pointing out the obvious here.
• 4:17
  They dropped this report and of course, as you can see on
• 4:20
  Twitter, breaking Russia's central bank confirms what we
• 4:23
  already knew. Bitcoin outperformed everything
• 4:26
  else. So forgive me guys, I don't know
• 4:28
  Russian. So you know, maybe you can Fact
• 4:30
  Check us here, but you can see on this chart here circled is
• 4:34
  Bitcoin just clearly outperforming.
• 4:36
  Everything. Did you zoom in a little bit?
• 4:38
  Yeah. Just clearly outperforming
• 4:41
  everything else on this chart. Again, I don't know Russian, but
• 4:45
  you can see very clearly they are head and shoulders
• 4:49
  outperforming everything else. And, and I would say this is an
• 4:52
  interesting development. Of course, we've been talking
• 4:55
  about essentially the global game theory, the global FOMO
• 4:59
  going on right now around the world of what exactly is going
• 5:02
  on. We have nation states embracing
• 5:04
  Bitcoin. We of course have this huge
• 5:06
  institutional capital inflow. It looks like the narrative
• 5:10
  around Bitcoin publicly in the public mindshare is slightly
• 5:14
  changing around Bitcoin. They're kind of grappling with
• 5:17
  this idea of Bitcoin, but now we have central bankers out there.
• 5:20
  Of course, we saw that Czech Republic talk about doing and
• 5:24
  accepting A strategic Bitcoin reserve.
• 5:26
  And now we have Russia's bank and we know what Russia's been
• 5:29
  doing lately. They've kind of tentatively
• 5:31
  allowed Bitcoin mining. They're talking about Bitcoin
• 5:34
  transaction usage within the country.
• 5:36
  So the the narrative and I think the fundamental sentiment around
• 5:41
  Bitcoin is shifting. It is becoming this macro global
• 5:45
  economic asset where people have to take it seriously.
• 5:49
  And of course, we also see what's going on the EC, maybe
• 5:51
  they're they're just actively hating on Bitcoin because they
• 5:54
  want to push a central bank digital currency.
• 5:56
  So it's getting interesting out there.
• 5:58
  It's no longer just us retail plebs or individuals stacking
• 6:03
  Bitcoin. It seems like everyone has to
• 6:06
  take Bitcoin seriously. At the very least.
• 6:08
  They have to look into Bitcoin. They have to kind of study
• 6:11
  Bitcoin a little bit, make up their minds around Bitcoin.
• 6:14
  Whether they embrace Bitcoin or not is besides the point.
• 6:17
  They have to look at Bitcoin seriously now.
• 6:20
  And I think this is a fundamental shift from what
• 6:22
  we've seen in the past, whether you can just really say, you
• 6:24
  know, Bitcoins, just a speculative assets, Internet
• 6:26
  nerd money. Now they're like, oh, this
• 6:29
  Bitcoin thing isn't going away. It's never going to end.
• 6:32
  Maybe we have to take this Bitcoin thing a little more
• 6:35
  seriously. And we're seeing that play out
• 6:37
  at the highest levels, period. So very interesting developments
• 6:41
  coming from the nation state levels.
• 6:43
  Of course, we also have news coming from the state level in
• 6:45
  the US. So things are heating up.
• 6:48
  And of course, this begs the question, man, when is the price
• 6:51
  going to RIP with all this incredible Bitcoin news?
• 6:54
  It does seem like just compounding little things that
• 6:57
  are building up. The pressure is cooking and it
• 7:00
  seems like the end of the year. It's probably going to be
• 7:03
  another parabolic year, which just makes me so much happier.
• 7:06
  Now. I know Nico was on the show a
• 7:08
  couple weeks ago being a little bearish.
• 7:10
  You know, you're starting to feel the the the pressure of the
• 7:13
  bear market, the chop solidation, even though we're
• 7:16
  all in Bitcoin, you know, the price does kind of mentally wear
• 7:18
  on you sometimes, especially when we're just so entitled with
• 7:22
  crazy Bitcoin returns or like, you know, Bitcoin do something.
• 7:25
  What's going on here? Bitcoin, can you really start to
• 7:27
  RIP? So very interesting stuff.
• 7:29
  Of course, the big kahuna Trump's just doubling down,
• 7:33
  which is really kind of like the art of war or sorry.
• 7:36
  Yeah, the art. No, the art of the art of the
• 7:38
  deal from Trump where he never admits defeat, you know, he
• 7:42
  double S down and is more bombastic than before.
• 7:45
  So it is interesting. Maybe this is art of the deal
• 7:48
  type stuff. Maybe he knows something we
• 7:50
  don't. But he is sending a massive
• 7:52
  warning to everyone out there that he wants to win in Bitcoin.
• 7:56
  You know, he's been saying Bitcoin is the Super or America
• 7:59
  will be the Bitcoin superpower. And now he's basically saying
• 8:02
  like, hey, China, yeah, we had a, you know, deal on the trade
• 8:05
  war, but we're still beating you in a place that you guys aren't
• 8:08
  really looking at that you guys are neglecting, which is of
• 8:10
  course Bitcoin. Though he did say crypto.
• 8:13
  So you know, we'll we'll kind of put a little pin on that one.
• 8:17
  But we all know when they say crypto, they mean Bitcoin.
• 8:19
  So I don't know, I'm starting to feel bullish.
• 8:22
  It starts to feel like the game theory is playing out in real
• 8:25
  time. Everyone is starting to feel
• 8:27
  that FOMO craze for Bitcoin. And of course, for you guys, the
• 8:31
  holders that have your Bitcoin in self custody, because we have
• 8:34
  a big news story around your Bitcoin on exchanges.
• 8:37
  You are obviously going to be the winner when things start
• 8:41
  ripping. Anyways, let me open this up.
• 8:43
  Nico, what's your thoughts here? You're more the geopolitical guy
• 8:47
  and political guy than I am. So what's your thoughts when you
• 8:50
  see Trump doubling down on Bitcoin?
• 8:52
  We're seeing that firms in in Hong Kong are buying Bitcoin and
• 8:56
  now we have the Russian central bank admitting what we all know.
• 8:59
  Bitcoin is the best performing asset, period.
• 9:01
  It blows everything out of the water.
• 9:03
  You might want to get some just in case it catches on.
• 9:07
  Yeah, a couple quick thoughts here.
• 9:08
  First of all, regarding Trump, like what's really interesting
• 9:12
  to me is he has an understanding of what's going on on a
• 9:18
  geopolitical level. Like he's looking at it from a
• 9:21
  common sense perspective. Like, look, the reality is that
• 9:25
  if the United States doesn't take a proactive stance on
• 9:28
  Bitcoin, China is going to get ahead.
• 9:31
  Incredibly obvious, right? That's just common sense, right?
• 9:35
  And then the other thing that I'll say as well is that in
• 9:37
  Trump, Trump in the the beginning of the year, in
• 9:40
  January, I believe Trump released an executive order
• 9:43
  essentially ordering the federal government to audit how much
• 9:47
  Bitcoin the government had, right?
• 9:51
  That was supposed to be due. I believe it was April 6th.
• 9:54
  It's been more than a month and a half.
• 9:56
  We still don't know how much Bitcoin the US government has.
• 10:00
  And the other thing that I'll say is, well, again, this is
• 10:03
  what Max Kaiser has been framing, or the way that he the
• 10:06
  way that he says it is that this is the global hash war playing
• 10:10
  out in real time. This is bitcoins incentives.
• 10:14
  At the end of the day, everyone wants the best asset the world
• 10:17
  has ever seen. And of course, of course, the
• 10:19
  United States is taking a leading role and that forces the
• 10:22
  rivals of the United States, like Russia, like China, to
• 10:27
  essentially throw their hat in the ring or get potentially get
• 10:30
  left behind. So they're, they're, they're
• 10:32
  forcing their hands. And I'm sure that China or
• 10:36
  Russia aren't too, you know, generally tyrannical countries,
• 10:42
  generally countries that let's just say have a heavy-handed
• 10:45
  governments aren't big fans of, of Bitcoin.
• 10:48
  Bitcoin is all about giving individuals freedom.
• 10:51
  So I mean, I, I like they're being essentially, they're
• 10:55
  forced. Their hands are being forced
• 10:57
  because the United States is taking such a pro Bitcoin
• 11:02
  stance. And again, you're starting to
• 11:04
  hear the rumblings out of you're starting to hear the rumblings
• 11:07
  and the Duma, which is like the equivalent of the House of
• 11:10
  Representatives here in the United States.
• 11:12
  They're essentially introducing bills that would launch a
• 11:17
  strategic Bitcoin reserve in Russia.
• 11:19
  And again, as Opti pointed out in the beginning, Hong Kong is
• 11:23
  being used as this proxy, right? They obviously don't want
• 11:26
  Bitcoin in the mainland, even though there is Bitcoin in the
• 11:29
  mainland. And we know that local
• 11:30
  governments deal with Bitcoin all the time, right?
• 11:34
  But they're using Hong Kong as this like, kind of proxy to
• 11:39
  allow global investment into China without it, you know,
• 11:44
  getting into mainland China. So the whole thing is absolutely
• 11:47
  fascinating. And again, you know, the last
• 11:51
  thing that I'll say before I pass it on to Fernando,
• 11:53
  elections have consequences. I'm going to keep iterating this
• 11:58
  because Bitcoiners have this anarcho view of the world.
• 12:02
  And, you know, it's true. I think eventually Bitcoin will
• 12:05
  make politics irrelevant. But where we are right now in
• 12:08
  the movie Fiat politics still have a tremendous amount of
• 12:12
  influence on the on the daily lives of bitcoiners and this
• 12:17
  last election, getting a pro Bitcoin administration in the
• 12:21
  White House changed everything it repealed Saab 121.
• 12:25
  It ended operation choke .2 point O.
