Latest / Simply Bitcoin / $4.9T GIANTS NEW Bitcoin Report: NATION STATES ARE COMING! | EP 1156

Transcript

$4.9T GIANTS NEW Bitcoin Report: NATION STATES ARE COMING! | EP 1156 · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  Yo, this $4.9 trillion giant just dropped a new Bitcoin
• 0:06
  report making some shocking conclusions about BTC.
• 0:10
  Not only did this new report say that we're early to Bitcoin, but
• 0:15
  they also dropped some bombshells about nation state
• 0:18
  Bitcoin adoption. Today we're going to be breaking
• 0:21
  down all the key insights from this mega 34 page report, so
• 0:27
  let's jump straight to it. But before we start the show,
• 0:30
  bring up my legendary Co host, Optimist Fields, who's always
• 0:33
  optimistic. And of course, in the house
• 0:36
  today we have Max Kai. Max Kai is the CEO of Debbie 5.
• 0:40
  We're going to talk about that during the culture segment.
• 0:44
  But before we do that, let's jump straight into the report.
• 0:47
  And who is this? Who is this giant?
• 0:50
  Who is this $4 trillion giant? Of course, I'm talking about
• 0:54
  Fidelity. Fidelity was one of the first
• 0:56
  asset managers that got into the Bitcoin space.
• 1:00
  They've they've been mining Bitcoin since like 2014, 2015 I
• 1:04
  believe. And you know, they were, they
• 1:06
  were first to advocate for it, you know, adopt it.
• 1:10
  And they've been in the space for a long time.
• 1:12
  But the interesting things about this report are some of the
• 1:16
  things, some of the conclusions that they made.
• 1:18
  So let's get to let's get straight into it.
• 1:21
  So first up it says, are you late to Bitcoin?
• 1:24
  This is a question that I hear all the time for so many people.
• 1:28
  You know, they see Bitcoin at 100K.
• 1:29
  When I got into Bitcoin in 2016, I remember the first Bitcoin
• 1:33
  that I bought was like. It's like 6-7 hundred dollars.
• 1:36
  I was like, dude, I'm so late. And the reason I felt so late is
• 1:39
  because I knew people that bought it at $100 or below $100.
• 1:43
  And I was like, dude. I missed the boat, I missed the
• 1:45
  train. Now I look back on those days
• 1:47
  and I'm like, bro, I wish I bought more Bitcoin at $1000 or
• 1:51
  $700.00. Like what was I thinking, right?
• 1:54
  So anyways, it says in our 2024 look ahead, the Fidelity Digital
• 1:59
  Assets Research team a pine that investors should quote, prepare
• 2:03
  for acceleration with increased adoption, development, interest
• 2:08
  in and demand for digital assets.
• 2:11
  However, no one could fully predict what 2024 would bring.
• 2:15
  The digital assets market experienced 2 significant waves
• 2:18
  of acceleration in the first half of the year with the
• 2:22
  approval of the ETFs, followed by a post election surge at the
• 2:28
  end of 2024. Right.
• 2:30
  We we call that the Trump pump here at simply Bitcoin.
• 2:34
  Anyways, moving on to page 27, the possible drivers of
• 2:39
  mainstream adoption and fusion in 2025, nation, state and
• 2:44
  government adoption. The approval and launch of spot
• 2:48
  Bitcoin ETFs earlier in 2024 led to substantial demand for
• 2:53
  exposure to Bitcoin from institutional and retail
• 2:56
  investors alike. This regulated, familiar, and
• 2:59
  accessible vehicle has made allocating to Bitcoin more
• 3:02
  streamlined than ever before, leading to several pensions and
• 3:06
  at least one endowment making allocations to Bitcoin through
• 3:10
  these products. While we expect to see this
• 3:13
  trend accelerate through 2025, one might wonder who the next
• 3:17
  significant investor might be to add Bitcoin to their portfolios.
• 3:22
  Enter nation States and governments.
• 3:24
  The largest government hodlers of Bitcoin currently are the US,
• 3:29
  China, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Bhutan, and El Salvador and has
• 3:33
  the breakdown here. The United States currently
• 3:35
  holds 198,000 Bitcoin. Donald Trump promised during the
• 3:40
  Nashville keynote that he had that the United States, while
• 3:45
  he's in charge, is not going to be selling any more of that
• 3:47
  Bitcoin. China's in 2nd place with
• 3:50
  190,000 Bitcoin. the United Kingdom has 61,000 Bitcoin.
• 3:54
  Ukraine has 46,000 Bitcoin. Bhutan has 11,688 Bitcoin.
• 4:00
  What's really interesting to me about Bhutan is that Bhutan
• 4:03
  never got any of this Bitcoin in a, in a coercive manner.
• 4:08
  This isn't Bitcoin that they just seized.
• 4:10
  This is Bitcoin that they've actually mined using their
• 4:12
  abundant energy resources. They have a tremendous amount of
• 4:17
  hydroelectric power. It's a, it's a small country in
• 4:20
  the Himalayas. And I believe the last time I
• 4:23
  checked, they're holding so much Bitcoin, it's like 1/3 of their
• 4:26
  GDP. It's like their balls deep.
• 4:28
  Like straight up. It goes on to say El Salvador
• 4:32
  5961 Bitcoin. Of course the Bitcoin country.
• 4:39
  It goes on. It goes on to say, however,
• 4:41
  despite hot holding Bitcoin, many countries with exposure
• 4:45
  have only gained that exposure through government seizures and
• 4:48
  recoveries of Bitcoin associated with entities using it for
• 4:51
  illicit financing purposes, not necessarily because they want to
• 4:55
  establish a strategic and long term position holding the asset,
• 4:58
  except for Bhutan and El Salvador.
• 5:01
  It goes on to say further, some of these governments, such as
• 5:04
  the US, have certain requirements relative to the
• 5:07
  handling and auctioning of this Bitcoin and cannot count them as
• 5:12
  part of their treasury. We expect 2025 to be the year
• 5:16
  this changes for both acceptance and adoption.
• 5:20
  This is to say, we anticipate more nation states, central
• 5:25
  banks, sovereign wealth funds, and government treasuries will
• 5:28
  look to establish strategic positions in Bitcoin.
• 5:32
  Perhaps these establishments will take notice of the playbook
• 5:36
  employed by Bhutan and El Salvador and the substantial
• 5:39
  returns they have been able to glean from such positions and a
• 5:43
  relatively short amount of time. I mean, we all remember Germany
• 5:47
  selling Bitcoin at think at like 50 or $60,000.
• 5:51
  It was like they sold 50,000 Bitcoin.
• 5:53
  The definition of wrecked, It goes on to say facing challenges
• 5:58
  such as debilitating inflation, currency debasement, increasing
• 6:02
  crushing fiscal deficits, not making any Bitcoin allocation
• 6:06
  could become more of a risk to nations than making one.
• 6:10
  Wow. President-elect Donald Trump and
• 6:12
  Senator Cynthia Lummus have been both vocal about their support
• 6:16
  and plans for establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve in the
• 6:19
  US. It remains to be seen if they
• 6:22
  follow through with this ambition in 2025.
• 6:24
  Currently, the Poly market odds have it at 40%.
• 6:28
  So I mean the odds aren't no, it's what I was telling you guys
• 6:31
  yesterday there last year, actually in 2024, I said there's
• 6:34
  a non zero chance that we'll have a pro Bitcoin president in
• 6:38
  the White House in 2025. And that seems like it came to
• 6:42
  fruition. It goes on to say Senator Lummus
• 6:45
  introduced the Bitcoin Act of 2024 to the Senate in July of
• 6:48
  2024. If the bills enacted, we believe
• 6:52
  the political and financial game theory at play will force.
• 6:55
  Other nations to follow suit. However, if this strategy were
• 6:58
  to be adopted, it is likely that nation states will begin
• 7:01
  accumulating in secret. This is because no nation hasn't
• 7:06
  sensitive to announce these plans, as doing so could
• 7:09
  influence more buyers and drive up the price.
• 7:12
  That's right, if you're selling Bitcoin right now, you're more
• 7:15
  than likely selling it to a nation state.
• 7:18
  Or Larry Fink. Don't put yourself in that
• 7:20
  position. Anyway, skip the skipping to
• 7:23
  page 32 conclusion. Not too late to Bitcoin.
• 7:26
  Not too late, and hopefully. Early to a new era Reviewing the
• 7:31
  2025 outlook, it is clear that investors are not too late to
• 7:35
  join the digital asset movement. In fact, we believe we may be
• 7:39
  entering the dawn of a new era for Digital Assets 1 poised to
• 7:43
  span multiple years, if not decades.
• 7:46
  This era could see digital assets permeating various
• 7:49
  sectors, industries, technologies, fields, balance
• 7:53
  sheets and even nation states. The pivotal question for
• 7:56
  investors now is not whether to participate, but how actively
• 8:00
  they want to engage with this transformation.
• 8:05
  Again, the big deal about this report is it's coming from a
• 8:09
  very well established and very well respected financial
• 8:14
  institution. Fidelity has four point point $9
• 8:17
  trillion assets under management.
• 8:19
  This isn't just someone on Bitcoin Twitter writing a report
• 8:23
  or writing a sub stack, you know post this is legit and they sent
• 8:28
  this to their investors and I completely agree.
• 8:31
  I think we entered a new era in bitcoins history, which is a
• 8:35
  little bit bittersweet from someone you know, class of 2016
• 8:38
  Max, I know that you came from an earlier class.
• 8:41
  You know, we're we, we came from the era of like it was the Wild
• 8:44
  West, right? But since the approval of the
• 8:47
  ETF in January of 2024, you know, trad Phi's here, the
• 8:51
  institutions are here. When Michael Saylor started
• 8:53
  accumulating as much Bitcoin as he did again, now public
• 8:57
  companies are here. When El Salvador said we're
• 8:59
  going to adopt A national strategic Bitcoin reserve
• 9:03
  strategy, you know, now nation states are here.
• 9:06
  Now as someone who wants to fix the money, fix the world, as
• 9:10
  someone who wants to end the tyranny of central banking, I
• 9:13
  just want to emphasize this guys nation state adoption is great
• 9:17
  for the price, but it's not going to change anything.
• 9:21
  What changes things is individuals holding Bitcoin in
• 9:25
  self custody. And if enough individuals do
• 9:27
  that, that is what is actually going to fundamentally change
• 9:30
  the world. That being said, this is still
• 9:33
  pretty positive for the price because the first country that
• 9:37
  uses their unlimited money printer to just print money and
• 9:41
  buy Bitcoin, that's going to make the price go up inevitably.
• 9:46
  But I love how the report basically said they're not these
• 9:48
  nation states are not going to they're not going to say
• 9:50
  anything. They're not incentivized to say
• 9:52
  anything because as soon as it like goes on the Wall Street
• 9:55
  Journal front page, United States to buy $300 billion worth
• 10:00
  of Bitcoin, like it's going to be insane.
• 10:03
  And I, and I've been saying this for a couple weeks now, if we do
• 10:06
  get a strategic Bitcoin reserve this year, we don't know what
• 10:10
  Trump's going to do. We don't know what the
• 10:12
  situation, the political situation Washington's going to
• 10:14
  be. I would not be surprised if we
• 10:16
  saw half $1,000,000 Bitcoin by the end of the year because
• 10:19
  again like you get the the ultimate last stamp of.
• 10:23
  Approval. We got that stamp of approval
• 10:26
  when Larry Fink and BlackRock put their brand and their
• 10:29
  company behind it and said, you know what?
• 10:32
  Bitcoin isn't an index for money laundering.
• 10:34
  Actually, Bitcoin is a great non sovereign alternative, right?
• 10:39
  They changed the wording completely.
