Latest / Simply Bitcoin / RECORD $1.1B Bitcoin Short SQUEEZE (What's Next?) | EP 1286

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RECORD $1.1B Bitcoin Short SQUEEZE (What's Next?) | EP 1286 · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  A record $1.1 billion of Bitcoin shorts was liquidated yesterday,
• 0:05
  sending Bitcoin soaring TO118K. It wasn't 18K, it's 118K retail.
• 0:14
  But the real question is, what if this is just the beginning of
• 0:18
  the short squeeze? What if this is just the
• 0:20
  beginning of what's to come for the rest of the year?
• 0:23
  And really, considering that retail is nowhere to be found
• 0:28
  today, we're going to be exploring why we think, or maybe
• 0:31
  it's why I think the bull run hasn't even started yet.
• 0:35
  So let's get into this. Of course, I got Nico sitting
• 0:37
  here in the cohost seat and we do have a guest.
• 0:40
  We have Leonard Seato bite Federal with us here today as
• 0:43
  well. Let me dive into some of this
• 0:45
  source material. We'll break this down.
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  I got a lot, a lot of tweets here, guys.
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  Yes, I know all time high. It feels great, you know, Hey,
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  we we made it guys, we're back. We're under in the gulags out
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  there. I think I feel something like.
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  We'll, we'll throw Nico a little bit.
• 1:01
  I didn't pull up your tweet, but we'll pull that up.
• 1:02
  I think we'll, we'll, we'll be yeah, yeah, pull that up.
• 1:05
  We'll, we'll talk about that. All right, guys.
• 1:06
  So as you can see here, Bitcoin Mag tweeted and I got all the
• 1:09
  data for you guys just in $1.1 billion worth of Bitcoin and of
• 1:15
  course some crypto shorts got liquidated in the past 24 hours.
• 1:19
  We're back. If you watched yesterday's show
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  while we were live on the show, it was at like 113.
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  And then, you know, I got done. I had to go run some errands and
• 1:28
  I had all my friends blowing me. I'll be like, dude, we're at one
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  16117. I was talking to my infamous
• 1:34
  friend who's a bear and he was he's starting to turn bullish.
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  And then it went to 118. So we didn't get the 10K candle
• 1:40
  yesterday, but it was like 8 to 9 K candle.
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  Maybe maybe it's like 9 K the last, you know, two days.
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  But hey, it feels good. You know, it's, it's, it's not
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  euphoria yet. Just go to your Twitter and I
• 1:53
  already pulled it up for you. I comment, do pull up my comment
• 1:56
  on there. So it's feeling good.
• 1:58
  You know, it's like we're finally breaking out.
• 2:01
  It's starting to feel like, OK, hey, we might not be in the bull
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  run parabolic phase, but I think it's just starting.
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  And when you start, maybe go to my Twitter.
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  But when you start to see the price move, when you see these
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  shorts get liquid like we saw yesterday usually and
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  historically, that means the price is going to go higher.
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  So I'm over here on coin glass. We're going to look at the
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  liquidation data. As you can see here, in the last
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  24 hours there has been a $1.1 billion that have been
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  liquidated. In short, obviously This is why
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  we saw that jump from 113 up to one 16117 yesterday.
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  It wasn't just Bitcoin, but you know though, if you're shorting
• 2:43
  any of the markets right now, you're kind of doing it wrong.
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  And here is like the crazy kind of data point for Bitcoin here
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  is that we saw the biggest Bitcoin short liquidation event
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  in years. And you can see this is the past
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  year, maybe a year and some change, two years and it is just
• 3:03
  dwarfing everything else. So it's starting to look like if
• 3:07
  you are getting bearish right now, if you are bearish right
• 3:10
  now, if you're thinking about shorting Bitcoin, you probably
• 3:13
  shouldn't be doing that at this point.
• 3:15
  It's not to say you should probably be longing right now
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  because who knows that, you know, the volatility could get
• 3:20
  crazy, but you should be in spot Bitcoin at this point.
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  It looks like we are entering the parabolic upward trend
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  towards the end of the year. As I've been saying, you know,
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  vindicated here on the show again, as always, he's always
• 3:34
  vindicated here and Nikka's a perma bear.
• 3:37
  But it looks like it looks like we are starting to get what
• 3:46
  we've all been waiting for. As I was kind of trolling, I was
• 3:49
  telling our Twitter team this morning, if you watch simply
• 3:51
  Bitcoin, you know, we we do have this running joke here that we
• 3:54
  are scamming you into profits with our titles and the content
• 3:58
  here. But every every viewer of Simply
• 4:01
  Bitcoin is in profit right now. Fair that that was Rockstar.
• 4:05
  Yeah, it was Rockstar. It was Rockstar.
• 4:08
  OK, so I have other stuff here, but I really want to open up the
• 4:11
  panel and. I also don't want to say scam.
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  Either. I know that's that's the point.
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  That's basically we're listen guys, we're just trying to get
• 4:18
  you to click on Bitcoin content cause Bitcoin is the truth.
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  Bitcoin, and we want you to buy Bitcoin.
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  It's the real money and we truly believe that because it is the
• 4:26
  real money you buy, you change your unit of account to sound
• 4:29
  money and your life gets better. You know, that's, that's all
• 4:31
  we're trying to do, you know, and there are some, there are
• 4:34
  some tools and there are some tactics that you can use to
• 4:38
  incentivize people to click on your videos.
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  I think that's what you meant to say Opti.
• 4:43
  I was leaning into into Rockstar's meme here because
• 4:47
  they call us clickbait scammers, but everyone, everyone that
• 4:51
  watches our show is officially in profit here.
• 4:54
  So you know, if you listen to us and bought Bitcoin, you're good
• 4:57
  to go. Anyways, Nico, let's talk about
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  these liquidations first and then I have a lot of information
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  coming on the back end today. The ETFs are going crazy and
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  then we're seeing seemingly the worst start of the year for the
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  dollar. So the real I think here is
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  maybe Bitcoin isn't pumping per SE, it's that the dollar is
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  losing it's purchasing power. If you're saving in anything
• 5:21
  other than Bitcoin, you are absolutely getting right.
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  So Nikka, let's touch on this, these liquidations here.
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  Actually, let's let's pull up your tweet here, here, I'll pull
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  it up. You go a little bit I.
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  Can pull. I can pull it up if you want.
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  OK, you pull it up and I'll do my my response to it.
• 5:35
  Oh, you got it. Yeah, yeah.
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  First of all, let's start with this is what I posted this
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  morning. So I actually had a a
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  conversation with my father-in-law this morning and
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  he was super hyped, you know, because I've been telling him to
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  buy Bitcoin for a while and he's first starting to feel his first
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  Bitcoin cycle. And you know, he's like, wow,
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  like number really does go up. And what I was showing him, and
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  I would, and I've been joking about this on Bitcoin, on
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  Bitcoin Twitter for the last couple of days, is there's no
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  euphoria. There is no euphoria.
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  Could you pull up a psychedelic Bart Bartow's Twitter account?
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  And there's no euphoria. And I, and this Google Trends
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  Analytics is showing what kind of what we're feeling.
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  And he basically says the same thing.
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  Opti's going to pull it up in just a second.
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  But if you look up on Google Trends right now, we're at all
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  time highs. We hit 118K, retail is still
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  completely asleep. Think we might be going higher.
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  And what I've been kind of making a making a joke of the
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  last couple days is like, I don't feel anything.
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  I don't feel euphoric. I don't feel a thrill.
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  I don't feel belief. I kind of feel a little bit of
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  disbelief because of, you know, what we went through these lot.
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  The price action the last six months has been brutal, right?
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  And then this kind of leads me to Wall Street CHEAT SHEET.
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  The way that markets work is yeah, it it's supposed to work
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  on supply and demand, but there's a lot of psychology that
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  goes into it, specifically when retail gets involved.
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  So if you want to connect these two pieces, right, retails still
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  asleep, Bitcoins hitting all time highs and the amount of
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  interest in Bitcoin is actually trending lower, right?
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  And this kind of coincides with how I personally believe.
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  I don't I'm kind of still in the disbelief phase.
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  I'm still kind of in the yeah, we hit 118K.
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  But like, you know, like what about 150?
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  What about 120? Like I'm not, I don't even feel
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  hope yet, right? Much less optimism, much left
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  belief, much left thrill, much left euphoria.
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  So if we're hitting all time highs and I'm not feeling any of
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  these feelings, just a hunch, but we might still have a little
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  bit left to go. And by the way, I'm not the only
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  Bitcoiner to feel this way as well.
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  We have Selig Bart, didn't you know?
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  He's been around for a long time in the industry and he says I
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  don't feel euphoric at all, more like more like what took so long
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  BTC to pump? And I'm like, Yup, 0 euphoria,
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  right? So yeah, I mean, this is the
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  reality. This is the reality of the
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  situation, man. Back to you Opti.
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  Yeah, yeah. No, I actually I'm glad you
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  brought that up because I do have some more charts here and
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  lend it. I'll pass this to you at the
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  tail end because we were talking about AI in in the morning and
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  everyone's saying no one's on Google trends anymore.
