[00:00:10] McIntosh:

Welcome back to Satoshi’s Plebs for episode two thirty seven. I’m Macintosh.

[00:00:15] Kenshin:

I am Kenshin. I don’t have the number two in front of me.

[00:00:23] McIntosh:

And today we’re gonna talk about El Salvador, the IMF in Africa. Wow. You sound so different today, Kenshin.

[00:00:31] Kenshin:

Okay.

[00:00:32] McIntosh:

Well, let’s let’s Hey, Kenshin. What’s up with you? Oh, you don’t want to start? No. Doing it live, man. Doing it doing it live. I wish I had that clip.

[00:00:43] Kenshin:

I I mean, Mcintosh, you you always take me by surprise when you start, you’re like, oh, welcome back and I’m like, where’s It’s my my job in life to keep you off balance.

[00:00:54] McIntosh:

I do it quite for at least once an episode.

I’m so sorry.

[00:00:59] Kenshin:

It’s okay. I have too many screens too many whatever you call them virtual desktops that I move around

[00:01:08] McIntosh:

figure out so. Yeah. You’ve got this fancy pants hyperland, hyperdash, hyper something. Oh, I said it right at first. Setup where you got everything like tied into your keystrokes and you’re like one of those guys who shaves off, you know, one stroke a day and you’re that makes you happy.

[00:01:28] Kenshin:

Yeah. But to set it up it it took yeah. But it took days to set it up so I I lost there in the start.

[00:01:37] McIntosh:

What’s going on with you, man?

[00:01:39] Kenshin:

Oh, I got banned.

[00:01:41] McIntosh:

Didn’t you hear? You’ve been using social media again, haven’t you, Kenshin?

[00:01:46] Kenshin:

No. I got banned from Claude, from Anthropic. How

[00:01:52] McIntosh:

did you do pull that off?

[00:01:55] Kenshin:

Honestly, it was the least traffic I was using or usage I was doing for the past few months. So background, I’ve been developing this website. Right? Mhmm. For the last few months a lot. And with a pro that is this $20.25 dollars a month Right. I was constantly hitting hitting limits. Right. So so for the last couple of months, I’ve been buying the Max. So lately, I tried to get the Pro for half a month or a week actually, not even a week. Okay. And then I’m like, no. I I still need the Max.

So I bought the max because I was hitting the limits again on the pro. So I bought the max which is five times the usage. I used that for two, three days without hitting any limits on the max and all of a sudden I cannot use it. I cannot log in. It says I I was automatically my account was automatically disabled due to or it didn’t say due to anything. It said it’s automatically deleted and disabled. And take a look at the terms and conditions. And if you don’t agree, you can appeal it here. So I appealed it. I didn’t hear anything back. Automatically, after half an hour, I got my money back for the subscription.

[00:03:23] McIntosh:

I what would I’m sorry.

Maybe I missed something. I don’t think I did but what did you actually do wrong?

[00:03:33] Kenshin:

Nothing. Nothing. Right. No. Honestly,

[00:03:35] McIntosh:

I was using it within It was the the amount of use that they were not happy with. They didn’t say. They just said automatically disabled.

[00:03:44] Kenshin:

Look at the terms and conditions.

[00:03:47] McIntosh:

Which probably has something about too much usage. It could be. I mean, I think I have a fair idea of kind of the places you I don’t think you’d be doing anything that would be But I went to max.

[00:04:05] Kenshin:

Look. I I will read it to you. Your account has been disabled after an automatic review of your recent activities. Please take a look at our terms of service and usage policy for more information. If you wish to appeal your suspension, please visit blah blah blah. So I bought I subscribed to Max.

I didn’t hit any limits on the Max. And even if I hit the limits, they have the limits so you cannot overuse it. Right? So they have set the limits. So maybe it is for the usage I did before when I was on the Pro which I was constantly hitting limits but again since I hit the limits, you cannot do anything more with it. So you cannot overuse it in that sense. So I don’t know what happened. I’m I can only think that it’s yeah. They maybe want to get rid of people like me who use it too much even if it’s with because you can’t it it is within limits and I paid even for the max. But the surprising thing is they just refunded me instantly and I haven’t heard anything back from the appeal.

And to be honest, I don’t care. I got instantly after one hour, I got ChatGPT, the business subscription that has two seats. Yeah. That you get two seats, so that’s only $60 compared to a 100 for the Clodmax. There I can use two seats. It has unlimited or it has similar limits to Clod for five hours and per week which I haven’t hit yet. So they’re very generous there also. It has the codecs, the same type of interface I was using in the terminal to do programming quite fast. And it looks quite smart. So I So you have

[00:05:58] McIntosh:

the chat GPT?

[00:06:01] Kenshin:

Yeah.

[00:06:04] McIntosh:

Yep. Okay.

[00:06:06] Kenshin:

Well But I put it all in my in my business account. So it’s like, yeah, it’s a business expense in this Right. Well, is.

[00:06:16] McIntosh:

Yeah. Yikes. Alright. Well, I cannot top that. There’s no way. Just gonna go ahead and say let’s move on. If you live in the Linux world at all, Jellyfin is a very well known media manager and I have attempted to start kind of pulling everything onto this server. I’ve got some disk space, and I want to consolidate things. So Jellyfin was kind of the next step of this. Now I listened did you listen to the last episode of what is it Linux unplugged Chris’s podcast?

[00:06:57] Kenshin:

Not the latest.

[00:07:00] McIntosh:

I have it queued up now. Well that won’t That won’t be helpful for me. Let me bring it up here because I don’t But I know they’re talking about, yeah, jellyfin quite often. Well, they were talking about jellyfin but actually I should have had this already pre done. I’m sorry. On the program Sunday, they were discussing this program called dispatch r a r r Like kind of like dispatcher but dispatch ARR. I

[00:07:34] Kenshin:

know all those. There are a lot attended with RR. Sonor

[00:07:39] McIntosh:

and some others. Yeah. It’s a suite of applications. Oh, is it? Okay. Well, this one is for managing what are called IPTV streams.

So Internet protocol based

[00:07:51] Kenshin:

TV. Are

[00:07:53] McIntosh:

you familiar with this at all?

