[00:00:00] McIntosh:

Welcome back to Satoshi’s Plebs for episode man, I haven’t done this in so long. I can’t even talk. Two twenty four. I’m Macintosh.

[00:00:09] Kenshin:

And I am Kenshin. And today, we’re talking about the continued drama in the Bitcoin node space and what September holds for us. Alright.

[00:00:18] McIntosh:

Glad to have you back, Kenshin. Yeah. Glad to be back. Talk about that in just a second as much as you want. But, before we do that, we’ll go ahead and do our regular block height. We’re at nine one three zero four six for our block height. So I haven’t seen you in a couple weeks. I can’t see you right now, but that’s a different story. We’ll get to that in a minute.

And what’s been up?

[00:00:44] Kenshin:

Oh, it’s been busy. It’s been so busy that I haven’t even seen the price of Bitcoin the last two weeks.

[00:00:54] McIntosh:

Which is why I just where you were two weeks ago. Right. It’s like nothing happened. I didn’t miss much. I see. So You missed all the drama. We’re gonna go below a 100,000. Oh. Twitter. Twitter. Get off Twitter, people.

[00:01:08] Kenshin:

Oh, was it? Was it the drama?

[00:01:11] McIntosh:

Well, just people worried about the sky falling. I think we got down to a 107, I wanna say, roughly. Actually, just a couple days ago, and, man, I’m telling you, they were like, yep. 58 the fifty eight gang came out. They’re like, we’re going back to 58.

Oh, I wish not.

[00:01:32] Kenshin:

No. And  I could just see my my DCA amount was getting a bit bigger. So I was happy about that.

[00:01:40] McIntosh:

I got a nice one Sunday night or Saturday night, I should say.

[00:01:45] Kenshin:

No. But I was away on a business trip for two weeks in a very, very, very warm country and, unpleasantly warm.

[00:01:55] McIntosh:

You showed me the thermometer. I don’t think I would have survived there. Yeah. I think I would have gotten pleasant. I would have gotten off the plane and turned around and said, I’m getting back on. Take me out of here.

[00:02:10] Kenshin:

You you know, the first shock the first shock was getting out of the airport.

Right. The it’s it’s literally the first second you step out and you’re like, oh, no. And it was ten thirty in the night, and the temperature was 39 degrees Celsius.

[00:02:29] McIntosh:

Right. Which is over a 100 degrees, if I’m not mistaken, in Fahrenheit. So I was just with the Yeah. I I have never had that experience. I’d the closest I’ve ever been I do remember one time, I think I was flying to to California, and we stopped in Las Vegas. And we deplaned and got on a different plane there. So you get out, and you’re, like, in this metal tube going between the plane and the and the airport.

And it was so hot in there. I felt like I was being baked in that 100 feet that we walked down that tube. I mean, it was it was crazy, and I’m I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as hot as what you saw in the last couple weeks. I I really did feel bad for you. I mean, you we talked a bit, and you showed me some videos and of kind of the the temperatures. And it’ll it’s it was it was crazy.

[00:03:31] Kenshin:

Yeah. Yeah. It was uncomfortable.

[00:03:33] McIntosh:

And but next week, I’m coming towards your side of the pond. Oh, well, just keep booking those plane flights, I guess. I don’t I hope you’re getting all your airline miles.

[00:03:45] Kenshin:

Yeah. I need to set that up. You

[00:03:49] McIntosh:

I didn’t. Oh my goodness. You do realize you’ve, like, left two free flights behind already.

[00:03:59] Kenshin:

Yeah. But they all have their own accounts, their own I know. It’s a I cannot be bothered.

[00:04:04] McIntosh:

When I travel, which I haven’t in a long time, but I very much try to travel on one or two at most airlines. I just it’s crazy because they all have their own programs and whatever. And, you know, we do utilize that. I think we’re actually using you know, we are. In October, my wife and I are going on a vacation finally, and we’re using airline miles to fly. So I’ll talk about that when we get back. It’s gonna be a lot of fun, but yeah.

[00:04:37] Kenshin:

Cool.

[00:04:38] McIntosh:

Alright. Okay. So what have I been doing? I’ve been trying to figure out what I’ve been doing since I last talked to you, and I keep coming up with new things as we were doing our show prep. Probably me for me personally, I’m really excited because I took my little you call them, like, a one liter PC, these little tiny PCs. Right. Yeah. And I I don’t know what you call it in US with your Right. You I that’s actually getting to be a pretty common name, I think. But regardless, I have had one for a bit over a year probably at this point that I’ve been running Ubuntu on, which is a Linux distribution and Bitcoin Core and electors, which is an indexing function essentially for Bitcoin Core or for Bitcoin, the the node.

And I use that with my Sparrow wallet to manage my money. Well, I have been wanting for a long time to set up a real kind of recording setup and a Linux desktop and all this kind of stuff. The challenge has been, I don’t have Ethernet back where in my bedroom where my desk is. And Wi Fi for something like Bitcoin, like running a node, not ideal. It’s doable, but the signal is a little weak. And I don’t know. It kinda drops in and out, and it’s just not ideal. Well, I ended up just dragging an Ethernet cord down the hall. Don’t tell my wife. Oh, wait. She walks past it every day.

So I just ran a cord down the hall and set up the the brought the little server in here, and I ended up wiping it. And I tried a couple of different things. I ended up landing on Ubuntu Studio, which is designed, it’s basically around content creation, around audio, video, this kind of thing. So the kernel is configured for, low latency, which is good for audio production, of course, and all this kind of stuff. And I’m running the latest version, which is actually 25 o four. So April Mhmm. Of this year. And so we’re running KDE Plasma 6.3.

Kinda nice. I and right now, I literally have the same setup that I used on my Mac. So I’m running Audacity. We’re recording locally, as we have been doing, and we both communicate through signal. So I can hear you. You can hear me. And all this is on my desktop. But where this will be going is I really wanna be able to bring in some other inputs like what what was I telling you? Like a video on a web page. You know? Somebody’s I don’t know. Adam Back is saying something important. So we wanna bring that into the show and click. There it is, and it gets piped right into the feed. Can’t do that with Audacity, but we’ll either be moving to, OBS on both of our sir or both of our desktops, which you already run that, and I will as well, or I may do Reaper, which will allow multiple inputs. And there’s a lot of tech stuff, but I’m super excited as you can tell, and we’ll stop right there.