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  They're probably searching on AI or you know, whatever ChatGPT or
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  whatever. So going further, you know, Nico
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  brought up the Google trends. I added a little extra metric in
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  here. We have buy, you know, Bitcoin
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  in blue and we have buy Bitcoin in red and either metric are
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  absolutely it's not there. It's not existing here, but we
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  did see this tweet this morning from Andre who works over at
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  Bitwise and he goes watch as Nico was saying, you know,
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  bitcoins at new all time highs and retail is literally nowhere
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  to be found. The latest leg up is mostly
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  driven by institutions. He put an overlay.
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  Yeah, he put an overlay that is so useful.
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  Yes. So and then you kind of have to
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  break it down like why aren't we having these crazy kind of like,
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  OK, we broke 100 and 112 and why didn't we rush up to 120?
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  You have to understand. And when Manicio came on the
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  show, he kind of he kind of broke it down.
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  He kind of explained it. When institutional money buys
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  Bitcoin, they do it in a way not to run up the price.
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  They don't want to run up the price.
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  So if they're buying half a billion dollars worth of
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  Bitcoin, they're doing it strategically.
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  Sailors actually talked about this on podcast a couple times.
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  So basically making the case like look like what I was doing
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  is I was DCA ING, you know, a couple couple million a day so
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  that the spot price wouldn't go up, right?
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  They don't want the spot spot price to go up.
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  This is why they're called smart money money in the 1st place.
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  So if you can pull up that Bitwise chart once again, Opti,
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  because once you did an overlay of this, This cycle is primarily
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  driven by institutions. That doesn't mean that retail is
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  not going to join the party. Retail is going to join the
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  party. But at the at the current price
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  right now, retail has no interest whatsoever, which tells
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  me that I think we still have a long, long ways to go.
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  I'm speculating here, man. But I feel in my bones, I don't
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  feel euphoria. I don't feel hope.
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  I don't feel optimism. I'm kind of I'm kind of burnt a
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  little bit. I'm kind of like, dude, like
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  that summer, I mean, these last six months, we were supposed to
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  be in the golden age. That was what was promised of us
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  when the orange man was elected and nothing, we got a, you know,
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  we went from 109 K down to 72,000 people were like, the
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  bull market is over. We're back to all time highs and
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  you know, this wasn't the golden age that we were promised.
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  Stop deal. What is it?
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  The golden age we were promised, man.
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  Yeah, he also said 150K and early in the in the presidency.
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  We haven't got that yet. And he took credit, too, for the
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  yeah. I'll pull that up.
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  I'll pull that up as well. Credit for the why I go look for
• 11:22
  that. Leonard, what's your thoughts on
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  this? And actually, since since you
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  are more familiar, I know you were telling me you use AI
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  literally for everything from the moment you wake up to the
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  time you go to bed. So let's talk about the shorts
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  and then I'd like to get your take on the Google Trends.
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  And do you think people are migrating over to using AI for
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  those questions and that's probably why we're not seeing
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  that pop up on Google Trends? I I think so, but the, the same
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  people that you're missing out here that don't even know what
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  Bitcoin is yet, they're probably also not using perplexity to
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  search for Bitcoin. So true.
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  I think you're, you're making a good point there.
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  But if Bitcoin were to hit like 500,000 or $1,000,000, I think
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  the sleepiest people that are really sitting around don't know
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  anything about crypto, Bitcoin or don't really care.
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  I don't want to care. They'll probably start waking
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  up. You really have to have these,
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  these insane rushes. Like remember when it went from
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  $30 to $140? Something completely incredible.
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  I think that's where you get another wave of of retail that
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  may not be interested at all, hasn't been interested in it
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  yet. Totally.
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  I I couldn't agree more with this.
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  OK, so as I was just telling you, you know, Trump is taking
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  credit for this here. But let's look at let's look at
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  this series of tweets here. So we have this.
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  I think this is the official White House.
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  Hold on. Oh, my God.
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  Yeah. Pretty Bitcoin.
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  Memes. I'm pretty sure this is the I'm
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  pretty. Sure this.
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  Is the official White House meme.
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  So the intern over at the White House, Twitter doing a great
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  job, and it goes panicking's hardest hit and it's a guy
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  looking at his computer and the green candles.
• 13:02
  Just got officially apologized to Opti because we ended the
• 13:05
  meme review on fraud. We ended the meme review that's
• 13:08
  now. The White House is now.
• 13:09
  The White House is dropping. Memes OK, but the funniest part
• 13:13
  of this Nico and I don't know if you saw this you saw the is Opti
• 13:16
  gate confirmed Yeah, the round 2.0 is Trump here.
• 13:21
  And so they did that meme on this quote tweet of Trump and
• 13:24
  you can see here he goes Country is now back tech stocks,
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  industrial stocks in NASDAQ hit all time high record highs
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  crypto through the roof and video's up 47% since Trump
• 13:36
  tariffs USA has taken in hundreds of billions of dollars
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  in tariffs. Country is now back a great
• 13:41
  credit. Fed should rapidly lower rates
• 13:44
  to reflect this strength and USA should be at the top of the
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  list. No inflation.
• 13:49
  So you know White House is memeing everyone feeling good
• 13:53
  about us breaking out of the Bitcoin high here.
• 13:56
  It seems like all stocks are going good.
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  Of course, you know, Trump takes some credit for this, which is
• 14:01
  actually kind of hilarious obviously, but some interesting
• 14:05
  stuff coming out here And as we we showed you with this chart
• 14:09
  here, who is really driving the price is the question.
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  Obviously retail is asleep at the wheel.
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  It seems to be institutions. Well, we got an update from the
• 14:19
  ETFs here and it's actually kind of mind blowing.
• 14:22
  So Eric Balcounis, of course, he's the Bloomberg analyst ETF.
• 14:26
  Analyst. Over there.
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  And he goes I bit the Black Rock ETF blew through the $80 billion
• 14:31
  mark last night to become. The fastest ETF to get there and
• 14:36
  that took 374 days, about five times faster than the previous
• 14:40
  record held by VLO, which is the Vanguard SP.
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  And it goes, which did it in 1814 days, also at 83 billion.
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  It's now the 20 first biggest ETF overall.
• 14:55
  The memes just kind of write themselves here, which is kind
• 14:59
  of hilarious. And then going further again, I
• 15:02
  really like Kobayashi letter on Twitter.
• 15:04
  They're doing a really good job. This really kind of goes into
• 15:07
  what I was saying earlier. A lot of people, if you're new
• 15:10
  to Bitcoin, even us bitcoiners, get excited when you see the
• 15:13
  price go up. But it does seem like in
• 15:16
  reality, it's not so much that Bitcoin is volatile, it's that
• 15:20
  the Fiat currencies are even more volatile.
• 15:23
  So they tweeted here. Truly incredible.
• 15:25
  The S&P 500 in Bitcoin terms is now down -15% year to date.
• 15:31
  And since 2012, the S&P 500 in Bitcoin terms is down -99.98%.
• 15:38
  We are all witnessing history. You guys are all a part of
• 15:41
  history. And then just kind of put a, you
• 15:43
  know, a bow tie on this. As I've been saying to you guys,
• 15:46
  the, you know, we have this tweet here breaking the US
• 15:49
  dollar. the US dollar has now lost more than 10% of its value
• 15:53
  this year in its worst first half in almost 40 years, guys.
• 15:58
  So there's a lot of things going on here.
• 16:00
  You know, Bitcoin is up 60% in three months. the US dollar
• 16:04
  purchasing price seems to be failing.
• 16:06
  Worst year since 1973. Gold's going up.
• 16:10
  Treasury yields are rising, almost like deficit spending is
• 16:14
  getting worse, and this big beautiful bill is going to
• 16:16
  expand the money supply by a lot.
• 16:19
  Let's not discount what's going on here.
• 16:22
  There might be a spending crisis, a debt crisis.
• 16:25
  What's Larry been saying? Debt crisis is upon us, Lynn.
• 16:28
  Alden's been saying you can't stop this train.
• 16:31
  Maybe you can't stop the bull run after all, Nico.
• 16:34
  I want to reframe. I want to rephrase the big
• 16:37
  beautiful bill to the big beautiful print, All right?
• 16:40
  Because that, that's really what's going to, that's really
• 16:43
  what's going to happen in order to fund the big beautiful bill,
• 16:48
  right? That's the reality.
• 16:49
  That's why Larry Leopard is literally wrote his last book.
• 16:53
  It's called the Big Print. That's why Lynn Alden says
• 16:56
  nothing stops this train. the US government currently spends $2
• 17:01
  trillion every single year, more than it collects in tax revenue,
• 17:08
  $2 trillion, right? That just to kind of give you
• 17:12
  guys reference, that's more that's bigger than the GDP of
• 17:17
  most countries on planet Earth, right?
• 17:19
  And that is the US that that's the US government's current, you
• 17:23
  know, fiscal policy, right? And eventually what's going to
• 17:27
  happen is that the interest payment, it's alone.