[00:07:55] Kenshin:

Yeah. But I I tried it only couple of times with Cody or whatever it’s called. Okay.

[00:08:03] McIntosh:

I’ve never really tried it and I so I’ve been experimenting with it because I want to so to better the show, I wanna be able to like watch France 24 on my computer. Mhmm. K? Right. I can go to my Roku and I can watch it on my TV, no problem. Or say Sky TV, Sky News, I think Sky News is what they call it, the the British news. I would love to be able to get all of these different TV shows, news shows from from all around the world and just have it right on my computer so I could clip out stuff for the show and this kind of thing.

Man, I love IPTV, but wow, that is just a hot mess. Still trying to get all this stuff sorted out. I have got it to work sort of, but I should be able to have it like curated with channels and this kind of thing and then have it in jellyfin so I can just just like a TV kind of turn it on and click on, you know, Sky News or whatever. I’m in the I’ve middle of not finished it. I’ve I’ve made progress, shall we say. But that kind of my free time was kinda spent doing that last weekend.

[00:09:18] Kenshin:

Right. I have used I have Jellyfin, but I’m still using Plex more but I know that with JellyFin, yeah, you can do those cool plugins and there is another one they mentioned in the one of the previous episodes about YouTube videos that you can even automatically download YouTube videos

[00:09:39] McIntosh:

and you watch them through jellyfish. I think that’s a possibility. In fact, to be honest, you could even download it, cut out the commercials and save it. Yes.

Like you I mean you can get really deep in all this stuff. I’m just trying to get something to work that I can actually use. So that’s where we’re at. And yeah, that kind of took up my week. That’s yeah, that’s about all I can kind of really talk about. So yeah. Our block height as we start recording is at nine two eight three ten. Just slightly over a thousand more than when we recorded last week. We keep chugging along. I let me just go ahead. No. That’ll wait. I’ll even cut that out. We’re good. So, Kenshin, what’s our topic today?

[00:10:35] Kenshin:

I think our topic is

[00:10:38] McIntosh:

something to do.

[00:10:42] Kenshin:

I think it has something to do with IMF. So we will hear a couple of clips and discuss a bit about IMF and how they like to intermingle themselves around within the finance or yeah, central banking world.

[00:11:02] McIntosh:

We’ve it’s complete aside. No. I’m not even gonna do it. Stop. Okay. I’m stopping myself. Alright. Very cool. Why don’t we kick things off with a clip? I wanna start with this simple Bitcoin clip. This came from another podcast. It was episode thirteen ninety eight of Simply Bitcoin. One that I listened to for news and kinda just general market feel or whatever.

But I thought that this clip about the IMF, about El Salvador, I thought it was really good. We got what is, like, a minute and a half or so, something like that. So if you’ll be patient, we’ll get this clip in, and then we’ll discuss it. So let’s jump on in there. Let’s go.

[00:11:48] Speaker 2:

You guys wanna know why the IMF had the They went bananas with El Salvador, and they literally said, listen, we will not give you a loan until you admit to the world that Bitcoin is not legal tender. You wanna know why all of that happened? It’s because they were petrified for the world to know that a money can exist that is not issued by the state. Not only that, they were petrified for people to find out that the money, the only money that is truly decentralized, that is not issued by the state, is actually a superior money to the money that is actually issued by the state. That is why the IMF did everything humanly possible to ensure that El Salvador said, okay. Actually, Bitcoin isn’t legal tender. Even though it functions as legal tender in El Salvador, nothing’s changed. But they didn’t want that official definition because they that idea in people’s minds that, oh my god. Wait a second. Hold on a second. So you’re trying to tell me that, you know, I I like, the the Bitcoin is is better money and you’re trying to tell me that, you know, the government isn’t necessary in order for for for money to function.

Like, the Pandora’s box of that is something that you can’t put back inside.

[00:13:16] McIntosh:

That is good stuff.

[00:13:18] Kenshin:

Part This of the clip and should we say for yeah. To be to be transparent, this is from simply Bitcoin as you said, episode thirteen

[00:13:27] McIntosh:

ninety eight. Sure. I don’t have any problem giving them credit. They did a good job. Yeah. So I remember when this was going down and I looked it up while we were talking, it completed in February. It started in late so basically one year ago. It it kinda started late last year. And it threw a lot of people for a loop, I think, in the Bitcoin community because the IMF basically forced El Salvador to say Bitcoin is not legal tender, which previously they had. That was a big deal, in order to take an IMF loan.

Now in my opinion, I’ll just say this, I think they should have done everything they could have to avoid taking an IMF loan, but that’s their sovereign nation decision to do so.

[00:14:21] Kenshin:

Now go ahead. Yeah. I remember when this was going down. I think for sure, we discussed it when this Mhmm. This came up first. But I also remember Jack Mallers, he said because he was there Mhmm. In El Salvador when they started with Bitcoin. Right? And he said the only thing he didn’t agree at the time is to force it as legal tender. So he said to take it away as legal legally to be or forcefully to be legal tender. He said that was a good thing.

So that wasn’t a negative out of this negotiation with IMF. That was his take as I remember. Yeah. And, again, I try not to get into other nations

[00:15:11] McIntosh:

stuff. Would I have done it that way the quite the way that they did? No. I don’t think so. If I were Bukele, which I am not, I’m not that smart to be honest, I I would not have, you know, I would have made Bitcoin available. I would have probably started stacking sats just like they’re doing. But and and education, which they’ve certainly done a good job of. I think that’s important to let the people don’t realize how how few people still really know about Bitcoin. We think that everybody knows just because they see it on the news. They just know there’s something called Bitcoin that’s a cryptocurrency.

That’s literally what they know, the average person. They don’t understand any of the benefits of it. They don’t understand any of 21,000,000, any of that. I mean, they just don’t. And you talk to them and you find out. So the education aspect of this, even though it’s run by the state or whatever, I mean, I think that’s important stuff. But the actual making it legal tender? No. I I mean, can El Salvadorans pay their taxes with Bitcoin? I think they can. I think they still can. To me that’s more important than making it legal tender and the lack of a capital gains tax on it which that’s certainly not the case here in The United States. Sorry.