I’m just excited to be off the Mac. I’m I’m I like the Mac hardware a lot, but OS X is a pain in the butt to deal with. And it’s certainly not open source and all that.

[00:08:28] Kenshin:

So Welcome to the Linux desktop world. Yeah. You know?

[00:08:32] McIntosh:

Alright. Alright. You young whippersnapper. I tried this a long time ago back when it was hard. And, frankly, the desktop itself is not hard anymore. I I was not super impressed with the sound setup. With Linux, basically, there’s three different components. There’s, like, the lowest level. I think it’s called ALSA, and that’s, like, your driver level. And that’s one thing. But then there’s kinda two different ways of managing it. One’s called Pipewire. One’s called, JACK, j a c k.

And it’s like they cannot settle on a standard. And it’s it is a little frustrating. I was able to get it working, and I think it’s gonna work fine. But, frankly, I just wish they would use Pipewire and be done with it, and everything would just work out of the box. Jack or Jackd, it it’s it’s it was not at the time, it was the best technology there was. It’s no longer so. And, I don’t know. That’s just my opinion. I’m just a dumb pleb who does not program, you know, programs and drivers and things. So take that with a grain of salt. But yeah.

In general, though, the user experience has actually been very, very good, much better than it used to be. And, yes, I have used a desktop before. Thank you.

[00:10:03] Kenshin:

 I installed the Ubuntu recently, and for me, it didn’t feel natural anymore. I don’t know why. What did you use? Arch. Okay. About to with, a tiling manager now called, yeah, called Hyperland, but it’s not relevant. What was difficult with Ubuntu was In Linux. Oh, sorry. Oh, yeah. Alright.

[00:10:34] McIntosh:

Hey. Maybe we would hit the top of the charts if we started sorry. I’ll stop. Yeah. No. Don’t say it.

[00:10:42] Kenshin:

No. But to to finish that thought, I mean, I just, Ubuntu is just more complicated to install stuff compared to Arch. So I have been used to now to Arch to very easily install everything with the same process instead of

[00:10:58] McIntosh:

yeah. I took a side trip at an Nix, and I really wanted it to work. Yeah. But I just cannot, at this point, really make it work for me. I love the concept.

I love the idea. Mhmm. But, yeah, it’s I I’ve just historically and the servers I work on at work are Ubuntu, so I’m intimately familiar with it. You know, it’s just what it is. But to each their own, I’ve not tried Arch. I’ve heard a lot about Hyperland, actually, but I’m just kind of an old school kinda KDE guy. I remember when KDE project came out. We’re gonna beat Gnome. Well, they kinda have, actually, in my opinion. Alright. We do need to move on because I think, like, every one of our listeners just dropped off. Hey. Come back, guys. This is the important part. We’re talking about our supporters. Sorry.

Sorry. We had to geek out a little bit. Send in Mike boosted us 1,069 sats and said, great interview. This was talking about last episode, episode two twenty three, the seed sider project. Great interview. I love the seed sider project. The ability to source components independently stop not only supply chain attacks, but also serves to check signing devices from getting too expensive as well. 100%. Yeah. 100%. That is absolutely true. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I always enjoy talking to SeedSigner. I’ve had the opportunity to do so on air a couple of times. I’ve talked to him at the conference as well. He is as genuine in person as he is on the air.

He does not present, a false face, shall we say. He may hide his face, but he does not, present a false front. So very good. Thank you, sir. Let’s jump on into this. We actually do have a number of things to cover today. It’s kind of a a hodgepodge of different things. No one big story, I guess, but I just had a collection of little things I wanted to talk about, get us back in the groove for this September. By the way, I wanted to mention really quick before we start. I promise. I told you right before I’d looked at the download numbers. August last month was our third best month ever, and it’s the first it’s the best month we’ve had in quite a bit.

So I’m very, very happy with that. So thank you very much to all those who are listening, downloading, talking about the show and all that kind of stuff. So thank you very much. But, yeah, what are we talking about today? I think maybe our main title, it is September the what is today? The third? Third. Yes. The third as we record, it’ll be the fourth when this comes out. So we are officially in the September, and this catches me every year, Kenshin. I’m not kidding. I’ve done this. I don’t know how many years. I always feel like, well, September’s gonna be a great month.

And yet, historically, it is actually the worst performing month in Bitcoin over the last fifteen years, however long it’s been. I’m going to find that chart and put it in the show notes, but I promise you, I’m telling you, historically, it is true. So do not tradition, history tells us that September is not going to be a good month. Now I’m gonna turn around in just a second and argue that that may not be true. If you wanna be conservative, if you wanna go with history, then that’s your bet. Right? What did what did they say? Sell in May and shoot, there’s a saying about the stock market. I just completely it is selling May, but then I can’t remember what it is. Like, come back in October.

Like, literally, like, just take the entire summer off. I mean, I kinda feel like that’s what Wall Street does anyways and all the politicians, but maybe that’s a different story.

[00:15:13] Kenshin:

Right. Which reminds me, why did you did you think

[00:15:18] McIntosh:

the price would go up in August? I’m telling you, I I continue I do not remember. I don’t know, man. It’s just the way my brain works. I am so bullish. I am so positive about Bitcoin. It’s like, no. It’s gonna be different. I am not gonna remember that September’s bad. I’m not gonna think that the summer is just gonna be the normal summer doldrums, which is actually early in the summer. We we did go up. I mean, we did, but then it kinda settled into this 100 to one twenty level, and it’s just sat there. My thesis had been if it broke off of one twenty, one twenty five, you know, roughly where we’re at, it it would it would start climbing again, and that just did not happen. Never really broke out.

But, yeah, it is what it is. I mean, the good news is if I’m not mistaken, if it’s not the best month, it’s certainly up there. But October and then November and December historically are the best months as well. So you go from the worst to the best. So I don’t know why that is, but that, if you wanna go on history, will be what happens. Now what could throw that off? I think, personally, one of the things that we’ve been waiting for here in The United States is for the Federal Reserve to start cutting rates. We have reported it on this show multiple times to the point that we just kinda don’t talk about it because it’s just so freaking boring.