• 17:29
  It's, it's, it's unsustainable. And, you know, they keep kicking
• 17:33
  the can down the road. The, the road This experiment
• 17:36
  started in 2008 with, you know, the, the financial crisis, the
• 17:41
  great, the so-called Great Recession and the QE experiment
• 17:45
  has accelerated since then. And coincidentally, that's when
• 17:48
  Bitcoin was born. Anyways, Leonard, do you have
• 17:51
  any takes on this before we keep?
• 17:53
  Going a lot of takes on this. I think the problem started in
• 17:56
  2013. I said someone, someone
• 17:57
  yesterday said it started in 2014.
• 17:59
  I'm like, no, I think it was 2013.
• 18:01
  Sorry, 1913. That's really where this where
• 18:04
  the train started leaving the leaving leaving the station.
• 18:07
  It's just now a full steam ahead.
• 18:09
  Now if this big beautiful bill wants to do anything then, and I
• 18:13
  think this is the this is at least the philosophical attempt
• 18:15
  here's try to drive down the energy cost by supporting
• 18:19
  nuclear power, bringing manufacturing back.
• 18:23
  So basically increasing productivity.
• 18:25
  If you don't increase productivity through robotics
• 18:27
  and AI desperately in the United States, then then what?
• 18:30
  You see this, this, this wave, the tsunami is just going to
• 18:34
  continue and more and more people are going to figure it
• 18:36
  out and drive their savings into Bitcoin.
• 18:41
  Yeah, absolutely. I mean all roads lead to
• 18:44
  Bitcoin. Completely agree with that take.
• 18:46
  And yeah man, the big beautiful bill leading to the big
• 18:50
  beautiful print. Ladies and gentlemen, we are an
• 18:53
  all time high territory $117,000 Bitcoin.
• 19:00
  I mean absolutely crazy. Remember the days where you'd be
• 19:04
  you used to be able to use spend $100 and get a million sats for
• 19:09
  it. Like I feel like I.
• 19:10
  Still do that math. But those days are long gone and
• 19:15
  you know, bitcoins grown up, man, this is crazy.
• 19:17
  And I think the party's just getting started.
• 19:19
  We've laid out the case for you guys.
• 19:21
  Retail is still asleep at the wheel.
• 19:25
  Retail is not even aware there's a party and the party has
• 19:29
  started. The party is starting.
• 19:31
  Wall Street is aware of it. the US government is aware of it.
• 19:35
  But again, markets are driven not so much institutional money,
• 19:41
  but retail markets are driven by psychology.
• 19:44
  And again, how many feeling right now, how Bitcoin Twitter's
• 19:47
  feeling right now, how the Google Trends are feeling right
• 19:51
  now? Retail's asleep at the wheel,
• 19:54
  right? And once you get these crazy
• 19:56
  blow off tops, those are almost always retail driven.
• 20:01
  That's when you get into an Uber and the Uber driver's like, hey,
• 20:04
  hey, have you heard of Bitcoin that we're not even close to
• 20:08
  that yet, right? And I think that a lot of that
• 20:10
  has to do with the recent volatility that we went through.
• 20:13
  I think in November, December, we had a, we had a small kind of
• 20:17
  blow off top in November through January of this year.
• 20:21
  We it was like kind of. Like this meme coin mania slash
• 20:25
  Bitcoin type of thing. And then, you know, we had that
• 20:28
  correction over the summer. But yeah, I think the future is
• 20:32
  bright. I think I'm extremely
• 20:34
  optimistic, not right now, but I'm extremely optimistic heading
• 20:38
  into Q3 and Q4 of this year. I think it's going to be
• 20:43
  absolutely explosive. And yeah, guys, you, you better
• 20:48
  get better, get your pants on. And we're we're about to.
• 20:53
  Can we acknowledge the fact that Nico is no longer a perma bear
• 20:56
  and it only took a couple $1000 for him to flip really quickly
• 21:00
  on his guys? I know chat noticed that.
• 21:02
  Maybe I'm getting it wrong. Maybe maybe maybe I'm I'm I'm
• 21:07
  optimistic bro. Maybe we're not in disbelief
• 21:09
  Phase, I mean. Let's talk about that I.
• 21:12
  Let's let's actually ask the chat.
• 21:15
  Well, I was going to ask him if we're going to double top or
• 21:17
  we're running. OK, ask the chat and then I
• 21:20
  let's go through basically the panelists and I do want to give
• 21:22
  a shout out by the way, to the live stream 1800 of you guys
• 21:26
  watching live between YouTube and X and 100 of you guys
• 21:30
  watching live on Rumble. If you guys are enjoying the
• 21:32
  show so far, make sure to smash that like button.
• 21:35
  You're listening to Simply Bitcoin Live hosting today's
• 21:38
  Nico and Opti, and of course, our guests, the CTO of Bite
• 21:42
  Federal. We got Leonard in the house
• 21:44
  today joining us on Simply Bitcoin.
• 21:47
  Did I mispronounce that? Are you?
• 21:48
  Is that why I'm laughing? Nico's bullish time to sell.
• 21:52
  Exactly when Nico is bullish, it is time to sell.
• 21:54
  So let's go through the panel, right?
• 21:56
  Where are we in the phase? Guys?
• 21:58
  Let us know down in the chat. Just drop it in the chat we got.
• 22:02
  I think it's help. Let us know in the chat where
• 22:05
  where we are in the Wall Street CHEAT SHEET.
• 22:07
  I'm going to ask Opti Opti, starting with you first.
• 22:10
  Where are we? Yeah, so last night I was kind
• 22:12
  of trolling you that you, you literally said on Twitter, I'm
• 22:16
  in still in disbelief of this rally.
• 22:18
  So it was kind of circling it and I tweeted it that if we are
• 22:22
  in disbelief, then buckle up because we still have a lot of
• 22:27
  room left until we all become euphoric.
• 22:30
  But this morning me and Sophie were kind of chatting about it
• 22:33
  and me and hers consensus is I think we're in like hope range,
• 22:38
  you know, like I'm not, we're not really optimistic about this
• 22:41
  pumping forever. It's more of like, I hope this
• 22:44
  is not a double top. It's kind of it's kind of where
• 22:47
  I'm at right now. So that's I think I'm at hope.
• 22:51
  You're at disbelief if you're if you're.
• 22:53
  Kind of I'm in hope I'm in. I'm in the middle there.
• 22:56
  It's like I'm literally right where you get off off disbelief
• 22:59
  and going into hope. That's where I'm.
• 23:01
  I'm personally in the disbelief kind of phase right now.
• 23:04
  Disbelief between hope. I, I agree with you.
• 23:06
  I, I think I'm where Opti's at. Leonard, what, what about you?
• 23:09
  Where do you think we're at in the Wall Street?
• 23:12
  The cycle, the psychology of a market cycle.
• 23:15
  Where are we? I don't know.
• 23:16
  I, I, I maintain, I think I maintain 2 personas in one.
• 23:20
  Basically I have, I have two, two competing thoughts here. 1
• 23:25
  is, you know, each of these, each of these four year cycles
• 23:27
  or whatever the, the, the percentage race up is a little
• 23:32
  bit less than it was before. Obviously the price is higher as
• 23:34
  well. So, you know, you could make an
• 23:36
  argument that maybe this time around you're not going to see,
• 23:39
  you know, I don't know, you're going to top out at 2 hundred
• 23:41
  250,000 or whatever, but you know, it's still far away from
• 23:44
  here. But then there's the then
• 23:45
  there's the opposing perspective that like you mentioned before,
• 23:49
  all the global parameters are looking at something more
• 23:53
  fundamental, shifting and changing.
• 23:55
  And then you have Bitcoin at several million.
• 23:56
  And that would really, definitely wake up the sleepiest
• 24:00
  person. And we've had, we've had tops
• 24:04
  like that where Bitcoin, you know, sitting at something that
• 24:06
  people already thought was high. If you remember one, one of my
• 24:09
  favorite bull cycles was 2017. I was like, you start the year
• 24:12
  two, $3000, everybody's yeah, it's going to go to 5000.
• 24:15
  And that was already insane to consider.
• 24:17
  And then it went to 20, so you could have Bitcoin do something
• 24:21
  nobody expects up or down idca, so it doesn't really bother me
• 24:26
  that much. Yeah, I think that's the best
• 24:28
  strategy honestly. Is is dollar cost average?
• 24:31
  I've honestly bought the top so many times.
• 24:34
  I've bought the bottom so many times.
• 24:37
  But at the time of buying, you have no idea whether you're
• 24:41
  buying the top or the bottom. You kind of have an idea
• 24:45
  sometimes maybe that you're buying the bottom 'cause it it
• 24:47
  just becomes so incredibly obvious.
• 24:49
  But I think DCA in general over a long period of time is just,
• 24:54
  it's just the best strategy. Trying to nail the top and
• 24:57
  trying to nail the bottom is literally impossible.
• 25:00
  I've never met someone. Maybe they're maybe it's just
• 25:03
  because they don't want to be known.
• 25:04
  Man, person who's been. Yeah, I wouldn't tell you.
• 25:07
  They wouldn't tell you, they wouldn't, they wouldn't sell
• 25:09
  that they wouldn't have a paid group, but.
