Episode 177

In the meantime, between those two, we took a big dip. We actually dropped quite a bit. Let me go. This is the daily. Yeah. We did. We took a big drop all the way down to 63,500, and then we went right back up. Crazy times. We pumped right through the Bitcoin conference. Well, maybe a surprise because in the past, we’ve we’ve dumped. I think the year that El Salvador, had their big announcement with Nayib Bukele, so it was 2021. We dumped the weekend of the conference. So it did not break an all time high, did not. So I guess I was wrong there. But, you know, overall, we’re actually in really put good position. As I record, we’re actually at 69,514.

So we’re up over $1,000 in the last 3 hours. Now it remains to be seen what we do with that. It is not looking good, to be honest. I think we may kind of roll off here. I don’t think this is gonna break through that 70, 71, $72,000 area and move on. Our block height at time of recording, according to mempool.space, is 854423. That’s 854423. Drinking the Earl Gray tonight, and it is good. I got some honey from my friends, in it. Nice and tasty and sweet just the way I like it. Difficulty adjustment, upcoming just in a couple of days, July 31st, which I think is 3 days away.

10.33%, which is tremendous as our 45th president, Mister Trump likes to say, and he repeated that statement many times during his speech, which we’ll discuss a little bit here shortly. Tremendous. I never really noticed that. It was actually kinda funny because I don’t know how many times he said it about different things. Tremendous. I don’t know. Anyways, 10.33%. That’s quite a bit up, because miners are coming online. It’s become profitable again at 69,000. It’s even more profitable, so I’m sure more people are putting their miners online. Hey. If y’all could turn your miners off, that’d be terrific, said this miner who doesn’t want a 10.33%.

Oh, man. That’s gonna hurt. Previous, update was also 3.21%. So in total, if we just went with 10%, we’d be looking at a 13% adjustment over the last however long that is. I think it’s a couple of weeks at a time. It’s actually a certain number of blocks, and I don’t remember exactly. Maybe 2,000? I have to look that up. Anyways, Yeah. Up, up, up, up goes the hash rate, up goes the difficulty. Fees and mempool, however, are looking quite nice. When I checked it a little bit earlier, we were at 4 sets per v byte and 797 megabytes of unprocessed transactions. So we’re actually slightly lower in unprocessed transactions, in the mempool, and then we’re significantly lower than we were a week ago. I think we were at 11 sets per vbyte or something last week. Four sets per vbyte is like dirt cheap. What does that mean?

You can send a transaction for 39¢. You can literally send billions of dollars. Wish I had it. But, if I did, I could send it and have the same security as, anybody else on the network. Pretty cool. Anyways, this week’s topic, Bitcoin game theory playing out. What’s this all about? Well, I did go to the, Bitcoin conference. I was there. I drove up Thursday. I’m gonna give you the nutshell version of this. There is lots of information about the conference out there. In fact, in the links, I will be having a link to the YouTube channel for Bitcoin Magazine where they post all the videos. So a lot of the content you can see for yourself.

And I would encourage you to go go in there, pick out stuff that you’re interested in, and take a listen. I’m going to talk about some of the things in particular that I think are really important and hopefully kinda wrap this all up. But in case you didn’t know, president Trump, 45th president, so, he was president before Biden, and he’s running again, was there. So was Robert f Kennedy junior. He’s an independent. He used to be a Democrat. He’s a lifelong Democrat, but, basically, they would not support him. And so he left the party and became independent and is running for president as well. He spoke, RFK spoke on on Thursday or excuse me, Friday, and then Trump on Saturday. So let me before I get ahead of myself, Thursday night, excuse me. Let me let me back up. Josh McIntosh, you’re screwing this all up. Everybody hang on.

Believe it or not, I made a mistake. I did wanna tell you Thursday night, went to the Vinyl Lounge, which is literally a small bar there in Nashville. And, we had, the podcasting 2.0. What did they call it? Goodness gracious. I’m not sure, but it was a it was a music band. I’m sure Kyrin’s probably screaming at this podcast right now going blah, whatever it is. Sorry. It’s just I don’t know. But they had Podcast 2.0 musicians there. Ainsley Costello, for example. I’m not sure offhand who else was there. To be honest, I did get to see Ainsley.

She’s a lively performer, and I do like her music, honestly. I I can’t hear the words, so don’t I have no idea what she’s really singing about. What I have heard online sounds pretty good, but I do like, you know, her music. It’s just pop music, but she’s a good performer. They had multiple bands there that night, and, you know, they all they were all performing. People were streaming and boosting sats. That was all real cool. And they had a board set up, a monitor set up in there showing a board of people, as they boosted in and this kind of thing. So it was great feedback as was kind of the plan.

On the other hand, really for me, frankly, what was most important. I’m not just to be honest, and I’ve told people this. I’m not really a fan. I was never really big into live music, to be honest. I did do it more a lot more when I was younger. Not really haven’t done it in years, really. I think I’ve been to one concert maybe in the last five years before this. I don’t know. Just not my thing anymore. I don’t know what else to say. Not that it was ever a huge thing for me. I love music. I listen to I don’t listen to as much anymore, but I do listen to a lot of different music actually. A wide range from pop to metal to jazz.

