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1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:12,400 Well, Dad, I noticed some interesting news kicking around that came out of the Mining 2 00:00:12,400 --> 00:00:16,680 Pool Observer Project. They noticed something kind of unsettling, but I thought maybe I'd 3 00:00:16,680 --> 00:00:20,720 start with, could you kind of explain what the Mining Pool Observer Project is and what 4 00:00:20,720 --> 00:00:21,720 they're doing? 5 00:00:21,720 --> 00:00:28,320 This is a really interesting project. It's produced by Bitcoin developer OXB10C, obviously 6 00:00:28,320 --> 00:00:35,200 a pseudonym. And if you will recall, I think last year, there was a US Mining Pool, I want 7 00:00:35,200 --> 00:00:40,960 to say Marathon, that added an up-return message to the blocks they mined that said 8 00:00:40,960 --> 00:00:45,440 something to the effect of, this is an OFAC compliant block. And it wasn't true because 9 00:00:45,440 --> 00:00:50,340 they weren't filtering blocks for Bitcoin addresses that were on the OFAC sanctions 10 00:00:50,340 --> 00:00:54,360 list. And of course, OFAC stands for Office of Foreign Asset Control, and it's one of 11 00:00:54,360 --> 00:01:00,880 these sanctioning entities in the US Treasury. It's used to sanction Iran, Russia, Hezbollah, 12 00:01:00,880 --> 00:01:05,320 all of the entities that the US government doesn't like. Basically, it's a list of names 13 00:01:05,320 --> 00:01:11,200 and businesses and Ethereum and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency addresses that the US 14 00:01:11,200 --> 00:01:15,760 government thinks are related to bad people that they don't like. And so you're not supposed 15 00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:21,200 to interact with them. Well, last year when this mining pool hinted that they were OFAC 16 00:01:21,240 --> 00:01:27,320 filtering, basically not mining blocks from addresses on this list, this developer developed 17 00:01:27,320 --> 00:01:32,440 a tool called Mining Pool Observer. And what it does is basically monitors mem pools. And 18 00:01:32,440 --> 00:01:36,840 so I think the developer is monitoring their own mem pool. And I think you can also add 19 00:01:36,840 --> 00:01:41,960 your mem pool as like a data source to this observer. I'd have to look at the documentation 20 00:01:41,960 --> 00:01:47,240 again. And what it does is every second, it builds a Bitcoin block out of the transactions 21 00:01:47,320 --> 00:01:51,440 that are in its mem pool. And then when a block is mined by a pool, it compares the blocks 22 00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:55,680 that it's built to the blocks that are being mined, and it tries to find transactions that 23 00:01:55,680 --> 00:02:00,160 are missing. And usually when a transaction is missing, there's an innocuous reason like 24 00:02:00,160 --> 00:02:05,040 it only showed up in the mining pool observer pool a second ago, so it might not have propagated 25 00:02:05,040 --> 00:02:09,160 to the mining pool. Also, there are transactions that show up in the block, the mining pool 26 00:02:09,160 --> 00:02:12,800 block that shouldn't be there, transactions with fees that are too low. And these are 27 00:02:12,800 --> 00:02:18,040 generally ascribed to the initiator of that transaction used a mining pool accelerator 28 00:02:18,040 --> 00:02:23,480 channel like a credit card transaction or a bank wire to add additional fees to that 29 00:02:23,480 --> 00:02:27,160 transaction so that the mining pool would mine it. But sometimes there are transactions 30 00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:33,640 missing and there's no explanation. And the reason therefore has to be probably the transaction 31 00:02:33,640 --> 00:02:36,840 was filtered out at the pool level for some reason. 32 00:02:36,840 --> 00:02:41,320 And I'm guessing based on that opera turn code that said OFAC compliant transaction, 33 00:02:41,320 --> 00:02:45,960 for some reason is they're filtering based on this list provided by the US government. 34 00:02:45,960 --> 00:02:51,960 Well, the irony was that that OFAC compliant message, they were not actually filtering 35 00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:58,120 those blocks. So there were sanctioned addresses in those blocks. So it was just some sort of 36 00:02:58,120 --> 00:03:01,880 marketing or they were getting ready to do that, but they kind of jumped the gun. But 37 00:03:01,880 --> 00:03:07,840 what's happened is that mining pool observer has detected, I think six blocks mined by 38 00:03:07,880 --> 00:03:14,960 F2 pool that seem to be missing addresses or outputs from addresses that are on the OFAC 39 00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:21,160 compliant list. So this is really good evidence that F2 pool has been filtering transactions, 40 00:03:21,160 --> 00:03:27,800 censoring transactions using the OFAC list of sanctioned Bitcoin addresses as their filter. 