• 12:28
  We got Ross Olbrich free. Could you imagine that the
• 12:31
  Bitcoin community we did that as a voting bloc like that's
• 12:35
  absolutely enormous. So, I mean, it's a really
• 12:38
  positive sign to to weave it back in that Trump is again
• 12:42
  reiterating exactly what he said in Nashville last year at the
• 12:46
  Bitcoin conference, that he is an ally, he is a friend of
• 12:50
  Bitcoin. And I wouldn't be surprised that
• 12:52
  by the end of Trump's second term, we will we will see half a
• 12:58
  million to $1,000,000 Bitcoin. Anyways, I want to welcome
• 13:02
  Fernando on stage, Fernando and I, but we, we go way back, man,
• 13:07
  for Fernando Fernando's the VP of marketing and communications
• 13:11
  at Block Stream. We want to welcome him on the
• 13:13
  show. Fernando.
• 13:14
  Fernando, what are your thoughts on this man?
• 13:16
  Like this is crazy. This is what Bitcoiners were
• 13:19
  talking about years ago, back in the 2017 era, back in the 2018
• 13:24
  era, back in the 2019 era, We were we were, you know, but it
• 13:27
  was all theory back then, all this, you know, nation state,
• 13:31
  geopolitical, you know, what Max Keiser calls the the hash wars.
• 13:37
  Like we were theorizing this was going to happen because we
• 13:39
  fundamentally knew bitcoins incentives and where where it
• 13:43
  would lead. But another thing is theory and
• 13:45
  another thing is watching it play out on the world stage,
• 13:49
  which is absolutely crazy. Fernando.
• 13:52
  Yeah, I think you know, once you, I mean, depending on how
• 13:54
  long you, how many cycles back you go from when you like
• 13:57
  discovered Bitcoin and it clicked in your head.
• 13:59
  I think, you know, once you do understand like the deeper
• 14:03
  properties of Bitcoin, you, you, you your whole world view
• 14:06
  changes. You, you see the world through a
• 14:08
  different lens. So it's easier to kind of like
• 14:10
  predict a couple of things to happen.
• 14:12
  And then, you know, at the same time, we have been kind of like
• 14:14
  chipping, chipping away at like promoting Bitcoin, educating
• 14:19
  Bitcoin, having people study Bitcoin and also listening to
• 14:22
  other people's stories from all around the world as they could
• 14:24
  also adopt Bitcoin. And we see how much their life
• 14:29
  is changing, how much their environment is being affected
• 14:31
  positively by adopting Bitcoin. And look, we are kind of like
• 14:37
  very reactionary to the news cycle.
• 14:39
  You know, it's, it's, you know, everything is happening on the
• 14:41
  timeline on the day-to-day. But if you really, really zoom
• 14:44
  out and you take a look at where we are right now, I mean, it's,
• 14:48
  it's obvious that Bitcoin is at A, at a pivotal moment and it's,
• 14:53
  you know, adoption cycle. We're officially now moved from,
• 14:57
  you know, the fringes of finance and now we are moving towards
• 15:01
  the center of, you know, global economic narratives.
• 15:06
  You know, the clip of of Trump talking just casually to the
• 15:09
  president in mid air about this says it all.
• 15:13
  And I think the, the, the interesting part is the timing
• 15:17
  of all of this happening because just as Bitcoin is kind of like
• 15:21
  maturing or is it's a 16 year old teenager now, it happens
• 15:25
  while the entire media landscape is fragmenting.
• 15:29
  So I think there's a lot of stuff to unpack.
• 15:31
  And you know, apart from, apart from doing marketing comms at at
• 15:34
  block stream, I'm also the founder of Bitcoin perception.
• 15:37
  So I had literally tracked the data of how all outlets, how
• 15:41
  communities, how social media is actually talking about Bitcoin.
• 15:45
  And I'm collecting data from all the way back to 2011.
• 15:48
  So to me, the data is there. The landscape is fragmenting.
• 15:52
  I think it's going to dictate how Bitcoin adoption is going to
• 15:56
  look like in the in the future. So yeah, it's a it's a insane
• 16:00
  time to be alive, right? Now it's exciting times, man,
• 16:02
  because it's not only do you have a like non state form of
• 16:06
  currency, but with the Internet, you also have non state form of
• 16:11
  mass communications, mass information, and it's completely
• 16:15
  changing the power dynamics of society as a whole.
• 16:18
  So I, I, I see that as well, Fernando, and you've done
• 16:21
  incredible work, you know, documenting this and it's a
• 16:24
  fascinating conversation. And that leads us to what we're
• 16:27
  going to cover during the numbers segment, the Fiat Times,
• 16:31
  AKA the Financial Times. The Financial Times, AKA the
• 16:33
  Fiat Times actually released about a 30 minute documentary
• 16:37
  regarding Bitcoin and they completely missed the mark.
• 16:42
  I have some thoughts on it, Fernando has some thoughts on
• 16:44
  it. It's going to be great.
• 16:46
  We're going to cover it. But you have to under you guys
• 16:48
  have to understand where you are in the movie, where what is
• 16:50
  happening in world history. We are living through the great
• 16:55
  disintermediation, which is powered by the Internet and it's
• 16:59
  allowed mass scale peer-to-peer communications like we're doing
• 17:02
  right now, the rise of social media, the rise of protocols
• 17:06
  like Noster and also the rise of non sovereign alternative monies
• 17:11
  like Bitcoin. So anyways, it's going to be a
• 17:13
  great show. But before we jump into it, I do
• 17:15
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  from all time high. Right now if you buy Bitcoin,
• 21:06
  you're getting at a 5% discount. Realize monetary inflation.
• 21:10
  We're sitting pretty at .85% Bitcoin continuing to take Fiat
• 21:15
  currencies to absolute school. Anyhow, I do want to give a
• 21:18
  shout out to the live stream 1500 of you guys watching live
• 21:22
  on the verge of breaking 500 live viewers on YouTube.
• 21:26
  Rumble is popping off 500 live viewers on rumble.
• 21:29
  If you guys are enjoying the show on rumble smash that like
• 21:31
  button and 1884 live viewers on X.
• 21:38
  If you guys are enjoying the show smash that like button.
• 21:41
  Oh my God then my camera overheat.
• 21:43
  Let me see the. Best part about?
• 21:45
  This is when I host Nikko. Still can't control himself and
• 21:48
  needs to take over. But yeah, fix your camera guy.
• 21:50
  Dude, it's. Overheating.
• 21:52
  I don't know what's going on. All right guys.
• 21:54
  So as we mentioned earlier, the Financial Times released a 30
• 21:59
  minute documentary on Michael Saylor's strategy and I'm not
• 22:03
  going to play the whole thing obviously, if you guys want to
• 22:05
  watch it, have a good laugh. It is very interesting to see
• 22:09
  the Financial Times kind of try to wrap their head around what
• 22:12
  Michael Saylor is doing. It's obviously painted in a
• 22:15
  negative light, but I do have a very interesting clip.
• 22:19
  And if you've been on Twitter, this has been all the rage since
• 22:22
  this dropped. And so let me let me just play
• 22:24
  the clip and then we will talk about it.
• 22:25
  And Fernando is a great thread here basically exposing the
• 22:29
  Financial Times as well. So couldn't have picked a better
• 22:31
  day for Fernando to come on here.
• 22:33
  But let's just play this clip guys.
• 22:34
  We're going to have a good laugh.
• 22:36
  Bitcoin is not for the faint hearted.
• 22:39
  With no obvious use case, it's an inherently speculative bet.
• 22:44
  Bitcoin Maxis, like Jeff and Michael Saylor, believe in the
• 22:47
  value embedded in Bitcoin because of its scarcity.
• 22:51
  I still don't get this. My teeth are pretty scarce and
• 22:55
  pretty useful, but they're not worth billions of bucks.
• 22:57
  Still, for the believers, there's just no plausible way
• 23:01
  for Bitcoin to crash. Are you comfortable with so much
• 23:05
  of your personal wealth tied up in this one, In this one thing?
• 23:08
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, I'm not going to sit here
• 23:12
  and tell you how strategy or Bitcoin are going to perform in
• 23:16
  the future. My track record here sucks and I
• 23:19
  genuinely have no idea, but I would argue that no one else
• 23:24
  really truly has any idea either, which is why I get
• 23:28
  nervous for retail. Invest all.
• 23:35
  Right. Well, First things first.
• 23:37
  Remember when we used to get Bitcoin is infinite?
• 23:40
  Like imagine cutting a piece of pizza infinite amount of times.
• 23:43
  Like this is the same thing with Bitcoin.
• 23:45
  Now we got another ridiculous floodline.
• 23:47
  Like my teeth are scarce and this isn't worth a billion
• 23:50
  dollars. Like they really aren't bringing
• 23:52
  their best here. And of course, This is why we
• 23:54
  call the Financial Times the Fiat Times.
• 23:56
  We know they're biased. We've been covering this on the
• 23:59
  show for a long time. Anytime the Financial Times
• 24:02
  talks about Bitcoin, it's usually in the negative light.
• 24:04
  There's only very few occasions where they're basically forced
• 24:08
  to talk positive about Bitcoin and they literally did a whole
• 24:12
  like essentially 30 minute hit piece on strategy.
• 24:15
  And of course Bitcoin got thrown in there as well.
• 24:17
  But a couple of points in that clip, she very clearly
• 24:21
  contradicted herself. She's like, I don't know
• 24:23
  anything about this. And that point about her having
• 24:26
  a bad track record, if you watch the video, she essentially
• 24:28
  picked 2024. They have like a Financial Times
• 24:31
  poll over there where everyone picks a stock and they short it.
• 24:35
  And she picked MicroStrategy and got absolutely blown out of the
• 24:37
  water. So I you go, it's just hilarious
• 24:40
  when you see the legacy media try to cover Bitcoin because you
• 24:44
  can see their biases. Obviously we know our bias.