• 10:41
  Now, could you imagine the United States government saying,
• 10:43
  you know what this thing actually it's, it's equivalent
• 10:47
  to gold. We're going to hold some too.
• 10:49
  All the other countries around the world.
• 10:51
  Doesn't matter. You're going to have to buy
• 10:52
  Bitcoin and kit because if not you might get left behind.
• 10:56
  So, and I think an absolutely bullish report doesn't surprise
• 11:02
  me at all. The signal is who it's coming
• 11:05
  from and the the institution it's coming from and the things
• 11:10
  that they're saying, things that we've been saying for a couple
• 11:12
  of months now. So I think 2025 is going to be
• 11:15
  an incredible year. 2024 was a historic year in bitcoins
• 11:19
  history. I think 2025 is going to top
• 11:21
  that. And we're only 8 days in and 12
• 11:24
  days from the inauguration of the first Bitcoin pro Bitcoin
• 11:30
  president, which I'm really excited for.
• 11:32
  Max, you've been here for quite a while.
• 11:34
  You've been in this industry for quite a while.
• 11:36
  Boy has have we grown up. Bitcoin is becoming a teenage,
• 11:40
  you know, it's getting out of the teenager years, it's coming
• 11:43
  into the adulthood. Things have changed.
• 11:46
  The cyberpunk, remember the early days, it was like
• 11:49
  difficult to buy a hardware wallet, to take self custody.
• 11:51
  Everything was clunky. We've come such a long way, so
• 11:54
  many things have changed. And I do agree, I think it is a
• 11:59
  bit of a new era for Bitcoin when institutions, when Trotfi
• 12:04
  is coming in. So for all the plebs that are
• 12:06
  listening right now, if you're selling your Bitcoin, you're
• 12:09
  probably selling your Bitcoin to a government or you're probably
• 12:13
  selling your Bitcoin to Larry Fink.
• 12:15
  Do not do that. That's a bad idea.
• 12:17
  Max, what are your takes? Never sell your Bitcoin, of
• 12:21
  course. I mean, I mean that that's,
• 12:25
  that's what I've been trying to achieve and that's why we are
• 12:29
  building what we're building and doing what we're doing.
• 12:32
  But again, my, my take on that as do not sell your Bitcoin.
• 12:38
  If you need the cash, borrow against that.
• 12:41
  And as you said, I still miss good old days, you know, cyber
• 12:46
  funk spirit and all that stuff. And hopefully it's not going to
• 12:49
  fade away, but we are like in, in another cycle.
• 12:54
  And it's only logical. I mean, it's evolution and
• 12:57
  institutions are coming. And hopefully after the
• 13:01
  institutions that will be wider mass adoption of Bitcoin.
• 13:06
  Because I'm still, there's still a lot of people who doesn't
• 13:09
  understand, who doesn't get it. And there's still a lot of
• 13:12
  people who are saying we're too late.
• 13:14
  I mean, look at the price, we're too late.
• 13:16
  And it's not it's not true. Nevertheless, I mean my take.
• 13:22
  I'm a hardcore believer in Bitcoin and I mean do not sell
• 13:27
  stack. I'll quote the Matt, you know,
• 13:34
  stack sats and and stay humble. Yeah, I think it's a it's stack
• 13:40
  sats. Stay humble and I'll add the
• 13:42
  Vikingo line in there. Stay solvent, which is as
• 13:46
  important too, right? Yeah.
• 13:49
  I will add in the keep building. I mean you know you need to keep
• 13:54
  building always, whether it's a beer, beer market, bull market,
• 13:57
  whatever. These things just happen and you
• 14:01
  know, never everyone is building something and I mean we are
• 14:08
  building products, you are building informational products,
• 14:12
  educational content. Even any single Bitcoiner who's
• 14:16
  not doing anything particular in the space can build network of
• 14:19
  individuals around yourself and promote Bitcoin and, you know,
• 14:24
  educate and do some stuff. Absolutely, 100%, keep building,
• 14:29
  contribute, you know, contribute that.
• 14:31
  That's what you got to do. You got to contribute to the
• 14:33
  Bitcoin ecosystem anyways, Opti, Also, I want to give a shout out
• 14:37
  to almost 1200 of you guys watching live between all the
• 14:41
  platforms. We're about to break 400 live
• 14:43
  viewers on YouTube alone. If you guys are enjoying the
• 14:45
  show so far, make sure to smash that like button.
• 14:48
  Help us break 100 likes on YouTube in the 1st 25 minutes of
• 14:55
  the show. So if you guys are enjoying the
• 14:56
  show, the live stream so far, smash that like button.
• 14:59
  Opti, what's your take on this this bombshell Fidelity report?
• 15:05
  I mean, dude, we, we, we just keep winning, bro.
• 15:07
  This 2025 is the year of Bitcoin winning and US winning feels
• 15:10
  good. What's your take?
• 15:11
  Yeah. Well, well, first of all, I need
• 15:13
  a shout out. Rob Evey in the chat, he said
• 15:16
  that this is a recording. Apparently we're AI Nico, and
• 15:19
  this is not live and we're not doing this show live.
• 15:22
  So, you know, I just want to put that caveat out there that this
• 15:25
  is actually live, guys. We're doing this live.
• 15:28
  Anyways, one thing you did say, Nico, and it just kind of struck
• 15:31
  me. This is what, Bitcoin's 16th
• 15:34
  year now, right? So it feels like 2025 is going
• 15:37
  to be like a Sweet 16 year. You know, we're going to have
• 15:40
  like a big old bash. You know, the price is going to
• 15:42
  go up, everything's going to be gravy.
• 15:44
  So I don't know that that that's totally off topic.
• 15:46
  So this, this report here from Fidelity, I said it earlier when
• 15:51
  we were kind of crafting the show and we were reading through
• 15:54
  this report and you kind of mentioned earlier like this
• 15:57
  isn't just, you know, random bit corners on Twitter with the sub
• 16:00
  SAC or, you know, a Twitter account.
• 16:02
  And this is the, this is the suits doing their due diligence
• 16:06
  and writing these reports. And while we were reading this,
• 16:08
  I was just sitting there like, man, I absolutely love the suits
• 16:11
  writing reports for us in Bitcoin.
• 16:13
  It makes us seem so legitimate. You know, they're like fancy
• 16:16
  with their charts and their language.
• 16:19
  And it just makes us look so official here with instead of
• 16:22
  just, you know, 2 idiots here with sub 65 IQ talking about
• 16:25
  Bitcoin. It's like, yes, we, we, we are
• 16:29
  so vindicated when we have the suits out there writing these
• 16:33
  reports for us or having a Black Rock, you know, Larry Fink's
• 16:36
  minions writing these reports for us.
• 16:38
  It's like, yeah, see, it's literally the bell curve.
• 16:40
  It's like, you know, left side of the bell curve.
• 16:43
  It's like, see, hey, we're coming right side of the bell
• 16:45
  curve. They're writing all these fancy
• 16:46
  reports and all the midwich in the middle, like bitcoins going
• 16:49
  to die. And we're like, no, you know,
• 16:50
  the highly regarded are coming and we are stacking all of this
• 16:54
  Bitcoin and, and you know, it's, it's our it's our future to to
• 16:58
  basically take. Anyways, there is some
• 17:00
  interesting stuff here. And I'm forgive me, I was kind
• 17:03
  of checking out the chat. So Nico, if you already kind of
• 17:06
  hit this point of the, of the report, so I might be rehashing
• 17:10
  some things. There was something in the
• 17:12
  beginning in this what what's this part are you too late
• 17:15
  section where he they start talking about Bitcoin as a, you
• 17:20
  know, revolutionary technology that isn't just going to affect
• 17:24
  1 industry. And they say that maybe Bitcoin
• 17:27
  could fit into this theory. And maybe we're at the point
• 17:31
  right now where we have passed this early speculative period,
• 17:34
  and I'm quoting here, accompanied by financial boom
• 17:37
  and bust and are now possibly entering the phase of further
• 17:40
  adoption. And while we were kind of coming
• 17:43
  through reading this, yeah, maybe maybe This Is Us kind of
• 17:46
  reaching here. But it sounds maybe like
• 17:48
  Fidelity is saying that we're no longer going to be seeing bear
• 17:52
  markets, that this is, you know, it's going up forever, Laura.
• 17:55
  Like maybe we are entering a point now where we might not see
• 17:59
  these boom and bust cycles. Maybe we're just going to see
• 18:01
  kind of like this gradual climb upwards, kind of trending
• 18:05
  sideways and then going up as we see nation state adoption, as we
• 18:09
  see institutional adoption. So we are definitely entering
• 18:13
  AAI think a whole new paradigm, a whole new era.
• 18:15
  Like they said at the very end of this is like you're not late
• 18:18
  to Bitcoin, you're just early into a whole new paradigm, into
• 18:22
  a whole new transformation. And again, reading this, I just
• 18:25
  feel super bullish. And there was one metric in
• 18:27
  there that I thought was very interesting is and I'm I can't
• 18:31
  remember what page it was on. So I'm just kind of, you know,
• 18:34
  recalling what they said, but one of the numbers there was
• 18:37
  essentially that the the majority of holders in Bitcoin,
• 18:42
  I think the numbers they said was 80% of retail are the ones
• 18:45
  holding Bitcoin. And I think that is super
• 18:47
  bullish. We, you know, we are here for
• 18:49
  Bitcoin, the revolution and having individuals hold this.
• 18:53
  Yes, of course we love the money that institutional capital is
• 18:56
  going to flow into Bitcoin and that's going to make number go
• 18:58
  up. But the fact that Satoshi
• 19:00
  created Bitcoin in such a way that it's distributed amongst
• 19:03
  basically all corners of the world, I think it's always lost
• 19:07
  on all the people that majority of holders here.
• 19:09
  And if these numbers are correct, they're estimating 80%
• 19:12
  of the Bitcoin that's held is held by individuals.
• 19:15
  And you know, we're seeing all these conversations right now
• 19:18
  play out, especially these concerns about nation state
• 19:20
  adopting Bitcoin and the centralization of Bitcoin
• 19:24
  holders. And when you really break down
• 19:26
  the numbers, again, assuming these numbers are correct and
• 19:29
  obviously they, they're, there's a little bit of speculation
• 19:32
  here. The majority of Bitcoin is being
• 19:34
  held by individuals. So that means, hey, you know,
• 19:36
  Larry Fink, BlackRock, US, Donald Trump, whatever the UK,
• 19:41
  Ukraine, whoever wants to boot on, whoever wants to buy a bunch
• 19:44
  of Bitcoin, in reality, they're enriching individuals out there.
• 19:48
  And I think that's super bullish moving forward.
• 19:50
  And I, I, I think a lot of times in Bitcoin, we do get paranoid.
• 19:54
  And of course there's and I think we should be rightfully
• 19:57
  paranoid and there is concerns of centralizations, obviously
• 20:00
  centralizations of holdings and honeypots.
• 20:02
  Etcetera, but people seem to forget that the majority of
• 20:05
  Bitcoin is held by individuals. And I think that's just one of
• 20:08
  the more bullish things coming out of this.
• 20:10
  And then of course, that conclusion, like, I don't know,
• 20:13
  guys, when you hear that last conclusion paragraph, like I
• 20:15
  feel bullish. It's like, yeah, no, we're not
• 20:17
  late to Bitcoin. We're entering a whole new era.
• 20:20
  Like we are transforming the world.
• 20:21
  This is a digital transformation of capital.
• 20:24
  And man, it just, it just feels so good being right.
• 20:26
  You know, it's like it's hard. It's hard to say.
• 20:29
  But indication, indication. Me and Max were kind of laughing
• 20:33
  when you're like, yeah man, 2025 starting off on a strong year,
• 20:37
  We're only 8 days into it and it's like, how much more winning
• 20:40
  can we actually take before we start losing our minds?