41 00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:32,080 Hmm. You know, I'm grateful that we have projects that are watching this. And now more people are 42 00:03:32,080 --> 00:03:36,280 going to be watching as a result of this. Now they've walked this back. I think there was news 43 00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:41,640 that someone from F2 pool said something to the effect of that they're going to roll back the 44 00:03:41,640 --> 00:03:46,720 patch that enabled this filtering until there's more consensus around how the community wants 45 00:03:46,720 --> 00:03:51,320 to handle this sort of thing. And mining pool observer is a really important project, because 46 00:03:51,320 --> 00:03:57,160 if we didn't have this tool monitoring blocks and mem pools, we would have totally missed this 47 00:03:57,160 --> 00:04:04,040 because it's hard to, it's actually hard to identify a block filter or a censorship filter, 48 00:04:04,120 --> 00:04:08,600 because you're trying to find something that should be there, but isn't there. That's actually 49 00:04:08,600 --> 00:04:14,040 quite difficult. And so this is a very important project. And I think it also is ringing an alarm 50 00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:20,760 bell that we are on a slippery slope to censorship. And obviously we don't need to play it out all 51 00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:26,680 the way to the end, because things often don't go to their logical extreme. But this is the beginning, 52 00:04:26,680 --> 00:04:31,720 perhaps, of censorship on Bitcoin. And it's happening at the pool level, which makes a lot 53 00:04:31,720 --> 00:04:36,520 of sense, because they're centralized larger entities, they can be regulated. Two of the largest 54 00:04:36,520 --> 00:04:42,760 mining pools in the world are based in the US. Together, they control over 51% of Bitcoin 55 00:04:42,760 --> 00:04:47,720 hash rate. Does that mean they're going to 51% attack Bitcoin? No, because they don't have a 56 00:04:47,720 --> 00:04:52,280 financial incentive to and even if ordered to by the US government, miners could direct their 57 00:04:52,280 --> 00:04:58,680 hash rate elsewhere. There are also developments like the stratum v2 protocol that allows the 58 00:04:58,680 --> 00:05:03,080 individual miners in the pool to build block templates, not the pool itself. So this takes 59 00:05:03,080 --> 00:05:08,840 away some of the censoring power of the pool. So there are positive developments in Bitcoin 60 00:05:08,840 --> 00:05:13,960 mining that kind of offsets this censorship activity. But it's still happening. And we 61 00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:18,200 still need more development on freedom technology and mining, in my opinion. 62 00:05:18,200 --> 00:05:22,120 I think we're really in the trend of this episode, I think is going to kind of lay it out there. 63 00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:27,320 We're on the precipice of a bunch of really historical forks in the road for Bitcoin in 64 00:05:27,400 --> 00:05:33,400 particular. I also think that maybe this will reignite interest in the plebs to set up 65 00:05:33,400 --> 00:05:37,480 little mining operations at home, even if they're small, little low power operations, 66 00:05:37,480 --> 00:05:41,480 you know, we can always add a little bit more decentralization to the network. So 67 00:05:41,480 --> 00:05:46,280 kind of gets me thinking about it. Maybe others will too. This is the Bitcoin dad pod recorded 68 00:05:46,280 --> 00:05:53,320 on November 24, 2023. I'm your Bitcoin dad. Happy Thanksgiving. And I'm here, as always, 69 00:05:53,320 --> 00:05:57,800 remotely with me, Chris. Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for joining us. 70 00:05:58,520 --> 00:06:05,160 On today's show, we're going to touch on another SEC lawsuit against Kraken that asserts polygon 71 00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:11,720 and Solana are securities. The major news of the week is that finance CEO CZ has pled guilty to US 72 00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:17,480 money laundering charges. And the exchange is going to pay a $4.3 billion fine to settle some 73 00:06:17,480 --> 00:06:23,240 US allegations. Seems like the exchange space is becoming much more compliant. Also, 74 00:06:23,240 --> 00:06:28,040 Bitrex and other non US crypto exchange is shutting down. The question has to be asked 75 00:06:28,040 --> 00:06:34,840 is Bitcoin entering its epoch of diminishing returns? The last happening disappointed in terms 76 00:06:34,840 --> 00:06:40,520 of the Bitcoin