• 24:47
  We are bitcoiners. We understand Bitcoin.
• 24:49
  We're we're like punter Jeff here and she has a punter Jeff.
• 24:52
  He's just like, yeah, I'm chill. Like I'm not worried about it at
• 24:54
  all. It's like we understand Bitcoin,
• 24:56
  we understand where the ball is going and none of us are really
• 25:00
  concerned about Bitcoin going to 0 or blowing up.
• 25:03
  But I, I just love this clip and, you know, the whole my
• 25:07
  teeth are scarce part just went absolutely viral on Twitter.
• 25:11
  Everyone's talking about Bitcoin and teeth lately.
• 25:13
  And a lot of people are like, what, what, what is this new
• 25:16
  teeth meme? Well, it's coming from the
• 25:17
  Financial Times. And on that note, I'm gonna pass
• 25:20
  it over to Fernando here 'cause we have your thread.
• 25:23
  So let's go through this thread. And yeah, you you take it from
• 25:26
  here. Yeah, just some other highlights
• 25:29
  from that film for the people who haven't seen the whole
• 25:32
  thing. I, I obviously, you know,
• 25:34
  devoured every single second of that documentary, but she
• 25:38
  finished in the bottom 5 of I think FT has like 1200 plus
• 25:45
  employees and they have like an annual stock picking
• 25:47
  competition. And she finished in the bottom
• 25:49
  five, OK for 2024. And then another thing that I
• 25:55
  thought was hilarious was she asked Sailor what, you know,
• 25:59
  what kind of predictions do you have for the price?
• 26:01
  And I think Sailor said, well, by 2045, I think Bitcoin is
• 26:06
  going to reach 13 million. And she visibly laughed in this
• 26:09
  fence. So absolutely like Riddle with
• 26:13
  golden moments, that documentary, everyone, everyone
• 26:16
  should see it, even though the cringe factor is super, super
• 26:19
  high. But yeah, yeah, the, the, the
• 26:22
  thread here, I thought it was timely because, you know, this
• 26:25
  morning I, I, I looked at the data that I gather on Bitcoin
• 26:28
  perception because I was just curious to see.
• 26:31
  OK, let's let's take a look at how the Financial Times have
• 26:34
  covered have covered Bitcoin. Just out of curiosity, since
• 26:37
  this topic is so hot. And I just randomly went back to
• 26:42
  2018 just to get like a good sample size from the beginning
• 26:46
  of 2018 till today. And I saw that, oh, you know, by
• 26:49
  chance, the number of articles, videos, just coverage that they
• 26:54
  have had I'll become was 400 in that time span.
• 26:58
  So I was like, OK, cool, this is a round Number.
• 26:59
  Let me see what I can get. And it's obviously incredibly,
• 27:05
  it's not a good look for FT at all.
• 27:07
  If you see this first screenshot, this is just the
• 27:10
  volume, you'll see that the only time like FT has ramped up their
• 27:14
  coverage was at the very left in the beginning.
• 27:18
  You know, January 2018 was when, you know, the 2017 cycle came to
• 27:22
  an end and you know, the bear market started and then you can
• 27:25
  see how they started their coverage until, you know, mid
• 27:30
  2018. Then years of silence where
• 27:33
  barely any mention happen. And then all they came back
• 27:37
  around 2021 and 2022, which was the next cycle and the
• 27:41
  subsequent bear market as well. And they ramped up coverage
• 27:46
  during that cycle and then silence until 2023 when, you
• 27:51
  know, Larry Fink started talking about Bitcoin, the, the rumors
• 27:56
  about the ETF became super strong.
• 27:57
  And I think once the, the BlackRock ETF got got official,
• 28:03
  you know, Bitcoin became mainstream, I guess.
• 28:05
  So I think Financial Times saw that as, you know, forcing their
• 28:09
  hand to, to cover Bitcoin, you know, because how can you not,
• 28:13
  to be honest, this is not only because of the ETF, it's the 5th
• 28:16
  largest asset in the world. How can you not cover it?
• 28:19
  So I think FT made some editorial decisions and started
• 28:24
  covering becoming more at least. And then they have been
• 28:26
  covering, you know, almost non-stop since 2023.
• 28:30
  But it's interesting to see how they behaved in terms of
• 28:34
  previous cycles before. But then apart from the volume,
• 28:38
  I wanted to see, you know, OK, let's let's take a look at the
• 28:40
  400 articles and see OK, what, what is their, their sentiment
• 28:42
  slant and not looking good guys, 11% of the 400 plus articles
• 28:48
  have been positive. So literally one out of 10 have
• 28:52
  been positive and 9 out of 10 have been either negative or
• 28:56
  neutral. So obviously these guys are not
• 29:00
  really Bitcoin friendly. They have always found an angle
• 29:05
  that is negatively slanted and that, you know, the positive
• 29:09
  stuff has only come later in 2023 and you know, in, in terms
• 29:14
  of like price and market analysis, which again is because
• 29:18
  of the ETF. So I think their, their, their
• 29:20
  hand is a little bit forced to cover Bitcoin somewhat
• 29:24
  positively and neutrally, but the negative stuff is just years
• 29:28
  and years and years of that same behavior just on repeat through
• 29:33
  different cycles. So that's that.
• 29:34
  I thought that was interesting. And then when you actually take
• 29:37
  a look at the topics that they, that they cover, it's just, you
• 29:40
  know, market analysis and price analysis, some tech, some global
• 29:44
  adoption. But if you take a look at the
• 29:45
  actual sentiment towards these topics, it's just like, you
• 29:49
  know, global adoption is 55% negative coverage, this 0
• 29:54
  positive coverage when it comes to Bitcoin and global adoption.
• 29:58
  I mean, Can you imagine that? Like, how can you not?
• 30:02
  How can you look at Bitcoin in terms of global adoption and see
• 30:06
  all the stories? This is a simple Google search
• 30:08
  guys, and and and and not have a positive story to tell.
• 30:12
  It's absolutely mind blowing how biased they they are, right.
• 30:17
  And then, you know, mining they, they've been somewhat neutral.
• 30:22
  No positive articles, but you know, not crazy negative
• 30:25
  neither. And anyway, I'm not going to
• 30:28
  bore you with with every single topic here, but it just goes to
• 30:30
  show that it's not only overall negative sentiment, but they
• 30:35
  really target in on very specific topics related to
• 30:38
  Bitcoin and they really show their bias even in those times.
• 30:42
  And then, you know, zooming back out the entire 400 plus
• 30:47
  articles, 10%, eleven percent positive and the rest is neutral
• 30:53
  negative. I mean, Financial Times is is
• 30:55
  like this chart is saying it's a net negative.
• 30:59
  And unfortunately, Financial Times is not the only example of
• 31:03
  this. But yeah, it's very timeless.
• 31:04
  Since the that trench documentary came out, I thought,
• 31:08
  hey, let's spend this morning looking at the data.
• 31:10
  And that's what it looks like. The data tells the story.
• 31:13
  It is what it is. I mean, I think you absolutely
• 31:16
  hit the nail on the head. And I think what's happening too
• 31:19
  is like, and this is what I was talking about earlier is we're
• 31:23
  going through this kind of paradigm shift in the world,
• 31:26
  right? And expecting like the legacy
• 31:29
  system, including the legacy media that are riding on the
• 31:32
  coattails of essentially the legitimacy that they've built
• 31:36
  over the decades under a Fiat standard is a bit naive on on
• 31:40
  our part. And like what Fernando was
• 31:42
  saying would so astute, which is like, you know, they're
• 31:45
  essentially being forced to cover something that they're not
• 31:50
  incentivized to comprehend because it calls their very
• 31:53
  world view into question. And that's what you saw with
• 31:56
  that Lady. Like she completely contradicted
• 31:59
  herself from the beginning of that video to the end of that,
• 32:03
  that clip that Opti played, she was basically saying like, look,
• 32:06
  it's performing really well. I have no idea.
• 32:09
  You know what I like, I don't really have a really good track
• 32:12
  record about this. And at the end she's like, you
• 32:14
  probably shouldn't buy some because no one has any idea
• 32:17
  where it's going. Like she contradicted herself,
• 32:19
  you know, like 5 or 6 different ways.
• 32:23
  That is your brain on Fiat. Like that's what it does.
• 32:27
  And no one is better than their incentives.
• 32:29
  The Financial Times, AKA the Fiat Times, look at their track
• 32:33
  record of how much they've attacked Bitcoin.
• 32:36
  They're incentivized to. It's part of the legacy system.
• 32:40
  As bitcoiners, we have to build the new system, the alternative
• 32:44
  system, and that's exactly what we're doing.
• 32:46
  That's what Fernando's doing with his incredible work.
• 32:49
  That's what we're doing at Simply Bitcoin.
• 32:51
  That's what the whole Bitcoin industry is doing.
• 32:53
  We have to build alternative media.
• 32:55
  We have to build alternative companies outside of the legacy
• 32:59
  system because the legacy system, they're not incentivized
• 33:02
  to change the the Fiat system has worked wonderfully for them,
• 33:06
  right? This is a very successful media
• 33:09
  organization. All of a sudden, Bitcoin comes
• 33:12
  in and says, hey, guys, you know what, not so much.
• 33:16
  Anyways, my camera's about to overheat.
• 33:17
  And there it goes. Anyways, Opti, I think it's time
• 33:21
  to move on to the new segment of the show.
• 33:23
  We'll be right back in just a second.
• 33:26
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• 36:01
  OK guys, well, perfect transition here, perfect Segway
• 36:06
  cuz we got some big news coming out of Coinbase.