• 25:11
  Read this comment though. This is actually a really good
• 25:13
  comment. OK, so we have a comment from
• 25:17
  Jason. Jason says up over 6X from cycle
• 25:20
  bottom and you're in disbelief. Come on guys, I think that's
• 25:25
  some wisdom from. Jason, Jason, you know, put nice
• 25:28
  to put like a, you know, throw some some cold water on us here,
• 25:31
  but. And let's let's take a look at
• 25:32
  look at a lot of these. Brent says 440K by Christmas.
• 25:38
  All right, we got Parabola says early November 2013 all time
• 25:45
  high, mid-december 2017, early November 2021 all time high.
• 25:49
  A lot of people says we have 2021 PTSD.
• 25:54
  Miles says cycles are over. It's only up from here.
• 25:59
  Sorry, getting go. Papi says I'm I'm in.
• 26:03
  Higher. For those people who exhibit
• 26:06
  units biased account, I would ask if they would not have to
• 26:09
  deal with it. All right.
• 26:11
  This is what I'm seeing guys. All your models are destroyed. 3
• 26:14
  green, one red let's look at the last couple of greens.
• 26:18
  I don't know I like this 2017 green candle here on the yearly.
• 26:22
  So we still got some run. We still.
• 26:24
  Got some room to run. No one forgets the 2017 cycle
• 26:28
  man. I mean the 2017 cycle was was
• 26:31
  historic. You know that?
• 26:33
  20X from $1000 January of 20/20/17 to 20,000 by December.
• 26:41
  Well, we have an explosive end of the year.
• 26:44
  I don't know, we shall see. Stay tuned to Simply Bitcoin
• 26:46
  because we will be covering it Monday through Friday through
• 26:50
  the roller coaster that is Bitcoin.
• 26:52
  Anyways, before we move on to the next segment, I do want to
• 26:55
  give a shout out to the live show 2000 live viewers between
• 26:59
  YouTube and X and 100 live viewers on Rumble.
• 27:03
  If you guys are enjoying today's show, make sure to smash that
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  like button really really helps with the algos to push this
• 27:09
  message forward. I do want to give a shout out to
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  All right everybody, we are back and we blew past live stream
• 30:21
  numbers. 2037 people watching live between YouTube and X smash
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  that like button. At the time of recording the
• 30:29
  Bitcoin price is $117,400, block height 905,097 sats per dollar,
• 30:38
  852 market cap 2.34 trillion Bitcoin versus gold market cap
• 30:43
  9.89%, decline from all time high negative 1.2% and realize
• 30:49
  monetary inflation .85%. Anyways, I want to talk about an
• 30:55
  interesting topic and that topic is taxes.
• 30:59
  Now, before we get into this topic, I will say guys, follow
• 31:03
  the law, pay your taxes, you know, pay income tax, pay
• 31:07
  capital gains tax. You got to do you know what the
• 31:09
  law is and we advocate for you know what the law is and
• 31:12
  following the law. But you know, at the end of the
• 31:15
  day, we are protected by the 1st Amendment and we're allowed to
• 31:19
  voice our opinions about, you know, the the situation.
• 31:23
  And what I will say is Nunya says it best.
• 31:28
  Bitcoin is money must be tax free.
• 31:31
  And I think that's a really incredible point.
• 31:34
  I mean, think about it for a second.
• 31:36
  Why should we be penalized for using better money?
• 31:40
  Because the way that it currently works is essentially
• 31:45
  you're saving in Bitcoin, right? If you save in Fiat, you're
• 31:49
  forced to lose purchasing power. So not only are you taxed for
• 31:54
  your income, you're also getting tax by holding and saving in
• 31:58
  Fiat, by earning in Fiat inflation tax, right?
• 32:02
  So that's double taxation. And you also get penalized if
• 32:07
  you choose to opt out and you choose to use Bitcoin as as
• 32:12
  money, right? And here is something that
• 32:15
  Senator Lummis, the Bitcoin senator, promised at the Bitcoin
• 32:18
  conference. Unfortunately, this didn't make
• 32:21
  it into the big beautiful bill. It was very close, but it didn't
• 32:25
  make it in. But here's the provision that
• 32:26
  she was talking about. What's happening here at this
• 32:30
  convention and what's happening around the country with the
• 32:34
  creation of applications for engaging the Lightning Network
• 32:41
  in small purchases, for example, we want to make sure that
• 32:46
  there's a de minimis amount, so if you are are buying something
• 32:51
  with Bitcoin, you are exempt from IRS reporting if it's under
• 32:58
  $600.00. Things like that are important
• 33:00
  to making Bitcoin very, very useful and utilitarian within
• 33:05
  the US economy. 100% Unfortunately, that was not
• 33:09
  passed. That was not included in the big
• 33:11
  beautiful bill. But fortunately coming up July
• 33:15
  14th, Congress is going to be talking about, you know, Bitcoin
• 33:21
  taxes, crypto and taxes. And here's the latest and
• 33:24
  greatest from the Bitcoin Senator and Charles Spain.
• 33:28
  It is now. And and that's why we want to
• 33:30
  discuss the digital asset tax legislation because there's a
• 33:33
  whole lot of parts of this. But again, it's smart stuff
• 33:36
  because this and the more growth we want to make sure people are
• 33:39
  protected with taxes. You want to talk about the most
• 33:42
  important parts of this? We do.
• 33:46
  There's a part that would prevent the double taxation of
• 33:50
  digital assets. Right now, they're taxed when
• 33:53
  they're identified and they're taxed again when they're sold.
• 33:56
  We don't do that with things like gold and cattle.
• 33:59
  We tax them when they're sold. And so we need to change that
• 34:03
  for digital assets. We're also sponsoring
• 34:07
  legislation that would create a de minimis amount that people
• 34:12
  people could spend when we're using Bitcoin as a means of
• 34:15
  exchange, we want to have a de minimis amount that can be used
• 34:20
  and spent without being subject to taxation.
• 34:23
  That amount would be about $5000 per year.
• 34:27
  So those are a couple of the main provisions.
• 34:30
  So, you know, again, unfortunately the $600.00
• 34:33
  provision wasn't included in the big beautiful bill.
• 34:35
  There wasn't enough lobbying, but again, enough pressure,
• 34:38
  enough people that are holding Bitcoin that are in Congress and
• 34:42
  then eventually, you know, they're not going to vote
• 34:44
  against their own bags. And again, this isn't
• 34:47
  unreasonable. Let me explain.
• 34:49
  If you are using EUR and you're using dollars, EUR, I can't
• 34:55
  believe I even said that. I need to go brush my teeth.
• 34:59
  But let's say you're using EUR, right?
• 35:03
  And you exchange those EUR for dollars, right?
• 35:07
  You don't get taxed for that like unless it's forex and
• 35:10
  you're purposely doing it and it's like a large capital gain
• 35:14
  that you have. You don't get taxed for
• 35:16
  exchanging dollars to euros or euros to dollars or dollars to
• 35:20
  any other Fiat currency. You don't do that if you're
• 35:23
  doing it for personal reasons. Now, of course, if you're
• 35:26
  trading on the forex and this is what you're focused on, yes, you
• 35:29
  do have to pay capital gains for that.
• 35:30
  But just for exchanging between currencies, you don't have to do
• 35:34
  that. Bitcoin is money.
• 35:36
  People are using it as money. As much as the central bankers
• 35:39
  don't want to call it money, they don't get to define what
• 35:43
  money is. The market fundamentally gets to
• 35:45
  define as money is what money is.
• 35:49
  So you know, why is it getting taxes a collectible, right?
• 35:52
  It's almost like the system doesn't want you using it almost
• 35:56
  right? Govern governments say Bitcoin
• 35:58
  isn't real money. They call it property.
• 36:00
  So anytime you spend, trade swap it, they treat they treat it
• 36:05
  like you're selling a stock and that means taxes.
• 36:07
  Why? Officially, it's about
• 36:09
  compliance and consumer protection, but unofficially,
• 36:12
  some might say not. Here, it's simply Bitcoin.
• 36:15
  Of course, it's about keeping you locked into the Fiat
• 36:20
  currency system. After all, Bitcoin can't be
• 36:23
  printed, it can't be frozen, and it doesn't need a central bank.
• 36:26
  If too many people start using it as actual money, well, it
• 36:30
  might raise an uncomfortable question about Fiat.
• 36:36
  Why does money need inflation in order to function?
• 36:40
  What is the results of this? You're penalized for using sound
• 36:43
  money and rewarded for staying in an inflationary debt Fiat
• 36:49
  money system. And here's the punch line.
• 36:52
  They tax Bitcoin like it's property because if they treat
• 36:55
  it like money, people might actually start using it.
• 36:58
  And maybe, just maybe, who knows?
• 37:02
  That's what they're afraid of anyways, Leonard, what are?
• 37:05
  Your takes on I was gonna say, I was gonna say if there's
• 37:07
  something you can say, I'll say it for you.
• 37:09
  Don't worry about it. That's totally cool.
• 37:11
  And I think you're absolutely right.
• 37:13
  I think you hit the nail on the head.