You know, Trump and Powell Powell is the chairman of the Federal Reserve. They’ve been going back and forth. Trump has been out there beating the drum saying we need to lower rates. We need to lower rates. And Powell, who frankly is probably more correct than Trump is, has been saying no. No. No. We can’t do it yet. Trump wants the boost in terms of the economy that will come from lowering rates. Powell is worried about unemployment. He’s worried about inflation, and so on. Now I think Powell is also being political because if you go back in time to right before the last election, Powell cut rates, and it was exactly the same kind of scenario.

Meaning unemployment not so great, inflation you know? And if he would have been following the same mantra, the same theory, he should not have cut rates back then. And in my opinion, what happened is Biden tapped him on the shoulder and said, please cut the rates because the election’s coming up, and that’s what he did. And then Biden still lost. So maybe it’s a lot political. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. My point to all of this little discussion is just a couple weeks ago, week and a half, they had their annual meeting out at Jackson Hole. Now for those of you outside The United States, Jackson Hole is in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

It’s very near, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, really nice places. It’s very fancy. It’s very expensive. It’s very exclusive. So they have this meeting every year, and they all fly in on their private jets, and they talk about the economy. And somehow that’s okay, but that’s just what we do. And at those meetings, he gave a speech, and he basically, in a way, said that they were gonna start cutting rates in September. If he does that and they will meet, their FOMC meeting, FOMC is, the September. So it’s, like, twelve days from now. At the end of that, they will come out and say, we’re leaving rates. We’re raising rates. We’re cutting rates. Those are kind of the three options. And most likely, he will be cutting rates. And at that point, we’re going to see a jump in in the markets.

We will see a jump in Bitcoin. I don’t know.

[00:19:41] Kenshin:

What’s the current rate?

[00:19:44] McIntosh:

That’s a good question.

[00:19:47] Kenshin:

I know in Sweden is 2%.

[00:19:50] McIntosh:

I should know. It’s above that. And that’s the problem. I mean, it’s it’s like three, three and a half. Hold on. Fed Reserve rate. Effective federal funds rate. Yeah. Four point oh, wow. Yeah. 4.33. Four. So their target is 4.25 to 4.5. I guess it kinda floats, but it’s right in the middle of that. So, yeah, we’re well above 2%. Give me a break. We’d be over the moon at 2%. Yeah. So, supposedly, they’re gonna cut a quarter, maybe a half.

And, if that happens, then September may not be so down. Maybe it’s gonna be up some. It may not be a huge amount because right now, we’re not doing so great. Although, I would say we’re holding above a 100 k really solid. We’ll see. But, but, yeah, that’s kind of the state of September, and Macintosh should really learn his history. I’m usually pretty good at that, but, man, I I just have a blind spot. Like, next year, I wanna be like, yeah. Up September, and you’re gonna be like, shut up.

[00:21:11] Kenshin:

You’re too too optimistic.

[00:21:13] McIntosh:

I am.

That’s why I was such a bad trader. Bitcoin go up, man. Well, I’ve been right for a long time.

[00:21:23] Kenshin:

Just If you zoom out. Timeline. Yeah. Just zoom out and then you’re right.

[00:21:31] McIntosh:

Oh, man. Alright. Hey. I got something else I wanna talk about. Yeah. Just a almost a little side note. If you don’t mind, I wanna put on my Gen X hat.

[00:21:47] Kenshin:

You know you know, I’m not familiar with those Gen X wise and stuff. No. We don’t mention them here. You don’t talk about that. No. So I don’t know what what Gen x is. Opportunity for some cultural

[00:22:00] McIntosh:

education, ladies and gentlemen. I I don’t know what generation am I. I’m glad you said that. I I appreciate that because I if you don’t know, I’m sure there’s a lot of people who don’t. So let me bring it up. I know what Gen X  is, and I I was about to give that, but hold on.

So we love to categorize things here apparently in The United States. And, so we came up with names. The baby boomers. You ever heard somebody called a boomer? Hey, boomer.

[00:22:32] Kenshin:

Yeah.

[00:22:32] McIntosh:

Okay. So they were that comes from right after World War Two. Okay. There was a boom in babies because all let’s be honest. All the soldiers came home. Oh. Okay? So they were called the baby boomers from 1946 to 1964. Now prior to that was called the silent tradition, generation, 1928 through 1945. And the majority of those people, they’re no longer with us.

[00:23:02] Kenshin:

Right.

[00:23:03] McIntosh:

But there are still people around from that generation, and then you got the baby boomers. And then my generation, I if you haven’t figured it out, I’ll go ahead and tell you that I’m a Gen X from 1965 through 1980. So we were the ones that grew up without cell phones, without, I didn’t get a color TV until the nineteen eighty Olympics when they were in Moscow. I didn’t get my family, I should say. Right? I mean, we have seen so many things happen in our lifetime, frankly, but but nobody ever talks about us. But that’s okay. We’re not heard about that or anything. Millennials, nineteen eighty one through 1996.

So kinda right on the cusp of, the Internet. Commercialization, I should say. Right? Right. And then Gen z, 1997 through 2012. So a lot of the people who are in the workforce now or who are just for a few years or they’re just getting in or maybe not even quite in. 2012, what’s that? Yeah. I guess they’re not in the workforce yet. Right? Those are Gen z’s. In the child labor force, maybe. Child Gen Alpha twenty thirteen through 2024, and then we’re starting apparently Gen Beta. I’ve never even heard of this. 2025 through 2039.

So those people are not in this discussion.

[00:24:31] Kenshin:

Oh, we restored the alphabet or

[00:24:33] McIntosh:

why it went from We are. X y is what did you say? Yeah. Gen X and Alpha and Beta. Yeah. No. X and y. Millennials are also gen y. Yeah. And they we just call them millennials. I’ve never actually heard them referred to as gen y, but that’s on the list here. And then gen z, and then alpha beta. And so I guess we’ll be at gamma maybe next if they do it properly, but we’ll see. Okay. Back to my point. I have watched a number of discussions on Noster. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have not been on Twitter. I’m sure it’s 10 times as toxic on there.