• 36:09
  Actually there's been a lot of big news coming out of Coinbase
• 36:11
  in the last couple of weeks, though this one is more in the
• 36:14
  negative light. So you know there there will be
• 36:18
  APSA call to action towards the end because it's all going to
• 36:21
  lead to the same answer. You need to take your Bitcoin
• 36:24
  off exchanges. But first let's dive into the
• 36:27
  details. So we got a tweet here from
• 36:29
  Coinbase on Twitter and it says cyber criminals bribe and
• 36:34
  recruited rogue overseas support agents to pull personal data on
• 36:38
  roughly 1% of Coinbase's Mt US, you know, users and no
• 36:45
  passwords, private keys or funds were exposed.
• 36:47
  Prime accounts are untouched. We will reimburse impacted
• 36:50
  customers more here. I will get to the press release
• 36:54
  that they that they covered, but we got a video here from Brian
• 36:57
  Armstrong himself covering what happened.
• 37:00
  So let me play that real quick and then we'll kind of chat
• 37:03
  about it. Hey everyone, I want to make you
• 37:05
  aware of a disturbing e-mail that we received recently at
• 37:08
  Coinbase. It was a ransom note demanding
• 37:10
  $20 million in Bitcoin in exchange for these attackers not
• 37:14
  releasing some information they claim to have obtained on our
• 37:16
  customers. Now, we like to do things
• 37:19
  transparently here at Coinbase, and so I'm going to respond
• 37:21
  publicly to these attackers by saying no, we are not going to
• 37:24
  pay a ransom. In fact, I have a few next steps
• 37:27
  in mind that I'm going to share at the end of this video.
• 37:30
  But for the rest of you watching, wondering what
• 37:32
  happened, we did an investigation here and these
• 37:35
  attackers have been approaching our overseas customer support
• 37:37
  agents looking for a weak link, someone who would accept a bribe
• 37:41
  in exchange for sharing some customer information with them.
• 37:44
  Now, our support tools have limited access to customer
• 37:47
  information. There was no passwords or
• 37:49
  private keys or funds accessed as part of this.
• 37:51
  But customer support agents do have access to personal
• 37:54
  information like name, date of birth, address, etcetera.
• 37:56
  And attackers still want access to this information because it
• 37:59
  allows them to conduct social engineering attacks where they
• 38:01
  can call our customers, impersonating Coinbase customer
• 38:03
  support and try to trick them into sending their funds to the
• 38:06
  attacker. Unfortunately, they were able to
• 38:10
  find a few bad apples. Our systems are designed to
• 38:13
  mitigate the impact of something like this.
• 38:15
  So less than 1% of our monthly transacting users had their
• 38:18
  records accessed. But this is still unacceptable,
• 38:20
  and I want to tell you what we're doing about it.
• 38:24
  So first, any customers that were socially engineered as a
• 38:27
  result of this incident, we're going to reimburse them.
• 38:31
  There's more details on our website on our blog post about
• 38:34
  the reimbursement process. You can read more there.
• 38:37
  Any customers who have been impacted by this or have been
• 38:39
  notified at this point #2 we're hardening our systems around
• 38:43
  customer support to make something like this much more
• 38:46
  difficult in the future. And 3rd, we're actually
• 38:48
  relocating some of our customer support operations as a result
• 38:51
  of this. But the last step is maybe the
• 38:53
  most important, which is that instead of paying this $20
• 38:56
  million ransom, we're turning it around and we're putting out a
• 38:59
  $20 million award for any information leading to the
• 39:03
  arrest and conviction of these attackers.
• 39:06
  But these would be extortionists or anyone seeking to harm
• 39:08
  Coinbase customers. Know that we will prosecute you
• 39:11
  and bring you to justice. And now you have my answer.
• 39:15
  OK, so interesting response here and of course, just kind of
• 39:20
  wrapping this up, I am over on the Coinbase blog where they
• 39:23
  kind of summed up what Bryan Armstrong just said.
• 39:25
  So just for you guys out there, maybe you use Coinbase or have
• 39:29
  used it in the past. What they got Name, address,
• 39:32
  phone and e-mail, mass Social Security, the last four digits,
• 39:35
  mass bank account numbers and some bank account identifiers,
• 39:38
  government ID images, example drivers license or passport,
• 39:42
  account data, balance snapshots and transaction history, and
• 39:45
  then limited corporate data including documents, training.
• 39:48
  Material. And and communications available
• 39:51
  to support agents. And then they made clear what
• 39:53
  they didn't get login credentials or two FA codes,
• 39:56
  private keys, any ability to move or access customer funds,
• 39:59
  access to Coinbase Prime accounts and access to any
• 40:02
  Coinbase or Coinbase customer hot or cold wallets.
• 40:05
  Now, as Brian Arthur was saying what they're doing about it,
• 40:09
  they're going to make their customers whole.
• 40:11
  They're going to, you know, add customer extra customer
• 40:13
  safeguards, further securing support operations, hardening
• 40:16
  defenses, staying transparent, etcetera.
• 40:18
  Of course mentions the 20. $1,000,000 reward fund.
• 40:21
  And I think here may be the biggest take away here.
• 40:24
  And I know a lot of people are probably not familiar with
• 40:27
  social engineering attacks. We have been pointing to you
• 40:30
  guys like very interesting podcast covering the social
• 40:33
  engineering attacks and maybe you want to take a listen to
• 40:36
  them. My favorite ones are the June
• 40:37
  Seth ones because they're they're actually kind of
• 40:39
  hilarious and what you can do to protect yourself and they go you
• 40:43
  know how you can stay safe. Of course expect imposters,
• 40:46
  scammers related to this incident or not may poise as
• 40:49
  comb based employees and try to pressure you into moving your
• 40:51
  funds. Remember, Coinbase will never
• 40:53
  ask for your password to a fake codes or for you to transfer
• 40:55
  assets to a specific or new address, account, vault or
• 40:58
  wallet. We will never call or text you
• 41:00
  to give you a new seed phrase or wallet address to move your
• 41:03
  funds to. If you receive this call, hang
• 41:06
  up the phone. Coinbase will never ask you to
• 41:08
  contact an unknown number to reach us.
• 41:10
  And of course, there's there's some extra stuff in here.
• 41:13
  My biggest take away here though is literally what he said in the
• 41:16
  end, if someone reaches out to you in a text message or an
• 41:20
  e-mail in regards to your funds not being safe, well, first, you
• 41:24
  probably shouldn't have funds on an exchange.
• 41:26
  This is why we constantly push you towards products that are
• 41:29
  essentially never hold your Bitcoin.
• 41:31
  This is why we always mention and double down on the idea of
• 41:35
  taking your Bitcoin off exchanges because it's only
• 41:38
  really your Bitcoin when you control the Bitcoin yourself, of
• 41:41
  course, not your keys, not your Bitcoin.
• 41:43
  So obviously, I think the one of the low hanging fruits here is
• 41:47
  how essentially all these companies and exchanges are
• 41:50
  forced to gather this much information or about their
• 41:53
  customers. And that's really kind of like
• 41:56
  the honeypot going on. And so, you know, as a lot of
• 41:59
  people say, like KYC is the illicit activity here, but to
• 42:03
  abide by the laws here, you have to get this information.
• 42:06
  And we're seeing that a lot of the traditional financial
• 42:10
  system, you know, safeguards really do not port over to the
• 42:14
  Bitcoin ecosystem. And as I was saying, it's just
• 42:17
  like, for once, it feels good to not really respond to my emails
• 42:21
  or text messages because I just ignore anything that comes to me
• 42:24
  from Coinbase or anyone or any exchange.
• 42:27
  You're talking about crypto. I'm like, yeah, I'm literally
• 42:29
  never going to talk to you because all my Bitcoin is in
• 42:31
  cold storage. So the big take away guys, is
• 42:34
  obviously, if you are a Coinbase user, I'm sure you already got
• 42:37
  reached out to if you were compromised.
• 42:40
  Now this is, you know, not really good luck on Coinbase's
• 42:44
  half, but as you can tell or from what they are saying, this
• 42:47
  is a social engineering attack from the people that do, you
• 42:51
  know, gather that information. So you know, third party
• 42:56
  contractors, etcetera. And this is something bit
• 42:58
  corners have been talking about for a long time that there is a
• 43:01
  lot of security holes there, some attack vectors that aren't
• 43:05
  necessarily from the exchanges themselves.
• 43:07
  But if you have to and are you're forced to gather this
• 43:10
  much data, there is opportunities.
• 43:12
  It's like we saw with this Coinbase attack to bribe people
• 43:16
  and take that information and of course disperse that around the
• 43:19
  black markets. Now one interesting thing that I
• 43:22
  do kind of want to hit on is I know Brian's kind of making like
• 43:26
  a, he's trying to make like a strong move here and not
• 43:29
  buckling to the the ransom hackers and not giving them 20
• 43:32
  million. But on the face, it does sound
• 43:36
  like a strong move, but it also sounds like he should just pay
• 43:39
  off the hackers and and protect his customers here and pay the
• 43:41
  $20 million so that information doesn't go somewhere.
• 43:44
  I know it's not a good thing, but it does almost seem like
• 43:48
  it's not going to help those customers 'cause I feel like
• 43:51
  that information's gonna get in black markets now.
• 43:53
  So it's. It's already out there, dude.
• 43:55
  It's done. It's it's, it's already out
• 43:58
  there. The the, the damage is done,
• 43:59
  man. Like the, the, the thing that
• 44:02
  like people have to realize is think about it.
• 44:07
  If you're a well known person, right, and you used Coinbase,
• 44:13
  essentially your address just got like leaked to the public,
• 44:17
  right, to the black markets. So like, could you imagine what
• 44:22
  that entails? What does that mean?
• 44:24
  Right? So like, if you're a well known
• 44:27
  figure in the Bitcoin community, someone now knows your address.
• 44:32
  What, what, what, what do you like?
• 44:34
  It it, it doesn't take rocket science to, you know, figure out
• 44:37
  where this could potentially lead to.