• 20:43
  We're not even a week into 2025 and it just feels like this
• 20:47
  year's going to be absolutely crazy sweet. 16 year upon us.
• 20:51
  Let's go. Let's effing go All right guys,
• 20:54
  if you guys are enjoying the show so far, make sure to smash
• 20:57
  that like button. We just broke through 100 likes
• 20:59
  on YouTube and we're at a 450 live years on YouTube, YouTube
• 21:02
  alone, and 1500 live viewers across all platforms.
• 21:06
  So again, if you guys are enjoying the show so far, smash
• 21:09
  that like button. Stay tuned because we still have
• 21:11
  so much content to cover. There is this piece or this part
• 21:17
  on legacy media where they're talking about Bitcoin being a
• 21:21
  very powerful political movement.
• 21:23
  I mean, at the end of the day, Bitcoiners do want the
• 21:25
  separation of money and state. Then we got news from Coinbase,
• 21:28
  we got news from El Salvador. El Salvador continues to get
• 21:32
  their ratings upgraded after the IMF deal and they continue to
• 21:37
  stack more Bitcoin seems like we're winning all across the
• 21:40
  board very exciting stuff but before we jump straight into all
• 21:43
  of that I want to give a very special shout out to simply
• 21:46
  bitcoins lead sponsor simply Bitcoin is powered by Bitcoin.
• 21:50
  Well Bitcoin well is the best place to build your automatic
• 21:52
  self custody Bitcoin stack. Enable your independence with
• 21:55
  the fastest and safest way to buy Bitcoin on chain or via the
• 21:59
  lightning network in Canada USA. To get started you put in your
• 22:02
  e-mail address here takes 2 to 5 minutes to sign up to sign up
• 22:07
  and bada Bing bada boom you're ready to buy self custody
• 22:11
  Bitcoin. So what what what makes Bitcoin
• 22:13
  well different? It's a completely non custodial
• 22:16
  platform which means as soon as you buy Bitcoin on Bitcoin well
• 22:20
  and the funds clear it goes straight to yourself custody
• 22:23
  Bitcoin wallet address. It doesn't even give you the
• 22:26
  ability to leave your money on the exchange with purchase,
• 22:29
  which which perfectly aligns with the simply Bitcoin ethos of
• 22:33
  the separation of money and state because self custody is
• 22:36
  the revolution. Also, if you're a higher net
• 22:38
  worth individual and you're trying to buy $50,000 worth of
• 22:41
  Bitcoin or more, check out Bitcoin Well Infinite.
• 22:44
  To get started, go to bitcoinwell.com/OTC.
• 22:48
  And again, this is a white glove service for people who are
• 22:51
  trying to buy $50,000 worth of Bitcoin or more.
• 22:54
  So if you're tired of dealing with UI and you want to deal
• 22:57
  with a human being every time you want to buy or sell Bitcoin.
• 23:00
  You want to have a personal representative of which you can
• 23:02
  call, you can text, you got to check out Bitcoin Well Infinite.
• 23:06
  Go to bitcoinwell.com/OTC to get started and every time you buy
• 23:11
  Bitcoin on Bitcoin Well, you earn Bitcoin Well points and you
• 23:14
  could use those points towards the Bitcoin Wishing Well
• 23:17
  contest, which we did live for you guys right now.
• 23:20
  Holy cow. The winner has won 2100.
• 23:24
  Stack today. That's a that's a big prize.
• 23:28
  So guys, you get 3 tosses into the Bitcoin wishing well if you
• 23:32
  sign up to bitcoinwell.com today and use the promo code Simply
• 23:36
  BTC every time, yes. Go sorry, I didn't mean to cut
• 23:40
  off the ad. I was just like, what is that
• 23:41
  like 20 bucks? Like let's.
• 23:43
  Go 21 dollars. First person that's scanned it
• 23:45
  won $21.00 in Bitcoin. Every time you toss a coin into
• 23:49
  the wishing well, you have an opportunity to win up to
• 23:51
  1,000,000 Satoshis. All right, everybody.
• 23:54
  Let's get to the numbers. We have tons to talk about.
• 23:57
  Let's check it out. I want to tell you guys about
• 24:07
  our sponsor Stamp Seed. Is your Bitcoin and cold storage
• 24:11
  really secure? Are your seed words really
• 24:15
  secure? Stamp Seeds Do it
• 24:30
  You want to literally stamp your seed into this plate of
• 24:34
  titanium. Your words are.
• 24:36
  Actually stamped into the metal plate with this hammer.
• 24:39
  So once your words are in they aren't going anywhere.
• 24:43
  No risk of the plate breaking apart and your pieces falling
• 24:47
  everywhere. Titanium stamp seeds will
• 24:49
  survive nearly triple the heat produced by a house fire.
• 24:53
  They are also crush proof, waterproof, non corrosive, and
• 24:57
  most importantly because this is generational wealth, time proof.
• 25:01
  All things that paper is not allowing you to huddle your
• 25:07
  Bitcoin for the long haul. I mean, here is the plate that
• 25:11
  they crushed, they put in water, they put a blowtorch to it.
• 25:15
  And as you can see, the words have survived.
• 25:18
  Stamp your seed on stamp seed and you can use promo code
• 25:23
  simply to get 15% off anything on their store.
• 25:30
  All right, everybody, you want to maintain the relationship
• 25:32
  with your grandchildren. Eventually you're going to pass
• 25:34
  on your generational wealth to them.
• 25:36
  And could you imagine that conversation many years from
• 25:39
  now? And they're like, grandpapa, are
• 25:41
  you going to give me your, your Bitcoin?
• 25:43
  And you're like, no, because I wrote down my seed words on
• 25:46
  paper and they're going to look at you and they're going to say,
• 25:48
  grandpapa, why don't you get a stamp seat?
• 25:50
  And then it's like, I don't know, I just didn't feel like
• 25:52
  doing it. Anyways, head over to
• 25:53
  stampseed.com today. Use promo code simply to get 15%
• 25:57
  off anything on their store. At the time of recording the
• 25:59
  Bitcoin prices $93,800 block height 878,375 sats per dollar
• 26:05
  1066 market cap 1.86 trillion Bitcoin versus gold market cap
• 26:11
  10.04% percentage issued 94.32% decline from all time high
• 26:18
  -13.3% realized monetary inflation 1.09% of the grand
• 26:24
  scheme of things. We are just getting the party
• 26:27
  started. All right, everybody moving on.
• 26:29
  So I, I, I found this clip interesting.
• 26:32
  I'm going to have this kind of the video playing in the
• 26:33
  background while I talk about it.
• 26:34
  And we'll play the clip for you guys.
• 26:36
  Because here's the thing about Bitcoin, and I think a lot of
• 26:39
  people haven't seen this yet. Bitcoin isn't just a technology.
• 26:43
  Bitcoin isn't just money. I fundamentally believe in my
• 26:48
  heart, Bitcoin is a political movement, right?
• 26:52
  And then you have to define what politics are.
• 26:54
  So politics is the organization of power.
• 26:57
  It's extremely messy, but what is the goal of Bitcoiners?
• 27:00
  Like what do bitcoiners want, right?
• 27:01
  We all have heard the saying came for the money, stayed for
• 27:04
  the revolution. I'm a millennial.
• 27:07
  I got affected by the 2008 financial crisis.
• 27:09
  So did Opti. So did a lot of us in our
• 27:11
  generation. And I'm assuming Max feels very
• 27:14
  passionate about this subject too, if he's working in the
• 27:16
  industry. And we we want to fix the money
• 27:19
  that we, we believe that Fiat money is broken.
• 27:22
  We believe that central banking is an is an instrument of
• 27:25
  tyranny. It's an instrument of the state
• 27:27
  to control its people. And I think that people
• 27:31
  underestimate how powerful this political movement is going to
• 27:35
  become and is becoming. And it seems like on the media
• 27:39
  they've picked up on that. Apparently a guest on MSNBC, the
• 27:44
  legacy media says if you think MAGA is a strong political
• 27:47
  movement, just wait until you see the Bitcoiners.
• 27:51
  So let's check out the clip and then we'll talk about it.
• 27:55
  Well, it's delivered on one important thing.
• 27:57
  It is a store of value, not too different than gold, right?
• 27:59
  So it's up 30,000% in the last 10 years.
• 28:03
  There's very few other assets on the planet have done that.
• 28:05
  Maybe NVIDIA, they're the ones that make the high end GPU's,
• 28:08
  that power generative AI. So when I think about what's
• 28:10
  going on here, it's a $2 trillion market cap.
• 28:13
  It's not going away. And if you think about what why
• 28:16
  it's gone up of late is because of the promise of deregulation,
• 28:19
  the leaning in, and I'll just say this, if you think MAGA
• 28:22
  movement is a strong political movement, just wait until you
• 28:26
  see these bitcoiners. This is like one of the
• 28:27
  strongest financial religious movements that I've ever seen as
• 28:31
  long as I've been in the business for nearly 30 years.
• 28:33
  So it's here to stay and maybe some new regulation will kind of
• 28:37
  help. And the last thing I'll just
• 28:38
  say, Zeke, you know, when you think about this, I know you did
• 28:40
  a lot of work on this. Some of the smartest people that
• 28:42
  I know in finance and in tech believe in this and they believe
• 28:47
  in the technology that's underlying it.
• 28:49
  Doesn't mean that the government OK.
• 28:50
  That's true. Two things can be true.
• 28:52
  There could be real value in it. There could be a real business
• 28:55
  there, but that doesn't mean that there needs to be a
• 28:58
  government program transferring $100 billion to it and.
• 29:01
  When we talk about smart people being into Bitcoin, is it
• 29:04
  because they think Bitcoin is like the technology that's going
• 29:07
  to power the future? Or is it because they're smart
• 29:09
  enough to realize there are a lot of people who are going to
• 29:11
  get on the train, feel the FOMO and buy in?
• 29:14
  I mean, if you were able to predict that, more power to you.
• 29:17
  But I don't think the government should be in that business.
• 29:19
  Well, I mean, there's no different than people investing
• 29:21
  in stocks or other illiquid assets.
• 29:23
  You know, there really isn't. I mean.
• 29:25
  On a minute, believe that stock are companies that sell products
• 29:30
  that you can talk. OK, ready.
• 29:32
  Let's give you the hawk to a girl example.
• 29:34
  OK, a drunk girl outside a bar who becomes famous for a lewd
• 29:38
  comment. More power to her OK, she then
• 29:41
  launches a coin is dishonest publicly about action around
• 29:45
  that coin the value wow. This is why we are the media now
• 29:54
  they're they don't even they don't know what they're
• 29:56
  connecting hawk to a girl with Bitcoin and the meme coin with
• 30:00
  Bitcoin. No, no, no, no, but I I really
• 30:03
  want to focus on that comment because I think that comment is
• 30:07
  spot on and the comment was if you think MAGA is a strong
• 30:10
  political movement, just wait until you see the bitcoiners.
• 30:15
  I completely fundamentally agree.
• 30:19
  And I think it's, and I've said this before, I think Bitcoin is
• 30:23
  the strongest political movement the world has ever seen since
• 30:26
  the introduction of Marxism in the mid 19, mid 19th century.
• 30:33
  It, it's, it's, it's, it's very strong because we're not like,
• 30:38
  yes, we benefit number go up, we get wealthier, but there's,
• 30:44
  there's something burning inside of Bitcoiners.
• 30:47
  We want change. We want to effectuate change.
• 30:50
  It's not just enough to get wealthy.
• 30:53
  It's not just whatever we're, we're, it's like in a way, we're
• 30:56
  a little bit angry. We're a little bit pissed off
• 30:58
  because we're awake and we understand that whether you vote
• 31:03
  for team blue or team red, nothing's going to change.