Not really a big fan of classical music, and I don’t care for rap, at all, basically. Very little rap do I like. But regardless, I just don’t do the live stuff anymore. It’s just too loud. I can’t hear all this kind of stuff. But what it did do is provide a great opportunity for me to meet Kyron from Bear Mortals. I’m I’m I know I’m gonna leave people out, and I apologize if you happen to listen to this. But, Oscar Mary, from Fountain and, Nick from Fountain. I met all 3 of them. I met a guy. Oh, man. He was a no agenda listener. He doesn’t listen to this podcast. I’m not even gonna mention his name, but it was really funny because he had on a shirt. It had, like, these handles on it.

And I’m I literally I really put myself out this week. I’ll be honest. Not to get off track here. I guess I’m off track. But I wanted to meet people and I wanted to, you know, kind of come out of my shell a little bit and talk to people. And I’m looking at this shirt and I’m going, what does all this mean? I just literally made a decision. I’m going to ask him what this is about. This giant guy. He’s like 6 and a half feet tall. I don’t know. He’s probably not, but maybe. I don’t know. He was significantly taller than I am and bigger. Not fat. Like, I’m not fat. Super fat, but not fat like I am, but bigger, bulkier, stronger. Right? That’s what I mean. Yeah. Now that I’ve dug that hole, let’s move right on.

So anyways, I’d literally, I said, what does that mean? And he launches into this story. Turns out, it’s like his online handle, and he had gotten it. And I’m like, wait. I’ve heard that handle on the No Agenda podcast, which is Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak. I’ve probably mentioned them once or twice on here. John John Dvorak is an old school. He’s I don’t know his age offhand. He’s not a young man. I think he would admit that, certainly. He’s been in the computer industry forever, though. When I was a kid, like, literally back in the eighties, in the late eighties, I was reading I think he was in BoardWatch Magazine, which was a bulletin board service magazine, a BBS, like dial in modem type stuff.

And I think he had a column in there. I think he had a column in Computer Shopper, which I used to read. I know he had one in PC Magazine, which I also read. I was a nerd, guys. I was that’s just that was just me. And I read all this stuff, and then years later, I come across this podcast. I don’t listen to it very much anymore. I used to listen to it pretty regularly. But, anyways, I had heard this guy. He was a listener to the No Agenda podcast, and, of course, he was contributing. They do value for value as Adam often says. They’ve been doing it for, like, 18 years or something.

And, so I had heard his name. So it was this basic the immediate connection. And I’m not gonna tell you we’re best friends and pen pals, but it was really cool I got to meet him. So, anyways, I met him completely unexpectedly. If I I’ve I can’t think of anybody else. I I hope I didn’t leave anybody off. Then the next day, go to the conference, and I met some cool people there. Everybody at the conference that I was trying to meet, I will talk about one really quick, because this was this was in some ways the highlight of my trip, and it was very unexpected.

Anyways, met a number of people, had a good talk with Eric Hersman from Gridless, who I’ve had on the show before and all this stuff. But, again, they had this band. I’m gonna even get this wrong. I’m so sorry, guys. I know it sounds like I I don’t care about this stuff. I do. It’s it’s a huge podcast 2 point o thing, and I’m I’m very support I’m trying to be as supportive of it as possible. Bans for Bitcoin Bitcoin bans are goodness. I don’t know. But they were right across the street from the conference and in a hotel up on the, I think it was a 4th floor in this restaurant.

And so it was very similar, a little quieter, which I appreciated, to be honest. But, like, I know Herbivore played there. I know Joe, Martin, which I like his music. I think it’s Joe Martin, quite a bit. I like his music. He closed it out. I did not get to hear him. The same type thing, same setup, and Kyrin and a number of other people were actually there. So I got to meet some more people, including Dovidos, although he does. I didn’t really I didn’t really meet him, but he was there and interacting with everybody. So that was cool because I I hear his name quite a bit on the podcast 2.0 app.

He was kinda running the show, though. He was super busy. Got to talk with Kyrin some more. I talked with, Oscar a little bit more, from from Fountain. Oh, Dave Jones. I’m sorry. I left Dave Jones. I met him the night before at the Vinyl Lounge, and that was really cool. Dave is the cohost of the podcast 2.0 podcast and does a lot of the technical stuff that makes these apps possible, frankly, for us to be able to operate in this ecosystem. So I’m super appreciative of him. And, honestly, he’s kind of, he’s a little more my speed. I he probably doesn’t wanna be categorized like that, but, we’re pretty close in age and, kinda have a similar background.

He’s a system admin. So, anyways, I feel like we kinda clicked. We had some good conversations, whatever. They were actually Dave and, Kyrin were going to the Cattleman’s Feast, and I did not go. That was a different situation. But, anyways, back to the conference. So, one of the people that I rather unexpectedly met let me explain this really quick. I’m I’m gonna stop talking about different people I met because that’s not what y’all are trying to listen to. But there’s a point to all this. So just please bear with me. I was sitting at a talk. Actually, I got there a few minutes early. And the way that their talks were, they’re literally just back to back. Like, there’s 2 minutes between each talk. 1 guy gets off, 1 panel, 1 woman, whatever, and then the next group comes on.