price gains? What's going on? Are we going to have another disappointing 77 00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:46,840 happening when million dollar Bitcoin will get into that? Butans Bitcoin mining operation has been 78 00:06:46,840 --> 00:06:52,040 identified by Forbes. I know we always accuse Forbes of being incapable of serious journalism, 79 00:06:52,040 --> 00:06:56,200 and they seem to have kind of done an interesting job here. So there's sort of an interesting story 80 00:06:56,200 --> 00:07:01,720 about Bhutan and their relationship with mining. Wallet of Satoshi, a popular custodial Bitcoin 81 00:07:01,720 --> 00:07:07,320 wallet is removing its US support. Obviously, it's not compliant with US regulations around 82 00:07:07,320 --> 00:07:12,360 financial custody. So that was kind of an obvious thing that would happen when it got large enough. 83 00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:19,080 On the subject of app stores, Apple has again started beef with Zeus developer Evan Kalutis 84 00:07:19,080 --> 00:07:25,720 after his developer account has been suspended. In economics, we have an excerpt from Lynn Alden's 85 00:07:25,720 --> 00:07:31,560 book, Broken Money. The title is the monetary gates are down. And this is a really interesting 86 00:07:31,560 --> 00:07:38,040 high level take on financial technology adoption, dollarization. And I think it ties in nicely with 87 00:07:38,040 --> 00:07:44,360 the news from Argentina about a new president who is sort of a outsider candidate and is talking 88 00:07:44,360 --> 00:07:50,280 about officially dollarizing the Argentinian economy. In privacy, Cloudflare seems to be 89 00:07:50,280 --> 00:07:57,560 filtering for Ethereum of fact listed addresses. So the theme of this episode is financial censorship 90 00:07:57,560 --> 00:08:03,240 and address filtering and coin center, a crypto lobbying group in Washington DC, 91 00:08:03,240 --> 00:08:10,360 as a blog post linking to their larger report on the US Bank Secrecy Act and how terribly 92 00:08:10,360 --> 00:08:14,040 illegal it actually is. And then we have some boosts and that's our show. 93 00:08:14,040 --> 00:08:18,600 Big show because there's some big things happening that are going to kind of lay down, 94 00:08:18,600 --> 00:08:22,840 I think the future of Bitcoin and how Bitcoiners are going to act with their Bitcoin. So let's 95 00:08:22,840 --> 00:08:28,520 start with CZ. The US federal government made a big show out of this. In fact, it's the first time 96 00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:33,720 that Janet Yellen and the head of the Justice Department did a press conference together. 97 00:08:33,720 --> 00:08:38,760 And of course, also the head of the FBI was there and they announced a massive crackdown on 98 00:08:38,760 --> 00:08:44,440 Binance and that CZ was stepping down. And I think anybody that's kind of been watching the ETF news 99 00:08:44,440 --> 00:08:49,880 and kind of reading the signals from Gary and the SEC and from BlackRock, it seemed kind of 100 00:08:49,880 --> 00:08:54,840 inevitable that before the ETFs for Bitcoin were going to get approved, Binance was going to get 101 00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:59,000 reigned in, at least taken down a peg if not completely taken out. And I think we've definitely 102 00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:05,400 seen that now. The sheriff's in town, dad. And actually, CZ was in our neck of the woods on 103 00:09:05,400 --> 00:09:11,640 Thursday. Just yesterday, he came to Seattle to plead guilty in federal court there. And he did 104 00:09:11,640 --> 00:09:17,560 not stop by to get a coffee despite my offer. So I'm feeling a little rejected. But yeah, 105 00:09:17,560 --> 00:09:22,520 that's too bad. He had to get back to Dubai, I guess. So what's going on here? Well, 106 00:09:22,600 --> 00:09:28,040 some of the reporting suggests that Binance has been in talks about this settlement with the US 107 00:09:28,040 --> 00:09:33,000 Justice Department for three years. So this has been a long time in the making. I think that they 108 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:38,600 set up their operations to be stateless, high degree of secrecy. They designed themselves to 109 00:09:38,600 --> 00:09:42,840 be kind of a hard target for US law enforcement. But I think that was very difficult and very 110 00:09:42,840 --> 00:09:49,320 costly. And we saw in the past year, just an outflow of Binance executives, first from Binance 111 00:09:49,320 --> 00:09:56,280 US, which was the supposedly compliant Binance operation. But clearly, they also broke the 112 00:09:56,280 --> 00:10:02,120 rules. There was some leaked information about how market making firms associated with CZ were 113 00:10:02,120 --> 00:10:08,280 