• 31:06
  What we really need is the separation of money and state.
• 31:09
  And I think as Bitcoiners continue to gain more and more
• 31:12
  influence, like what just happened in the American
• 31:15
  election, which bitcoiners essentially became part of the
• 31:19
  donor class, which is essentially who runs Washington,
• 31:22
  DC, we're going to have more and more influence on policy, right?
• 31:28
  And I think the end goal here, let's be very clear, and the
• 31:32
  Federal Reserve and the Fed and central banking, because it's a
• 31:37
  mechanism that essentially has been stealing from the lower and
• 31:41
  middle classes that don't have the means to save in assets.
• 31:45
  And it's it's a wealth redistribution mechanism back to
• 31:48
  the very wealthy that do have the means to save in assets and
• 31:51
  back to the state, back to the government.
• 31:54
  What is that? But not a political philosophy
• 31:56
  that what is that, but not a political movement having that
• 31:59
  inside, talking about that internally.
• 32:02
  It's not just this isn't just an investment.
• 32:05
  And I remember having this conversation with this like
• 32:07
  higher net worth individual and I was like pitching him Bitcoin.
• 32:10
  And I was like, hey, man, you know, it's, it's, it's like a,
• 32:13
  it's a, it's a money. It's completely decentralized.
• 32:16
  There's a cap supply, It's absolute scarcity.
• 32:19
  It's not controlled by the state.
• 32:20
  It's not controlled by anyone. It's backed by the largest
• 32:23
  decentralized computing network in the world.
• 32:26
  There's literally nodes orbiting in outer space.
• 32:29
  Like it's freaking crazy. It's unstoppable.
• 32:30
  And he just looks at me and he's like, Nico, I don't want the
• 32:34
  revolution. Just talk to me about the
• 32:35
  investment. And then that's when it hit me
• 32:37
  like, Oh my God, you know, like, like, you know, some people see
• 32:41
  it, some people don't see it. But I think that this movement
• 32:44
  is still in, its in, in its infancy.
• 32:47
  I, I think that in 10 years, you're going to have an army of
• 32:51
  people that see the world the way that we see it, believe the
• 32:56
  things that we see. And I think once you get
• 32:59
  10/15/20 percent of the population awaken to the reality
• 33:05
  of the scam of central banking, they're going to have a hard
• 33:09
  time continuing that system because one thing is the
• 33:14
  justification of income tax, which is a very, very deep
• 33:17
  discussion. But I don't think there's a
• 33:20
  social contract for the money tax, AKA inflation.
• 33:26
  I don't think society as a whole has agreed to that.
• 33:30
  They've been psyopped into thinking that somehow money has
• 33:34
  to lose purchasing power in order to function.
• 33:37
  That's bullshit and politicians don't even try to justify it.
• 33:40
  They start to explain and try to blame other factors like the war
• 33:45
  in Ukraine, the supply chains, it's the pandemic, it's
• 33:49
  everything and everyone around them except for them printing
• 33:55
  money that is the cause for inflation.
• 33:57
  What happens when the world wakes up and it's like, wait a
• 33:59
  second, you guys are the cause for inflation?
• 34:02
  What's going on there? You know, and then one of the
• 34:06
  things that I always say, and I'll pass it on to Max, is the
• 34:09
  first question you're going to ask is what is money?
• 34:11
  But I think that inevitably leads to the question of what is
• 34:14
  government and what is the role of government?
• 34:17
  What it, what should the role of government be in society?
• 34:20
  Max, that's a very loaded question.
• 34:23
  Don't mean to ambush you, but what's your take on all this?
• 34:27
  You know, on that conversation, 'cause it seems like people are
• 34:29
  catching up to the fact that Bitcoin, in fact, is a very,
• 34:33
  very powerful political movement.
• 34:36
  I actually, yeah, I wanted to commend on that.
• 34:39
  I think it's, it's true, but it's also true because I think
• 34:45
  the the difference between Bitcoiners and all other
• 34:47
  movements is that most of Bitcoiners are into Bitcoin
• 34:52
  because they like freedom, independence, and it's just not
• 34:56
  words, not just words for for most of us and a lot of us.
• 35:03
  The second thing is that a lot of us realize that we need to
• 35:06
  separate money in the state because as you mentioned, fat
• 35:10
  and central banks and bad politics in terms of monetary
• 35:15
  stuff. But I think the the most
• 35:17
  important thing, two things that a Bitcoiners are not just
• 35:22
  movement, you know, people who gather around, talk about some
• 35:26
  stuff. We are also a movement of
• 35:28
  builders. We're doing something actually.
• 35:32
  And the next important factor is that we are as Bitcoin network
• 35:36
  is decentralized, Bitcoiners across the globe are also
• 35:39
  decentralized. We're not controlled by any
• 35:42
  single, you know, authority. There's no CEO, there's no
• 35:46
  board, there's nothing that's controlling Bitcoiners across
• 35:50
  the globe. And we all are doing because
• 35:53
  we're passionate about freedom. We're all doing our part and we
• 35:58
  don't coordinate with each other.
• 36:00
  I mean, we're building the stuff across the globe and we do it on
• 36:05
  our own way. And you know, in the end,
• 36:09
  Bitcoin doesn't care, but Bitcoiners do care, do care
• 36:12
  sometimes too much. But I think the power of the
• 36:15
  Bitcoin is a movement is is it's kind, it's kind of
• 36:18
  decentralized, mostly decentralized.
• 36:20
  And it's also movement of the builders.
• 36:22
  You know, we're doing something. We're not just sitting there and
• 36:25
  discussing, of course we're discussing a lot Bitcoin as an
• 36:30
  idea and as a, as a thing to fix all the things.
• 36:34
  But we also, I think it's kind of, it's kind of weird thing,
• 36:40
  you know, Bitcoiners like to say that Bitcoin fixes everything,
• 36:43
  but in the end it's Bitcoiners who are fixing everything, you
• 36:47
  know. So that's a very important
• 36:49
  factor that makes us very strong.
• 36:52
  Bars. Absolutely bars.
• 36:54
  Absolutely, Opti, what's your take on this?
• 36:57
  I really like the comment from the chat that Bitcoin is a
• 37:00
  political movement, but actually it's, it's, it's not about
• 37:02
  politics. You know, we don't care about
• 37:04
  politics that much. It's a, it's a political
• 37:08
  movement to end politics, right? It's a, it's a political
• 37:12
  movement to take the, the, the, the sovereign individual thesis,
• 37:15
  right, where essentially information technologies makes
• 37:19
  politics irrelevant over the long term.
• 37:21
  So it's this political movement to end the necessity for like
• 37:26
  Fiat politics of which we see today, which in my opinion is a
• 37:31
  popularity contest in order to see who wins control of the
• 37:34
  money printer. That's really how I see
• 37:37
  elections and politics today because this is essentially what
• 37:40
  it is. It doesn't matter whether you
• 37:41
  vote left or right. You know what either party goes
• 37:44
  in there. They just print a fuck ton of
• 37:46
  money. They devalue, they debase
• 37:47
  everyone's money. Their source of power is coming
• 37:50
  from their ability to create money.
• 37:54
  What happens when the state no longer has the ability to create
• 37:56
  money? Their only way of raising
• 37:59
  revenue is through direct taxation, which means they're
• 38:02
  actually going to have have to be a little bit nice to their
• 38:04
  citizens because if not their citizens say, you know what,
• 38:07
  like I don't feel like paying 10% more to fund this crazy
• 38:13
  effing idea. And it's not free.
• 38:15
  I have to pay for it. But with the money printer, they
• 38:18
  could promise free things. And because people are not
• 38:21
  educated about money, they believe it's free.
• 38:24
  They believe there's no cost to it, right?
• 38:26
  Opti, what's your take on all this, man?
• 38:28
  I mean, dude, we've been saying this for quite a while.
• 38:31
  It seems like the the legacy I see media is finally starting to
• 38:34
  catch on about what our true intentions here are.
• 38:39
  Yeah, the mask is off now and you're freaking out about it.
• 38:42
  You just love to see it, honestly.
• 38:44
  First, I have a few things just like nitpicky, and then I'll
• 38:47
  maybe do a rant. First one is that journalist
• 38:50
  there, like he's so smug, but also like so wrong.
• 38:53
  It's hilarious. You know, he's like, I, I don't
• 38:56
  even know what he was saying, but you just love to see these
• 38:59
  academics come out here and just continue to prove themselves to
• 39:02
  be the idiots that they are. It's like, look, bro, you can
• 39:04
  intellectualize this whole thing all you want to, you know, stay
• 39:08
  in your pessimistic doom loop. But you could have just bought
• 39:11
  Bitcoin and been right with us and been like, yeah, you know, I
• 39:13
  love Bitcoin. Bitcoin's great.
• 39:15
  And the second thing is, I forget when I first said this on
• 39:19
  the show, it it had to have been either 2023 or at some point in
• 39:23
  2024 that it is very important for us to separate Bitcoin from
• 39:29
  shit quinary. Considering that you see the
• 39:33
  same kind of flood lines come around.
• 39:35
  Like the fact that the hawk to a girl is like our mascot here for
• 39:39
  what Bitcoin is, is absolutely ridiculous.
• 39:41
  When every Bitcoiner was saying like she's she's doing a rug
• 39:45
  pull, like in real time, this is going to be a rug pull.
• 39:48
  That's what shit coins are. It is just designed to take your
• 39:51
  Bitcoin and they're all rug pulls.
• 39:54
  And now it's like, it's really going back to like the Sam
• 39:57
  Bankman Freed FTX moment here where we get all.
• 40:00
  Caught up in the all the damage that the shit coins do and the
• 40:05
  shit coin world does and that gets publicized and then we all
• 40:08
  get wrapped into that in Bitcoin.
• 40:11
  And you know, it's it's really important for us to continue to,
• 40:13
  you know, kind of dug on them and be like, no, this is not
• 40:17
  what we're doing. We are not shit coiners.
• 40:19
  Shit coins are designed to be rug pulls.
• 40:21
  And a little one more little tangent since I'm on this point.
• 40:25
  It's really fun to see what's that one shit coin like pump fun
• 40:28
  or whatever it is. I, I really love, love to see
• 40:31
  them kind of go all the way to the inevitable end of shit coins
• 40:36
  and just literally be like very blatant about the fact that
• 40:40
  like, yes, I, I, you know, I'm going to hurt this goldfish if
• 40:43
  you don't pump my bags and then I'm going to rug pool you
• 40:46
  because you're an idiot. Like I'm so glad that we've
• 40:49
  gotten to this point with shit coins where the mask is off for
• 40:51
  them, where all you, we all know they're just here to steal money
• 40:54
  from you. And now we can kind of kind of
• 40:56
  what Max was saying. We can all get back to hopefully
• 40:59
  the point of what we're doing here.
• 41:01
  Build something better and you know, end of rants of shit
• 41:04
  coinery and you know the smug academics out here.
• 41:08
  Can we, can we talk a little bit about the, the, the Haktua thing
• 41:12
  is, is hilarious because it's like, you know, like people are
• 41:16
  surprised she scammed her. What did you think was going to
• 41:19
  happen? Like what, what, what, what
• 41:21
  other outcome? What like, you know, it's like,
• 41:25
  like, what's the dollar backed by, you know, the full faith and
• 41:28
  trust of the US government. Look at how bad they've shot to
• 41:31
  bed. And then you're going to like
• 41:33
  place your money, your hard earned money and faith and
• 41:38
  trust. I'm not going to even comment
• 41:41
  about how she got famous, but let's just say that that that's
• 41:45
  not a really good logical, you know, thought process.
• 41:49
  Like what did you think was going to happen?