Okay? So I’m sitting there, and I got there a few minutes early. I’m sitting there, and this guy up on stage, I look up there, and it was an older guy. Now I don’t know how old he is. I’ve not looked it up. But to be honest, he’s at least in his late sixties, if not mid seventies ish or so. And he’s up there chatting away, and I’m, like, talking. And I’m kinda listening, and I’m like, like, I don’t know. These little light bulbs start going off in my head. I’m like, is that who I think it is? And then he was talking about this case in the nineties, this, like, Supreme Court case.

And I leaned over to the woman next to me, and I said, who is that guy? And she thought she was not. She was English was not her first language. I don’t know where she was from, but she didn’t quite understand me. And she said, oh, this talk is about blah blah blah. And I’m like, I I’m sorry. No. That who is he? Oh, Phil Zimmerman. Oh, my blown away. Now in case you don’t know who Phil Zimmerman is, in a nutshell, he was the creator of PGP, which was a stands for pretty good privacy. It was a cryptographic protocol that’s used primarily to encrypt email.

Back in the nineties, he got in, one or more. I actually don’t remember offhand. I think it probably would have been multiple, but lawsuits about his cryptography because the US government was saying the military specifically was saying, hey, you gotta give us the keys to that. We can’t have it’s that’s like, what do they call it? Like, they basically made it the equivalent of, like, munitions and said you can’t export that. In other words, it can’t go outside the United States because we don’t want our enemies to have that. He said no.

He says it’s open source. He says I’m giving it away. He says, I don’t, you know, I don’t care because it’s important that we have privacy. He was a he was a cypherpunk. He was one of the original cypherpunks, essentially. So he ends up in court. It ends up, I believe I maybe I should refresh my memory on this, but I think it went all the way up to the Supreme Court. He did not go to jail. He didn’t get in trouble, and, ultimately, it was allowed to be sent all over the world. So it was a big win, And it was a precedent setting thing. So I’m this just kind of blew me away. I didn’t know he was gonna be there. Well, about an hour later, I’m walking around, in the expo area, and I see him sitting at this table, this little little table there.

And nobody was with him, which was a shame, really, but nobody was with him. And I walked up and I said, excuse me. I said, may I shake your hand? Literally, that’s what I said. And he said, yeah. And I shook his hand and I said, thank you for what you did and for all you’ve done. Or I think it’s exactly what I said. And and I left because that’s all that needed to be said. I don’t do hero worship. I don’t want an autograph. I don’t want a picture. I just don’t go for that kind of stuff. But what he’s done was so important, and I did understand that. I’m not sure a lot of people at that conference necessarily did, But I just wanted a chance to to thank him, and I did. So that was awesome. That was probably the highlight of my week.

Sorry. I to all the people I met, I I really liked meeting all of y’all, but but that was Phil Zimmerman. And I I’m not sure that can be topped. Only Satoshi Nakamoto. If if I knew who he was and nobody else did for some reason, I would do exactly the same thing to him. But that’s not gonna happen. So for one thing, England has concluded conclusively that Craig Wright is not But, anyways alright. So that’s kind of my little personal story. I really, really, really enjoyed meeting all of the people that I I met, including people that listen to this podcast.

Grateful for that time that I got to, do that and spend with them. I left. I had my meeting with Eric, Saturday morning. I was able to arrange that. Now the conference ran, industry day was like Thursday, so I didn’t go to that. And then the general day was Friday and all day all day Friday, all day Saturday. I I was out there all day Friday, essentially. Saturday morning, I met with Eric at about 11 o’clock. It was over by 11, and I left immediately because that was the day that Trump was speaking at two o’clock. Everything was a huge mess.

The auditorium that they had him in the Nakamoto stage, which was the big area, had 5,000 seats in it. They put 8,000 people in there. Of course, secret service is everywhere. You gotta go through 2 different security checkpoints. I had to go through 1 just to get in the building, which didn’t really delay me. But if you were going into that auditorium, the Nakamoto Auditorium, you had to go through another one. And it’s literally like a 40 plus minute wait just to get in. God forbid you had to go to the bathroom. Right?

I didn’t do that. I had no intention of doing that. I knew I’d be able to hear the speech if I wanted to. And I did. I wanted to hear what he said, as we’ll discuss shortly. But it just wasn’t worth all the hassle. So I left. I left and started driving home, listened to the YouTube livestream essentially of the of the conference, of the Nakamoto stage, of all the kind of the bigwig people. And we’re gonna talk about that for just a minute. Because at the conference, there was a lot of political people there. No. I don’t have all of them written down. I do know that, of course, Trump was there, RFK was there, Senator Cynthia Lummis was there. She’s from Wyoming.

There was people there from Tennessee. I didn’t catch their names or their I know one of them was the state senator, I think. Maybe the governor. I’m not a 100% clear on that. I could not keep track of everybody. There were Democrats there, not as many, but there were Democrats there. And we’re gonna talk about that for just a second. Certainly, there were Republicans there. But this really was kind of the political conference. Okay. Now I, on purpose, did not go to all of these talks. I knew they’d be available. Not that interested other than the distillation of what’s going on.