interacting with Binance US and maybe the assets between Binance US and global Binance were 114 00:10:08,280 --> 00:10:14,360 commingled. And so all of the kind of compliant by the book CEOs that they hired in the US to 115 00:10:14,360 --> 00:10:19,720 kind of add a veneer of respectability and compliance to their US operation, they left. 116 00:10:19,720 --> 00:10:23,800 And so that was a bad look for Binance. That suggested that things were probably not going 117 00:10:23,800 --> 00:10:30,120 well. That said, this settlement is in many ways a great outcome because personally, I thought that 118 00:10:30,120 --> 00:10:37,320 Binance very easily could be another FTX, another insolvent exchange with very little scrutiny 119 00:10:37,320 --> 00:10:41,080 over their finances. So why wouldn't they be insolvent? Why wouldn't they have played games 120 00:10:41,080 --> 00:10:46,280 with customer funds? And it doesn't seem to be the case because as part of the agreement between 121 00:10:46,280 --> 00:10:51,400 Binance and the US Justice Department, the exchange seems to have a huge amount of cash on hand. 122 00:10:51,400 --> 00:10:56,440 They've kind of opened their books a little. And as long as that information is in false and 123 00:10:56,440 --> 00:11:00,600 frankly, providing false information to the US Justice Department is pretty suicidal, 124 00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:04,760 so I don't think they've done that, then they seem to be in a pretty okay financial position. 125 00:11:04,760 --> 00:11:12,600 The other aspect is that this paves the way for less resistance to Bitcoin and Ethereum now spot 126 00:11:12,600 --> 00:11:19,400 ETF proposals because Binance used to be 80% of global crypto trading volume. It's since dropped 127 00:11:19,400 --> 00:11:25,160 down to 60% and as they become more compliant with US regulation, which they will because they 128 00:11:25,160 --> 00:11:30,920 have to have a third party auditor that monitors their compliance operations, they're going to get 129 00:11:30,920 --> 00:11:36,040 less and less volume because they're going to be less competitive versus already compliant exchanges 130 00:11:36,040 --> 00:11:43,480 like Kraken or Coinbase. That also means that some Binance customers who are not able to KYC 131 00:11:43,480 --> 00:11:48,040 with a US compliant exchange, they're going to move elsewhere, but those are going to be smaller 132 00:11:48,040 --> 00:11:55,320 volumes, smaller venues, and it seems like eventually the majority of crypto trading is going to be 133 00:11:55,320 --> 00:12:01,720 under the US regulatory umbrella. And so crypto bros, I think like this because this means bigger 134 00:12:01,720 --> 00:12:07,880 market cap, more opportunity for centralized projects that require some legal cover to print 135 00:12:07,880 --> 00:12:13,720 tokens and whatever, pump and dump them. But I think for us, for the kind of cypherpunk 136 00:12:13,720 --> 00:12:18,120 big Bitcoiners, this is the end of an era. This is the end of the Wildcat exchanges. This is the 137 00:12:18,120 --> 00:12:24,360 end of a kind of free-for-all, wheeling and dealing international exchange Bitcoin financial market. 138 00:12:24,360 --> 00:12:29,160 And it seems like something much more compliant, much more under the thumb of US regulation is 139 00:12:29,160 --> 00:12:33,640 replacing it. Well, Ted, you're just using the wrong language. What Wall Street is calling it is, 140 00:12:33,640 --> 00:12:40,440 this is the end of the quote, legacy exchanges, and we're now entering into the era of trusted 141 00:12:40,440 --> 00:12:44,360 exchanges. So you see, dad, you're just looking at it from the wrong angle. They got them dead to 142 00:12:44,360 --> 00:12:49,080 rights on a few things. It's pretty embarrassing. I mean, I guess they better. If it took them three 143 00:12:49,080 --> 00:12:54,840 years across three different agencies, and God knows how many staff to work on this obvious 144 00:12:54,840 --> 00:13:00,200 case, I hope they had some good stuff. And one of them is internal communications that essentially 145 00:13:00,200 --> 00:13:05,400 are just walking through some whale customers through pretending like they're not from the US 146 00:13:05,400 --> 00:13:10,200 and how to transition their account when they had to create Binance US, how to transition and make 147 00:13:10,200 --> 00:13:16,200 things seem normal. They also have communications internally of the staff walking someone through 148 00:13:16,280 --> 00:13:20,920 who got flagged with fraud, I think maybe like another OFAC sanction, Ethereum thing. And so 149 00:13:20,920 --> 00:13:24,120 their account got flagged and they're like, well, you don't really have to leave, but you just have 150 00:13:24,120 --> 00:13:29,560 to make it look like you're leaving the