• 37:14
  That's exactly what's happening here.
• 37:16
  It feels very much since the beginning of Bitcoin is like
• 37:19
  going in against the concrete wall of the system.
• 37:22
  Obviously you're thinking about why would there be a taxation on
• 37:26
  money? There shouldn't be.
• 37:28
  You are, you're absolutely right.
• 37:29
  You're getting penalized for something that operates like
• 37:31
  gold. And if you look at the history
• 37:32
  and most of us Bitcoiners have at this point, we understand
• 37:35
  what happened with gold. A similar trajectory here is
• 37:37
  unfolding with Bitcoin. And they would love, they would
• 37:40
  love to be able to lock Bitcoin away and just print some, you
• 37:43
  know, some fake token on top of it and make you use it.
• 37:46
  So I think the fight for getting Bitcoin out of the taxation,
• 37:50
  using it as money is very important for these very
• 37:52
  reasons. I think it if anything, it will
• 37:55
  highlight what's actually happening with money and has
• 37:57
  happened with money and was taken advantage by a parasite
• 38:00
  class and government to take advantage of the purchasing
• 38:04
  power and the and the work of the public in general.
• 38:07
  And this falls back to right the beginning of our conversation
• 38:10
  with the with the insane spending of the government.
• 38:14
  There's no control of the public over it, not really, not even
• 38:17
  after this election. And I think all of this is is
• 38:20
  connected and people start to seeing this very clearly.
• 38:22
  Absolutely, I 100% agree with you, right.
• 38:25
  And you know, and this really started Leonard, you said it at
• 38:29
  the beginning of the show. What happened in 1913, creature
• 38:33
  from Jekyll Island, baby, what happened in 1913?
• 38:37
  How come the century of some of the most horrific wars in human
• 38:41
  history was the century of central banking, right?
• 38:44
  It's almost like as if unchecked unlimited money printer, you
• 38:49
  know, funds some things that the general population doesn't
• 38:52
  necessarily. I really agree with.
• 38:53
  It is taxation without representation.
• 38:57
  That is what money printing is all about.
• 38:59
  Make no mistake, keep your eye on the ball anyways guys, it's
• 39:03
  going to be an incredible show. Opti.
• 39:04
  Any last words before the next segment?
• 39:07
  Yeah, I mean, I've been talking about this, the Senator Lemons
• 39:10
  bill, of course, not to rehash what Leonard and Nico said, but
• 39:14
  my biggest take on this is just as much as I like the effort
• 39:18
  here, the de minimis tax is too low, $5000 a year is not enough.
• 39:23
  So I think it might be a good step forward.
• 39:26
  And everyone in the chat's like well.
• 39:30
  Be credit, it's incredible step. Yeah, I agree.
• 39:32
  I agree. It gets our foot in the door.
• 39:34
  That's exactly what I'm saying. I totally agree with that.
• 39:36
  But you know, it's a bit corner as all the things that they
• 39:39
  said. I'm like could we raise this a
• 39:41
  little bit? Could I use?
• 39:42
  This a ride. We're on the I'm on the Mr.
• 39:44
  Hoddle tip like from a regulatory again, guys, you have
• 39:47
  to follow the law, pay your taxes, all that stuff.
• 39:50
  But I'm on the Mr. Hoddle tip, you know, like no capital gains
• 39:54
  on on Bitcoin cells. You know.
• 39:56
  That's what I'm saying. That's what gets passed from a
• 39:59
  regulatory perspective, you know, and hopefully that happens
• 40:02
  in the future, of course, legally and through the
• 40:04
  democratic process. Anyways, guys, let's move on to
• 40:08
  the new segment. We have tons to talk about.
• 40:10
  We're going to be talking about the two forks in the road for
• 40:13
  humanity, one of peace, prosperity, hope, opportunity,
• 40:18
  and one of nihilism. Poverty, despair, destruction.
• 40:23
  You guys have heard me say this. It's Bitcoin or the other of the
• 40:28
  other. The other can't even say it.
• 40:31
  The other Ave. so ladies and gentlemen, let's get to the
• 40:34
  news. We have tons to talk about.
• 40:35
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  Anyways, I want to talk about this subject because there are
• 43:59
  two different directions civilization is heading, ladies
• 44:03
  and gentlemen, and the United States is heading towards the
• 44:08
  freedom direction. They are pro Bitcoin fantastic
• 44:13
  and the European Union is going down the other direction.
• 44:17
  Ladies and gentlemen, they're doubling down on CBDC communism.
• 44:22
  I don't know why, but that is the direction that they choose
• 44:26
  to go down. And so let's kind of do a Deeve
• 44:29
  break, a Deeve dive breakdown into this.
• 44:33
  What is the latest news? And I keep saying this, guys,
• 44:36
  this is not a hyperbolic statement.
• 44:38
  You guys have heard me say this phrase so many, so many times.
• 44:42
  They're very serious about it. Here is Opti's ex-girlfriend,
• 44:46
  the head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde,
• 44:50
  convicted convicted felon, I might add, when she was the head
• 44:54
  of the IMF. What was that?
• 44:56
  It was the IMF, I think it was the IMF, right?
• 45:00
  I don't know. I'll Fact Check and.
• 45:01
  That's why she dumped you anyways.
• 45:03
  I dumped her. And This is why CBDC's were
• 45:07
  created. CBDC's were created because Opti
• 45:10
  broke Christine Lagarde's heart. Anyways, let's check out this
• 45:13
  latest clip. Many people are a little worried
• 45:17
  about what will happen to them with the digital euro.
• 45:22
  Can you encourage them? Why the digital the euro?
• 45:25
  Good for people like you like me.
• 45:28
  A digital currency where it has been piloted and there is only
• 45:31
  one which is clearly now launched in, in a, in a very
• 45:34
  small country, but it is piloted on a fairly large scale in, in
• 45:38
  China is of use and of service to all citizens.
• 45:43
  So it is not something that is good for the elite, or is good
• 45:49
  for the young, or is good for some versus others.
• 45:53
  If it is well done, and if it is well implemented, it would be of
• 45:57
  service to all citizens. So let me just kind of let me
• 46:01
  just kind of recap what just happened there.
• 46:03
  There was someone who called and is like, hey, listen, I'm kind
• 46:06
  of concerned about this. And she's basically making the
• 46:11
  case would be of service for all citizens.
• 46:14
  The country that she referred to as the shining country on the
• 46:18
  hill, basically comparing it to is China, you know, the same
• 46:24
  country that censors information left and right, the same country
• 46:29
  that doesn't necessarily have the best track record when it
• 46:33
  comes to human rights. And, you know, like it.
• 46:38
  Let's just say it's not exactly a country that, you know, you
• 46:42
  would you would look up to, you know, as as someone who's a free
• 46:45
  minded individual, right? And she's basically saying like,
• 46:49
  look, it's not going to benefit the elite.
• 46:51
  It's not going to. It's going to benefit everyone.
• 46:55
  That's the exact opposite of what central banking has done.
• 46:59
  Central banking completely gutted the middle class
• 47:03
  entirely. How did that happen?
• 47:05
  Well, every time you earn and save in Fiat, which is most of
• 47:09
  the lower middle classes, you get debased.
• 47:13
  Your savings get debased completely, right?
• 47:17
  If you're wealthy, you do have the means to save in assets.
• 47:20
  So it's not that you're getting wealthier when the currency is
• 47:23
  being debased, but your assets are actually going up in value,
• 47:27
  right? So that creates more wealth
• 47:29
  inequality. What a CBDC is, is a central
• 47:33
  bank on steroids with God like powers.
• 47:36
  Why? Because they would be able to do
• 47:39
  exactly what China does. She brought up, I'm trying to.
• 47:41
  I didn't. Right.
• 47:42
  So you're talking about money with expiration dates.
• 47:45
  You're talking about money that's connected with a credit
• 47:49
  system. You're talking about money
• 47:51
  that's connected with an ID. And it's not like history has
• 47:55
  shown that government, governments have never abused
• 47:58
  their power, right? That that's never happened
• 48:00
  before. So yeah, I mean, I, I just don't
• 48:04
  think that's a very good comparison between the two.
• 48:08
  And I'll just add this next tweet, which again is dystopian
• 48:12
  AF. Here's a post from the European
• 48:15
  Central Bank. There's an urgent need to
• 48:18
  channel retail savings into capital markets to develop those
• 48:22
  markets and finance EU priorities.
• 48:25
  An EU saving standard could increase retail participation,
• 48:29
  benefiting savers, boosting investment and supporting
• 48:32
  strategic priorities. So what they're basically saying
• 48:36
  is that the EU, this European Central Bank, feels entitled to
• 48:42
  do what they want to do with your savings.
• 48:46
  That is nuts. Could you imagine?
• 48:49
  Like, you work your ass off, you pay your taxes, you are a good
• 48:53
  citizen. And they're basically saying,
• 48:55
  hey, you know what, we need to channel those retail savings
• 49:00
  into capital markets, bro. And I'm just gonna scroll.
• 49:04
  I'm not gonna read any of these. But you know, it's just
• 49:06
  hilarious as Bitcoiners are just kind of replying to this.