• 41:51
  Like what, what, what other outcome were you expecting doing
• 41:56
  something like that? And what is this like 2017 that
• 42:00
  like people still can't see the difference between Bitcoin and
• 42:04
  and altcoins? Like come on man, get the memo.
• 42:07
  Time is a circle, a flat circle. We just keep repeating the same
• 42:11
  things over and over. And I mean anyone, anyone that
• 42:14
  joined the Hawk to a coin community because of the, you
• 42:18
  know, I don't even remember what Haley Welch is that what her
• 42:21
  name is? Is like I think so.
• 42:22
  They all look this is might be a little harsh here but like they
• 42:25
  deserve to lose their money. Like what are you doing here
• 42:29
  anyways? Anyways, I really want to what?
• 42:31
  Did you expect what? What did people expect the
• 42:34
  outcome was going to be like what?
• 42:36
  Like it's so ridiculous. So I do kind of want to hit on
• 42:41
  the, the Bitcoin as a movement because I, I have been saying
• 42:44
  that for a long time. I think 2024 was kind of our I,
• 42:48
  I don't know, I, I don't want to use the framing like coming out
• 42:51
  moment because that's like pause, big pause here, but it is
• 42:54
  kind of us hitting the mainstage.
• 42:56
  And it really goes to show that there is a lot of power here in
• 43:00
  Bitcoin as individuals, as people being outspoken around
• 43:03
  Bitcoin. And I think Bitcoin is bigger
• 43:06
  than just the MAGA movement. Obviously we don't have like a
• 43:09
  charismatic front man like Donald Trump to really be
• 43:12
  divisive and hit the popular stage here.
• 43:15
  But the Bitcoin movement is a global movement.
• 43:18
  And I, I think people seem to forget that, that it's like it's
• 43:20
  not about just AUS getting the Bitcoin.
• 43:22
  Obviously US has most of the capital here, but it is a, you
• 43:26
  know, it's an anti political political movement because we
• 43:29
  all realize that the money printer is politics, like
• 43:33
  politics as we know it is being backed by the money printer.
• 43:36
  And now we have an alternative to that.
• 43:37
  And it's really going to take the world by storm.
• 43:40
  And the cope that we're going to see on mainstream media is only
• 43:43
  going to intensify. And I'm here for it.
• 43:45
  I, I can't wait to hear some more, you know, academic,
• 43:49
  mainstream journalists Co host tears here.
• 43:53
  We're, we're going to be so quenched throughout the year
• 43:55
  because actually, you know, we, we might, we might be a little,
• 43:59
  a little more thirsty for some more tears because it's going to
• 44:01
  be very salty here. But you know anyways, anyways,
• 44:04
  keep it going you guys. Cracking the jokes all right,
• 44:06
  everybody. Stay.
• 44:07
  Tuned. Stay tuned.
• 44:09
  We're going to hit the news segment where we have lots to
• 44:11
  talk about. We'll be right back.
• 44:13
  I want to give a very special shout out to our sponsor Compass
• 44:17
  Mining. They make Bitcoin mining
• 44:19
  accessible to everyone from beginners to experienced
• 44:23
  investors. Their turn key miners gets you
• 44:26
  online and hashing within 48 hours, making it easier than
• 44:30
  ever to start your mining journey.
• 44:33
  Plus, with their active marketplace, you can resell your
• 44:37
  miner at any time, adding flexibility and value to your
• 44:41
  investment. Visit their website to access a
• 44:44
  wealth of resources, learning everything you need to know
• 44:47
  about Bitcoin mining. Take your first step into the
• 44:50
  world of Bitcoin mining with confidence.
• 44:53
  Discover more at Compass Mining dot IO.
• 44:56
  Again, Compass mining dot IO and see how Compass Mining can power
• 45:01
  your success. I want to I give a shout out to
• 45:11
  our sponsor foundation. It's self custody done right.
• 45:15
  They've built a premium grade hardware wallet called Passport
• 45:19
  right here in the US, and it integrates seamlessly with their
• 45:22
  free A called Envoy. Passport is fully open source
• 45:26
  and verifiable. It's the most intuitive Bitcoin
• 45:29
  wallet, designed with a UX reminiscent of a classic feature
• 45:33
  phone, so you'll know how to navigate it and use it the
• 45:36
  moment you pick it up. It's also air gaps, meaning
• 45:38
  Bitcoin stays offline, never touching an Internet connection.
• 45:42
  It's Bitcoin only open source, verifiable air gap security
• 45:46
  model, gorgeous design craft premium grade materials.
• 45:50
  Get your Bitcoin off exchanges and into your own hands in just
• 45:54
  a few minutes with Passport at foundation dot XYZ slash.
• 45:57
  Simply get Peace of Mind. All right, everybody, this is
• 46:03
  Opti. Sorry, sorry guys, I got a new
• 46:06
  headache. He's.
• 46:06
  Playing with his eyes, he's heading the passport by
• 46:10
  foundation devices. No, it's not a phone, it's a
• 46:14
  hardware wallet. It makes taking self custody of
• 46:17
  your Bitcoin extremely convenient without sacrificing
• 46:20
  security. It's a completely open source
• 46:23
  Bitcoin only harder wallet. This is the perfect gift to give
• 46:27
  to somebody that perhaps is a little bit intimidated by self
• 46:29
  custody. Passport makes it easy.
• 46:32
  Use promo code simply to get a small discount.
• 46:34
  Anyways, I do want to read this quote from the Sovereign
• 46:38
  Individual before I get to today's news.
• 46:41
  So, it goes on to say, in the new Millennium, cyber money
• 46:44
  controlled by private markets will supersede Fiat money issued
• 46:47
  by governments. The authors have also predicted
• 46:50
  that with the rise of this new cyberspace and consequently
• 46:53
  cyber money, it will become harder for a nation state to
• 46:56
  collect taxes from its citizens. They compare the state to a
• 46:59
  farmer keeping cows in the field to be milked.
• 47:02
  But that quote soon the cows will have wings.
• 47:04
  They predict that for the government to collect taxes from
• 47:06
  its citizens in this type of society, it would have to
• 47:09
  violate human rights. Even traditionally civil
• 47:11
  countries will have to resort and turn nasty, lacking their
• 47:15
  accustomed scope to tax and inflate, which by the way, are
• 47:18
  the same thing. Governments, even in
• 47:20
  traditionally civil countries, will turn nasty.
• 47:22
  Businesses that offer services that facilitate the realization
• 47:25
  of autonomy by individuals will be subject to infiltration,
• 47:29
  sabotage, and disruption. Arbitrary forfeiture of
• 47:32
  property, already commonplace in the United States where it
• 47:34
  occurs 5000 times a week, will become even more pervasive.
• 47:37
  Governments will violate human rights, censor the free flow of
• 47:40
  information, sabotage useful technologies, and worse.
• 47:44
  Right. Sounds very, very familiar and I
• 47:46
  had to give a little bit of context before getting to this.
• 47:50
  This is a new article on No BS Bitcoin Coinbase.
• 47:53
  User sentenced to two years for Bitcoin tax fraud to surrender
• 47:58
  access to $124 million Bitcoin Fortune an early Bitcoin
• 48:04
  investor and Coinbase user Frank Richard Algren, who was
• 48:08
  sentenced to two years in prison last month for falsely
• 48:12
  underreported capital gains linked to $3.7 million worth of
• 48:16
  Bitcoin sales, has been ordered to hand over his private.
• 48:20
  I think they met they missed the word private keys to allow U.S.
• 48:23
  officials to access his digital assets valued at approximately
• 48:27
  $124 million. Algar is an early Bitcoin
• 48:32
  investor since 2011. He reportedly acquired 1300 and.
• 48:37
  66 BTC. Through Coinbase in 2015, when
• 48:40
  Bitcoin peaked at approximately 495 each, and then use some of
• 48:45
  the proceeds to purchase a home in Park City, UT.
• 48:48
  Agarin then concealed some some of his profits from sales
• 48:51
  between 2017 and 2019 by providing false information to
• 48:56
  his accountant, claiming he had purchased the bitcoins at a
• 48:58
  higher price than he actually did.
• 49:00
  He now owes the government around 1,000,000 in restitution
• 49:03
  from the criminal case and must provide any physical devices
• 49:07
  along with any public keys, private keys, seed phrases and
• 49:10
  passphrases to use this to use to store the coins, ruled the US
• 49:15
  District Judge Robert Pittman on Monday in federal court in
• 49:19
  Austin, TX. Prosecutors requested that the
• 49:22
  judge that that requested the judge to force Agra to reveal
• 49:27
  the location of at least 1287 Bitcoin he moved in 2020 via a
• 49:33
  mixing service, which are now worth 124 million after more
• 49:38
  than doubling in value last year.
• 49:40
  We will comply with the court directive and to the extent that
• 49:43
  we have a question, we will direct it to the court.
• 49:45
  We appreciate the care that Judge Pittman has taken
• 49:48
  throughout this case, said his attorney Dennis Kenyon.
• 49:52
  So before like add comments. For this and all this.
• 49:56
  I, I remember the Roger Virr case and Roger Virr is a very
• 49:58
  controversial figure in the Bitcoin community for obvious
• 50:01
  reasons. But, you know, he gave up his
• 50:03
  citizenship and then not too long after, you know, he gave up
• 50:09
  his citizenship and he was recently arrested.
• 50:11
  I believe he was in Spain and they're trying to extradite him
• 50:15
  back and he's facing up to 20 years in prison.
• 50:18
  Same thing. They basically claimed, you
• 50:20
  know, he cheated on his taxes and all that stuff.
• 50:22
  And you know, income tax is income tax and it is the law
• 50:26
  whether you agree with it, whether you disagree with it.
• 50:29
  But what I will say is I think this trend is going to continue.
• 50:34
  And I think it's not so much because people are are are
• 50:39
  breaking the law, I think. It's.
• 50:41
  Really to set an example, and I think over time, what I think is
• 50:46
  going to happen as well is I think that people are going to
• 50:49
  start to weigh the pros and cons of living in a jurisdiction that
• 50:54
  has certain types of tax requirements, which is exactly
• 50:58
  the theory that the sovereign individual, you know, laid out.
• 51:02
  And I think they're going to start to weigh their options and
• 51:04
  say, why should I live here if I could live in Dubai, you know,
• 51:10
  live in Puerto Rico six months out of the year, take advantage
• 51:13
  of their tax program there or live in different jurisdictions
• 51:19
  where the tax implications aren't so high.
• 51:23
  And I think what's going to happen over the long term is
• 51:27
  that's actually going to force other jurisdictions that perhaps
• 51:30
  don't have as favorable tax regulations to make adjustments.
• 51:36
  Because what's going to happen is I think you're going to see a
• 51:38
  giant brain drain, right? You see some countries in Europe
• 51:41
  already talking about exit taxes.
• 51:44
  They're already talking about, they're complaining about how
• 51:46
  all the wealthy for all the wealthy people from their
• 51:48
  country are just getting up and leaving and moving to Dubai.
• 51:52
  And it reminds me again from the book, The sovereign individual,
• 51:55
  right, which is the way that the state sees its citizens now is
• 51:59
  like tax cattle. But the Internet essentially has
• 52:02
  given them wings. Like before, you are essentially
• 52:06
  tied to a jurisdiction. You had to live in a certain
• 52:09
  place in order for your employment, in order for your
• 52:12
  family. But now in the age of the
• 52:14
  Internet, like, you know what me and Opti do, Like I can work
• 52:18
  from anywhere around the world. I don't have to be tied to a
• 52:21
  specific location, right? And I know a lot of people have
• 52:24
  that type of setup, have this type of like remote working
• 52:27
  environment. So it begs the question, like,
• 52:30
  if the tax laws are so unfavorable, why are you going
• 52:34
  to put up with them, right? Like what's what, what it, what
• 52:37
  is the benefit to me right now? Does that mean that you should
• 52:41
  break the law? No.