• 44:39
  So like he's trying to downplay it.
• 44:41
  I do give him credit for essentially making the users
• 44:45
  whole that got socially engineered.
• 44:48
  I think that was great PR mitigation and and management.
• 44:53
  But at the same time, man, like it's unexcusable in this world
• 44:57
  of Bitcoin that we live in, you know, to essentially have your
• 45:01
  name and address leaked. That is unexcusable in this
• 45:06
  world, especially in the world of, you know, of of of self
• 45:09
  custody and individuals having their Bitcoin like that that is
• 45:13
  on it. That's like that's like the the
• 45:17
  last thing you want to happen, right?
• 45:20
  So, yeah, I mean, my recommendation again is, you
• 45:24
  know, use better on ramps that, you know, that take better care
• 45:29
  of your data. The fundamental problem here is
• 45:32
  KYCKYC is what enables this. It creates these honey pots of
• 45:38
  information. It's not like Coinbase wanted to
• 45:41
  gather all this information. They're legally required to
• 45:44
  gather all this information. But you know, I do give Brian
• 45:49
  Armstrong credit where credit is due.
• 45:50
  He, he did make the users who got socially engineered whole.
• 45:55
  But at the same time, it's like the Ledger hack.
• 45:57
  It's the same thing, you know, hardware wallet manufacturer,
• 46:01
  you know, they got all their data that was just, it was
• 46:04
  leaked and all of a sudden people knew, you know, where
• 46:08
  that person lived. And there was targeted emails to
• 46:12
  specific people. And it was very sophisticated
• 46:16
  because essentially they could add personal information into
• 46:19
  that targeted e-mail to make it seem like it was coming from a
• 46:23
  Ledger representative. I'm sure there's going to be
• 46:25
  targeted phishing emails coming from quote UN quote coin base
• 46:31
  now that they have. They already have them.
• 46:32
  They already have. Them now that they have more
• 46:34
  information about you, right, so you know the fundamental problem
• 46:37
  here, you know, of course Coinbase could do a better job.
• 46:41
  Of course they could bring their call centers, you know into the
• 46:45
  United States. However, the fundamental problem
• 46:48
  here is KYC. And remember, KYC is essentially
• 46:53
  advertised to the public to essentially protect you.
• 46:56
  It's like, look, it's to protect you.
• 46:58
  It's to stop money laundering, it's to stop, you know,
• 47:01
  terrorism. It's to stop all these things.
• 47:03
  But you have to remember the data.
• 47:04
  You have to actually like understand the vast majority of
• 47:09
  illicit finance is conducted in the traditional financial
• 47:13
  system. I think it's $3 trillion.
• 47:17
  My number might be incorrect there, but $3 trillion of, of
• 47:22
  essentially illicit, you know, market activity is conducted on
• 47:27
  a yearly basis. Even with the Financial Action
• 47:31
  Task Force recommendations, even with the KYC recommendations,
• 47:35
  they only get a small percentage of that money.
• 47:40
  They were only able to recover it.
• 47:42
  They're only able to get it. So think about the burdens, the
• 47:46
  the the burden of regulation that you're putting on
• 47:49
  businesses to essentially comply with these regulations.
• 47:54
  But if you actually question the efficiency of the regulations
• 47:59
  themselves, no politician wants to have that conversation.
• 48:02
  And then that leads me to the inevitable conclusion, which is,
• 48:06
  is KYC really about stopping crime or is KYC really about
• 48:14
  surveillance and control? That's the question.
• 48:18
  I think that's the question that Bitcoiners have to fundamentally
• 48:21
  ask Fernando. I think the, I think the
• 48:23
  fundamental challenge if you really see the big picture is
• 48:26
  that it's, it's about user experience.
• 48:28
  I think as Bitcoin continues to grow and it's adoption cycle
• 48:31
  continues to develop, new people are always going to come into
• 48:35
  the space. And honestly they they come for
• 48:38
  NGU technology 1st and then they start to, you know, learn about
• 48:41
  other aspects of of Bitcoin, including security.
• 48:44
  But it's not an easy journey. I think about today in 2025,
• 48:47
  it's as easy as it has been. But I think for the regular Joe
• 48:52
  trying to get some exposure to to Bitcoin, it's still pretty,
• 48:55
  pretty advanced for them and it's going to take some time.
• 48:59
  And I think exchanges are going to be the first option.
• 49:03
  And you know, obviously we we all agree that, you know, the
• 49:06
  gold standard is to self custody your Bitcoin cold storage, multi
• 49:11
  sig, whatever, But that's the end of the journey, right?
• 49:14
  That's not the beginning. And I think, you know, the
• 49:17
  exchanges are still going to be the first touch point for future
• 49:22
  generations coming into Bitcoin. And you know, the, the good
• 49:26
  thing about that is that, you know, in terms of hacks, you
• 49:30
  know, exchanges are also better at that.
• 49:34
  I mean, you don't really hear about exchanges being hacked.
• 49:37
  It's more like protocols, new protocols, like losing smart
• 49:42
  contracts. Those are the things that are
• 49:43
  literally being hacked. But you don't see exchanges that
• 49:46
  much as, you know, 2017 and, and, and, and, you know, you
• 49:49
  know, those times. And I think the social
• 49:51
  engineering aspect is the biggest threat.
• 49:54
  And the question begins to be, who are you going to leave that
• 50:00
  protection from? Are you going to trust Coinbase
• 50:04
  to not fall victim for social engineering?
• 50:06
  Because it's either that or you know yourself falling victim for
• 50:10
  social engineering. Because just because you bought
• 50:12
  a hardware wallet and you, you know, store it in cold storage,
• 50:15
  doesn't mean that you, you won't be able to, to get an e-mail and
• 50:19
  then in a hurry, you click on a link or you follow because these
• 50:22
  things are just becoming better and better as well.
• 50:24
  These people are increasingly becoming better at social
• 50:28
  engineering. So you you might fall victim to
• 50:30
  that, but I guess the question is, you know, are you sovereign
• 50:34
  to take that risk yourself? Are you leaving that risk to
• 50:37
  custodians like like Coinbase? And when it comes to social
• 50:41
  engineering, it's not a technology thing that you can do
• 50:45
  like hacks. That is a human prone to error
• 50:50
  technology that is easily manipulative.
• 50:52
  And it's very hard when you are when you're when you're at a big
• 50:55
  company that have hundreds and hundreds of customer support
• 50:58
  agents. It's a tough one.
• 51:00
  It's a tough one. But I really think, yeah, gold
• 51:02
  standard is called cold storage. But it's going to take a while.
• 51:05
  And I'm really happy for all the vendors in in, in the space that
• 51:08
  are just increasingly just becoming more competitive.
• 51:11
  New, new wallets are coming to the market.
• 51:13
  The ones that already exist, they become better.
• 51:16
  So you know, I really hope for a near future where the cold
• 51:20
  storage touchpoint becomes super seamless and easy so that
• 51:25
  becomes the standard amongst newbs.
• 51:27
  Absolutely 100% self custody becoming the standard.
• 51:30
  I think Fernando brought up a really good point.
• 51:32
  It's only getting easier. There's multiple companies that
• 51:35
  are developing incredible devices to make self custody
• 51:39
  easy to do because it look, I'll be honest with you guys, like,
• 51:43
  you know, with my parents or my grandparents, I'm Uncle Jim, you
• 51:47
  know, like it's right now self custody is not easy, you know,
• 51:51
  plugging in a device, you know, going through the motions of it,
• 51:54
  right? So, but there's amazing Bitcoin
• 51:56
  companies and entrepreneurs actively trying to solve this
• 51:59
  problem and you know, it's going to just get easier from here.
• 52:03
  I completely agree with you, Fernando.
• 52:04
  And another thing too, what you said about the social
• 52:06
  engineering aspect, which is, yeah, you know, you could still
• 52:11
  be socially engineered even if you have your Bitcoin in self
• 52:14
  custody, right? So there's an educational
• 52:16
  component to this as well, which which is incredibly important.
• 52:20
  But you know, I think the, the, the theme here, the, the lesson
• 52:23
  is self custody is going to get easier.
• 52:26
  Entrepreneurs, the free markets going to take care of that.
• 52:29
  They're solving, they're actively solving this issue.
• 52:32
  There's incredible companies that are doing this.
• 52:35
  And then the other thing is educate yourself, be that Uncle
• 52:38
  Jim in your family and and warn them.
• 52:41
  Like, look, guys, like if you lose your seed phrase because
• 52:43
  you decided to write it down on paper and not stamp it on
• 52:46
  titanium with the stamp seed kit using promo code simply to get
• 52:49
  15% off, you know, like you're not going to be able to call A1
• 52:54
  800 number, right? That's that's the, you know,
• 52:56
  that's the, that's the reality of it, right?
• 52:58
  But there, but there's a trade off which that comes with
• 53:01
  tremendous amount of sovereignty and power for the individual,
• 53:05
  right. Specifically if you live in one
• 53:07
  of those countries where the banking system isn't stable,
• 53:11
  right. A lot of us have financial
• 53:13
  privilege that we don't realize. Anyways, guys, we have still so
• 53:16
  much to talk to talk about. We're going to get to to the
• 53:19
  culture segment and we're going to talk to Fernando, what he's
• 53:22
  been working on, what he's been focusing on.
• 53:24
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  today. All right, everybody, we are
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• 55:34
  All right. Well, Fernando, thanks for
• 55:37
  coming on. I just pulled up your Twitter.
• 55:39
  So guys go follow him. It's at BTC Perceptions and I
• 55:42
  know this is what you want to hit on today.
• 55:44
  And so I'm going to just read the bio here and then we will
• 55:47
  take it and you get the floor. So the bio here for BTC
• 55:50
  perception or Bitcoin perception is narrative shaped markets,
• 55:53
  Bitcoin stable coin and tokenized finance market
• 55:55
  intelligent platform driven by social, web and media metrics.