I was there to meet people and learn new things. I did learn some things. There was a lot of mining stuff there. We’re not gonna talk about that. I spent a lot of time at the open source stage, which is probably one of the better stages at that conference, if not the best stage. They did have a bizarre, like a marketplace there, which was kinda cool, and so on. So, anyways, what’s my title mean and what How does it relate to all this talk about politicians, game theory, and Bitcoin? We we game things out. We say, well, what happens if if this happens? If a million people get involved with Bitcoin or businesses start buying Bitcoin or Bitcoin is used as a global reserve currency of the world. And we try and figure these things out beforehand as a way to harden bitcoin, as a way to figure out what do we have to do to scale it, to make it better, And just to figure out where it’s going to go.

So one of the things that we’ve kind of that I have, at least, and I’m sure other people have. I don’t recall anyone offhand, but I know that this has been discussed is what happens when a nation state gets super involved in Bitcoin? We’ve seen El Salvador legal tender. They’re mining Bitcoin. I believe they’re buying a Bitcoin a day as well. But but El Salvador, respectfully, is a very small country now. From the outside, from what I’ve seen, they’ve made a lot of progress. Now, there’s people who will say there’s a lot of things going on there, and I’m I’m gonna leave that alone for now.

But, specifically, given what I saw this weekend, I would say that the American politicians have figured out that there’s 50 to 60,000,000 people in the United States who own crypto. There’s I don’t know how many people involved in crypto jobs. Now I’m going to not divide Bitcoin and other things because these politicians aren’t. And frankly, it’s just not possible at this point to do that. But understand, of course, I’m Bitcoin only and so on and so forth. But that’s just the way this breaks down. That the last 3 years, frankly, have made the regulations less clear that there’s been more, I would call it denial of service for things like Bitcoin business, for Bitcoin individuals who are high net worth, who’ve been debanked in both cases.

And just a lot of well, there’s been talk of basically making self custody illegal of Central Bank Digital Currencies and so on and so forth. This has been going on for a while. Well, these politicians have woken up and said, hey, This stuff’s going on. We can basically make these people vote for us if we’re telling them and hopefully doing the right things as part of our platform. RFK has started promoting, and he’s done this earlier. This is not new. But he started promoting the idea of, you know, Bitcoin is well, actually, crypto as part of his platform. Again, that’s what they’re saying. And Trump says the same thing. I’m not putting words into their mouth.

But RFK came to the conference and he said on Friday, he said the United States should have a strategic Bitcoin reserve. I am not sure if he said that or somebody else said that, but I’m going to use that word because it was used multiple times, and it makes a lot of sense. A strategic Bitcoin reserve. We’re gonna start with the 210,000 Bitcoin that United States already controls. We’re going to start DCA 550, which I think is a very odd number, but that’s the number 550 Bitcoin a day, which, by the way, is 100 more than are actually being mined.

So immediately, the United States would be buying more Bitcoin than is actually being produced. And we’re gonna do that until we reach 4,000,000 Bitcoin because we’re number 1. Gotta understand about Americans. That’s important to us. We gotta be number 1. I have no idea why. Something about the way that we started maybe. I I I don’t know. But, yeah, we’re number 1. And, you know, we’re gonna we’re gonna make regulations clear. We’re gonna, oh, he did say something, which I thought was super crazy. He said, that they would he would eliminate capital gains, and the cost when you, the tax hit or whatever when you convert Bitcoin to US dollar. Essentially, he was making it the equivalent or a legal tender or whatever you wanna call it without calling it that. So then the next day, Trump comes in, and everybody had been rumoring and speculating on what Trump was gonna say. Now, again, I listened to his speech as I was driving down the road.

I will say this. Trump is not, with all due respect, whatever respect that he has due, he’s not a great speech person. Unless he’s, like, really driving something home, man, he just talks in a monotone. It was kinda crazy. Just, like, unenthusiastic is the way it comes across. Now, whatever. What’s important is what he said. So here’s what he said, we’re gonna have a strategic reserve Bitcoin reserve. We’re gonna take 210,000 Bitcoin that US already controls. That’ll be our reserve. We’re gonna add to that. Although, he didn’t say by how much or when or whatever. But, you know, I think he literally said, you know, we need to be number 1 in this. Now, mister Trump, I would say it’s very likely that China or Russia or both are already mining Bitcoin.

And it’s very likely that 1 or the other or both may already have more than 200 and 10,000 Bitcoin, and we just don’t know it. So we may not be number 1, mister president. But that’s what Bitcoin does. He said, and this got the biggest applause. I’m gonna fire Gary Gensler on day 1. The room went wild. I mean, just like crazy. And I can understand that. Gary Gary has done himself no favors. I think Gary had a very clear understanding from day 1 that, that Bitcoin was a commodity because of how it started, And that all the crypto all the other crypto was not. And then he couldn’t seem to follow through on that.

He would never approve a Bitcoin ETF until literally he was taken to court and forced to do so. And then we saw, what, 11 of them start in a week. So Gary’s not doing himself any favors. Gary’s probably beholden to people who don’t like crypto, and I would point to senator Warren. Regardless, he said he’s gonna fire him on day 1. He says within a 100 days of being in office, that he’s going to have essentially a committee put together clear crypto regulations and that they would, you know, then, of course, pass those. Of course, they never say what happens if they don’t pass those, but and that’s gonna kinda clear up all the crypto regulations.