• 52:42
  Does that mean that you should color within the lines?
• 52:45
  Absolutely. It's the law.
• 52:47
  But I think over time, I think it's more and more people
• 52:50
  realize the sovereignty that Bitcoin gives them, the
• 52:54
  abilities that the Internet gives them.
• 52:57
  I think a lot of people are going to start asking the
• 52:59
  question, am I really getting the value for the amount of
• 53:04
  money that I am paying in taxes? And if the questions, no, I
• 53:08
  think you're going to start seeing more and more people give
• 53:11
  up their citizenship and move to more favorable tax
• 53:15
  jurisdictions. In the long run, I think this is
• 53:17
  what's going to happen. The theory from the sovereign
• 53:20
  individual playing out, I think this is like the first inklings
• 53:24
  of these types of cases. I think they made an example of
• 53:28
  Rodger Burr. I think they're making an
• 53:30
  example of this gentleman over here.
• 53:33
  Now, does this justify the fact that they broke the law?
• 53:36
  No, I'm not trying to justify that at all at all.
• 53:39
  Like the the law is the law, even if it's unjust.
• 53:42
  It's a social contract. People agreed to it.
• 53:44
  There was a vote on it. But what I'm trying to say is
• 53:47
  like, you know, people are going to start weighing their options.
• 53:51
  Then I think people are going to start questioning like, is it
• 53:53
  worth it for me to live in this place?
• 53:55
  Is it worth it for me to live in a jurisdiction where I have to
• 53:58
  pay 60% of my income in tax? Or if I can just live over there
• 54:02
  and have to pay 10% or 20%, Right.
• 54:05
  And then you, you know, you start the, the judicial
• 54:08
  arbitrage starts to come into place.
• 54:11
  People start looking into alternative passport.
• 54:13
  I've had at least four or five friends in the last year or two
• 54:19
  that have all given up their American citizenship because of
• 54:22
  taxes, because they've wanted to move to more favorable tax
• 54:26
  jurisdictions. And again, that's a net loss for
• 54:29
  the United States because they're losing very capable
• 54:32
  entrepreneurs, very, very smart people.
• 54:34
  And you know, the the incoming President Donald Trump is
• 54:37
  talking about this. One of the things that he said
• 54:40
  was it actually doesn't make sense for Bitcoin to have
• 54:44
  capital gains because it's money, right?
• 54:46
  It's not like you're just selling an asset.
• 54:48
  It's not like if you go to Europe and you convert dollars
• 54:52
  to euros, you don't pay a capital gain on that on the
• 54:56
  euro. Or if, if it makes a gain for
• 54:58
  whatever, it's you're converting one money to the other, right?
• 55:01
  So it's not my fault that the money that I decide to use is
• 55:04
  superior to your money. And it's funny how they get to
• 55:08
  pick and choose when Bitcoin isn't money and when Bitcoin is
• 55:11
  money and when Bitcoin is an asset, when Bitcoin isn't an
• 55:14
  asset. Like whatever is more most
• 55:17
  favorable to them is what Bitcoin is.
• 55:20
  When it's unfavorable. Bitcoin isn't a money when it is
• 55:22
  favorable, Bitcoin is money when bit like it's you can't, it
• 55:26
  can't be like that. And I think overtime and this
• 55:29
  process is probably going to take decades in my opinion, I
• 55:33
  really believe the theory from the sovereign individual is
• 55:35
  going to play out. And I think over time the
• 55:39
  Internet and Bitcoin is going to bring taxes down all around the
• 55:44
  world as nation states compete for the business of individuals
• 55:49
  and it starts to become a more like customer like relationship.
• 55:53
  Again, I think this is going to take a long time.
• 55:55
  But again, these are the first innings of this.
• 55:58
  I think there's going to be. Many, many, many more.
• 56:01
  Cases, right? We had the example with the IRS,
• 56:04
  they set, they set a deadline by the 31st and they said like,
• 56:09
  look, you have to report. And I was like scrambling to get
• 56:13
  compliant and all this stuff, but they set a deadline by
• 56:16
  December 31st. You have to, you know, file your
• 56:20
  taxes a certain way because if not, you know you're not going
• 56:23
  to be able to do it. Two days later they reversed
• 56:27
  that and they said, you know what, actually you have until
• 56:30
  December 31st of 2026 in order to do this.
• 56:34
  But imagine all the people that sent all their pub, all their,
• 56:38
  all their, all their balances, all their consolidated UTX OS
• 56:43
  thinking that the deadline was December 31st, right?
• 56:47
  So I think that this is going to continue.
• 56:49
  I think the current taxation system is based on the fact that
• 56:54
  I think governments always thought they were going to have
• 56:57
  a complete control over money. And I think that they always
• 57:00
  thought they were going to have the, the ability to, to censor
• 57:07
  money, control money, issue money.
• 57:10
  But in a world where that's not the case, I think the social
• 57:13
  dynamics change. I think the conversation
• 57:15
  changes, the, the, the balance of power changes as well.
• 57:19
  So anyways, maybe I'm naive, but just an observation.
• 57:22
  Max, I want to give your thoughts and then we'll talk to
• 57:24
  Opti. I mean, life always finds a way.
• 57:28
  So if governments will definitely compete for people,
• 57:35
  governments will definitely compete and countries will
• 57:37
  compete for smart people. And it's getting easier and
• 57:41
  easier, at least in most of the countries out there to change,
• 57:46
  to relocate. I mean, as you mentioned, we can
• 57:49
  more, we can work remotely and you can work for many part of
• 57:54
  the world and you can just, you know, choose and pick the
• 58:00
  country or the location that you prefer, whether it's weather,
• 58:04
  whether it's economy, taxes, social things, whatever.
• 58:10
  So I think it's, it's not theory actually anymore because like in
• 58:17
  Europe, for example, European Union, you can change location
• 58:20
  pretty much easily and you can become a tax resident.
• 58:25
  Not that easy. It's changing the location, but
• 58:28
  you can actually become a tax resident.
• 58:30
  If you're a European Union citizens, you can become a tax
• 58:32
  resident of any European Union state and they still have a
• 58:36
  difference in terms of tax and capital gain gains and and other
• 58:42
  stuff. So you can pretty much in Mortar
• 58:44
  Warren, you can, you can pretty much relocate easily to any part
• 58:48
  of the world just based on your preference, whatever you're
• 58:51
  looking for. And it's not theory anymore,
• 58:55
  it's actually real life and people are moving. 100% it's
• 59:01
  definitely not theory. People are moving.
• 59:03
  The Internet has just facilitated this.
• 59:06
  You can just jump on a plane again.
• 59:08
  You know, Katie, the Russian built an entire business Plan B
• 59:12
  passport, right? So yes, I think, I think people
• 59:17
  the trend I think is going to accelerate where people are
• 59:20
  going to shop for jurisdictions that most they're most favorable
• 59:26
  to them. I think that trend is
• 59:28
  inevitable. And I think that if you're a
• 59:29
  country, and then we saw this in the United States, like with the
• 59:33
  pandemic, certain states were, were pretty bad towards
• 59:37
  businesses and they became pretty bad in terms of, of, of
• 59:41
  taxes as well. And what you saw is you saw a
• 59:44
  massive exodus from New York and California and you saw a lot of
• 59:48
  people move to Texas and Florida, right?
• 59:50
  So you saw that like kind of like on a microscopic scale, I
• 59:55
  think 20 years ago, it was much harder to do that, right?
• 59:58
  You couldn't just bring your entire business.
• 1:00:00
  You couldn't just take your laptop, put it in a car and say,
• 1:00:04
  hey, you know what, we're leaving, right?
• 1:00:06
  With Bitcoin and with the fact that the Internet is a thing,
• 1:00:10
  you can, I would say a lot of people can just pack up, get in
• 1:00:14
  a car, got on an airplane, say peace out.
• 1:00:17
  I'm leaving moving to a more favorable jurisdiction.
• 1:00:20
  And I think where that trend is going to continue.
• 1:00:22
  And I think these types of cases are going to continue as well as
• 1:00:26
  governments get desperate, right?
• 1:00:27
  And I think they they they're going to want to continue
• 1:00:30
  setting examples and saying, hey, you know what, like it
• 1:00:33
  doesn't matter that you left for some, you still owe us taxes,
• 1:00:36
  right? So anyways, Opti, what's your
• 1:00:39
  take on this? And then we're going to move on
• 1:00:41
  to the culture. Talk to Max about Debbie Fi.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah, I mean, I think the main signal here is when you kind of
• 1:00:49
  bring in Roger Burr here, of course, he's like a despised
• 1:00:53
  figure in the Bitcoin community. But what you're seeing is the
• 1:00:57
  capital controls. And Nico, you just said it like
• 1:00:59
  when these nation states, when the people in power start to get
• 1:01:02
  scared, obviously they're going to clamp down on capital.
• 1:01:05
  And we're seeing that play out. And remember, you know, Roger
• 1:01:08
  Burt renounced his citizenship, paid his taxes and left.
• 1:01:11
  And yet 10 years later, they still came after him.
• 1:01:13
  And now this guy is very similar thing.
• 1:01:15
  And so you're seeing that they are actively coming after
• 1:01:18
  Bitcoin and Bitcoiners because they understand the games that
• 1:01:21
  we understand. Like if Bitcoin does get out of
• 1:01:24
  the gate and more people start to hold it, then the whole
• 1:01:26
  facade starts to crumble and more people start to wake up and
• 1:01:29
  realize like, wait, why am IA tax cattle?
• 1:01:31
  What is really going on here? Like what is the purpose of this
• 1:01:34
  Fiat money versus, you know, besides just stealing my wealth?
• 1:01:38
  Like This is why Nico, I I'm I'm going further than you always
• 1:01:42
  go. It's like the main goal of
• 1:01:43
  Bitcoin is to end the Fed. I think the main goal of Bitcoin
• 1:01:47
  is to end all central banks and to end usury in general.
• 1:01:50
  And that's the main problem going here, like, and I, I, I, I
• 1:01:54
  am on YouTube here, but the parasites out there are scared
• 1:01:57
  because we are waking up to the fact that they can no longer
• 1:02:00
  suck our blood. And This is why you're seeing
• 1:02:03
  all this stuff play out. And so I think this is only
• 1:02:05
  going to continue as Bitcoin starts to get proliferated
• 1:02:08
  around the globe. And we are already seeing
• 1:02:11
  jurisdictions that are embracing Bitcoin in the last couple of
• 1:02:15
  weeks, like, you know, the Czech Republic, it just came out very,
• 1:02:17
  very, I would say adamantly and saying that like there's no
• 1:02:21
  capital gains tax on your Bitcoin if you hold it for X
• 1:02:23
  amount of years. And This is why I'm hoping that
• 1:02:27
  in the very short term, we start to see Bitcoin kind of
• 1:02:31
  classified as money. Like you said, why?
• 1:02:34
  Why are we having to pay capital gains tax on Bitcoin?
• 1:02:37
  You don't pay a capital gains tax when you move from dollars
• 1:02:40
  to pesos or dollars to whatever, you know, moose shekels.
• 1:02:44
  Like, why are we doing all this? And it's really capital
• 1:02:47
  controls. They're afraid of classifying
• 1:02:50
  Bitcoin as money because if the money is able to flow freely
• 1:02:53
  around the globe, then the scam of Fiat currencies are exposed
• 1:02:57
  and the whole House of Cards breaks.
• 1:02:59
  And so are we surprised? No, I think this is only going
• 1:03:02
  to continue. And this, this is a bunch of
• 1:03:04
  precedent being set right now. And it, it, you know, it's
• 1:03:06
  absolutely terrifying that, you know, they're locked and
• 1:03:09
  throwing, throwing bitcoiners in cages and stuff.