• 55:59
  And I know you really want to hit on this idea of media
• 56:02
  narratives. Of course, we've been covering
• 56:04
  it throughout the whole show, whether it's on the nation state
• 56:06
  level, whether it's from corporate press themselves.
• 56:10
  We are starting to see the media narratives shift around Bitcoin.
• 56:14
  And you specifically want to hit on the point on how this will
• 56:17
  affect future Bitcoiners. So floor is yours, T I'm teeing
• 56:21
  you up here. You know what?
• 56:23
  What does this mean and what is the importance for everyone
• 56:26
  watching the show today? Oh, man, with the, you know,
• 56:30
  disclaimer, I'm going to go on a on a sick rant because I have so
• 56:33
  many opinions about this, but I think, you know, I, I started
• 56:39
  out, you know, with business in the music industry.
• 56:44
  So I, I created my own record label back in the day, you know,
• 56:49
  had I sold vinyls, I sold CDs back in the early aughts and,
• 56:53
  and that led me to start in the, in, in Universal Music as a, as
• 56:58
  a junior product manager. It's kind of how I started my
• 57:01
  career and in the early in the mid odds, you know, 2000 and
• 57:05
  seven 2008 when I started out as a junior, that was kind of like
• 57:09
  the time where streaming and torrenting it was a was a big
• 57:14
  thing. And you know, I'm originally
• 57:15
  from Argentina, but I my mom immigrated when I was a kid.
• 57:18
  So I grew up in Norway and in Norway at that time, the end in
• 57:24
  the music business, the only thing that you heard every
• 57:26
  single day at the office was The Pirate Bay.
• 57:30
  And you know, they were Swedish people.
• 57:32
  One of the Co founders is Norwegian and you know, I I grew
• 57:36
  up in Oslo, the capital, So he I knew of him.
• 57:39
  He was in my social circle. So I was obsessed with that time
• 57:42
  and kind of like how disruptive tech it can be to certain
• 57:47
  industries, right. And you know, I wanted to
• 57:50
  embrace torrents in Universal Music.
• 57:53
  I had told the guys like, hey, we should totally embrace this
• 57:57
  technology. We should release like low bit
• 57:59
  rate editions of a single or parts of an album before the
• 58:04
  actual release happens so that it gets distributed so that
• 58:07
  people can share it, so that it it gets out there and people can
• 58:10
  get excited about it. And obviously, you know, as a
• 58:13
  junior didn't have enough juice or cloud in the exec room, so
• 58:16
  they totally ignored me. I rage quit the business and,
• 58:20
  but I essentially wanted to be close to disruptive technologies
• 58:24
  ever since, right? So my career has been part of
• 58:26
  that. You know, that's why I, I work
• 58:28
  at lock stream. I, I believe in disruptive
• 58:30
  technologies and I, I love how Bitcoin in a way, is shaping
• 58:35
  culture the same way music is shaping culture especially and
• 58:38
  how that's distributed through the Internet.
• 58:40
  So I'm looking at the media landscape now, and I'm thinking
• 58:45
  the era of like centralized narratives is completely over.
• 58:49
  You know, the Financial Times that we talked about and other
• 58:52
  other similar incumbents, they were, you know, they operated as
• 58:57
  centralized gatekeepers of public opinion.
• 59:00
  Now we're just splintered into, you know, countless platforms
• 59:03
  because now they are forced to be on X, they're forced to be on
• 59:08
  platforms that they don't create, right?
• 59:10
  So that was the first capitulation, right?
• 59:13
  And but what they have done is just continue to own their own
• 59:17
  agenda, own their own bias, own their own narrative slant.
• 59:20
  And and that has created this fragmentation of media where
• 59:25
  outlets today, it's kind of like behaving the same way Universal
• 59:30
  Music was behaving. And when I was a junior product
• 59:33
  manager, essentially now they're kind of like scrambling to
• 59:36
  survive through mergers and acquisitions and either pivot
• 59:42
  their, their narratives to, to, to, to, to, you know, to, to
• 59:47
  have to, to expand their audiences.
• 59:49
  So, so they, they can, you know, get new followers and, and
• 59:52
  expand their audiences, or they just double down, triple down on
• 59:57
  the thing that got them to their current audience size.
• 1:00:00
  And then just like never change, never break and just keep
• 1:00:03
  hammering on that. I think that's the, that's the
• 1:00:06
  choices that you have to do today if you want to survive in
• 1:00:09
  media, if you're a big incumbent.
• 1:00:11
  And I think. You know, shout out to the ones
• 1:00:14
  who have pivoted in terms of Bitcoin and have chosen to, you
• 1:00:19
  know, flip the script a little bit and maybe hire younger
• 1:00:22
  reporters who I don't know, grew up listening to Wu Tang Clan
• 1:00:26
  that are like more open to concepts like Bitcoin.
• 1:00:30
  And actually, you know, pay them a check every month to write
• 1:00:33
  about it. Because you know, you see
• 1:00:36
  Bloomberg's the, The Wall Street Journal's, the CNBC's, they have
• 1:00:41
  a lot of reporters that are covering Bitcoin pretty well
• 1:00:43
  when you see them on, on conferences all the time.
• 1:00:46
  So they really are in tune, I would say.
• 1:00:48
  So some outlets have actually done that pivot.
• 1:00:51
  And then others like Financial Times, BBC, The Guardian, you
• 1:00:55
  know, the usual suspects, they just double and, and triple down
• 1:00:58
  because they don't want to lose more of their audience.
• 1:01:03
  So they're just pandering to the audience that they have built up
• 1:01:07
  that think the way they think and they hire reporters to think
• 1:01:11
  that way the audience thinks. And I, I don't know, that's not
• 1:01:14
  a formula to stay alive for too long.
• 1:01:17
  So I feel like the landscape is just kind of continue to
• 1:01:21
  fragment into more and more pieces.
• 1:01:23
  And eventually Bitcoin will be covered differently depending on
• 1:01:28
  which fragmented outlet you're listening to.
• 1:01:30
  So for example, I mentioned Wall Street and Bloomberg and CNBCI
• 1:01:35
  think they, they do a good job covering Bitcoin to be honest
• 1:01:38
  with you. But if you take a look at their
• 1:01:40
  coverage and you can take a look by going through Bitcoin
• 1:01:43
  perception.com, you'll see that, you know, the topics that they
• 1:01:46
  touch on is ETF, institutional adoption, regulatory clarity,
• 1:01:50
  stuff like that. But they know their audience.
• 1:01:53
  So obviously these are things that they care about and they
• 1:01:57
  they know what to write about, but it is in a positive way, at
• 1:02:00
  least especially in the last two years, I would say.
• 1:02:04
  So you as a Bitcoiner who know more about cold storage and how
• 1:02:10
  peer-to-peer transactions work. And you know, because you,
• 1:02:13
  you've, you've seen in your timeline how the circular
• 1:02:16
  economies in South Africa is working and you know, you have a
• 1:02:18
  better, more broader view and understanding of Bitcoin.
• 1:02:22
  You'll take a look at the Bloomberg and say, ah, all they
• 1:02:25
  cover is NGU stuff and I'm not interested.
• 1:02:27
  But you know what, for the audience that they serve, that
• 1:02:32
  angle makes sense. And I'm, you know, I'm happy
• 1:02:36
  that more people are coming into Bitcoin and you have to realize
• 1:02:39
  that it's going to the the, you know, as Bitcoin becomes more
• 1:02:44
  global and adoption continues to grow, there's a lot of people
• 1:02:47
  that you don't agree with that that are going to understand
• 1:02:50
  Bitcoin, but in a different way than you.
• 1:02:52
  And they might like other properties that you don't
• 1:02:54
  necessarily think are that important.
• 1:02:56
  And that's kind of like part of things becoming mainstream.
• 1:02:58
  So it's not like, you know, Bitcoin is going to stay this
• 1:03:01
  cool underground punk band forever.
• 1:03:04
  There will come a time where that thing that you like that
• 1:03:08
  you were like part of a special club on will be embraced by
• 1:03:12
  other people very, very different from you.
• 1:03:14
  And you know what, there's a place for anyone when it comes
• 1:03:18
  to Bitcoin. I think you can, you know,
• 1:03:20
  Bitcoin is so transcendental, the way that changed the world
• 1:03:24
  that you can have a, you can have a, you can spin a story
• 1:03:27
  about Bitcoin that almost serves every single person, every
• 1:03:31
  single political bias, every single mindset.
• 1:03:36
  So the media is a reflection of all of that.
• 1:03:40
  And as we are entering, you know, a fragmented landscape, I
• 1:03:45
  think that's how it's going to be.
• 1:03:47
  People will learn about Bitcoin from only watching Bloomberg,
• 1:03:50
  and they will only care about NGU.
• 1:03:52
  But then other people will love Bitcoin maybe more than these
• 1:03:56
  people. But they have listened to
• 1:03:58
  podcasts and they have a whole other different story.
• 1:04:01
  But both of these people are part of Bitcoin.
• 1:04:04
  And so I, I think just because of incentives in the media, like
• 1:04:07
  you said, Nico, and for people to, you know, capture audience
• 1:04:12
  and stay relevant, they're just going to cover Bitcoin in a very
• 1:04:15
  specific way. And as stories grow and Bitcoin
• 1:04:19
  keeps growing, people are going to come through those outlets
• 1:04:22
  and we're going to end up with a very broad landscape of
• 1:04:25
  different Bitcoiners that to the point that the term Bitcoiners
• 1:04:29
  not going to make sense anymore. But yeah, that's kind of like
• 1:04:31
  the things that I'm thinking about lately.
• 1:04:33
  Absolutely. I mean, dude, you, you, you
• 1:04:35
  just, you unpack so much there. And, and it's, it's crazy for
• 1:04:39
  Nando because, you know, and Opti's heard me talk about this,
• 1:04:42
  you know, for the last, he's, he's been forced to hear me talk
• 1:04:45
  about this for the last like 6 months or so.