[00:16:43] Kenshin:

Yeah. No. Sorry. Yes. It hasn’t practically changed anything for them. So it was just a stipulation to to appease IMF. And going back to that clip, yeah, that really shows how scared the IMF is of Bitcoin. They they really don’t want a country showing the rest of the world how to to use a better money. Right? So in in in those terms, yeah, it was a very interesting thing. I was a bit hesitant when when El Salvador agreed to those terms. So I thought, woah. As I was. Mhmm. But nothing changed. They still keep stuck in the 1 Bitcoin a day and Right. Some days they stuck even more because they said they couldn’t use that amount for Bitcoin.

[00:17:33] McIntosh:

And I don’t understand that because there was an explicit provision in the law or the the whatever, it’s not law but the you know that they signed. Their agreement. Their contract. Their agreement. Their contract. Thank you. Words are so difficult. Their contract saying you could not continue to maybe it said buy bitcoin and they’re not buying it, they’re mining it. I don’t well, no, they are buying it. The mining operation is actually separate from that 1 Bitcoin a day buy. They could never have a mining operation do exactly 1 Bitcoin every day. That’s just not the way it works.

[00:18:13] Kenshin:

No. I don’t know. Think I think it was from that money that they received. So they couldn’t take that IMF loan, that specific one, and use it to buy Bitcoin. But I guess they use it to cover other expenses and, yeah, use their other sources of income to buy to keep buying Bitcoin. Right. As far as I as I understood at the time. I don’t Yeah. But your question in the start was for me my question too, why do they keep going to the IMF or why is actually the IMF keep forcing them to take loans? Because I think it’s the other way around, right? I think the IMF has a way to force them.

[00:18:59] McIntosh:

How can they don’t know. Let me turn that around. How can they force them to make a loan? I

[00:19:06] Kenshin:

think it’s to cover the previous loans.

Think that’s how in Greece that happened also. It’s like you cannot pay your loan, you need to take another loan. Right. Which that makes zero sense but I agree that certainly has happened in the past.

[00:19:21] McIntosh:

I would be maybe that’s what’s going on here. I don’t know. That’s surprising to me.

[00:19:30] Kenshin:

And I think at the time they said also they want to, yeah, use the bigger budget for infrastructure and Right.

[00:19:38] McIntosh:

We’re gonna improve the economy or the infrastructure and therefore that’s going to improve We’re the going to grow and therefore we’ll be able to pay off your loan. Yeah. Okay.

[00:19:50] Kenshin:

Yeah. It’s a slippery slope to keep collaborating with them so that’s the bad part but I guess they keep doing what they’re doing with Bitcoin, which is a good thing.

So it’s another example of how to, yeah, use the current system while in the Bitcoin system and be successful in a way. So hopefully it works out good for them. I look.

[00:20:18] McIntosh:

Anything that’s so large like El Salvador embracing Bitcoin essentially at a nation state level like this. It’s going to take years to see what happens. And the jury is out on Bukele’s presidency. I am not an El Salvadoran citizen. I do not have any ancestors that came from there. As we would say in the South, I don’t got a dog in that hunt. Okay? But and I will say despite what other people say a lot, it seems to me that the people who actually live in El Salvador are very happy with their situation.

Do I as an American, and again, as an American, to emphasize that, feel like it’s a good idea for Bekele to change constitution so that he can run, you know, again? No, I I don’t think that’s a good idea, but it’s also not my business. So I I tend to stay out of that part of the discussion.

[00:21:38] Kenshin:

Yeah. Yeah. The jury is still out so as you said. So we’ll see. We’ll see. I But at least

[00:21:45] McIntosh:

sorry. Yeah.

[00:21:46] Kenshin:

At least we we have some interesting examples going forward. Yes. How country can work with Bitcoin. So that’s at least that’s a positive for us.

[00:21:56] McIntosh:

Right. It’s a good experiment.

You also see, you know, we don’t talk about them very much, but the Bhutan, who’s actually been mining Bitcoin longer than than El Salvador has. I mean, they are a monarchy and the prince, I believe, and I apologize if I’m not correct in this, but you know, basically he decides what’s going on and and that’s what happens. It’s very autocratic and it’s very much a monarchy, but in this case, he’s making choices that I think will help Bhutan in the long term, you know? Yeah.

[00:22:35] Kenshin:

You know know Alexander Zvetsky, right?

[00:22:41] McIntosh:

Sounds like I should know. Who is this person? He did a book Bushido of Bitcoin. Oh, right. Knew I had heard name recently. We mentioned this a couple weeks ago. Mhmm. Or last week.

[00:22:53] Kenshin:

Yeah. So what he said that really touched me in a way, you know, like Mhmm. Changed my perspective. He said that democracies he doesn’t believe in democracy anymore. Right. He prefers monarchies

[00:23:11] McIntosh:

or

[00:23:12] Kenshin:

Right. However you call them because they are they have a long term view. Right? They’re not there for four years. They have a hundred year or hundreds of years view ahead and they want their family to to to keep being in Like the king Empower?

[00:23:31] McIntosh:

Power. Let’s go ahead and say it. Empower.

[00:23:34] Kenshin:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But in in those smaller countries in a way that’s you know they want to make the country good so they’re so the king thinks his son he will take over a nice country to keep growing and his son and his grandchildren and the rest of them. So the whole family tree. So in that sense, they do good decisions with a more long term view and not the four year cycle.

[00:24:03] McIntosh:

So just recently, like a couple days ago, it was the two hundred and fifty second anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

Okay? So the Boston Tea Party which any elementary school person in The United States should know. I’m not sure that it’s really even taught anymore. I was actually just recently where this actually happened when we took that trip up to Maine and Boston. But anyways, they the patriots, the colonialists, basically said we’ve had enough of the British government imposing taxes on actually, not the British government, King George, the monarch in And so they they dumped literally in today’s dollars millions of dollars of tea into the Boston Harbor in protest.