And you can just go ahead and ignore me if you want, and that’s fine. But I got the microphone, and I’m gonna get to say my little piece. I see a lot of Gen Z’s, and they they self identify as that. So that’s who they are. Gen Z’s, people who are just now getting into the workforce, who are just now starting their careers, and they’re like, oh my god. The world is ending. The boomers are taking all our money. I’m seriously like, I’ve literally heard people say, like, the the people but the baby boomers who are all on Social Security at this point, which is our kind of retirement system. Like, they should take that away from them because it’s not fair.

Look, ladies and gentlemen, the baby boomers, the gen xers, the millennials, or even the gen z’s, they’re not the problem. The problem is the broken system that we live in. So please don’t be telling people that you’re stealing from that they’re stealing from you, I should say, that, you know, I deserve more, that whatever. And it’s all your fault. It’s all the baby boomers’ faults. No. It’s the politician. And you the only argument you can make is people who are baby boomers, people who are gen xers, they put those people in power. But you don’t know how people voted. I mean, maybe they voted for Rand Paul. I’m just saying.

I mean, it’s a possibility. He was a guy. Well, he’s still alive, but he, for decades, promoted a flat tax here in The United States. Never got traction. I don’t know. The Social Security system, which by the way, I put money into, which by the way is a really poor investment system, really, really poor. And I wish that I could just take my money out. Like, literally, just give me three quarters of the money that I put in, and let’s call it a day. But we don’t have that option. But that the these things aren’t the problem. The problem is the politicians who’ve overspent. And Gen z, I would respectfully say at least you have an answer.

The baby boomers, they got to invest in real estate, and many of them have done very well. Here’s what I remember from my childhood, and I’m I’m gonna tell a story. I’m sorry. It’s just I’m sorry. I think this is very relevant. I’ve thought about this a long time this week. I remember in 1980, and I had to look it up, but the date was in, I’ve got it in our notes. August? No. October. And it was 1981. This is why I have notes. 10/22/1981, The United States hit a trillion dollars in debt. I was old enough to be aware of that, and I was old enough to understand we’re screwed.

We have no way of paying that debt back. And I think, frankly, that’s actually proven true. We’re 37 times higher than that right now. But you know what I didn’t have? In 1981, I didn’t have Bitcoin. I had a broken fiat system, and people who were telling me go to, school, go to college, get a job, and save money. And that kind of sort of worked, but it didn’t work the way that it should have because our system is broken. And you, Gen x or excuse me, Gen z, instead of complaining about the boomers and us, which we get left out, but that’s okay. I’m not bitter about that at all.

Instead of complaining, take control of the system. You don’t even need the politicians anymore. Buy Bitcoin as much as you can and save it and use it and build circular economies and do the things to get out of the system instead of sitting here like a bunch of petulant little children complaining. Sorry. Maybe I should scrub that last a little bit, but that is what a lot of these people on Twitter and Nostra sound like. I’m serious. It’s it’s just maybe it’s because I’m older, but it’s what it sounds like. Right.

[00:29:53] Kenshin:

There is a meme I I have seen, like, a drawing, like, a cartoon drawing or a comic strip. Mhmm. Like, pushing in back in the day, like, what was it?

Like, you have the workers just going up the the mountain. Mhmm. And then a decade later, it’s fewer workers pushing one old man. And then it’s more and more, yeah, old people and less

[00:30:23] McIntosh:

workforce. But it There’s a lot of truth to that.

[00:30:27] Kenshin:

Yeah. But I think it symbolizes the the purchasing power. It’s not so much of of the people, but it was yeah. But you need this many people.

[00:30:37] McIntosh:

You’re correct. The Social Security system was built on the idea essentially of an endlessly expanding population, and that’s not the case. Yeah. It it it may have been for a few decades.

Well, it was up until, like, the seventies, but the birth rates are slowing down. People are not having children because they’re expensive. I I have a few, so I know. You know, they’re they’re expensive, and they can’t afford it or they don’t feel like they can afford it. And twenty years from now, unless immigration has loosened a lot, we’re gonna have fewer people in The United States than we do right now. And it’s those people that’s who’s supporting the people who are in the Social Security system. But the problem with the Social Security system the idea was, hey. You pled. You can’t manage your own investment. So we’re gonna take some of it from you, and we’re gonna manage it for you so that you can take care of yourself in your old age. That was the idea.

The problem was they did two things. They took it, and then they put it in very poor investments like treasuries, which don’t really keep up with inflation, much less, you know, actually grow, and things like that. I mean, it’s a toxic mix that’s not doing well. And then they would take money out of it even though they weren’t supposed to and basically leave an IOU and go out and spend the money. So, you know, I don’t know. So my point is, though, back in 1981 when we hit a trillion dollars, I had no opportunity to get out of the system. I was trapped, and I did what I thought was best. And I’ve done okay.

But today, even though you can view this and say, well, things are much, much worse now than they were in 1981, Macintosh, and you’re correct. The difference is you have the answer, and you can get out. So please start doing that instead of sitting on Nostra and Twitter and prattling on about everybody else. And there went half the audience. Alright. Yay. But I felt like I had to say that. I hope that I think that there are people that that will help. Okay? I do. And take that in the manner that I’m trying I get frustrated, but I’m I’m not trying to be mean.

But I’m trying to present something which maybe from my viewpoint is very obvious, but maybe it maybe it’s not from yours. I don’t know. Alright. What else do we have, sir?

[00:33:27] Kenshin:

Yeah. I just I just have a question. So it was 1,000,000,000,000 back, you said, 1980?

[00:33:34] McIntosh:

1981. October 22. I looked it up. Right.

[00:33:39] Kenshin:

And now it’s 37. Correct. And how fast or do you know when it went from one to two? Because

[00:33:49] McIntosh:

I can can look it up real quick. Yeah. It was pretty slow. It’s definitely accelerating. I mean, there’s no doubt about that. Chart of US debt over

[00:34:00] Kenshin:

time. Because now I think it’s 1,000,000,000,000

[00:34:04] McIntosh:

every hundred days or something? Yeah. Roughly. About every quarter. That’s correct.