SEC? Is it any other organization? Is it, you know, whatever? And and the policy essentially for for Bitcoin for crypto here in the United States. At one point, he compared the crypto industry to the steel industry, And I would say, well, that’s an interesting comparison. But what I would say is it’s not analogous because as we know, virtually every crypto outside of Bitcoin has failed within a few years of its birth essentially with only a very few exceptions. And I think over time, we’ll see those exceptions fail as well because they’re not Bitcoin. They’re not the same. And, we talk about that over and over on this podcast, so I’m not gonna waste the time on that. But the imagery on the other hand, I thought was interesting, but I’ve got a couple of quotes here to to kind of wrap this up with this discussion about Trump. He said, for too long, our government has violated the cardinal rule that every Bitcoiner knows by heart, never sell your Bitcoin, Trump said. Okay. So this this was this endeared him to the crowd. Right? You know, we don’t sell our Bitcoin. The US should not be selling that 210,000 Bitcoin. It should be a long term asset.

He also said if I’m elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires in the future. Okay. So we get it. I don’t know. There were times when he seemed very much like he was a Bitcoiner, and there were times when he very much seemed like he was a politician. And I will say this about every person that was up there as a politician. Some of them didn’t have the platform to talk about this, but certainly Trump and RFK did. They both did not talk about the core issue that we have as a as the United States government as as our government. Okay? And that is we spend more than we make.

Neither one of them said a thing about it. Now they said what would get them the cheers and hopefully the votes, at least in their cases, but they didn’t talk about the core issues that are actually causing the problems that we’re seeing. In fact, at one point, Trump could not help himself. There was multiple times when this happened. But one point specifically, he essentially blamed inflation and what’s going on in our economy against well, the current president, against Joe Biden. Okay? So he was just politically grandstanding at that point. Inflation is caused by the printing of money. Inflation is caused by spending more than what you have, what you make.

That was not addressed. During Trump’s time frame, our debt went up, not down. Now did Trump print stimulus checks? No. At least as far as I can tell and remember, I actually did research this. I don’t think he did. You know, did he do really stupid things in regards to the economy? No. Did he cut any ministries or, we don’t call them ministries, but departments or budgets or this kind of thing? Well, no. And our debt continued to grow while he was president. So don’t come to me and blame it on your opponent. Well, for that aspect, at least in my opinion, it was a complete failure.

And I’m not surprised. Do I think that these things would be good for the United States? Yeah. Probably so. In terms of a game theory, we’re about to find out potentially what will happen when a country announces we’re going to have a Bitcoin reserve. We’re going to start working with Bitcoin. We’re going to make Bitcoin be important. And you could argue that that’s the number well, certainly, in terms of an economy, it’s the number one country in the world. That will be interesting. Do you think that Russia and China would not respond to that? No. They will. They’ll set up their own Bitcoin reserves because they’ll have to.

Now right after he got done, Cynthia Loomis, senator Cynthia Loomis from Wyoming got up and said she’s introducing a bill to set up that strategic Bitcoin reserve and convert the excess reserves of our 12 federal regional, reserve banks into Bitcoin over a 5 year time period. So she must have known already what was coming. She she’s essentially and she was holding the bill and, you know, waving her. So she’s drafted this up. So she’s now she’s and she’s kind of the Bitcoin senator. She’s well known for her Bitcoin stance. Not surprising that it was her, and I think she should get the credit for that. So she’s actually gonna go ahead and put in a bill to start that process. Now, will that bill get signed into law before someone like Trump or RFK, who, by the way, would be in, like, a distant third place right now in any poll, gets elected? No. It’s I don’t think so.

This is setting in motion things that potentially could happen. Tennessee, I I did want to mention this. They had multiple people, politicians from Tennessee there and their talk essentially, Tennessee, the state, was around embracing nuclear energy. They’re bringing up a new, modular, the first modular nuclear power reactor in, the United States. And they’re so they’re embracing that, and they’re also embracing Bitcoin mining. They’re trying to make it a big part of of their economy. I thought that was interesting. They’re kind of trying to follow Texas’s path if you wanna call it that. There were things left out. It was very well, I would have loved for Trump to have said no cap gains on on Bitcoin.

I think that has a very little chance of passing, but, man, at some point, that has to happen. So we’ll see. There were things we didn’t hear. There were things we did hear, and there were very obvious political pandering at time from both from every party, essentially, from from certainly from RFK and from Trump. Okay? So, you know, a lot of people were frustrated. You know, there’s a lot of talk on Twitter. Well, the United States shouldn’t own Bitcoin. And I’m like, I don’t know. This is so simplistic to me. I don’t not to be disrespectful, but really, why?

Well, I’m worried about them controlling the Bitcoin. Well, then you buy more Bitcoin, first of all, and other countries will buy more Bitcoin. And it will be a competition just the way it should be. And, frankly, countries like El Salvador and Bhutan have a head start. I wonder how much mining Bhutan has done. They’ve been doing it for a while. I don’t know. So eventually, the game theory says that these nation states will adopt Bitcoin. You can’t just keep it to yourself. That’s just not the way that it will work, and it was never meant to be that way. So you may be uncomfortable with United States only Bitcoin or Russia or China or European country or South American or African country, it doesn’t matter what country.