Uh-huh. Okay? Okay. I come from that so to speak at least a good portion of my ancestry does and I am aware that that is kind of my mindset. I have no interest in being run by a monarch. I have no interest in being run by the current crop of politicians in fact. I believe it is possible at least that the statesmen of the early American experience and I’m talking really early, the ‘17 late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds were different than they are now. Mhmm. There’s evidence maybe that’s not really true but it’s a myth at least I like to keep in my head. And they were really liking trying to, you know, build a great country that was different.

I can’t change that and I guess my point to all this is you know when I when somebody starts saying things like we need a monarch, I’m like, yeah, no. Yeah, no. I don’t even want them to have two terms. I don’t want congress people to have two terms. I don’t want presidents to have two term. They get one shot and if they can’t do something then, oh, well. Let’s get somebody in there that can.

[00:26:31] Kenshin:

But all the bad decisions come from this short term thinking.

[00:26:38] McIntosh:

Bad okay. I want to rephrase that and but I don’t know I’m gonna change what you said but here’s the way I view it. Bad decisions can come from short term thinking, but having politicians in place for decades, which is what happens in The United States with congresspeople, That’s not they do not it’s not like they have long term views.

They just literally they’re they’re just trying to pull the the money to themselves. I can give you example after example of that with very few exceptions.

[00:27:13] Kenshin:

But that’s not similar to monarchy.

[00:27:17] McIntosh:

I don’t think a person in charge of a country is going to do anything other than I people are not I don’t know if people ever were but I don’t believe that people you put somebody in power like that. That they they don’t operate out of a sense can I say this without offending half the audience and I don’t know probably saying something incorrect? Most people when they’re put in a position of power like that become corrupt. How about that?

[00:27:52] Kenshin:

Yeah I agree.

[00:27:54] McIntosh:

And I’ll talk about this openly. I what goes on in Britain, in England with the monarchy that they’ve had for hundreds of years, it’s a joke. I mean, seriously. They sponge off England. I don’t understand why England puts up with it. Why do these people say, okay, we’re selling everything except we’ll give you one place for your family to live, cut off all the money that they pay them, turn over all the land that the the crown owns. It’s such a joke. And I mean the law is not the same. Look, Andrew whatever his oh I just need to stop because

[00:28:43] Kenshin:

For the record I would love to live in Monaco that one.

[00:28:50] McIntosh:

Maybe the difference is it’s a seriously, this just hit me because there’s an example of a well run place and you could make the argument in that case, it’s a good thing. But that’s also a very small country, it’s very prosperous but it’s very small. Bhutan, Bhutan is tiny. It’s shoved up between India and China. You’ve got Bhutan and Nepal right in the same area. But Bhutan is very small, very small population and maybe that’s the difference, I don’t know. Yeah. But time after time through history, we see conquest, we see just stupidity abound by these people who in many cases in Europe at least, they were supposed to be in place by God.

God doesn’t that’s not the way it works people. Sorry. And now that I’ve just offended everyone, I will just stop. And I will say, as I said at the start, I have an American outlook. And I mean literally you can trace it back to things like the Boston Tea Party. When we told England, Get out. We don’t want you here. Okay?

[00:30:10] Kenshin:

Yeah. I’m

[00:30:11] McIntosh:

just saying. So you’ll be throwing tea in the harbor you said? Well I would go up to Washington and throw tea into the the Washington it’s not the Washington Monument but the monument is right there. It’s the reflecting pool. Do you know what I mean? There’s like this huge like very shallow like reflecting pool. It goes from I want to say the capital to the Washington Monument which is the big tall spire.

I may not be correct about this but I would just absolutely dump. Alright. We could use a few I am not gonna say that.

[00:30:54] Kenshin:

You’re

[00:30:56] McIntosh:

in control today. I am literally self censoring myself right now. I will stop. But trust me I’m not casting stones at other countries although it sounds like I probably am right now. We we have a lot of problems right here in The United States, okay? And I am at least I’m willing to admit that. I’m not someone who sits there and says, we’re perfect and you’re not and why can’t you change? No, we all need to change.

[00:31:24] Kenshin:

Do you know what’s the population of Monaco?

[00:31:28] McIntosh:

It can’t be that much. 1,000,000? Probably less?

[00:31:32] Kenshin:

Well, Bhutan. We talked about Bhutan. Bhutan is 770,000. So let’s have a midday. Very close. Okay. Yeah. But Monaco is 38,000.

[00:31:42] McIntosh:

Wow.

[00:31:44] Kenshin:

That’s it.

[00:31:46] McIntosh:

It’s a small city. It is very I didn’t realize that. Yeah. I was completely wrong. Yeah. No. I’d love to live in Monaco. I mean Yeah. But Have you have you been there? No. I’ve never been to Europe. I I really No. Wanna I’ve we’ve had this discussion. Come on now. I had been to China. I don’t know how many times. I’ve I’ve flown through Japan. I’ve I’ve not been there really but I’ve been in Tokyo twice or three times. Oh, nice. Just in the airport though.

[00:32:18] Kenshin:

I’ve never been to Canada.

[00:32:20] McIntosh:

Was in Mexico when I was like really young. I mean I’ve never been to Europe.

[00:32:27] Kenshin:

Wow.

[00:32:28] McIntosh:

My wife has and and the problem is see I wanna go and she’s like, no, I’ve already been there. I’m like, but but but

[00:32:37] Kenshin:

But it’s not one place, right?

[00:32:39] McIntosh:

No. But the fun thing is you can drive around there. It’s like our states, know. Yeah. Exactly. I’m gonna go I’m gonna go to France tomorrow. It’ll only take a couple of hours.

[00:32:52] Kenshin:

But I I personally love that area around Monaco. Nice, that’s that’s one of my favorite cities in South Of France. It’s because it’s so rich. Let’s be honest. I see. It just looks good, feels good to be there. Yeah.

And then you have the mountains. Probably nice and clean and,

[00:33:11] McIntosh:

you know.

[00:33:12] Kenshin:

My dream was to be around that area for the summer and then in the Swiss Alps in the winter that’s like an hour away, Geneva and those mountains around there. Oh, it’s really nice.

[00:33:25] McIntosh:

Well, I’m afraid my friend, you may have to wait a little while. We’ll get to the Bitcoin prices here in a while, but alright. We need to move on. I I don’t know. Maybe I should leave that in. Maybe I should cut all that out. Maybe I went overboard but that is my feelings. I don’t to close-up this I I don’t think that that’s really the answer and I’ve heard that.