• 1:04:48
  And I what I've been the, the, the, what I coined it, what, the
• 1:04:52
  term that I coined was essentially the greatest
• 1:04:54
  intermediation. And essentially that, that's
• 1:04:56
  what you're breaking down is these legacy media outlets,
• 1:05:00
  they're essentially trying to remain relevant.
• 1:05:04
  Some of them don't even want to pivot.
• 1:05:06
  They just want to double down on the narrative and then use
• 1:05:09
  essentially the government or the powers that be to
• 1:05:12
  essentially censor their competitors rather than, you
• 1:05:16
  know, reading the room and saying, OK, guys, you know, we
• 1:05:19
  should probably change things. But The thing is that would
• 1:05:23
  require for them to essentially change their whole worldview.
• 1:05:28
  And then that creates opportunities for the what I
• 1:05:31
  called the new media or independent media, which is
• 1:05:34
  becoming what the legacy media is today.
• 1:05:38
  And it's super exciting because essentially now the media
• 1:05:42
  landscape is fully democratized. Anybody can grow a massive
• 1:05:47
  platform by just buying a microphone, buying a camera.
• 1:05:52
  If you're a good content creator, you, you know, you
• 1:05:54
  garner, you know, millions of views, you get millions of
• 1:05:58
  followers. And you'll be surprised like
• 1:06:01
  right now when I when I say this, I say this all the time,
• 1:06:05
  Fernando, the most popular broadcaster on the face of the
• 1:06:08
  planet, it's not Fox News in primetime.
• 1:06:11
  It's not MSNBC in primetime. It's Joe Rogan.
• 1:06:15
  It's a dude that talks about eating elk, taking DMT and cold
• 1:06:20
  plunges, right? Like this is the world that
• 1:06:22
  we're heading into. And what's really fascinating is
• 1:06:25
  that, you know, depending on the type of media that you're
• 1:06:28
  consuming, you're going to have a different worldview.
• 1:06:31
  Because if you're still consuming CNN or MSNBC and
• 1:06:36
  you're consuming Joe and the other person is consuming Joe
• 1:06:38
  Rogan, you're looking at the world from a totally different
• 1:06:41
  lens. But the convergence I think is
• 1:06:44
  beautiful, which is I think what Fernando was talking about,
• 1:06:47
  which is this Bitcoin is just creeping in, in the government
• 1:06:52
  level, on the Wall Street level, on the media level.
• 1:06:54
  You can't ignore it. Number go up, number goes up is
• 1:06:59
  an amazing incentive. So regardless of where you're
• 1:07:02
  coming from, eventually you're going to have to cover Bitcoin.
• 1:07:06
  Eventually you're going to have you're going to be forced to
• 1:07:08
  cover it on a more positive light.
• 1:07:10
  And the people that were watching CNN and the people that
• 1:07:14
  are watching Joe Rogan, all of a sudden they have something in
• 1:07:16
  common. And that thing in common is
• 1:07:18
  Bitcoin, right? And just to kind of connect the
• 1:07:20
  dots, the last thing that I'll say is This is why it was so
• 1:07:23
  significant that Coinbase was added to the S&P 500 or it's
• 1:07:27
  going to be on May 19th. Because all of a sudden, and
• 1:07:31
  most people, most people, if they have retirement accounts,
• 1:07:35
  they have an index fund that tracks the S&P 500 and they're
• 1:07:40
  going to have exposure to Bitcoin whether they like it or
• 1:07:44
  not, right? So this is, this is fast.
• 1:07:47
  This is a fascinating discussion, Fernando, as a
• 1:07:50
  fascinating topic and a fascinating phenomenon because
• 1:07:54
  we've never lived through something like this in all of
• 1:07:58
  human history. The narrative has always been
• 1:08:01
  controlled. You can kind of equate this to
• 1:08:04
  the invention or the introduction of the printing
• 1:08:06
  press, but multiply that by a factor of 1000.
• 1:08:10
  You know, what's interesting though, is that, you know, back
• 1:08:14
  in my music business days, I saw that, you know, Universal EMI
• 1:08:20
  Music or Sony BMG, all that. Well, Sony used to be Sony Music
• 1:08:24
  and then they bought a BMG and become Sony BMG.
• 1:08:27
  Then Warner Music started buying some other stuff and become
• 1:08:31
  something else. It's kind of like, you know,
• 1:08:33
  that that, that that was the thing that continued their
• 1:08:37
  business was to just buy up other labels.
• 1:08:39
  And also most importantly, in order to kind of like maintain
• 1:08:43
  an edge, they bought up the small record labels that, you
• 1:08:49
  know, created new genres. For example, you know, they
• 1:08:52
  bought up a bunch of like indie techno labels, hip hop labels
• 1:08:58
  just to kind of like be like, hey, we have a hip hop division,
• 1:09:01
  we have a techno division as well.
• 1:09:03
  Music that they, these people had absolutely no clue even
• 1:09:07
  existed. But through the work of like
• 1:09:09
  smaller indie labels that were actually, you know, their ears
• 1:09:13
  were to the street, they discovered those artists and you
• 1:09:16
  know, through them new genres got created.
• 1:09:19
  So the difference here now in 2025 is that I don't think that
• 1:09:23
  model is going to be able because now micro influencers to
• 1:09:28
  the bigger influencers, like you said, Nico, not only have access
• 1:09:32
  to technology to actually spin up a podcast or an e-mail
• 1:09:35
  newsletter or whatever you want for practically nothing.
• 1:09:40
  There's, there's also like the monetary aspect of it because
• 1:09:43
  now Bitcoin exists now these solopreneurs, these micro
• 1:09:48
  influencers, you guys, you guys have Bitcoin right now.
• 1:09:52
  So what can you know? I don't know if Bloomberg comes
• 1:09:56
  knocking on your door, what can they actually offer you if, if
• 1:09:59
  they don't have Bitcoin to pay to pay you with or you know what
• 1:10:06
  you know, you, you run a lean machine with just two three guys
• 1:10:10
  and you have really good cash flow.
• 1:10:12
  You got sponsorships. You're, you're making a really
• 1:10:15
  viable business. Why would you sell out?
• 1:10:17
  It was a very different time for small record labels at that time
• 1:10:20
  to survive. So they took that money when
• 1:10:22
  they were offering. But I don't think today's
• 1:10:24
  influencers that are on a Bitcoin standard are going to,
• 1:10:28
  you know, be welcoming bigger outlets to buy them up.
• 1:10:33
  That it just makes no sense if you have a viable business model
• 1:10:36
  on your own. 100 I 100% agree with with you, Fernando and and
• 1:10:42
  and and you see it too. And and, you know, and you see
• 1:10:45
  it with like the the, the exodus from for specifically for the
• 1:10:50
  live streamers from from love YouTube.
• 1:10:53
  YouTube's a great platform. We're big fans of YouTube here
• 1:10:55
  at simply Bitcoin. But you saw a big exodus from,
• 1:10:59
  you know, from YouTube to Rumble from a lot of the popular, you
• 1:11:04
  know, kind of content creators, right?
• 1:11:07
  And, you know, this is what you're talking about, right?
• 1:11:10
  It it's before the record labels, the studios had all the
• 1:11:15
  power. They they controlled.
• 1:11:16
  They are the gatekeepers of essentially what was going to go
• 1:11:21
  on air, what was not going to go on air.
• 1:11:23
  And the Internet changed the ball game, right?
• 1:11:26
  Like it's like, OK, you know, you don't want to air me, I'm
• 1:11:29
  going to go over there, right? Like, and I'm just going to and
• 1:11:32
  my audience is going to follow me, right?
• 1:11:34
  And that changes the dynamics, that changes the situation.
• 1:11:37
  And then you see them like, you know, complain, like you see
• 1:11:41
  them breakdown. Like the, you know, the White
• 1:11:43
  House press room is, is hilarious to me.
• 1:11:46
  Now they're having essentially podcasters join that press room
• 1:11:50
  and the legacy press. They're losing their minds.
• 1:11:54
  It reminds me of when, you know, the blue checkmarks went from
• 1:11:58
  being assigned by by Twitter to, oh, you can just purchase a
• 1:12:03
  subscription. You get a blue check mark.
• 1:12:04
  But you saw all the legacy journalists lose their minds.
• 1:12:07
  What do you mean? I don't have the elite status of
• 1:12:10
  this. You know, I'm credentialed.
• 1:12:13
  I'm a journalist. It's like, you know, and it and
• 1:12:16
  and that type of attitude. Listen, if you have to tell
• 1:12:18
  people that you're a journalist and that you are the media, you
• 1:12:22
  are not the media, right? And essentially that's what
• 1:12:25
  you're seeing. The, the, the, the, these legacy
• 1:12:28
  institutions are going through this phenomenon.
• 1:12:30
  But Fernando, you added a, a entirely different angle that I
• 1:12:34
  didn't see based on your own lived experience and your life
• 1:12:37
  experience coming from the music industry that, you know, this
• 1:12:41
  phenomenon is not, it's not necessarily unique.
• 1:12:45
  This history is not necessarily repeating itself, but it is
• 1:12:49
  rhyming and you are starting to see patterns that are playing
• 1:12:53
  out. Once again, yeah.
• 1:12:54
  Yeah, you have. You have.
• 1:12:56
  You know, it's all about distribution essentially.
• 1:12:59
  It was back then. It is right now, right?
• 1:13:01
  An indie label couldn't really get their their music on the
• 1:13:05
  shelves because the shelves were reserved for the bigger labels
• 1:13:09
  and they had sales reps and they had the connections and the
• 1:13:11
  relationships. So if you as an indie record
• 1:13:15
  label wanted to get your music on the shelves, you picked up
• 1:13:18
  the phone and it got ignored. But if a sales Rep from Warner
• 1:13:22
  BMG did that, OK, the tune is different.