• 49:10
  Bitcoin exists for this matter. Anyways, before I move on to the
• 49:13
  next topic, because that is the route that the European Union is
• 49:17
  heading down. They're doubling down on CBD CS,
• 49:20
  which again, I think is a horrible idea.
• 49:23
  It's a continuation of the central banking system that has
• 49:26
  oppressed humanity for the last 100 years.
• 49:28
  Before I move on, Leonard, you have any thoughts on this?
• 49:31
  And just a reminder, we are on YouTube, so let's keep it
• 49:35
  somewhat YouTube. Friendly.
• 49:37
  Yeah. You know, me, I have to really
• 49:38
  keep it. I really have to hold it back on
• 49:40
  this one. I was going to say like, let's
• 49:41
  stay on this topic for a little while longer.
• 49:44
  No, but I think it's the same. That's the repeat.
• 49:46
  It's the same thing all over again.
• 49:48
  You have, you have, if you look back at the history, gold now
• 49:52
  Bitcoin, it's the idea of a more decentralized system where the
• 49:55
  individual has control over their own destiny, where maybe
• 49:59
  the innovations and manufacturing are the ones that
• 50:02
  dictate the journey. And then you have the opposite,
• 50:04
  where the centralist dictates and holds the rest of the
• 50:07
  population in in slavery or full control.
• 50:10
  The Europeans love this model very much.
• 50:13
  They're very used to it. Obviously, I'm originally I'm a
• 50:16
  German, I'm now AUS citizen. But if you look back in in
• 50:19
  history, there's a certain distinction between Europeans
• 50:22
  who decided to move to America versus Europeans.
• 50:24
  So they are more inclined to enjoy that model.
• 50:28
  But but it is in like you said, the centralization is slavery.
• 50:31
  If you were to say the centralist has an idea how to
• 50:34
  benefit the population and you have a communist ideal, the IT
• 50:38
  unfortunately clashes with reality and human reality every
• 50:41
  single time it's been tried. What what actually really
• 50:43
  happens is you have a massive amount of parasites that bubble
• 50:46
  up to the top and take advantage of it to fill their pockets and
• 50:50
  infrastructure suffers and the individual suffers and the
• 50:53
  purchasing power and their and their future degrades.
• 50:56
  So like you said, Bitcoin is a journey towards more freedom and
• 50:59
  towards more decentralization and hopefully more manufacturing
• 51:03
  innovation and prosperity for everyone.
• 51:05
  That's absolutely. Beautifully, beautifully
• 51:08
  summarized. So, and then I know what a lot
• 51:10
  of you guys are thinking. Like, you know, dude, like this
• 51:13
  kind of sounds a little bit dark, you know, like, wow, like
• 51:16
  we're kind of heading towards this world where, you know, more
• 51:19
  control. And I also want to mention too,
• 51:21
  because I love the track record. And by the way, Opti did confirm
• 51:25
  it. So Christine Lagarde was the
• 51:26
  head of the IMF. She is a convicted felon.
• 51:30
  You can don't trust me. You can verify that yourself,
• 51:33
  right? And now she is the head of the
• 51:35
  European Central Bank, and she has been calling Bitcoin a scam
• 51:41
  for quite a while now. Here's one of those tweets.
• 51:44
  Bitcoin's last stand from November 2020.
• 51:47
  Second, November of 2022, the Bitcoin price was literally at
• 51:52
  $16,000 and it has risen 592% since then.
• 52:02
  Maybe that maybe they got that one wrong.
• 52:04
  That's just a personal opinion though.
• 52:05
  So the European Union is heading down a certain round that sorted
• 52:09
  route. They're doubling down on CBDC's.
• 52:11
  However, the shining country on a hill, the United States of
• 52:15
  America has chosen a different path.
• 52:18
  America will be the Bitcoin superpower of the world.
• 52:22
  The golden age of America has begun.
• 52:25
  That is for audio listeners, a post from the white official
• 52:31
  White House account. And again, it has the AI
• 52:35
  Cryptozar David Sachs next to President Trump and next to Bo
• 52:40
  Hines, who's in charge of the strategic Bitcoin Reserve
• 52:43
  initiative coming out of the executive branch.
• 52:46
  And here are the two realities. Here are the two paths forward.
• 52:49
  Ladies and gentlemen, I'll do a, a kind of a, a quick breakdown,
• 52:53
  right? So there's two paths in front of
• 52:54
  us. And I think it's 2 paths for
• 52:56
  humanity. There's a fork in the road for
• 52:58
  humanity. You can make this full screen
• 53:00
  opti if you want. Actually, no, no, no, pull up
• 53:02
  the pull up the I like the tweet, but there's two paths,
• 53:05
  right? Path number one is US versus
• 53:09
  Europe. The US for now is the most
• 53:11
  Bitcoin friendly major country. Miners are public, ETFs are
• 53:16
  live. Politicians like Trump, Lummus,
• 53:18
  Emmer are openly pro Bitcoin. It's not perfect, but Bitcoin
• 53:22
  has still room to breathe. Europe not so much.
• 53:25
  Mika regulations prioritize surveillance, friend friendly
• 53:29
  stable coins, and compliant altcoins.
• 53:31
  Self custody is quietly discouraged and proof of work
• 53:35
  remains under pressure. Bitcoin isn't banned, but it's
• 53:38
  certainly not welcome. Mika is marketed as consumer
• 53:42
  protection, but it also lays the groundwork for a digital euro.
• 53:46
  Transactions over €1000 tracked, peer-to-peer monitored, privacy
• 53:50
  optional. The ECB has made it clear cash
• 53:54
  is on the way out and programmable digital money is
• 53:57
  coming in the bigger picture. Freedom or friction?
• 54:01
  Europe is the test lab. If CBD CS work there, other
• 54:04
  regions will follow. The question is, do you want
• 54:07
  money that's neutral and open, or one that can be limited,
• 54:10
  taxed, or frozen? Based on your behavior, Bitcoin
• 54:14
  equals the peaceful exit. For now.
• 54:16
  Bitcoin is still legal, still usable, still yours.
• 54:20
  But that window won't stay open forever.
• 54:22
  The time is to opt out is before the gates close, not before
• 54:27
  Bitcoin or control cord, cold storage or digital rails.
• 54:31
  The choice is still yours. For now, that's what I'll say.
• 54:35
  This is the future ahead of us as the human race, and we got to
• 54:40
  choose. Do we want a continuation of
• 54:42
  central banking, or do we want a currency that is not controlled
• 54:47
  by anyone? It has rules without rulers, it
• 54:49
  has absolute scarcity, and of course, that currency is
• 54:53
  Bitcoin. The choice is yours.
• 54:55
  Ladies and gentlemen, which which system do you want to
• 54:57
  choose? Housing has gotten cheaper if
• 55:00
  you've been saving a Bitcoin. Everything's gotten cheaper if
• 55:02
  you've been saving a Bitcoin. If you've been saving in Fiat,
• 55:05
  including CBD CS, everything has gotten more expensive.
• 55:08
  Remember, CBD CS, as much as they get promoted, as you know,
• 55:12
  the end all be all to fix all these problems.
• 55:15
  They don't fix a lot of fundamental issues.
• 55:18
  And one of those fundamental issues, they don't fix
• 55:21
  inflation. They don't fix censorship
• 55:24
  resistance because if you happen to live in, let's say,
• 55:28
  Afghanistan, you happen to live in Cuba, you happen to live in a
• 55:32
  totalitarian country. Like I think every human, I
• 55:37
  think it should be a human right for you to be able to save and a
• 55:41
  currency that can't be censored to the base.
• 55:43
  I don't think that's too crazy to ask.
• 55:46
  I don't think that's a crazy unreasonable a statement that
• 55:51
  I'm making, right, because they're trying to they're trying
• 55:54
  to frame it as if we're crazy like unhosted wallets are the we
• 55:58
  are the crazy ones. I would say I don't agree.
• 56:02
  I would say, you know, being forced to use the money that
• 56:06
  steals from you that the bases. I think that's pretty crazy.
• 56:11
  And I think the only reason that people haven't spoken up about
• 56:14
  this in the past is because there wasn't another option.
• 56:18
  And now what's really crazy, and this is one of the things that I
• 56:20
  love about Bitcoin, is that Bitcoin exposes incentives.
• 56:24
  So Bitcoin brings up a mirror and it says, hey, you can't make
• 56:28
  us go away. We're fully decentralized.
• 56:31
  You're going to have to compete with us on the open market.
• 56:35
  And incentives always beat coercion, Leonard.
• 56:38
  And I know this very well, right?
• 56:40
  So my money is on incentives. My money's on Bitcoin winning.
• 56:45
  And that doesn't mean that they're not gonna try to remain
• 56:49
  and keep control because this is what it's fundamentally about
• 56:52
  under the guise of consumer protection.
• 56:55
  Fundamentally, what this comes down to is control over the
• 56:59
  populace. If you control the money, you
• 57:01
  control the people. Anyways, Leonard, final thoughts
• 57:04
  before we move on. And again, we are on YouTube.