I just think that power corrupts. How are we gonna choose our monarch? Please. Let let’s see. You know what? Maybe I should cut all that out. I wanna flip this around. I believe families should start thinking about their legacy, not countries. I mean they do but it’s more important that families think about that. I’ve got a book on order I had heard about on a podcast. It’s not on order it’s on my Christmas list about legacy, about leaving a legacy for your family and part of that is financial. Right. And the part of the problem is with Fiat we can’t think long term really. But there are families the Rothschild, I mean you know these names Vanderbilt, these families built a legacy and they passed that down from generation to generation and there are ways of keeping that wealth and, you know, making it What’s

[00:34:53] Kenshin:

different to a monarchy?

[00:34:56] McIntosh:

That’s exactly what a monarchy does also. I as a member of that family have a choice to do whatever I want in a sense. But I’m setting as a I’m the all I’m saying is we have an attitude, you know, this is actually a really deep topic. Maybe we should actually just talk about this separately but I’m not forcing anyone in my family to continue on. I’m just thinking differently and not trying to go to my grave with all my money spent and pass on nothing to my children. And I can’t even think beyond my children. I mean, I want to pass down things to my grandchildren and their grandchildren, right, for generations.

Not just, oh, I’m gonna buy this little acre of land and my kids will fight over it when I die.

[00:36:00] Kenshin:

Right? And that’s exactly the logic I said about the monarchies. So that’s exactly the same approach they have. So it’s an example that that they do, they practice, and then families like normal people’s families, they can aspire to have as well. Because that’s the opposite of all the politicians. They don’t have this long term view. It’s all fiat view, short term. Short term view, four years, maximum what what can we take maximum and not leave anything behind? It’s the next next government’s issue.

[00:36:35] McIntosh:

I I think if you took let me put it this way. In my opinion, and maybe I’m wrong, but I think if you took 20 nations and you just across the board and you made monarchs somehow magically the head of those countries, they were not currently monarchs, I think a hundred years from now those countries by and large are gonna be not as good off. There’s going to be it’s it’s not going to be as good as if they didn’t have a monarch.

[00:37:13] Kenshin:

Like UK?

[00:37:17] McIntosh:

Like Spain? I don’t think The UK is doing very good personally.

[00:37:20] Kenshin:

Well, not now but Doing great.

[00:37:25] McIntosh:

Their monarch role is from what I understand is semi ceremonial. My problem with them is they seem to have a different set of rules that are applied to them. Now maybe that’s because they’re so rich. How did they get rich? But anyways, and in theory they own the crown owns all this land and all, you know, which that should be the countries. Like they literally own land and I mean it’s called Crown land which means there’s now they would say, well they literally don’t own it but I’m not sure that’s true. Right? And I’m into stuff that maybe I you guys boost in and tell me what a moron I am. I don’t think you guys have a lot of this correct.

Think I’m correct at least in general. I I cannot imagine living in Canada with all this I I don’t know. It’s just it’s crazy stuff like that. And you make look. Make the same arguments here. The government in The United States owns a ton of land for good or for bad. Not a big fan of that either.

[00:38:41] Kenshin:

But Yeah. I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to all of this. Sure there is.

[00:38:48] McIntosh:

We just don’t know what it is. I don’t know. I I will say though that this whole idea of monarchies are a good thing to me is that is We have to stop. Alright. Next item.

What are we talking about next?

[00:39:06] Kenshin:

Well, we started talking about IMF. Right? Yeah. And then there was a nice clip from two years, two and a half years ago from the Human Rights Foundation. They posted that video on YouTube about, it’s titled fighting back against monetary colonialism. Right? And it’s about how the French has been affecting the monetary policies of countries in Africa.

[00:39:40] Speaker 3:

Okay.

[00:39:42] Kenshin:

So I thought to play a minute from this Yes. And we can comment on it. Sure. It’s it fits with the IMF because it’s a French government and the IMF collaborating to to control that. Okay. Ready?

Mhmm.

[00:40:00] Speaker 3:

After World War two, the French had fought tooth and nail to keep their colonial possessions, but eventually were forced to give them up. However, the benefits of the resources and labor of French colonies in West And Central Africa were too rich. Paris devised a scheme to have its cake and eat it too, ending political colonialism while orchestrating monetary colonialism. This was the birth of the Sifa Franc. The French understand that by controlling the colonial Franc currency, also known as the Sifa Franc, it increases its power against its former colonies and allows it to siphon the wealth back to Paris in numerous ways.

The cifa franc was originally introduced in 1945. By the nineteen nineties, it had been devalued by 99.5%.

[00:40:59] Kenshin:

Okay. Okay. That that was a minute. It’s a really nice video. It’s ten minutes long exactly. And it starts to explain how, from literally one day to the other, the value of the c CHF5 dropped to half. So one French frank was worth 50 of those c for franks and the next day, one French frank was worth 100 Right. Of c for frank. And that’s what they decided in a boardroom, the French whoever with the IMF.

[00:41:36] McIntosh:

Right. And to me, this is a a modern way of having colonialism, frankly.

It’s 1990 so so from 1945 to through the nineteen nineties, so that’s like Fifty years. Fifty fifty five years at most. The the value went down 90 you said 9999.5%. Okay. 80% in in in many people’s lifetime. I mean that’s just fifty five years. That’s that’s that is insane. And to me that is a form of economic slavery rather than physical slavery and I mean that 100. I do not I’m not I know what that brings to mind and that’s absolutely what I mean. And this is my biggest beef with France and I have a huge problem with it frankly. I cannot believe that it is allowed to go on in a modern world that one country gets to dictate to other countries their monetary policy and they do this for their benefit. They part of the agreement is they have to store their gold in France.