So let’s see. Here we go. ‘19, there’s there’s the trillion. ‘81. There’s 2,000,000,000,000. Where is that? It’s really close.

[00:34:28] Kenshin:

You you know what, until you find it. You know what, Swedish person just told me a few days ago? What’s that? The discussion went around a bit with a crisis economic crisis back in the yeah. Fifteen years ago. She turned and I said something about Greece, and he said, yeah. But, Chris, you were overspending. Why why Greece was spending so much. I’m like, are you serious? It’s like, you know how much US is spending? But there is no one to go and ask for their money back. Right.

If someone wanted the money back from US, they would bankrupt in a single day. So it’s just like yeah. So we hit 2,000,000,000,000, it looks like, probably in either the ‘86.

[00:35:13] McIntosh:

Oh, five years. So, yeah, five years. But, yeah, it’s it’s just going exponential. I think by 2030, we’ll be at at least at 50,000,000,000,000. I’m not gonna speculate beyond that, but there is a point. And what early on when I was doing the show, I was I mean, we can’t keep I don’t know how far we’re gonna go.

[00:35:39] Kenshin:

Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. But

[00:35:42] McIntosh:

it doesn’t. It actually doesn’t. We’re just we know we’re at the point where we’ve got two choices. We’re either gonna hyperinflate or we’re gonna default, which would be really bad as well.

So it’s just a matter of which one of those choices that we pick, and you need to prepare for that. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m here on this podcast. Yeah. Alright. Yeehaw. I hate doing that kind of stuff, Kenshin. I do. I always feel like the bad guy. It’s informative. I learned some. I know. But the way I do it, my wife is really nice. She can tell you that you’re wrong, and you’ll be like, okay. Sounds great. And, I can’t do that. Let’s talk about knots. You wanna you wanna run this? Yeah. I’ve been talking a lot. Yeah. You you you send me this article and,

[00:36:40] Kenshin:

it, worried me again.

This, argument again around Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Notes, the Node softwares. And it says that Bitcoin Core, during the the version 30 launch in October that they’re planning Mhmm. They’re back at it saying that they will remove the limit for OP return, which will essentially allow anyone to upload anything within the blocks within the block limits, at least Yep. On the blockchain,

[00:37:20] McIntosh:

which Four megabytes. Right? I guess Yeah. Really is what that comes down to. Yeah.

[00:37:25] Kenshin:

Mhmm. But, yeah. Exactly. So you could actually take a full block size with one image, essentially?

[00:37:32] McIntosh:

Kenshin, you know, I don’t have the best memory.

Right. But I think I remember them saying they weren’t going to actually remove this, that they were gonna leave it at some configurable arbitrary limit, but that’s no longer the case, or am I not remembering?

[00:37:54] Kenshin:

It says planned removal. And that was the argument if if she a couple of months ago, we went through all this drama, and people voted on GitHub not to do it. And they, yeah, let it go, and now they’re back at it. It it just feels like they really want to do this.

[00:38:18] McIntosh:

There’s a well, they are gonna do it. I mean, version 30, whenever that comes out in October, I think, they Mhmm. That’s it’s already committed. Like, they’re going to do and they’re very clear they’re going to do it. There’s a couple of things that really bugged me about this. The the actually, the biggest one, and, I’m just gonna go ahead and say the name of one of the people that I know for sure said this because he keeps saying it over and over again.

Jamieson Lop, over and over. Well, you nontechnical people, you just can’t understand what’s going on, so shut up. I mean, that’s what he says. Mhmm. That’s my translation. That’s the Macintosh translation. But he does say something along the lines of it’s the nontechnical people who side with knots because they just don’t understand.

[00:39:07] Kenshin:

And

[00:39:08] McIntosh:

you can classify me and that nontechnical people. I don’t write c. I passed a c class when I was in college, but that was a few years ago. And I’m really not good at it, and I’m not gonna say that I am. But frankly, I understand what’s going on at least enough.

And, actually, if your argument is so complex that you have to be super technical to understand it, Maybe that’s actually on you, Jameson Law. Maybe you aren’t presenting it properly, but I think a lot of us actually do understand it. So that’s one thing that really bugs me. And the second is I was thinking about this. I actually started in Osterholm post, and then something happened in my post didn’t get set up. And I never redid it because I was way into it when it cleared out. The second thing is let me ask you something, Kenshin. Mhmm. Would it be a good idea if we only had one Bitcoin software wallet?

One Bitcoin hardware wallet? Maybe Electors, which is that indexing software that I was talking about. Maybe that was the only version of that that we could use. Maybe maybe there should only be one Linux distribution. Let me think. Are those good things?

[00:40:33] Kenshin:

Sounds like a really bad idea.

[00:40:35] McIntosh:

Okay. Now we can discuss why in just a second. But I will point out for the standard of the network, the Bitcoin node software. Prior to knots coming along and now claiming 18% of the network, by the way, there was essentially no competition. There was Bitcoin Core where all these holier than thou devs congregate, and there was a couple of well, there’s, like, two other projects, and they both had very small share.

Is that a good idea? What happens if they screw up Bitcoin Core that everyone essentially is running? Yeah. Oh, that would be bad. How can we keep that for how can we foster some competition? How How can we keep a really bad network issue from happening from some bug that gets introduced? I don’t maybe a little diversity. So even aside from the actual argument, I’m all for there being competition. I think there should be a Rust version of Core. I think there should be three other versions, not just nots. Nots is the one that’s gotten the traction, and it’s because of their view of spam on the network. And I happen to align fairly closely with that view, and I don’t want people putting anything on the Bitcoin network other than peer to peer money transactions because that is what it was created for. It was not created to put your three d printed gun plans on because of, censorship.

I I don’t that’s not what this tool is for. Can you do it? Yes. It’s been done. That’s not what it’s for. And in fact, I think we should make it difficult to make it to make that happen. Yeah.

[00:42:31] Kenshin:

I just don’t like that they they, how do we say? It’s obvious there is some gain behind the scenes, and they pretend like they take the high moral ground. Does Jamieson ever talk about his company, Citrio?