• 1:03:11
  And I I think this fight is going to continue not only in
• 1:03:14
  2025, but probably all the way into the twenty 30s.
• 1:03:18
  So yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, Yeah, Look into
• 1:03:22
  alternative passports, look into this, you know, take the tax
• 1:03:26
  planning seriously, guys. You know, obviously, you know,
• 1:03:29
  we, we follow the law, you know, the law in your jurisdiction,
• 1:03:32
  you have to look at it, you know, whatever the capital
• 1:03:34
  gains, you don't want to get in trouble, right.
• 1:03:37
  So, and we recommend that. But at the same time, you know,
• 1:03:41
  legally, there's a legal process where you can take advantage of
• 1:03:45
  shopping around, looking for more favorable tax jurisdictions
• 1:03:49
  to benefit your financial planning.
• 1:03:51
  You could totally do this. This is 100% legal.
• 1:03:54
  You have the ability to do that as an individual, but you have
• 1:03:57
  to do it right. You have to do it by the book,
• 1:04:00
  you know, just not reporting your taxes.
• 1:04:02
  In general. Is, is a, is a terrible idea.
• 1:04:05
  I do not recommend that at all. But at the same time, I think
• 1:04:08
  more and more people are going to realize that, hey, you know,
• 1:04:11
  what's the point of me living here if I can find a more
• 1:04:14
  favorable tax situation over here, you know?
• 1:04:17
  But again, you have to do it legally.
• 1:04:19
  We're not tax advisors, We're not lawyers.
• 1:04:21
  So you guys got to do your own research.
• 1:04:23
  But I thought it was an interesting article to cover
• 1:04:25
  during the news. Today.
• 1:04:26
  Anyways, guys, we're going to hit the culture.
• 1:04:29
  We're going to talk to Max about the Baltic Honey Badger
• 1:04:33
  Conference, about Debbie Phi, about Hoddle Hoddle, about all
• 1:04:36
  these things. So we'll be.
• 1:04:38
  Right back I want to give a shout out to our sponsor Hive
• 1:04:42
  Digital Technologies. As the first ever public miner,
• 1:04:46
  Hive's been battle tested through every possible market
• 1:04:50
  and as the first with an AI strategy, Hive continues to
• 1:04:55
  redefine the future of sustainable energy.
• 1:04:58
  Also got to casually drop this in here.
• 1:05:00
  Hive consistently tops the industry in Bitcoin mine per.
• 1:05:05
  Exa hash. They're lean and mean, they're
• 1:05:07
  green and clean, and they're changing the game.
• 1:05:11
  Learn more by following them at Hive Digital Tech or check out
• 1:05:14
  their website, hivedigitaltech.com.
• 1:05:29
  All right everybody, I do want to give a very, very special
• 1:05:34
  shout out to our sponsor bit Block boom.
• 1:05:36
  I mean, one of the best Bitcoin conferences of the year, April
• 1:05:39
  3rd through the 6th in Dallas, TX.
• 1:05:43
  You guys definitely don't want to miss this.
• 1:05:45
  It's one of the best Bitcoin conferences if you're trying to
• 1:05:47
  get a job in the industry, if you're trying to meet your
• 1:05:49
  favorite bitcoiners, This is one of the conferences to go to the
• 1:05:52
  entire simply Bitcoin crew is going to be there.
• 1:05:54
  Nico, Opti, Dante, Rustin, Jacob, Sophie, everyone, it's
• 1:05:59
  going to be a great time guys. Definitely don't want to miss
• 1:06:01
  it. Hope to see you guys in Dallas,
• 1:06:03
  TX. They have barbecues, they have
• 1:06:06
  just so many. It's just fun.
• 1:06:07
  It's just a great event. Definitely want to see you guys
• 1:06:10
  there. It's April 3rd through the 6th
• 1:06:12
  of this year. Get your tickets quickly.
• 1:06:14
  The prices do go up in exactly 11 hours, and you can use promo
• 1:06:19
  code BBB 21 to get $100 off of your ticket.
• 1:06:26
  All right, I want to take advantage of the fact that we
• 1:06:28
  got Max Kai in the house and we're going to talk about all
• 1:06:32
  the things that Max has been working on lately, Opti.
• 1:06:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Max, of course, thank you for
• 1:06:39
  coming on. Well, first, maybe I'll do this
• 1:06:43
  at the end. I, I, I do kind of want to get
• 1:06:45
  your like 2015 take from, you know, 2015 Bitcoin to take and
• 1:06:48
  where we're getting. But let's talk about Debbie Fi
• 1:06:51
  first. Obviously we talked about this
• 1:06:53
  before the show. And for people that don't know,
• 1:06:55
  you did help build Hoddle Hoddle, but now you're building
• 1:06:58
  Debbie Fi. So what's Debbie Fi and who's it
• 1:07:01
  for? And I'll pull up your website
• 1:07:03
  here. So give us, you know, your, your
• 1:07:05
  elevator pitch for the people out there, who it or what it is
• 1:07:09
  and why people need it. I know before the show you're
• 1:07:12
  like, I'm the worst marketer here, but this is this is your
• 1:07:14
  chance, bro. Couple minutes talk about what
• 1:07:17
  you're building and who's it for really.
• 1:07:19
  That's, I think, the most interesting aspect of.
• 1:07:21
  This, I mean, I love talking about Bitcoin, I hate talking
• 1:07:23
  about products, but nevertheless, yeah, because like
• 1:07:28
  Bitcoin is perfect. Products unfortunately are not
• 1:07:31
  sometimes, but we're we're striving for for the perfection.
• 1:07:35
  Now Debify is, is a global lending platform.
• 1:07:38
  We are basically bridging the gap between institutional
• 1:07:41
  lenders on one side and borrowers, Bitcoiners, Bitcoin
• 1:07:46
  companies that has treasuries. So those who don't want to sell
• 1:07:50
  Bitcoin and they want to borrow against that, it's possible to
• 1:07:55
  do it through Debify. It's basically like an eBay for
• 1:07:59
  Bitcoin loans. So we're not acting as a
• 1:08:01
  middleman. You communicate as a borrower or
• 1:08:04
  as a lender. You communicate directly with
• 1:08:05
  your concert party and we provide you with a safe
• 1:08:08
  technical environment to conclude all the lending
• 1:08:12
  activities that you want to conclude.
• 1:08:14
  And we work with, we prefer building our products, huddle,
• 1:08:21
  huddle and debify with the core principles of Bitcoin in mind,
• 1:08:26
  meaning it should be peer-to-peer, it should be non
• 1:08:29
  custodial and it should be Bitcoin only.
• 1:08:31
  So it's peer-to-peer because again, as I said, it's lenders
• 1:08:35
  are talking and engaging in contracts directly with the
• 1:08:40
  borrowers. It's non custodial because all
• 1:08:43
  the collaterals are stored in multi sig in a unique multi sig
• 1:08:47
  on a public Bitcoin blockchain. So it's fully transparent, can
• 1:08:50
  be verified real time. You as a borrower hold one key,
• 1:08:54
  lender will hold another key, debify and hold the third key.
• 1:09:00
  And there's a fourth key holder, which in our case is anchor.
• 1:09:03
  Watch what we have, we'll have more.
• 1:09:07
  So the multi SEC works with three out of four.
• 1:09:09
  There's no reification and there's no opportunity for us
• 1:09:14
  single handedly move your Bitcoin to any type of other
• 1:09:18
  addresses. And we only work with Bitcoin.
• 1:09:22
  I mean we only support Bitcoin as a collateral.
• 1:09:24
  We only build infrastructure for Bitcoin.
• 1:09:26
  So that's basically it. We, we are bringing trade fi
• 1:09:30
  companies with liquidity that doesn't have any experience in
• 1:09:34
  building Bitcoin tech, but they have a lot of liquidity.
• 1:09:39
  We are connecting them with the borrowers, with Bitcoin
• 1:09:42
  borrowers across the globe. So that's, that's the initial
• 1:09:45
  idea. I mean, do not sell borrow
• 1:09:47
  against your Bitcoin in most of the countries.
• 1:09:50
  You will avoid capital gain tax and you will still keep holding
• 1:09:55
  your Bitcoin and you will have one of the keys and that will
• 1:10:00
  allow you probably to make more money rather than selling this,
• 1:10:04
  this and now. So yeah, that's that's the idea
• 1:10:06
  of that be fine. Yeah.
• 1:10:08
  And one, one question to clarify, because I think you
• 1:10:11
  said it before the show, before we went live, you as a lender
• 1:10:16
  are lending to like bigger institutions.
• 1:10:19
  This isn't just no, no, no. No, you're, you're as a lender,
• 1:10:23
  your institution is a lender. So lenders only institutions.
• 1:10:26
  I mean you can only be corporated to lend out money on
• 1:10:30
  debified, but you can lend out to private individuals and to
• 1:10:34
  corporate entities. So there's no limit who can
• 1:10:37
  borrow against against their Bitcoin.
• 1:10:40
  Got it, got it. And our audience is mainly in
• 1:10:44
  the US, So clarifying here. Can US investors or lenders use
• 1:10:50
  this product? Lenders, we're in talks with
• 1:10:52
  multiple US lenders at the moment.
• 1:10:55
  I mean it's still like it's, it's highly scalable, but we
• 1:10:59
  still need to take some baby steps since we launched just
• 1:11:02
  last year. So we're in talks with with some
• 1:11:07
  of the US lenders and there's a huge interest from large
• 1:11:10
  liquidity providers. Hopefully in Q1 we will announce
• 1:11:14
  some USD based lenders. At the moment we, we have we
• 1:11:19
  have stable coins and some Fiat as well available, but no
• 1:11:24
  particular USD focused lender individuals and companies.
• 1:11:29
  We're also in talks and some of them are using Debbie fight to
• 1:11:32
  borrow against their Bitcoins. So I mean we are building
• 1:11:36
  debified to be available globally for everyone.
• 1:11:40
  Love it, love it. OK, I do kind of want to talk
• 1:11:43
  about just Bitcoin lending in general because I know it does
• 1:11:46
  kind of seem like the new hot topic, You know, one of the more
• 1:11:49
  interesting things playing out in in Bitcoin and there is, you
• 1:11:54
  know, obviously some pushback from bitcoiners of like, well,
• 1:11:57
  you know, why am I going to lend out my Bitcoin when I should
• 1:11:59
  just Hoddle this Bitcoin? So is Bitcoin lending obviously
• 1:12:04
  going to be the future for bitcoiners or, you know, what's
• 1:12:07
  your thoughts on maybe the risk and where the trajectory of
• 1:12:10
  bitcoins going with Bitcoin lending?
• 1:12:12
  Obviously, I like the meme that you said of live off your
• 1:12:15
  Bitcoin, don't necessarily just sell your Bitcoin, like live off
• 1:12:18
  of it. And that's what the Bitcoin
• 1:12:19
  lending is about. So what's your thoughts on this
• 1:12:21
  push back from like Hodlers versus the Bitcoin lending
• 1:12:25
  space? Yeah.
• 1:12:27
  So first of all, I need to to make one, one correction.
• 1:12:31
  It's you're not lending out your Bitcoin on Debi Fi.
• 1:12:35
  We we don't support that. I mean, I think, I think that
• 1:12:38
  generated yield on top your Bitcoin is just retarded.
• 1:12:43
  I mean, you want to you want to generate yield, you buy Bitcoin,
• 1:12:46
  you buy a hardware wallet, you put your Bitcoin in a hardware
• 1:12:49
  wallet, you forget it for four years, voila, in four years your
• 1:12:53
  yield is generated. I mean, Bitcoin is like self
• 1:12:56
  generating yield asset money, whatever you, whatever you claim
• 1:13:02
  it to be, whatever you prefer it to call.