I don’t know that makes no sense to me. Part of the agreement is they get these sweetheart deals on resources. Africa in general is a huge it’s it’s rich in natural resources. Okay? Things like iron ore. And they make they are required to make deals to the French first, for example, for whatever bauxite, which is needed for aluminum. To bring that bauxite into France and then France refines it to aluminum and then sells it. How is that possible? I’m sorry. You came in with your soldiers and dominated us for a hundred years or more, however long it was, a hundred and fifty years. But then on the way out the door you said, oh, by the way, all of these things are in effect. And somehow the IMF is okay with that. Somehow the world courts are okay with that. It’s all fine and dandy and I just find it infuriating that no one seems to care.

I don’t know. Sorry. Mhmm. This topic, I did two episodes on this a couple years ago. Mhmm. If you wanna go back through the archives, I don’t know exactly which ones, but this topic frankly touches me very deeply. I I’m very it it there are things in the world that are not right. This is one of them. Okay? Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Your turn, sir.

[00:44:49] Kenshin:

Yeah. For for me, it feels like this is the modern way of taking advantage or controlling countries. Yes. And they have they are doing it to many countries. I mean, it’s even the European countries even though we have euro and everything like that. I mean, I saw it in Greece. So it’s a good example in the African countries but yeah well I have my dog here is fighting with my cats.

[00:45:22] McIntosh:

You wanna put him on camera for a second? Is he too big to pick up? I have no idea. I’ve never seen this dog. I heard it from time to time. Come here. Come here. Come here. Aw. It’s a little puppy. Where is he? Is he full grown?

[00:45:38] Kenshin:

He’s a what is he called? Spaniel.

[00:45:44] McIntosh:

Spaniel. Cocker spaniel? Cocker spaniel. Cocker spaniel. Okay. Now I feel much better. Thank you for lowering my blood pressure. No that’s awesome. There we go. See now is when y’all wish we had video. What’s their name?

[00:46:03] Kenshin:

It’s a boy. It’s Alfred. Alfred.

[00:46:09] McIntosh:

Okay.

Look, the IMF is a bad thing. Was it ever a good thing? I’m not certain but there have been numerous books that have and I have a number of them and I’ve read them all on how the IMF in concert with the World Bank, they work together and they keep these countries like the Central and West African countries economically enslaved and they do it on purpose. It’s not a side effect. It’s on purpose. They know these countries cannot pay back these loans and they just continue to endlessly make loans and in return they’re going to continue to get that stream of money but they’re also going to make deals to basically rob these people of their of their resources.

[00:47:12] Kenshin:

Yeah. Yeah. And this is very obvious in in those third world countries, let’s say. But I think it’s similar to what we see with our countries. Right? I mean, if you see how much the the US dollar has divided over time over fifty years Mhmm. It might not be 99.5 but it is over 90% I think.

[00:47:35] McIntosh:

Depends on so we probably should get this correct. It does depend on how long you look back. I I don’t know offhand. So I’m I’m not I’m not gonna say I know but that doesn’t that sounds high to me. I don’t know.

[00:47:56] Kenshin:

Yeah. It is high.

[00:47:59] McIntosh:

But if you go back to like 1913 which is another pivotal moment, I do believe it gets really high. It’s up in the nineties.

Yep.

[00:48:12] Kenshin:

Can look that up. ‘90 the dollar has lost over 96% of its value. Yeah. I can send. We can put a link in the show notes. Okay. I just want to see how many years that’s it. That is talking about. So that okay. That’s like almost 200 or more than a 100 years from 1913.

[00:48:37] McIntosh:

Yeah. Yeah. The 1913 was a pivotal moment. 1970 when was it we went off the gold standard. So it was basically three different times. The Bretton Woods agreement and then when we went off the gold standard and the petrodollar came into play. Mhmm. So those were 1913, nineteen forties ish something, ‘44, ‘45 and then the early seventies.

Nixon. Nixon. Nixon.

[00:49:12] Kenshin:

Yeah. Yeah. The biggest trope is from ‘71. I mean, there is a chart here. It’s it’s quite quite amazing.

[00:49:21] McIntosh:

Yeah. Yeah. It it it has definitely accelerated but if you go back far enough it it obviously continues to to do that.

[00:49:30] Kenshin:

Yeah. So yeah, so we’ll have that link also in the topic there.

[00:49:41] McIntosh:

Very good. Alright.

[00:49:45] Kenshin:

So you wanted to ask a question to the audience this week.

[00:49:49] McIntosh:

I do. I have a question. Kenshin and I’ve been analyzing our statistics and we wonder sometimes why things change and whatever. I don’t know. Is it the title? Is it when it comes out? Is it both? One question that I do have, would love to hear from you, is do you stream the episode or do you download it automatically?

Like like a lot of episodes I I have set to auto download. Apparently, Kenshin does not. I guess typically this would be for space savings. But just kinda wanted to throw that out and see what y’all thought.

[00:50:30] Kenshin:

Yeah. It’s I only auto download our episodes, but I don’t auto download anything else, and I don’t listen to any podcast in the weekends. So we are curious if that’s the same for other people as well. Weekend is the best time. Anyways,

[00:50:48] McIntosh:

I don’t know. And if it would be better for the show to be on a different day, maybe that would I I don’t know. We have talked about going earlier in the week, but, know, we’ve kind of been all over the place.

Although it’s been a while since we’ve been releasing it at the end of the week like this. I don’t know.

[00:51:06] Kenshin:

I don’t know. My favorite podcast comes out Sunday night. So Monday morning I have fresh

[00:51:14] McIntosh:

in the morning. Excuse me sir. Your favorite podcast comes out Friday morning. You are not allowed to say anything else. What comes out Friday morning Kenshin? Every Friday morning I try and get it out by 2AM central time which means it hits your your cue right as you get up. Right. Yep. Last week I dropped the ball. There was reasons and I’m embarrassed. I have been shamed.

We’ll move on and I’ll try and do better.

[00:51:57] Kenshin:

We rung the bell. That’s fine.

[00:52:02] McIntosh:

Alright. We do have a supporter this week. Don’t blow. Let me throw this out there. Send it Mike boosted last week’s episode. The Fed’s the Fed’s chairman speaks, does Bitcoin care? And he had this to say, good episode, 21 x x I, which is well, went public via merger with a SPAC, which is thank you, Senate Mike. It means special purpose acquisition company. Wow. That sounds fun. That’s where the price history came from. So yeah, we had confusion about the price history and it did go down but it was not nearly as big a drop as I had initially thought.