• 1:13:26
  And, you know, you you your music is actually able to be
• 1:13:29
  available on a wider scale. But distribution with the
• 1:13:32
  Internet absolutely killed that that monopoly.
• 1:13:35
  So why would you like, do you even need the reach of the New
• 1:13:40
  York Times really, you know, like you are able to grow that
• 1:13:45
  reach yourself. You're able to control it.
• 1:13:48
  You're you can determine what your audience is and you can
• 1:13:51
  choose whether to nurture that or pivot at your own pace.
• 1:13:54
  Nobody tells you anything different.
• 1:13:56
  And the distribution is there for you to take, to be honest,
• 1:14:01
  if distribution is the the currency, why would you sell out
• 1:14:05
  to a bigger media outlet that is losing audience by the second
• 1:14:08
  anyway? So it's just, it makes
• 1:14:10
  absolutely no sense. And I think journalists who like
• 1:14:14
  that monopoly, who were very comfortable getting a paycheck,
• 1:14:18
  leveraging that are going to rage quit.
• 1:14:21
  As you saw, you know, they are rage.
• 1:14:23
  I don't know how many times they have rage quit Twitter because
• 1:14:25
  one, the blue check was one thing and then Elon Musk being
• 1:14:28
  the owner was another. And it jumped over to Blue Sky.
• 1:14:30
  And I don't know what the hell is happening over at Blue Sky.
• 1:14:33
  Nobody really is checking out Blue Sky.
• 1:14:35
  And then you have platforms like Noster, you know, you, we, we
• 1:14:38
  are. And this is for the good and for
• 1:14:39
  the better. I mean, we are going to live in
• 1:14:41
  our bubbles and we have to be sovereign enough to know to jump
• 1:14:45
  from bubble to bubble and not stay within the same bubble too
• 1:14:47
  long. And honestly, that goes for any
• 1:14:49
  type of bubble, even the Bitcoin bubble.
• 1:14:52
  But that's the the future of media and narratives and how
• 1:14:55
  things are going to convince people.
• 1:14:57
  So, you know, in terms of Bitcoin and the future adoption,
• 1:15:02
  I think you're going to see very, you know, Bitcoiners in
• 1:15:08
  the future, they're not going to keep it as real as yourself
• 1:15:11
  perhaps. And I think the Bitcoin commuter
• 1:15:13
  just need to be OK with that and accept the fact that we are
• 1:15:17
  weird people are going to come into our, our fray.
• 1:15:20
  And that's part of global adoption.
• 1:15:22
  That's, that's part of becoming the number one asset in, in, in
• 1:15:26
  history. That's just the way it is.
• 1:15:29
  But I welcome that future. To be honest.
• 1:15:30
  It's a. That's how hyper bitcoinization
• 1:15:32
  looks like to me. Absolutely.
• 1:15:35
  And it's, it's a brave new and exciting world, man, because you
• 1:15:39
  know, it like before the Internet, it was this people
• 1:15:43
  didn't realize there was a handful of newspapers, a handful
• 1:15:46
  of TV channels and like guys, governments controlled the
• 1:15:51
  narrative. I remember seeing this really
• 1:15:53
  powerful Twitter post and I never forget it.
• 1:15:56
  And it was like something like, if if social media would have
• 1:16:00
  existed in 2001, the war in Iraq would have never happened.
• 1:16:04
  Like, that is a very, very strong, you know, statement.
• 1:16:10
  And of course, you can go down that rabbit hole.
• 1:16:12
  Like who was the media outlet that published that Iraq had
• 1:16:16
  weapons of mass destruction, right?
• 1:16:18
  Who's the same media outlet that's been attacking Bitcoin
• 1:16:21
  that doctored the image, you know, above the mining center,
• 1:16:26
  essentially making the case that, oh, Bitcoin is bad for the
• 1:16:29
  environment. And then, you know, Elon Musk
• 1:16:31
  came in there with USAID and then we found it out that, you
• 1:16:35
  know, a lot of these so-called independent media outlets were
• 1:16:38
  being funded by the government themselves, right?
• 1:16:40
  Crazy, crazy stuff. But it's all different now.
• 1:16:43
  It's changing. And This is why the times are so
• 1:16:46
  turbulent. This is why you're seeing this
• 1:16:48
  heavy censorship. You're seeing the system
• 1:16:51
  essentially fight back out of fear that they're they're
• 1:16:54
  terrified. That's really what what it comes
• 1:16:56
  down to, but I think it's going to be a much better world, you
• 1:17:00
  know, after we, you know, get get over this hump, which is
• 1:17:04
  going to be extremely. Exciting that I have one thing
• 1:17:06
  that I discovered looking at the Bitcoin perception data is the
• 1:17:11
  emergence of a new narrative and I think yeah the future the
• 1:17:15
  brave new world is looking good but I think there's one thing
• 1:17:18
  that we as a collective of Bitcoiners that are you know
• 1:17:22
  following the news and and checking out like the dominant
• 1:17:26
  narratives. I think one thing we need to now
• 1:17:28
  be on the lookout for because I'm seeing the the initial
• 1:17:32
  trends of this at Bitcoin perception is a new narrative
• 1:17:36
  negative about bitcoiners. I was like looking around the
• 1:17:41
  data a couple of months back and I and I wrote a a newsletter
• 1:17:44
  about it When I when I discovered the data and I saw
• 1:17:47
  that 5-6 different outlets started started covering
• 1:17:53
  bitcoiners as the one percenters, the the new elite.
• 1:17:57
  I don't know if you guys caught that, but it's very interesting
• 1:18:00
  because bitcoiners, you know, were once frame as you know,
• 1:18:05
  French radicals, you know, if you take a look at, you know,
• 1:18:08
  pre 2020 narratives, but now bitcoins are being cast as
• 1:18:13
  these, I don't know this new financial elite, you know, a
• 1:18:16
  class of early adopters who got in early, got lucky and oh, you
• 1:18:21
  guys are now hoarding power and wealth.
• 1:18:25
  And I think this shift is essentially serving a purpose
• 1:18:28
  because it repositions Bitcoin from like a tool of empowerment
• 1:18:34
  to more of a like a like a symbol of inequality, you know,
• 1:18:38
  and, you know, there's certain outlets that are very big on
• 1:18:41
  inequality. And I think if these stories get
• 1:18:47
  a foothold, if if this actually ends up sticky, I think it will
• 1:18:52
  make it easier for, you know, regulators, political critics,
• 1:18:59
  mostly leaning on the left side of the spectrum to justify, you
• 1:19:03
  know, legal restrictions on Bitcoin, to be honest with you.
• 1:19:06
  So I think, you know, the fact that the media or a pocket of
• 1:19:09
  the media is reframing Bitcoiners as the new 1% and
• 1:19:14
  then kind of like providing these stories that provide a
• 1:19:17
  moral justification for, like, increased regulation, I think
• 1:19:21
  that's something to be very, very alert about because that
• 1:19:25
  could bring a cultural shift, you know, a cultural shift from
• 1:19:29
  Bitcoin as resistance to, you know, Bitcoin as dominance.
• 1:19:34
  And yeah, it's a heads up for the Bitcoiners out there who are
• 1:19:37
  listening. It's something to be very, very
• 1:19:40
  alert about. And yeah, follow that closely.
• 1:19:45
  I completely agree. Completely agree.
• 1:19:48
  Yeah, no, I was just going to say I think that's a great way
• 1:19:51
  to wrap up today's show. Fernando, thank you so much for
• 1:19:54
  coming on. Love these discussions.
• 1:19:56
  Of course, go follow him. Go check out his work at Block
• 1:19:58
  Stream. But of course, you can follow
• 1:20:00
  him on Twitter at Bass Layer. With for his personal account or
• 1:20:04
  at BTC perception. What a great, what a great
• 1:20:07
  handle. Check out guys if you want to
• 1:20:10
  see more on this type of conversation and the data behind
• 1:20:13
  this. So Fernando, thank you so much
• 1:20:16
  for coming on the show. Before we go though, we do have
• 1:20:19
  to plug the Bitcoin Conference 2025.
• 1:20:23
  It is what, 12 days, less than 12 days away.
• 1:20:28
  We are taking over Vegas. You guys can tell the price is
• 1:20:31
  pumping. This is probably going to be the
• 1:20:33
  biggest Bitcoin conference ever. We're taking over the Venetian.
• 1:20:37
  I hope you guys go down there, scan the QR code and use the
• 1:20:40
  promo code simply to get 10% off.
• 1:20:43
  The whole Simply Bitcoin crew will be down there.
• 1:20:45
  We're going to be on the floor. We got a booth.
• 1:20:47
  Really excited to see you guys come over, say what's up.
• 1:20:50
  We really appreciate all the feedback.
• 1:20:52
  On that note, guys, let's wrap up today's show.
• 1:20:55
  Fernando, thanks so much for coming on today's show.
• 1:20:58
  Come back on and we'll talk about some more updates around
• 1:21:01
  the perception of Bitcoin. And yeah, Nico, Nico, just you
• 1:21:06
  know, Nico's doing the Monday show, so, you know, I'm not
• 1:21:09
  going to let him squirm out of the work here.
• 1:21:11
  But let me let me pull you guys behind the scenes as I wrap this
• 1:21:14
  up. All right, guys, this was
• 1:21:16
  episode, I believe 12:45. It is Thursday May 5th, your boy
• 1:21:20
  Opti, this was Simply Bitcoin and we will be back tomorrow for
• 1:21:24
  another Simply Bitcoin Live peace out.
• 1:21:28
  Today's episode was brought to you by bitcoinwell.com, a
• 1:21:32
  Bitcoin only platform on a mission to enable financial
• 1:21:35
  independence.