You may be uncomfortable with that, but understand it’s going to happen. Bitcoin is for friends. Bitcoin is for enemies. Now my friend may be your enemy and vice versa, but that’s okay. What it does is level the field for how we trade. The United States has had 50 years of having an uneven playing field, one that’s tilted towards them. That gives them an advantage that that, you know, insulates us for in a lot of ways from the struggles of a lot of the countries of the world. And we just we have this huge advantage, and it’s up to other countries, frankly, at this point to disadvantage us.

Does that make sense? It’s not like the United States is just willingly going to stop using the US dollar as the global trade. And it’s not up to us. It’s just ultimately, yes, it was an agreement that was made a long time ago. Bretton Woods back in 40 2, 43, whenever it was. It was in the forties. It’s it’s probably a little bit later than that. But that doesn’t mean that countries can’t start using Bitcoin and sidestepping that. If I were a country and, I realized that the US dollar was giving the US an advantage and a disadvantage to me, I would do everything I could not to let that happen. And I think that’s what we’re seeing in BRIC, the BRIC’s countries. I just don’t think they realize that Bitcoin is the best medium of exchange because they’re just gonna fight about everything else. Well, it should be the yuan. No. It should be the rupee. No. It should be whatever Saudi Arabia uses. No. It should be the rubble from Russia, you know, so on and so forth. Because that’s gonna give that country an advantage.

Well, no. It’s gonna be Bitcoin because Bitcoin doesn’t give an advantage to anybody. That’s ultimately what they will land upon. And the sooner that a country gets to that state, the better off that they will be at least going out of the gate. Okay. Enough about that. I hope that was helpful, though, though, because it’s coming to a country near you whether you live in the United States or not. It’s just a matter of when. I do think as soon as the United States goes down this path, if we happen to be first, that you will see Russia and China follow publicly. Again, they could already be doing this. I think you will slowly see the EU come on board because, well, that’s just my impression.

I think you will see African countries and South American countries come along quicker. And frankly, I will be glad to see that because those are both disadvantaged in many ways by, policies of Europe and policies of America. So good on them. Get on board. Let’s start doing it. Let’s let’s make this a fair world because that’s one way it gets a lot more fair. So this garbage about, well, I don’t want the government to own Bitcoin. Well, maybe you don’t want my government to own Bitcoin, but I don’t want your government to own Bitcoin either. Do I really want, you know, what I want Russia to be the number one Bitcoin owner in the world? No. I wouldn’t. As an American, I would not.

But they have the right and ability to do that if they so choose just like we do. So I thought it was a very interesting from that aspect. The crowds were extremely frustrating, but, yeah, good stuff. It is interesting to very likely see this stuff play out, and I think what will maybe be a lot sooner than a lot of us thought, certainly myself. I thought we were years from this. If it’s not this election, I’m convinced it will be the next election. I think it will I very honestly think it could be the deciding deal in this election. And by the way, just to wrap that up, the morning of Trump’s speech, so Saturday, a group of Democrats so that’s the opposing party here in the United States that’s opposing Trump who Harris is their current candidate, Although I don’t think that’s a 100% set in stone until the conference happens, which is the the Democratic Select Candidate Conference or, DNC is what it’s called.

Until that happens very soon, which is like a week away or so. But, regardless, a group of Democratic congresspeople sent a letter, to Harris, I think, actually to a number of people if I’m not mistaken, and said, look. Basically, this is my interpretation. It’s Macintosh’s interpretation. Knock it off about the crypto because these people are all very the peep people that it was sent to, like Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate. They’re very anti crypto. And if they’re not careful, it could cost them an election. If it doesn’t this time, I’m again, unless they just, like, completely snuff the life out of crypto, which is possible.

If the democrats get elected, let me put it this way. If a subset of the Democrats get elected this time and managed to get the support for it, I could see how they could essentially kill crypto in the next 4 years. I don’t think that’s hyperbole. I think that’s a possibility. And I’m not as you all know, I’m not a political I try and not be political. I’m not a party person. I am independent. I’m not registered as either a Republican or Democrat, and I will vote based on my conscience. I will be 100% honest, And I’m not gonna tell you who I’ve hoped for. But as someone who thinks that Bitcoin specifically can change the world, this is very important to me.

So this is very high on my agenda. I will say that. Alright. Let’s move on. We’ve got some support this week, and I appreciate that. I’m gonna run through pretty quickly because this is getting kinda long. A lot to go over there. A lot going on this week, though. Again, really cool to meet up with people. Having trouble finding my notes. Alright. We had a total. I’m just going throughout the total here. It was 23123 sets. I do appreciate that. And let’s see here. So we did have some I actually didn’t have any messages this week. It was kinda weird. That’s fine. Nobody had anything to say. We had some screaming. I got a boost from Gulag Bound when he was watching he or she was watching episode 176, two roads, the last episode boosted, a row sticks 1111. I do appreciate that Gulag Bound. Your support has been going on for quite a while, and you’re very consistent, and I appreciate that. I do appreciate that. And then we also got a boost from hypersensitive asaris, also on, the 2 roads episode, episode 176, a 500 sat boost. Thank you very much, hypersensitiveivosaurus. Always good to hear from you too, out there in Portugal. So, that’s it on the boost and the streams. So let’s jump right on into the news. We do have some news this week. I think maybe other than the Bitcoin conference stuff, which I think is frankly important.