[00:42:48] McIntosh:

I think it’s Citrio. It starts with a c I d. No. Of course not. It has to be brought up by other people and then, you know, somehow they’re shamed because they’re digging around. But that’s I mean, let’s talk about it.

[00:43:04] Kenshin:

Yeah.

[00:43:05] McIntosh:

What does his product do? How does it directly benefit me as someone who wants to use Bitcoin as a peer to peer exchange monetary network? I think that’s a fairly simple idea, really. And I think that’s what was outlined in Satoshi’s white paper. And, no, I do not think Satoshi would come back or I’m sure well, most likely, he’s still alive, but or she. But and say, whoop. Yep. That’s exactly what I wanted. I wanted core, and I want them to do that. And, yep, that’s it. No.

[00:43:36] Kenshin:

They they put this I don’t think so. They put this limit on purpose, the LP return. It came Yes. Purpose to block this type of spam. And now they take the moral high ground, say no. We should not have any he says that’s a quote.

Try to impose traditional governance models onto Bitcoin. Traditional. By limits? Any sort of limit is I mean okay. It’s really and then he says, if you don’t like anarchy, you’re free to leave. I mean okay.

[00:44:07] McIntosh:

We’re building this network for peer to peer money. We’re not building it so that you can ship around your garbage. Sorry. You may like anarchy. You can go do it on any of those millions of other altcoins, casino coins, whatever you wanna call them. Yeah. That that’s my opinion. You’re doing this for a very specific purpose, and it’s not because you just woke up one day and said, I thought I’d try something new. I I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this. When I built my new desktop and I put Bitcoin core back on it and I put well, I’m working on Electors. I actually don’t quite have it set up.

I did not put Bitcoin core on it. I put knots on it, and I did that on purpose. It had been running core because it had been up for actually, before this conversation ever came to light. What was that? Early this year? You know?

[00:45:07] Kenshin:

April,

[00:45:08] McIntosh:

May. So I took that opportunity to go ahead and do that upgrade. Did not lose my data. Everything worked smoothly. It was terrific. And so now I’m running the latest version of knots there as we speak. Yeah. So I that I’m doing my part. And look, I’m not gonna if somebody chooses to run core, that’s fine. You do you. But I’m very clear about what I want out of Bitcoin.

And what I want does not align with what a lot of these people want and and what they’re trying to implement. So, therefore, I’m going to do what I can to keep that from happening.

[00:45:48] Kenshin:

Right. Two things more on the subject. One thing is we’ve been seeing, Bitcoin notes gaining in market share. Right? Mhmm. But I don’t I think it’s a bit miss how do we say? Misleading? Yeah. Misleading. Correct. Because I see here total number of public nodes, 23,800 right now. Right. Out of which, 82% Bitcoin Core with 19,500 nodes. Okay. And 18% Bitcoin nodes with 4,300 essentially.

[00:46:34] McIntosh:

Mine hasn’t checked in yet.

[00:46:36] Kenshin:

I’m just kidding. No. Well, I remember a few months ago, the total number of public notes were was around 19,000.

[00:46:47] McIntosh:

Right. It’s definitely going up.

[00:46:50] Kenshin:

Yeah. So it seems like it’s not people converting from Bitcoin core to Bitcoin notes. No. It feels like new notes come up with knots instead.

[00:47:03] McIntosh:

I think there is a lot of that. Now in this literal case that we were just talking about, I actually did switch. But, yes, new nodes that I have built recently, I’ve been putting knots on, not not core. Mhmm. So I think there’s a lot of truth to that. Yeah. And that’s fine. I think everyone should run a node.

I think it’s a stretch for a lot of people. But if you’re deeply involved in Bitcoin, if you want Bitcoin to succeed,

[00:47:29] Kenshin:

you should be running a node. It’s part of your sovereignty. Not only that. If you want to have privacy in your transactions Yes. And even to look up how much Bitcoin you have in your wallet Mhmm. Is a good practice to have your own note.

[00:47:44] McIntosh:

0.01 wait. No. That’s too much. 0.0001. That’s how much is in mine. Sorry. I apologize.

[00:47:56] Kenshin:

Oh, that’s yeah. But that in a hundred years, that’s gonna be

[00:48:01] McIntosh:

I won’t be here in a hundred years, Kenshin. Oh, I am not one of these people who thinks that I’m going to live forever on this earth, in this physical body. Let me put it that way. Uh-huh. Alright.

Another thing. Yeah. I you’re you’re exactly right. A lot of this has been new growth, not old. And I don’t I I think people are it’s just it’s inertia. Right? It’s hard to change. Yeah. Mhmm.

[00:48:29] Kenshin:

And another thing they’re saying in those articles that worries may be maybe is an exaggeration, but maybe that would lead to a new fork. Because you have too many nodes publishing, broadcasting some transactions and accepting some of them.

[00:48:50] McIntosh:

I do not know. Mhmm. I’m not a big fan of forks. But at the same time, to me, this is a super important topic. And I know in a fork situation, everyone always believes that they’re right.

But I’ve looked at this for months on end. I’ve been an observer, not a participant in this insanity for the most part. And I think I’ve picked the right side. At least in general, I don’t know that nots is the be all to end all. And frankly and I’ll just go ahead and say this. You know, there’s things that Luke Dash Junior who heads this project does and says that I don’t agree with or or really think is relevant. But he’s not the only person involved. If there were another project that could get some momentum going, I would gladly support them as long as they were had the right goals. I mean, like I said, I think a Rust core project would be terrific. They say it’s too hard. I don’t believe that’s true.

But okay. You know, I think a diversity of clients is a good thing. So I am willing to take whatever bad I may feel about that particular leadership role, and I think the good that they provide outweighs that. Does that make sense? Yeah. I do believe they’re correct about spam. There’s other things that I disagree with with him. He’s a rather outspoken person in case you didn’t know. He’s and he’s been around Bitcoin for a long time. Yeah. A long time. And, so he has a long history and maybe talks too much. Sorry. I’d probably never meet him, so it won’t matter. And I’m sure he doesn’t listen to this. So

[00:50:53] Kenshin:

Oh, now now you burn our chance. Next week. Yeah. We’ll get

[00:50:59] McIntosh:

Oh, man.