• 57:07
  We love YouTube by the way. Incredible platform.
• 57:10
  It's funny that you always mentioned that before you switch
• 57:12
  over to me. We had a very nice conversation.
• 57:14
  Niko and I at the conference, Bitcoin conference now is really
• 57:16
  scared. But no, I totally agree with
• 57:18
  you. I think I think Bitcoin is, is
• 57:20
  freedom and that's why I got into it.
• 57:23
  That's why I'm excited about it. And the opposite is very clear.
• 57:26
  It's, it's shown its trail of blood in the last century.
• 57:30
  You know, you, you do have people in in a central state
• 57:33
  that think that they can do better and they can make better
• 57:35
  decisions in the rest of the population.
• 57:37
  Usually that's not the case. You know, maybe you could say
• 57:40
  even in China, you could say even in China where you have,
• 57:43
  let's say, PHD's and, and engineers or whatever running
• 57:46
  the country and in many ways benefiting their, their citizens
• 57:49
  when it comes to being outspoken and say the things you do want
• 57:52
  to say, you get censored. And there's, you know, with the
• 57:56
  money control, CBC control and control over social media, you
• 57:59
  basically disappear. If that's the type of future you
• 58:03
  want to live in, then that's not the one that I think most of us
• 58:08
  here in the North American continent would like to enjoy.
• 58:13
  Very, very well said, guys. If you're enjoying the show,
• 58:16
  2025 hundred live viewers between YouTube and X smash that
• 58:22
  like button. Almost 600 live viewers on
• 58:24
  YouTube, 100 live viewers on Rumble, Smash that like button.
• 58:28
  Ladies and gentlemen, we still have a ton of content.
• 58:31
  We're going to be talking to the CTO of Byte Federal Leonard
• 58:36
  about Byte Federal during the culture segment.
• 58:38
  So stay tuned. We will be right back in just
• 58:41
  one second. I want to give a shout out to
• 58:44
  our partner Hive Digital Technology.
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  Head over to Casa dot IO. Alright everybody, we are back
• 1:00:27
  ladies and gentlemen, and we're in the culture segment.
• 1:00:30
  We're we're about to do a deep dive with Leonard into Bite
• 1:00:34
  Federal. He's pulling up the Bike Federal
• 1:00:36
  website. Leonard, welcome to the show
• 1:00:38
  man. Thank you so much for coming
• 1:00:39
  out. Pleasure.
• 1:00:40
  Pleasure for having me enjoy it very much.
• 1:00:43
  So Leonard, talk to us a little bit about Bite Federal.
• 1:00:46
  For anyone who doesn't know, bite Federal, ladies and
• 1:00:48
  gentlemen, is one of the largest Bitcoin ATM companies in the
• 1:00:53
  United States of America. They offer a variety of
• 1:00:56
  different products like of course the ATMs, the vault,
• 1:00:59
  proof of proof of the POS if you're it's.
• 1:01:04
  Fun of sale? Yeah, if you're.
• 1:01:05
  A merchant, if you're a merchant, right, and they have a
• 1:01:09
  find a Bitcoin ATM near me, which you could put in your
• 1:01:12
  address and it'll tell you the closest ATM Opti put in Texas,
• 1:01:17
  but he forgets he lives in Miami now.
• 1:01:20
  That's not that's not, Doc says here.
• 1:01:21
  And anyways, so, so let's go through, let's go through this,
• 1:01:27
  Leonard, what is Byte Federal? What makes you guys unique?
• 1:01:32
  And why don't you tell? Why don't you tell everybody a
• 1:01:33
  little bit about yourself as well?
• 1:01:35
  I, I, I'll, I'll do both. So Byte Federal is an
• 1:01:39
  interesting, interesting beast. So we started in 2016, one of
• 1:01:42
  the first Bitcoin ATM operations in the United States.
• 1:01:47
  And that's quite a difficult space to be in, to be, to be
• 1:01:50
  honest. So you're, you're immediately
• 1:01:52
  clashing heads with banks, regulators and then of course
• 1:01:56
  the the whole crypto world. And you have to navigate that
• 1:01:59
  very, very well because you're in a highly regulated industry
• 1:02:02
  when it comes to cash, cash transport logistics.
• 1:02:05
  As you can see on the map, we're at this point in 42 states,
• 1:02:09
  about 1400 locations, retail locations, a lot of them are
• 1:02:14
  24/7 operating with a very reliable network.
• 1:02:17
  Very proud of our network servicing customers in across
• 1:02:22
  the continental US, also Australia.
• 1:02:26
  And the story, like I said, started 2016.
• 1:02:28
  It's me, it's two friends of mine.
• 1:02:30
  We started this, this business and it's been quite a, it's been
• 1:02:34
  quite a ride. I personally, as you can hear
• 1:02:36
  from my accent, I'm originally from Germany, East Germany.
• 1:02:38
  My, I was actually born in Communist East Germany.
• 1:02:41
  My parents fled when I was 8 years.
• 1:02:43
  I got lucky, so to speak, not really lucky.
• 1:02:46
  My, my, my dad is, is quite something if you meet him.
• 1:02:49
  And so we escaped East Germany and I grew up in Austria and
• 1:02:51
  Vienna and lived some time and Germany later studied and after
• 1:02:56
  the reunification and then eventually after some years in
• 1:02:59
  Asia, came to United States and became full citizen a few years
• 1:03:02
  ago. But yeah, the, the world of Bite
• 1:03:06
  Federal is, is intense and interesting.
• 1:03:07
  We started with this retail network on the ground, which is
• 1:03:11
  amazing. People can use their cash to
• 1:03:13
  purchase and sell Bitcoin. Most of them buy Bitcoin and
• 1:03:18
  we've built our our digital footprint up from there.
• 1:03:21
  We went into the wallet space, banking as a service integrated
• 1:03:25
  into our wallet. We now branched out to two types
• 1:03:28
  of wallet. One that's going to launch here
• 1:03:29
  very soon is a custodial, fully custodial wallet, make it
• 1:03:32
  simpler and easier for some people that are not comfortable
• 1:03:34
  with seat phrases. The other one is our, our first
• 1:03:38
  wallet that we developed, which is what we renamed as Vault,
• 1:03:41
  which is more for the pro Bitcoiner.
• 1:03:43
  And then we also went into the merchant sector because we
• 1:03:46
  really believe, just like you mentioned the beginning of the
• 1:03:48
  show, that it's very important for Bitcoin to be used as money
• 1:03:51
  for all the, for all the reasons that we gave earlier.
• 1:03:54
  And the point of sale is an API in the background that allows
• 1:03:58
  people, merchants to set up their shop all legally and
• 1:04:02
  beautifully above board and also have a point of sale system
• 1:04:05
  because sometimes they just don't work very well with a,
• 1:04:08
  with a phone. You know, sometimes you need
• 1:04:10
  your, your clerk in your store and needs a device that's
• 1:04:12
  separated out and that does everything without you having to
• 1:04:15
  think about it, printing receipts and all of that.
• 1:04:17
  So it's a whole merchant platform, a wallet and a retail
• 1:04:22
  location across the United States.
• 1:04:25
  That that's awesome man. And your story too is, you know,
• 1:04:28
  it, it makes a whole lot of sense as to why you'd be
• 1:04:32
  interested into something like Bitcoin, you know, living in a,
• 1:04:37
  you know, being born in into a totalitarian system, it makes
• 1:04:40
  sense why you would want a permission.
• 1:04:43
  You'd, you know, focus your career on building out the
• 1:04:46
  infrastructure for a permission less money.
• 1:04:49
  Yeah, I came across the Bitcoin white paper in 2011.
• 1:04:53
  I think Bitcoin was around a dollar if I remember correctly.
• 1:04:56
  And it just immediately if with if you have a history like that,
• 1:04:59
  I had very libertarian leanings and it just speaks to you right
• 1:05:03
  away. And then my background is
• 1:05:05
  computer science. You study computer science and
• 1:05:07
  you see the Byzantine general's solution there and you're like,
• 1:05:10
  OK, wow. That, you know, I'm surprised
• 1:05:13
  this gentleman didn't publish this in a, in a, in a scientific
• 1:05:16
  journal or so. But, you know, obviously now in
• 1:05:18
  hindsight, it all kind of makes a lot of sense where and how
• 1:05:22
  Bitcoin got launched and what would have happened if it was
• 1:05:25
  launched, you know, not anonymously, but in a different
• 1:05:29
  fashion that it could be taken down and could be taken apart,
• 1:05:31
  which in the very beginning, we actually frankly thought this
• 1:05:34
  is, you know, if the government really understands what's
• 1:05:36
  happening here, it can't let it run this.
• 1:05:40
  And the Chinese obviously kind of understood it at some point
• 1:05:44
  and tried to stop it. But it's the the power of these
• 1:05:47
  of the network effect, the power of, of an idea.
• 1:05:50
  You can't put it back into its box.
• 1:05:52
  It's out and it has advantages over gold.
• 1:05:56
  In particular, I had a conversation with Peter Schiff.