Thank you for that clarification. And he says, I think what you are remembering is the rule of ‘72. 72 divided by the rate of return equals years to a doubling. I. E. 10% means a doubling in seven point two years. Thank you. Yes. Yep. Thank you. And This has been bothering me. Yeah. Did he include this or did you? I didn’t wish we were seeing this. Hold on. Where did that come from? I’ve got a chart here. Dollar oh, you put that in just not I put it in now. Yeah. You had to. Alright. Yep. I did it now. Excellent. So we’ll have that chart in the show notes about the dollar devaluation about about how even the old USD is in the toilet, which it is 100%.

That’s why every country in the world I’ve had enough France this week. I’m not doing it. It’s almost Christmas time. We’re just all gonna be happy. Hey, we got a little news this week. We should move on to that and wrap this up. People are tired of hearing Macintosh. Do you wanna pick out one of these?

[00:53:55] Kenshin:

Yeah. So something happened again with Japan. Yep. So Japan passes the $118,000,000,000 extra budget for their fund, which is its biggest post COVID stimulus. So their budget grows by a $118,000,000,000.

[00:54:18] McIntosh:

Right. Which to to me doesn’t sound like very much. That’s just like an average congressperson spending.

But in their current situation with the way that they manage their finances or whatever, that’s actually a really big deal. It is. Yeah. It’s huge. It will trigger more inflation and inflation for them I don’t know exactly. I mean, they’re trying to stimulate the economy. This is what the Keynesians say to do. You create the money, you inject it in the economy, and then, you know, that stimulates the growth. The growth creates more jobs, more prosperity, more tax revenue, and so on and so forth. But the reality is this is gonna make a big difference in in their interest rates and then their loan payments are so large at this point that it could really accelerate kind of their debt slide. Does that make sense?

Mhmm. I actually think I did a pretty good job explaining that. Right.

[00:55:25] Kenshin:

And it also says here that the benchmark ten year Japanese government bond yields have hit an eighteen year high Yep. This month. Eighteen years and it will continue to go up. This will not help it. Yep. Sorry. They’re expected to raise interest rates on Friday so that’s something to to look

[00:55:47] McIntosh:

So the carry trade is gonna continue to break down the dollar carry trade, the Japanese yen carry trade, excuse me, that we have talked about briefly in the past. I mean, this is going to cause unwindings that it’s second and third order effects.

This will affect The United States, oddly enough. Because of that, literally because of that carry trade. So Alright. The other thing I wanted to talk about in some lengths at least is Japan. China, right next to Japan oddly enough Yep. Looks like they’re cracking down on mining. Now when we talk about China, there’s a lot of obscurity. We never really know exactly what’s going on. It’s, you know, you’re kinda reading the tea leaves so to speak. So this is tough. But what we do know is that since December 13, so just a few days ago, a partial shutdown has happened in the Chinese.

It’s actually an autonomous region supposedly of Xinjiang, is in the West Of China. I’m almost sure. And it’s a significant amount of power. They’re they’re talking about four or 500,000 mining rigs that they’ve taken offline. And we have seen the the difficulty adjustment has well, the total exahashes exahash? Let me start over. The total exahashes have dropped by like a 100,000 which is insane. And it kind of on the surface sounds a lot like what happened a few years ago in 2021 which we had a like a 50% hash rate drop and then it just caused chaos.

The miners who were still online did great but there was a lot of a lot of challenges while that was all going on. A 100 exahashes is huge but we’re at we were at roughly 1,100 exahashes when this happened so we dropped roughly 10%.

[00:58:19] Kenshin:

Yeah. Exactly. It’s around 10 and it’s honestly it’s not visible in the charts. So I have the charts for the whole year. Yeah. We’re in a

[00:58:32] McIntosh:

fair still above one extra hash just barely. I just looked on Clark’s dashboard.

[00:58:37] Kenshin:

Yeah. We’re just above. One one’s it has Let me look at mempool and

[00:58:44] McIntosh:

look at the difficulty adjustment.

The previous adjustment which just happened a week ago was seven point 74%, so just under 1%. Right now we’re looking at about a percent and a half. So in total, the last week and if it were to happen right now, 2.25% or so that’s not actually that much. So you’re right. No.

[00:59:14] Kenshin:

And if you see the latest chart I sent you it’s doesn’t

[00:59:19] McIntosh:

You’re sending them too fast. It’s it’s alright.

[00:59:24] Kenshin:

But we’re in a downwards trend since beginning of Well

[00:59:29] McIntosh:

because the price has been going down. Miners are taking old equipment offline. They cannot afford to keep it online.

Yes. Some of my original servers that I bought three years ago are unprofitable at this point. Now I keep them online because that’s just me because I don’t sell that Bitcoin and I’m waiting for the price to go up which I may be a fool for doing that. You know that’s kind of my thought. But a lot of these miners they will just if the price drops a certain amount or really their profit that they’re making off of the server they just shut it off. And so we you know, you can it will continue to go down as long as the price continues to go down.

That’s just natural.

[01:00:30] Kenshin:

But the the previous around 50% that was quite

[01:00:35] McIntosh:

Oh, it was crazy. I wished I’d have been mining back then. People were making I want to say like literally like $75 a $100 a day off of a single server. Okay. Alright. So that’s going on. It remains to be seen if this is a long term thing, if it will spread. I would love it to frankly and not because it’s China because I just don’t think we need this many miners. I would love to see some consolidation but that’s just me and I’m being selfish and that’s okay. The last thing I want to talk about is the boss mind or the boss challenge.

We brought this up a week or so ago. It is done by the end of the month. So December 31, had to have your application turned in. I did do a little digging. It does look like based on kind of the people who’ve been through and where they’re working and whatever. It’s not just c or c plus plus. There’s one of the kind of big companies is doing rust. Let’s see. So core mempool core lightning was c what was oh the pay join. Pay join is rust. Go look at their github it’s it’s a lot of rust. Oh. I’m gonna look into this. Have you done it? Afraid to dedicate the time to it but I really wanna do it.