That would be funny. I heard you. Sorry. I look. You can say all kinds of bad things about me, and that’s fine. In fact, I’m quite sure you do that quite frequently to your wife. Oh, me? Let me tell you what that nut said today. Alright. Where were we at? I think that about covers that. Right. Yeah. I you know, I actually so I have a question, and I just thought of it, really. And it’s in regards to this, but it maybe it’s not what you think. I think we’ve already asked. Do you run knots or whatever? Is Bitcoin’s peer to peer money aspects important to you?

Let’s see what people say. Is that a fair topic or a question or do you wanna modify that? Because I really did just think about that. So That’s good. Because I think you boil this all down, that’s the argument. Now they don’t wanna phrase it that way, especially the people on the core side of things. It’s freedom. It’s anarchy. It’s we’re right about this. Shut up, lab. Right? But I think that’s actually the question. Is this a peer to peer electronic cash network, or is this something that we can just build whatever we want on it? Yeah. Alright. News and notes.

Oh, yeah. I did wanna highlight this. I came across this great post. It’s actually on this stupid website called cryptopotato.com. Okay. Here’s one of the differences, ladies and gentlemen, between Bitcoin and whatever altcoin you wanna talk about. They don’t do Bitcoin doesn’t pay people to do this. Whereas I believe a lot of the other altcoins do. It comes out of their marketing budget. There is, they’ve done an investigation. This guy, Blockchain Detective Zach xBT, which I knew who that was. He is a pretty smart fellow. He did a study, did a blockchain analysis, whatever whatever he does.

And I’ll just give you the overview here. It says that he has revealed more than 200 influencers have been charging thousands of dollars, sometimes as much as $60,000 for a single post to promote token projects. So they’re going on and saying without disclosing that they’re getting paid for this, hey. You should buy, I don’t know, Solana. And I’m not saying Solana, the Solana Foundation, or whatever is doing this. I’m just giving you an example. You should buy Solana. Oh, and over here on the other hand, by the way, they’re getting $60,000 to make that post to reach those 50,000 people.

Does that make sense? It it’s certainly not fair. Does that make sense?

[00:54:01] Kenshin:

Well, yeah. I mean, it’s it’s not it shows that yeah. All all of those things are are purely scams.

[00:54:11] McIntosh:

Right. Be very, very careful about who you listen to online that you do not know what their incentives are. Because most likely, it is to make money off of you. And you are a person that they can claim saying, I have x number of followers, and therefore, you can pay me $10,000 to post on that account. Right? Crazy stuff. But you need to be aware of it, and don’t be naive about it. And it happens it’s probably I wanna say it’s less common just because of the Bitcoin.

The fact that there’s no Bitcoin foundation and, you know, but you still even in Bitcoin need to be careful about that. B b okay with questioning people’s motives. Why are you doing this? Why? I don’t know. Is it out of the generosity of your heart? And maybe it is. Or maybe you have a an ulterior motive.

[00:55:15] Kenshin:

Yeah. Okay.

[00:55:17] McIntosh:

Software updates. Right?

[00:55:21] Kenshin:

Right. Where are we? Oh, Bitcoin. Software updates. Bitcoin safe.

[00:55:28] McIntosh:

Yeah. New version. I I wanted to point this out. Just a few days ago, they came out with their brand new version 1.5 o.

I had him on the show. Right? Yeah. He was yeah. And a great conversation. Really nice guy. I need to try this out. I have not. I’m not gonna tell you I have. But I think I said when we did the interview, one of the things I wanna try and do this winter is take a look at this. A real good look at this. But it’s a it’s a great looking piece of software. They had a new version. On the Nostra side of things, had a couple of updates of clients, Amethyst. Do you use Amethyst? Yeah. That’s that’s my favorite. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead and talk about it. Oh, Amethyst I mean, Amethyst brings out a new version every single week, basically. Well, this one was pretty big. Did you read about this? No. I’m I’m used to seeing Amethyst, having an update, so I just I know you’ve been busy for a couple weeks. They’ve been fussing and going on online about video recording. Everybody wants to start their v log. Right? Oh. Which is Yeah. Is the silly stuff. So now Amethyst has built in video recording. Like, you can just stream right from your Nostra app. I actually saw that. I I went to after

[00:56:48] Kenshin:

a while. I went yesterday or before yesterday, and I I saw that. Yeah.

I I won’t I will not do it. I will not do it anytime soon.

[00:56:57] McIntosh:

But yeah. I won’t either, but for those of you who want the social engagement, there it is. That’s the next big thing on Noster. Congratulations. You win. Yeah. Now I also heard on another podcast that these people are actually one of the supporters or whatever, money people behind primal. They’ve got a big update coming out. I thought it was already gonna be out, but I don’t see it. And part of that was video as well. So video, like I said, is becoming a a thing on, and and that’s fine.

It’s I’m sure it was bound to happen, But, be looking for that.

[00:57:39] Kenshin:

I just don’t know where all this data is gonna be stored. Of course, you need some centralized storage places to store it. On your Blossom

[00:57:48] McIntosh:

media server. Yeah. You don’t run a Blossom media server? No.

[00:57:55] Kenshin:

I don’t think I should.

[00:57:57] McIntosh:

The average person won’t. And the average person this is why I believe yeah. I think this is fair to say. This is why I believe that Nasr is going to struggle certainly for long term widespread adoption because we make the choices to not monetize the views.

Oh, you’re using my app, therefore, you’re seeing my ad. But the trade off is to have a really good experience, you gotta run your own relay, and you gotta have your own Blossom server, which is your media server. Yeah. And that’s not gonna happen for And most people average person. And most people won’t do that. No. So there you go. So you’ve self limited, and I’m okay with that because I really don’t like the Facebook. I’m still on Facebook because of family and friends just like everybody else. Okay, boomer. Sorry.

But it’s turned into a constant stream of ads. Some of them are I actually find interesting. Like, say, I don’t know. I like old trucks. And so there’s a Dodge with a nineteen fifty something Dodge with a swapped out Cummins engine, which to me is just mind blowing. And they look beautiful, and they cost probably a $150,000. But, you know, but a lot of it is just garbage. You know? I don’t know. I don’t know. But without that income, you can’t just have that stuff for free. People are not going to support that, especially video. Video is expensive. Let’s be honest. Mhmm.