• 1:13:05
  So we are in the business of borrowing against your Bitcoin.
• 1:13:09
  We want to offer services and we want to provide services to
• 1:13:12
  Bitcoiners to live off their Bitcoin by not selling the
• 1:13:17
  Bitcoin because that's the ultimate goal.
• 1:13:19
  I mean, when the price is half million, as Nico envisioned
• 1:13:27
  boldly at the beginning of the, of the, of the, of the live
• 1:13:30
  stream, I mean, many people will, will consider, you know,
• 1:13:35
  you know what, I don't want to sell it because I, I've been
• 1:13:37
  seeing how this thing taking off against all other assets for the
• 1:13:42
  past four years, five years, whatever, two years, one year,
• 1:13:46
  maybe. And I, I see what's happening
• 1:13:50
  with the economy. You know, Bitcoin is the
• 1:13:52
  ultimate hedge against all the, all the weird stuff happening
• 1:13:57
  and all the mismanagement things that happening with, with the
• 1:13:59
  traditional Fiat system and what, what I can do with that, I
• 1:14:05
  can borrow against that. And again, as I mentioned in, in
• 1:14:08
  multiple countries across the globe, borrowing against your
• 1:14:11
  Bitcoin is non taxable event while selling the Bitcoin is
• 1:14:17
  actually taxable event. So this is what we want to
• 1:14:20
  offer. That's that's the service we're
• 1:14:22
  trying to build. But again, we don't want to
• 1:14:24
  build it in a custodial way because as we saw for the past
• 1:14:28
  couple years, you know, Block 5 Celsius, FTX, Voyager, you name
• 1:14:33
  it, I mean, as soon as you're starting using the custodial
• 1:14:36
  services, you're probably gonna get hurt at some point.
• 1:14:39
  So we want you to learn. I think a lot of learning's been
• 1:14:44
  done hard way. We want you to avoid that.
• 1:14:47
  Yeah, love it. And then Speaking of learning,
• 1:14:50
  you know, I again trolling. I am a 65 IQ Bitcoiner here.
• 1:14:54
  So, you know, borrowing against my Bitcoin seems kind of
• 1:14:58
  difficult. How difficult is this, you know,
• 1:15:01
  break it down in fifth grade language here for people.
• 1:15:05
  It's not difficult if, if you cracked out Bitcoin, I mean in
• 1:15:09
  in a good way, if you, if you do understand how to store your
• 1:15:14
  keys and as we, as we talk at the beginning of the live
• 1:15:18
  stream, you know the services are improving.
• 1:15:21
  I would say that Debify is striving to to create a proper,
• 1:15:27
  the ultimate user experience. We still have some of the things
• 1:15:32
  to improve, actually a lot of things to improve, but it's
• 1:15:35
  getting there. And I think in, in, in if you
• 1:15:38
  have Bitcoin, if you, if you know how to use it, if you know
• 1:15:42
  how to self custody this thing, you're probably going to get
• 1:15:46
  familiar with a lot of non custodial services such as
• 1:15:49
  Debbie 5 for example. So yeah, it's not hard.
• 1:15:53
  It's pretty much, I would say it's pretty, pretty much user
• 1:15:56
  friendly and it will be even more user friendly in next
• 1:16:00
  couple of months. We have a lot of plans and a lot
• 1:16:02
  of interesting feature to announce.
• 1:16:05
  Max and I have a have a question because you're also known for
• 1:16:09
  for to the the Baltic Honey Badger conference, which is a
• 1:16:15
  legendary conference update. If you could pull that up.
• 1:16:18
  I want to talk about that because again, that's one of the
• 1:16:21
  most famous conferences, Bitcoin conferences in Europe.
• 1:16:25
  And you were saying something in the beginning of the show about
• 1:16:28
  this next one potentially being, you know, I don't know if I
• 1:16:31
  could say that live, but. We, we, we don't know whether
• 1:16:35
  there will be a next one, but if there will be, it's probably,
• 1:16:38
  it's probably will be the last one.
• 1:16:40
  So we haven't yet decided. So we put 2025, but still, you
• 1:16:45
  know, we're still thinking. Nevertheless, the reason is that
• 1:16:50
  we are, we are not conference organizers.
• 1:16:53
  We just, we back in the days in 2017, we, we started Baltic
• 1:17:02
  honey Badger because we were fed up with the, with all the ICO
• 1:17:07
  blockchain bullshit happening across the globe at, at the
• 1:17:12
  conference level. And we decided we, we're going,
• 1:17:15
  we're going to do the Bitcoin only thing and we did it and we
• 1:17:19
  did it in Riga, which is like for most of the people, it's
• 1:17:23
  like a middle of nowhere. You know, it's a lot of people
• 1:17:27
  can't even like say what it is. So with it in Riga, we, we were
• 1:17:34
  very lucky with having at our first conference at the first
• 1:17:40
  Baltic Honey Badger in 2017, we had Andrea Santanopoulos as a
• 1:17:44
  speaker, Wow, legend. And he's a legend.
• 1:17:47
  I mean, he delivered a great speech on particularly at the
• 1:17:52
  Baltic Honey Badger. If you have an opportunity, go
• 1:17:54
  on YouTube, check it out. It's like it's one of my
• 1:17:57
  favorite talks about Bitcoin and particularly about state and
• 1:18:03
  government control. That was amazing.
• 1:18:05
  We had Adam back, we had Peter Todd, we have Jack O Mizuko, and
• 1:18:09
  that's was like the first conference there.
• 1:18:11
  We had Elizabeth Stark as well. And yeah, it was November, very
• 1:18:18
  cold, very chilly in the basement in Riga and it was like
• 1:18:24
  300 people, something like that. And we were lucky and we
• 1:18:30
  understood that Bitcoin only conferences, the thing we
• 1:18:34
  repeated that in 2018. Then in 2019, a lot of
• 1:18:40
  conference started to mimic or to, to do the same, you know,
• 1:18:45
  being Bitcoin only conferences. And eventually like we would
• 1:18:50
  just continue doing this. But now we have a lot of things
• 1:18:56
  in our plate and it's just taking too much time because
• 1:18:58
  again, we are not conference organizers.
• 1:19:00
  We're like software builders and we prefer to do that.
• 1:19:06
  That's our core business. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:19:08
  And then another thing that you're known for, Max, and I
• 1:19:10
  want to talk about that is Hoddle, Hoddle.
• 1:19:13
  So what is Hoddle? Hoddle?
• 1:19:15
  I'm sure a lot of people in the audience have heard about it.
• 1:19:18
  Can you give a quick breakdown? It's peer-to-peer trading and
• 1:19:23
  lending platform like for for like retail, retail sector or
• 1:19:31
  retail market. So it's a platform where you can
• 1:19:34
  non custodially buy and sell Bitcoin across the globe and you
• 1:19:40
  can also borrow or lend out stable coins if you have them
• 1:19:45
  also across the globe. So huddle, huddle mostly focused
• 1:19:48
  on emerging markets. It's not available in US
• 1:19:53
  unfortunately or fortunately. I mean, you had a rough four
• 1:19:58
  years, you guys. So we, we were actually some of
• 1:20:03
  our competitors were like we are in US and we said like, yeah,
• 1:20:07
  great. I don't know what to do, what to
• 1:20:11
  say congratulate or or say my condolences to you.
• 1:20:13
  But eventually, you know, we survived with our strategy
• 1:20:18
  focusing on emerging markets and we actually have a significant
• 1:20:21
  presence in Latin America, Southeast Asia.
• 1:20:25
  We are, we are very much interested in moving into Africa
• 1:20:29
  and we want to build huddle, huddle and tools for buying,
• 1:20:34
  selling, trading, I mean lending and borrowing for emerging
• 1:20:38
  markets. So that's our core markets and
• 1:20:42
  we want to move in that direction and we've been doing
• 1:20:44
  this for past six years. I think.
• 1:20:48
  So Huddle, Huddle is actually, we've been pioneers in a lending
• 1:20:53
  space. We've been pioneers in
• 1:20:54
  peer-to-peer lending. So basically anyone can become a
• 1:20:58
  lender and anyone can borrow against that.
• 1:21:00
  So when you're borrowing on Huddle, Huddle outside of US not
• 1:21:05
  being AUS resident, so I need to take, I need to make that
• 1:21:08
  reference you're actually borrowing from could be
• 1:21:13
  borrowing from private individuals, could be borrowing
• 1:21:15
  from corporates. It's anonymous and it's
• 1:21:20
  basically again, we're sticking with the core principles of
• 1:21:22
  Bitcoin, peer-to-peer, non custodial, no middle man and
• 1:21:26
  Bitcoin only. Amazing.
• 1:21:28
  Amazing. Well, Max, it was.
• 1:21:31
  Wait. Nico, wait, wait, wait before we
• 1:21:32
  go our audience. I'm I'm I'm speculating here,
• 1:21:37
  but our audience is a lot of newer Bitcoiners and we have Max
• 1:21:41
  here who's a 2015 Bitcoiner. So I would like if you could,
• 1:21:46
  we'll go back to you talking about Bitcoin and not, you know,
• 1:21:49
  Debbie Fi, since that's not what you like to do.
• 1:21:52
  I would like for you as a again, 2015 Bitcoiner to maybe impart
• 1:21:57
  some wisdom on the newer Bitcoiners here.
• 1:22:00
  Maybe. What do you, what do you see
• 1:22:01
  coming down the pipeline? Like what are you most excited
• 1:22:04
  about in Bitcoin considering you've been in it for 10 years
• 1:22:07
  at this point? I mean, I think the most
• 1:22:11
  important thing over the course of all, all my years in Bitcoin,
• 1:22:20
  stick with Bitcoin first of all, Bitcoin only.
• 1:22:23
  And that's like ultimate advice to anyone.
• 1:22:28
  Learn about self custody and do self custody always.
• 1:22:32
  And if you need to use services, whether it's trading or
• 1:22:37
  borrowing lending, avoid custodial services at all costs.
• 1:22:42
  You know, use non custodial services and I'm a big believer
• 1:22:47
  and a big fan of multi sick and if you can use multi sick within
• 1:22:53
  the services, that's the best choice out there.
• 1:22:57
  It's not necessary. It has to be like Devify or
• 1:23:00
  something else. There's a bunch of them, but I
• 1:23:03
  mean stick with Bitcoin, do the self custody properly and do
• 1:23:08
  not, do not generate yield, Do not fall for scams of generating
• 1:23:12
  yield on top of Bitcoin. I mean Bitcoin is yield
• 1:23:16
  generating asset. And if you will, if you will
• 1:23:20
  store it properly, if you cherish your Bitcoin, it will do
• 1:23:24
  good for you. Absolutely.
• 1:23:26
  I completely, completely, completely agree.
• 1:23:30
  Anyways, I do want to thank Max for joining us on the show
• 1:23:33
  today. Really, really appreciate it
• 1:23:35
  guys. I hope you enjoyed today's show
• 1:23:37
  for January 8th, 2024. I'm your host Nico, of course,
• 1:23:42
  my legendary Co host Optimus Fields, and our special guest
• 1:23:45
  today, Max Kai, CEO of Debbie Phi.
• 1:23:48
  We appreciate you all. If you guys enjoyed the show,
• 1:23:51
  smash the like button. Consider subscribing if you feel
• 1:23:53
  like we provided you value. We'll see you tomorrow for a
• 1:23:55
  brand new episode of Simply Bitcoin Live.
• 1:23:58
  Today's episode was brought to you by bitcoinwell.com, a
• 1:24:02
  Bitcoin only platform on a mission to enable financial
• 1:24:05
  independence.