[01:02:15] Kenshin:

Have you applied for it? No. The application is very easy. No. Did you apply for it? No. I see it in front of me. Okay. But it’s only the name, email, they say don’t put a phone number, don’t put a resume.

[01:02:35] McIntosh:

I think they’re just gonna kinda give everybody a core set of things and kinda see who shakes out. It’s kinda my idea of what’s gonna happen. I don’t know. So it’s it’s not like everybody

[01:02:49] Kenshin:

can join and after the first it’s three months right? After the first month they can Yeah.

[01:02:58] McIntosh:

Continue or not? Yeah. The first month is you work with someone pretty hands on really intensively and then after that it’s you’re more on your own.

Wow. My server just spun up and is really chugging. I wonder what’s going on over there. Are you running a bitcoin mine on my server?

[01:03:21] Kenshin:

Yes.

[01:03:22] McIntosh:

You’re doing it, aren’t you? It’s your fault. You just better not be running a Monero rig. Exactly. Have had people now come to me and say, what about Monero? What about Zcash? I’m like, what about it? I don’t care. Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve already been there through all this. Well, it’s about privacy. Well, I’m gonna advocate for privacy on Bitcoin, plain and simple. We do need more privacy on Bitcoin by the way. Way. And I’m fine with 100% stealing stuff off of those coins if it’s proven and works.

But I could care less about CCash or Monero. They’re not gonna solve the world’s problems. Bitcoin is. Alright. Yeehaw. Good. So far I’m in a prickly mood today. I am so sorry. RoboSATs zero Dot eight Dot3 alpha is now out. It’s a bug fix release if you have any interest in that. You can take a look at that.

[01:04:27] Kenshin:

Yeah. Sure. Is there room? Oh.

[01:04:30] McIntosh:

You added that. Primal fountain.

[01:04:33] Kenshin:

Go ahead. Yeah. There’s a new version of fountain which will make me try fountain again because I stopped trying fountain for a while. It was just for me, it was always cool with all the Nostril stuff Mhmm.

And the Lightning, but it was never a good player. The base function of being a podcast player, for me, it was not good. And Right. So now they have version one point four point zero. Yeah. One point four point zero. And they added finally Nostra Wallet Connect NWC support. So me having an Albi hub and my Albi wallet, I can connect that wallet directly to Fountain, which before I had to transfer money from my wallet to Fountain’s wallet to do anything. So they added that which I think is huge. Finally they accepted that they needed to do that. Then they also added to pay to Lightning addresses Mhmm. Because apparently you couldn’t do that. I guess not. That’s kinda weird. Yeah. It’s very weird.

[01:05:55] McIntosh:

Always spent my fountain money, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever I only have a couple thousand sats in there right now and I don’t think I’ve ever extracted money out of it even back when we were making a lot more off of the streaming and whatever. Just spent that on people personally. I don’t know.

[01:06:17] Kenshin:

I don’t know what it means then. Don’t know. Well, it should mean you can like send it to your lightning wallet. That would be good. I I I think I could do that before. Okay. But maybe they say you can now pay anyone instantly from from Fountain. Enter the recipient’s lightning address or I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know. Before it was just with an invoice maybe before. Maybe. Not not with an address.

And they also added support with Strike, so you can connect Strike to it and withdraw directly to Strike, which is cool. That’s cool. And they also added support to choose a payment method. So, like, podcasters and artists, they they want to to to get money directly to a card payment. Right. So, yeah, it’s again through oh, no. That’s through Stripe. So you can pay with normal cards to go towards artists and podcasters. Okay. So that’s good. Need to give it another try then.

[01:07:23] McIntosh:

Join us back in the dark side. Okay.

As we started recording our Bitcoin price was I hope you’re sitting down. 85,700 US dollars and what do we got in euros sir?

[01:07:37] Kenshin:

€72,990.

[01:07:40] McIntosh:

Okay. And I really hope you’re sitting down for this. The price last December 17, drum roll please was 106,140 which means we’re down 19.3% year over year. That hurt. That hurts. Oh, man.

[01:08:01] Kenshin:

You sitting down for this? Bitcoin’s market cap right now is at 1,700,000,000,000.0 which is not too bad actually. And gold’s market cap is at 30,300,000,000,000.0 which brings us to 5.7%.

[01:08:19] McIntosh:

Why was mine not right? Because I did update it. Okay.

Yeah. We’re losing ground here people. We gotta do some work. Time to do some work. Our mempool fees right now are one sat two sats per v byte actually. 55,000 unprocessed transactions and a 172 megabytes in total in the mempool.

[01:08:45] Kenshin:

Alright.

[01:08:46] McIntosh:

Yep. Alright. Let’s bring this on home. Toshi’s plebs is a value for value podcast supporting podcasting two point o. It’s just two guys and a little dog apparently. Alfred, right? Yes. He’s the show mascot now. We strive to bring you honest bitcoin content every week. We’re asked are you getting value from this show? Support it through time, talent or treasure. Help with future projects, stream sats, boost messages, even just a 100 sats saying great show or you suck. I’ll read it either way. Check out the apps at podcastapps.com and support independent bitcoin media.

If you like the content, I would love it if you would write a review on Apple and tell your friends about the podcast. That’s the best way for us to grow. I did wanna mention, I’m going to make a push this week. We do not have very much support in terms of Apple. I know that’s probably hurting our statistics and downloads and all of that. We don’t have any reviews on Apple. And very few of of our listeners actually use Apple, which I kind of love. But at the same time, you cannot ignore what Apple is in the market. If you could take the time to post a review on Apple on Apple podcast for the show.

I would deeply appreciate it. This week’s music is again going to be Top Hat Orchestra. I will pick a couple of different songs than from last week. I hope you enjoyed those. It is more of an orchestra than jazz. I apologize. Or big band. But it’s still some really good stuff. Any boosting or streaming of sets during those any boost or streaming of sets during those songs will go straight to the artist.

[01:10:38] Kenshin:

Cool. So thanks for joining us again this week. We hope this has been helpful, and we would love to hear from you on Oster or even on Fountain. Find all our contact info at satoshis-plebs.com.

Stay humble, DCA those sats, and have a great weekend.

[01:10:54] McIntosh:

We’ll talk to you all soon.