• 1:05:58
  I couldn't hold myself back at the Bitcoin conference about the
• 1:06:01
  very cryptographic technical factors that make it so much
• 1:06:04
  harder to attack than then goal that you have to slap around and
• 1:06:08
  eventually end up keeping in a safe place only to be replaced.
• 1:06:14
  So we definitely I my big talking point with Bitcoiners in
• 1:06:17
  particular is like always, keep your eyes open.
• 1:06:18
  Don't forget the history of money, where it's coming from
• 1:06:21
  and what the powers that be tried to do to the network in
• 1:06:25
  order to retain their own, their own control, non productive
• 1:06:31
  control. I will say over the over the
• 1:06:33
  economy. Yeah, 100%.
• 1:06:36
  So let's pivot the conversation back to Byte Federal, you guys
• 1:06:39
  again, three products that I saw from the website.
• 1:06:42
  What what differentiates the Byte Federal ATMs?
• 1:06:46
  So the really cool thing about Betfair was we built everything
• 1:06:49
  in the US We're the only operator and manufacturer of
• 1:06:53
  Bitcoin ATMs in the United States.
• 1:06:55
  So we have the sheet metal of the the chassis coming in on the
• 1:06:58
  one side and the the fully assembled programs ATM going out
• 1:07:04
  on the other, getting installed, getting maintained, operated.
• 1:07:08
  The whole network is controlled by our software stack, not just
• 1:07:12
  the kiosk front end, but also the administrative side.
• 1:07:14
  So you have a a full stack operation in house from the
• 1:07:18
  ground up including the wallet and the point of sale.
• 1:07:21
  So that sets us really apart from everyone else.
• 1:07:23
  Most operators that you see out there, they buy an ATM over
• 1:07:26
  here, they buy the software over there and they operate With BITE
• 1:07:30
  Federal, it's a very different story.
• 1:07:31
  It's all in house. It's all we did it before it was
• 1:07:35
  sexy, if you will, to the SpaceX model to have the full control
• 1:07:38
  over your stack. And it gives you a lot more
• 1:07:40
  flexibility if you want to make a change to the software, if you
• 1:07:43
  want to add some other partner into our network.
• 1:07:46
  It's very easy for us to do that, make changes, especially
• 1:07:49
  from a regulatory perspective, something changes in the state
• 1:07:52
  level or so we can, we can react very, very quickly.
• 1:07:55
  Incredible, incredible. So let's move on to the next
• 1:07:58
  next product I think I saw which was the vault.
• 1:08:02
  What is that? Yeah, so the vault story starts
• 1:08:04
  in 22. After we had successfully
• 1:08:06
  established ourselves as a Bitcoin ATM network, we branched
• 1:08:10
  out to the wallet because obviously a lot of people come
• 1:08:12
  to the ATM. It's very often the first
• 1:08:13
  touchpoint for people to try out Bitcoin.
• 1:08:17
  I've like this funny story. I all tell this one little story
• 1:08:20
  when in the early days, Bitcoin ATMs where I was at one ATM kind
• 1:08:23
  of maintaining and and looking at it, I saw the parking lot,
• 1:08:27
  two elderly folks coming along, walking across and like in a
• 1:08:31
  heated debate with the with a young gentleman.
• 1:08:33
  And then they entered the the gas station where our Bitcoin
• 1:08:35
  ATM was. And so you could see that the
• 1:08:37
  young kid had turned out to be their son had like tried to
• 1:08:41
  explain Bitcoin to them for a very long time and it was
• 1:08:43
  completely exhausted and he didn't understand what he wanted
• 1:08:46
  from them. And then he walks into the, into
• 1:08:48
  the gas station and he points to the Bitcoin ATM and says, like
• 1:08:50
  mom and dad, this is Bitcoin. And so they're like, ah, now
• 1:08:55
  we're understanding how we, we know what to do.
• 1:08:57
  That was kind of really, really cute and interesting to see.
• 1:08:59
  But yeah, we, we realized there was a need for wallets and
• 1:09:02
  wallets in particular, they're very simple and easy to use.
• 1:09:04
  So we branched out and built our own wallet, which we're very
• 1:09:08
  proud of. And like I said, we're going to
• 1:09:10
  soon supplement it with a with a custodial wallet that's a little
• 1:09:13
  bit simpler to use, but this one has a lot of power, a lot of
• 1:09:17
  features, digital notary, for instance, you can notarize
• 1:09:20
  documents in the wallet and hash tools on the Bitcoin blockchain.
• 1:09:24
  So a lot of interesting features and details that went into that
• 1:09:29
  product. I love that.
• 1:09:30
  So let's talk about the point of sale.
• 1:09:32
  If you're a merchant, I think this is really cool, especially
• 1:09:36
  like here in the United States, right?
• 1:09:40
  A lot of the point of sales are credit card focused, right?
• 1:09:45
  So what is the bike connect? How's it differentiate itself
• 1:09:49
  from let's say Square or even though we, you know, we, we love
• 1:09:54
  Jack Dorsey and what he's doing over there, but other points of
• 1:09:57
  sales which I'm not familiar with, but there's plenty of
• 1:09:59
  them, right? So what differentiates Bike
• 1:10:01
  Connect from everybody else? Yeah, there are, there are some
• 1:10:04
  out there. It's a very difficult market.
• 1:10:06
  So I applaud definitely Jack Dorsey for trying to push it.
• 1:10:09
  It's a lot of the start-ups that have been in this space.
• 1:10:11
  They go just bankrupt after a while.
• 1:10:13
  One of the reasons is just a difficulty for Bitcoin as money,
• 1:10:16
  which we alluded to also in the beginning of the show.
• 1:10:19
  So I hope Senator Loomis has success with it will make it
• 1:10:22
  easier. If you get taxed on
• 1:10:24
  transactions, it's really difficult to use.
• 1:10:25
  But for instance, we didn't see a lot of support for Bitcoin
• 1:10:30
  merchant software in the beginning when we started out.
• 1:10:33
  So we we felt like it's a natural supplement to what we
• 1:10:36
  already offer and went head first into the space, but
• 1:10:40
  learned a lot. Lightning is enabled on our
• 1:10:42
  wallets as well and and the point of sale system.
• 1:10:45
  So making it really easy for merchants.
• 1:10:48
  You do have to, you do run into some of your regulatory issues
• 1:10:51
  in the United States, in Australia, for instance, our
• 1:10:54
  team there is as far as we know, the only one that got the
• 1:10:57
  payment application license from AUSTRAC In the US you need money
• 1:11:02
  transmission licenses in some models of this, this method.
• 1:11:06
  So it's, it's tricky. It's not that easy to set up
• 1:11:09
  just even from a regulatory perspective to make sure that
• 1:11:11
  the merchants have everything that they need.
• 1:11:14
  Yeah, that's, no, that's, that's actually incredible.
• 1:11:17
  Last thing I wanted to point out too, and I think this is going
• 1:11:19
  to start, you know, happening more and more transform your
• 1:11:23
  real estate transactions with Bitcoin.
• 1:11:26
  What does that mean, Leonard? So here we we partnered with a
• 1:11:30
  with a company called Neo. They do need new estates only.
• 1:11:36
  It's a it's a very interesting also start up that's not around
• 1:11:39
  for too long, but they've made a huge strides in the market and
• 1:11:42
  we've became we've become their their main Bitcoin transaction
• 1:11:47
  hub, if you will. So if someone wants to buy a new
• 1:11:50
  property through NEO, then by the federal will help.
• 1:11:53
  But in general, the platform is built generically speaking, for
• 1:11:56
  for anyone who wants to do a real estate transaction.
• 1:11:59
  So it's just if you think about it, the whole platform that we
• 1:12:01
  have in the back end contains the QYCML process that you that
• 1:12:05
  the banks and the companies require that are involved in
• 1:12:08
  this process. And then we just facilitate the
• 1:12:11
  the transfer and conversion of Bitcoin to U.S. dollars.
• 1:12:15
  That's fantastic man. Very cool guys.
• 1:12:17
  Go check out bytefederal.com. This is Leonard the CTO started
• 1:12:23
  in 2016 and again, you know, Leonard was able to identify
• 1:12:29
  Bitcoin a very similar reasons to why I was able to identify
• 1:12:33
  Bitcoin. You know, just our home
• 1:12:35
  countries, you know, went down some certain paths and you know,
• 1:12:41
  Bitcoin is a tool of freedom fundamentally, right.
• 1:12:43
  So Leonard, it's been an honor to have you on today's show on
• 1:12:46
  the Friday show of simply Bitcoin.
• 1:12:48
  Today is July July 11th, 2025. I'm your host, Nico is my
• 1:12:54
  legendary Co host Nihilus Fields and of course, our special guest
• 1:12:57
  for today, Leonard, the CTO of Bite Federal.
• 1:13:01
  Again, go check out bite Federal dot com.
• 1:13:04
  Love you guys. We'll see you guys on Monday for
• 1:13:06
  brand new episode of Simply Bitcoin Live.
• 1:13:09
  Today's episode was brought to you by bitcoinwell.com, a
• 1:13:12
  Bitcoin only platform on a mission to enable financial
• 1:13:16
  independence.