I hope you understand why. Not because of Trump or because of RFK, but because of what this really represents in terms of nation state gameplay, I’m serious about that. It sounds silly when you call it gameplay, but, game theory, But that’s really what it amounts to. It’s going to happen, and you need to be prepared for it. Swan Bitcoin. So apparently, Swan Bitcoin is experiencing some trouble. It’s not a good economy despite what anybody says, on whoever. And they ended up, laying off a significant number of people. They they made statements saying, well, in fact, earlier this year, so in the last 6 or 7 months, they said they were gonna go public within the next 12 months and that they they had a mining unit of a 160 megawatts, 4 and a half exahash up and running, which that was amazing if that’s what actually happened, that they did that kind of under under cut covers. It’s kind of weird.

But, anyways, apparently, they’ve laid off front end engineers and UX designers. They’ve also, let off back end people, so people who were running those machines. And there was a lot of people on Twitter, Bitcoin Twitter saying, I’m looking for work from Swan. So I don’t know. They’re they’re not gonna go public. They’ve they’ve said that. Apparently, their financials are what that means to me is their financials are a mess, and they’re just not gonna be able to pull that off. Apparently, that 4 and a half x it has, maybe it is up and running, and maybe that’s partially why we’re seeing this difficulty adjustment.

I shouldn’t say that, but yeah. On the other hand, Mara, which used to be Marathon, which used to be almost bankrupt or went bankrupt, which this is crazy. Now they’re not. They’re up and running. They bought a $100,000,000 worth of Bitcoin. Now I don’t understand why a mining business would buy a $100,000,000 worth of Bitcoin. Are we in the Bitcoin holding business, or are we in the mining to make Bitcoin business? I don’t know. I can’t answer that question, but it was certainly out of left field. And I’m not gonna speculate because I I don’t know. Yeah.

Let me run through this real quick. It’s getting late. Need to wrap this up. I took a clip from, from the conference. I may take the time to talk about this. I think this is getting to be more important, more and more important. I thought this was interesting. The chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald was at the conference. This is like a really, really big company or whatever, and it was kind of a big deal that they were there. And then they were talking about Tether. So Tether is a stable coin. Right now, it’s not I don’t think Tether runs on Bitcoin at all. Although now with Bitcoin Lightning, you actually can do stable coins. So I don’t know if Tether is going to do that or not. But, anyways, he literally said they work with multiple law enforcement agencies around the world, and they will seize any amount of coin, meaning Tether, if it is involved in illicit activities.

And they the other part is, Tether’s essentially buying treasuries of the United States to back, as a way to I don’t know. It’s all about the financing. I mean, they have a large amount of cash essentially because they’re a very profitable business. It’s crazy how profitable they are, and they buy treasuries. And so they’re essentially supporting the debt of the United States. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that, or I would be comfortable with that if that were my company. But, anyways, I thought that was very interesting that right there on stage, he was talking and said out loud that they will seize any amount of coin if it is involved in what they deemed to be. I’m gonna add that part, illicit activity because we know over and over again that people get mislabeled and so on and so forth. And a lot of times, they just simply end up with the wrong person, and they just seize it and say, no. It’s ours.

No. No. That’s not yours. It’s ours. It’s crazy. I’ve mentioned the Nakamoto Institute, at the conference. They launched a redesign of their website. I have not looked at it yet, to be honest. But from what I’m seeing here, looks really nice. And they’ve been talking about that. So oh, the letter was actually written to the DNC. Sorry. They and basically saying they do need to pivot away from the anti Bitcoin policies of Elizabeth Warren, which which people within that party have have, you know, supported. And it’s gotten to be very onerous.

Yeah. I reposted this checkmate, underscore checkmate. I don’t know who this is. But, anyways, they posted, remember folks, words by politicians are worth less than the air that carries them. What matters are the actions and the results, and I agree with that 100%. Now Trump may believe from the bottom of his heart that we need a Bitcoin strategic asset. He may not be able to get that because of pot party differences or whatever. I don’t know. We’ll just have to see. And, you know, some of it, frankly, very much could be just hyperbole. Okay.

Cynthia Loomis’ bill actually, I’m not sure I said this, but the one that she posted would actually assemble 1,000,000 Bitcoin, 5% of the world’s supply. To me, frankly, that is a much more honest target than than what Robert f Kennedy says. Robert f Kennedy junior, I should say, really. And, with all respect to him, he he just does not understand the math that would drive, it would be impossible. We can’t do that. 1,000,000 when we already hold 210 or, you know, basically almost a quarter of a1000000. Yeah. I think that’s probably possible. Maybe.

We’ll see. One of the I will mention this just because of how crazy it is. Antminer, the big Bitcoin mining manufacturer from Bitmain. They call me Antminers. Anyways, they released s 21XP Hydro. So this is an immersed model. It runs, in a coolant, essentially. 473 terahashes. 12 joules per terahash. 5676 watts. I just bought some s 20 ones. Okay? And there are 180 terra hashes. So they’re half less than half of this power. I don’t know where all this is going, but it is literally like a a race for these companies, which I get. But, man, this needs to slow down.

Wow. Making my stuff obsolete. In 600 days, there will be less than 1,000,000 Bitcoin left to mine. Keep that in mind. Okay. I think that’s it. Let’s see. Oh, yeah. I would point out, and I think this is actually important. So Kamala Harris, the the vice president right now of our country, And the candidate for president declined the option. She was invited. People at the Bitcoin conference reached out to her people, and she flat turned them down. So she declined the option to speak to 20,000 people, 400 press. By the way, the day that Trump was there, there was over 900 press. They actually they tracked that.