Alright. Yeah. Hey. What’s our Bitcoin price? What is it over in Europe? You know what? We always say USD first. You go first. Thank you very much. Well, it is You’re welcome. €96,000. Euros. Yep. Yes, sir. And we are at a 111 thousand 970 US cock bucks as they would say.

[01:00:04] Kenshin:

What was last year? Fiat.

[01:00:07] McIntosh:

What was last year? Are you ready? Are you sitting down? 57,431 Wow. Which is down from two weeks ago last year, which is funny because it actually is down quite a bit, compare it was, like, 63, I think, two weeks ago last year, versus basically, we’re at the same price right now we were two weeks ago.

But we’re up 95% year over year, so that’s always fun until we’re in the bear market. And then it’s gonna be, like, negative, but that’s okay. Maybe not this time. We’re in the super cycle. Right?

[01:00:41] Kenshin:

It’s it can’t be special this time.

[01:00:46] McIntosh:

Well, it’s always special. This time’s always special. You didn’t know that. It’s going to it’s not gonna be different until it’s different, and then it’s different. Right. That that actually did make sense. It’s not good. Yeah. Look at me. Did that on the fly.

[01:01:01] Kenshin:

Yeah. No. Okay. And gold. Zoom out, people. What about Alright. Sorry. Yes. Let’s see the market caps. So we have a Bitcoin market cap 2,200,000,000,000.0 and gold market cap 24.8.

I think I think that’s highest I’ve seen. Right?

[01:01:18] McIntosh:

I think so. Yeah. Which brings us I’m trying to find the actual price. I hate it. It doesn’t have the per ounce price. One ounce gold. No. It doesn’t. In sats. No. It doesn’t. Oh, no. I need to fix this. Man, if I could only get that guy who made that bot to update that bot.

[01:01:37] Kenshin:

Yeah.

[01:01:38] McIntosh:

It’s over 3,500. I’m almost sure.

[01:01:41] Kenshin:

Yeah. It’s, yeah. But it’s where do you get the price that’s a problem? Because then you need to get Oh, it’s over 3,600. Goodness. Woah. K.

[01:01:53] McIntosh:

It’s up $26 today.

What do they know that we don’t? $36.18 90 right now according to the markets.

[01:02:04] Kenshin:

Okay. I see different pricing. I see the tether gold. That’s why in some places you need to The

[01:02:11] McIntosh:

gold’s traded on the commodity market. You can get a good price for that.

[01:02:15] Kenshin:

Not in this app. But okay. Yep.

[01:02:18] McIntosh:

Not in that app.

[01:02:20] Kenshin:

Yeah. Yeah. Which brings us Bitcoin versus gold market cap. We were at some point above 10%, but now we’re We were? Nine. We’re down 1%. Yeah. That’s it, boys. Sell the Bitcoin. Yeah. Nine point zero now.

[01:02:34] McIntosh:

I’m I’m all in on gold. All in.

I’m selling this squeaky chair I’m sitting in. How do we rename the podcast?

[01:02:44] Kenshin:

The Gold Clips.

[01:02:46] McIntosh:

I’ve already named this podcast three times. It’s not happening again. I will go down. Nope. Not gonna happen. Alright. And we got six sets per vbyte, roughly 200 megabytes of unprocessed transactions. I would say, we were certainly at a low earlier in the year, probably early summer if I’m remembering correctly, late spring, you know, kind of at a low, maybe even a little later than that. But but in terms of transactions, maybe not Sats per vByte, but in terms of transactions, it’s picked up a little bit.

Maybe.

[01:03:29] Kenshin:

I don’t know. Just my impression. Yeah. It feels a bit busy now.

[01:03:34] McIntosh:

A little bit busier. But, yeah, I’m sure they’re printing some stupid spam. Warming up the oh, sorry. I’ll cut that out. Hey. We should wrap this up. You got anything else you wanna say before oh. No. I I was I was just looking. There are 41

[01:03:58] Kenshin:

blocks plus

[01:04:00] McIntosh:

seven 48 blocks in the queue. Yeah. So it’s it’s definitely busy. Days ago, it was 30. Yeah. No. It’s it’s I mean, it fluctuates, but I think overall, it is starting to pick up. And is what is that from? I don’t know. I have no idea.

I do know that when the time comes, the sets the transactions will be there. I’m not worried about it. It could stay at one set per v byte, for the next ten years, and I’d be fine with that personally. Right. But imagine opening the floodgates to spam now. So Oh, no. Yeah. No. We don’t need that. Yep. Okay. Alright. Yeah. Satoshi’s blebs, that’s us, is a value for value podcast. Supporting pod I crack myself up sometimes. Supporting podcasting two point o. No ads, no sponsorships, no money under the table. Dang it. Why can’t you ring us up one of those $60,000 deals? Oh, sorry. Just honest Bitcoin content.

I deliberately avoid sponsors because even if I love a company, taking their money would influence my opinion, our opinion. What if something goes wrong with that company and, you know, we’d hesitate to warn you. Instead, we simply ask, are you getting value for this show? Support it through time, talent, or treasure, help with the chapters, transcripts transcripts, or future projects like our chat room, which is not a future project anymore. Stream sats, boost with messages, even just a 100 sats saying great show or you suck. Either way, we’ll read it. You can go check out the apps at podcastapps.com and support independent Bitcoin media.

If you like the content, I would love it if you’d tell your friends about the podcast. That’s the best way for us to grow. Once again, this week, we’re gonna have Horizons of Hope by Jawbone. I’m sorry. I know it’s been, like, three weeks now for them, maybe even four. It’s a great song, but I just really haven’t had time to look up something new. Any boost or streaming or sets during that song will go straight to the artist.

[01:06:08] Kenshin:

Great. So thanks for being here. We hope, this has been helpful, and we would love to hear from you. Find all our contact info at satoshis dot plebs dot com. Stay humble. Please see those, and have a great weekend.

[01:06:22] McIntosh:

We’ll talk to you all soon.

[01:06:24] Kenshin:

Bye bye.