And so, actually, it was a lot higher than that. And she turned it down because this is an area where she’s very clearly staked out her views, and her views very much line up with Elizabeth Warren who is very anti crypto and very anti Bitcoin. Mt. Gox, as far as I can tell, they’ve repaid all their creditors. All the money is all the Bitcoin has been dispersed. And the dip we saw last week down to 635 or whatever was literally, in my opinion, because of that, and I thought it was fascinating that it essentially rebounded immediately. As earlier, we’re still above 69,000, 69341 right now.

Alright. That’s it. Very cool. I did get to shake hand. I just saw a tweet about that about seed signer. That was cool. They were there. The main developer, a guy named Keith, got to shake his hand, got to shake she’s on his hand, talked to him a bit. That was all cool. It’s really fun meeting people in real life that you, you know, you’ve talked to or you’ve interacted with online, this kind of thing. I would highly recommend it. I would actually say the value in going to the Bitcoin conference is that. And I’ve I waffled. I I even told my wife Friday. After Friday, I’m like, I don’t think I’m coming back to another one. This was my first.

I’ve just never taken the time to go to one before. And to be honest, after a little reflection, maybe a little sleep, the Bitcoin conference, I, respectfully, the Bitcoin conference content itself was disappointing to me. Some of it was good. Some of it was very good. A lot of it it’s not even that it wasn’t of interest to me. It was just that I frankly don’t think it’s of the benefit to Bitcoin. And because money was paid, people were allowed to talk. Okay. A lot of times in in some instances, that’s certainly why there were some speakers there. And I just it’s hard to do value for value when you’re a business like that. I’m not sure it’s possible. But, man, we’re a Bitcoin business.

I would just say that some thought needs to be put into that. You know, just because somebody is willing to pay doesn’t mean that that they’re there. You know, there was 25,000 people ultimately there, and if they were buying tickets, the average ticket price was at least $300. You do the math. It’s a lot of money just off tickets alone. I know those conferences are expensive. But, man, Bitcoin Magazine, the people who put this on, you do not have to accept every bozo that slides a check into your hand and says I wanna talk on the main stage or on a on a side stage. I heard stuff that was just it was just hot garbage, man. It was just hot garbage. Didn’t have any business being there.

But having said that, I would also say meeting people, interacting with people was worth the money. Learn and there were things that I did learn, but, you know, interacting with people, making new friends, so on and so forth. That was worth it. Networking. We don’t like to say that word, but networking. The software updates this week, I will run through this real quick. I’m not Proton launched a new wallet. ProtonMail, ever heard of that? They’ve launched a self custody Bitcoin wallet. It’s gotten mixed reviews. Whatever. At least they’re trying. It seems to be very slick.

Nutshell, which is the cashew e cash, wallet. They put out a new version, got lots of new stuff in it. Nunchuck, put out a new version. Let’s see. Nunchuk is a, it’s a mobile, main chain Bitcoin wallet. I’m not sure if they even do lightning, but they are trying to make it easy. And they believe that mobile is actually safer, more secure than having it on a server. I disagree, but that’s okay. We’re allowed to. But, anyways, they’ve added some more features, new release, and then I’ll be hub for the podcast 2.0 fans is now out and available. It essentially is a way to kind of set things up with lightning and get everything connected. I’ve not used it. They do have an open source version that’s free that you can use, which I love. They also have basically a software as a service where you can pay them. I think it was 21,000 Bitcoin, not Bitcoin…Good Lord. Satoshi’s a month to use, which I don’t know. Maybe I’m being cheap. I probably am. Let me see how much 21,000 bitcoin is. $21,014.05 So what are they going to do? Maybe in a year, maybe a year and a half. If Bitcoin’s doubled in price, is it gonna be half that, or is it still gonna be 21,000 sat and it’s $30 a month? I don’t I don’t know. I can’t answer that. I feel like that maybe is too much, but I would also be very interested in running the open source version potentially. So, anyways, it’s out there. It’s available. I do use the Albie Wallet. It’s actually my primary lightning wallet right now.

Shocker. So there you go. I’m not gonna look. I’m I’m gonna skip the wrap up. It’s already been an hour, maybe more than an hour. I gotta edit this puppy. It has been more than an hour. Oh, man. It’s gonna be a long night. See how much I love you people? It takes me longer to edit than it does to record. I’m gonna I’m gonna skip the wrap up. This is a value for value podcast. I’d appreciate your support. Grab a podcast 2.0 app. Boost stream. Share it with somebody. That would be awesome. I don’t know what we’re gonna talk about next week. There was other stuff at the conference. I thought that was the most important message.

Please understand where I’m coming from. This is not a republican or democrat or conservative or liberal, however you wanna phrase it, thing. This is Bitcoin going to the next level, and you need to be ready for it whether you believe that or not. It’s coming. That’s it. I will say this. You can reach me at Mcintosh @satoshis-plebs.com. I’m on Twitter at mcintoshfintech. That’s it. That’s all I got. I’ll talk to you all soon. Stay humble, friends. Go out. Make it a great week. I’ll talk to you soon.