platform. Here's some tips, you know, that kind of stuff 151 00:13:29,560 --> 00:13:34,040 just right there in the chat. So that's one of the reasons why CZ's kind of, they got them 152 00:13:34,040 --> 00:13:38,440 dead to rights. I don't really quite understand how it works since he's not a US citizen, but 153 00:13:38,440 --> 00:13:44,040 clearly there's a bilateral cooperation, I suppose. Yeah, I got to agree with Sam Bankmanfreed on 154 00:13:44,040 --> 00:13:50,120 this one. If you put something in the Slack chat, expect it to be on the front page of the New York 155 00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:56,920 Times. So that is certainly some egg on their face. You know, in the previous SEC denials 156 00:13:56,920 --> 00:14:01,560 of spot ETFs for Bitcoin, I believe at least in one of them, it's been a while and they're really 157 00:14:01,560 --> 00:14:06,280 thick, but I believe at least in one of them, they specifically cited Binance as a market 158 00:14:06,280 --> 00:14:11,000 manipulator of the Bitcoin price, which is why we kind of, you and I months ago said, yeah, 159 00:14:11,880 --> 00:14:17,080 Binance is done. They got it in for Binance. If they're specifically calling out Binance as a risk 160 00:14:17,080 --> 00:14:22,120 and now BlackRock, the big dog wants a spot ETF, they're going to have to go clean up 161 00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:27,320 the exchanges and that's exactly what happened. And Fidelity has just opened a proposal for a new 162 00:14:27,320 --> 00:14:34,120 Ethereum spot ETF. So it seems like the era of regulated financial products, 163 00:14:34,120 --> 00:14:39,720 wrapping cryptocurrencies is here. And again, it could have been worse for Binance because 164 00:14:39,720 --> 00:14:45,560 they are not admitting to market manipulation. They're not admitting to her loining customer 165 00:14:45,560 --> 00:14:50,600 assets. Oddly enough, kind of like Tether, they're this, they were this gray market, 166 00:14:50,600 --> 00:14:55,160 black market entity that didn't have to do financial compliance because they were so 167 00:14:55,160 --> 00:15:00,760 clearly out of compliance, but they were pretty good, it seems. They didn't monkey around with 168 00:15:00,760 --> 00:15:06,600 and hurt their customers that much. And so in an odd way, it kind of is an example of how maybe 169 00:15:06,600 --> 00:15:12,680 regulated financial compliance is maybe not as necessary as people seem to believe. 170 00:15:12,680 --> 00:15:17,000 You get market compliance when you succeed at being just a little bit less shady than your 171 00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:23,880 nearby competitor. I don't know, man. When it comes to all of this stuff, it seems like there 172 00:15:23,880 --> 00:15:29,560 was pretty good indications though that they were intermingling customer funds and their finances. 173 00:15:29,560 --> 00:15:33,720 I didn't dig super deep into it, but I did see multiple references to it in the brief 174 00:15:33,720 --> 00:15:37,960 that there was co-mingling of funds. And you know, the SEC has been signaling about coming 175 00:15:37,960 --> 00:15:41,720 after co-mingling of funds for two years. So I mean, there was some of that going on, it seems. 176 00:15:41,720 --> 00:15:45,480 Right. So they were kept in similar, they weren't fully segregated accounts. And this is kind of 177 00:15:45,480 --> 00:15:52,280 the argument that the future for exchanges is separating custody and trading. And this is how 178 00:15:52,280 --> 00:15:59,240 US markets have prevented financial fraud for over 100 years now. Because if the exchange has to 179 00:15:59,240 --> 00:16:04,680 trade your assets by contacting your custodian, your custodian is keeping records of what the 180 00:16:04,680 --> 00:16:10,360 exchange is doing and therefore it becomes much harder to pull an FTX and basically use 181 00:16:10,360 --> 00:16:14,520 customer assets for whatever you want. Corey, is that you? Are you there, Corey? 182 00:16:14,520 --> 00:16:21,320 On the one hand, you can see how separating custody and trading is a good idea. On the other hand, 183 00:16:21,320 --> 00:16:28,120 I wonder if this leads Bitcoin into the gold rabbit hole where in order to trade on these 184 00:16:28,120 --> 00:16:34,360 venues, you have to send coins into regulated custodians and these regulated custodians, 185 00:16:34,360 --> 00:16:38,600 you know, that the coins never come out. They just end up sitting there forever. And then you 186 00:16:38,600 --> 00:16:44,360 end up with a market like the US stock market where all the shares are actually custodyed by 187 00:16:44,360 --> 00:16:50,360 the deposit clearing corporation or like the bullion markets where the bulk of the world's 188 00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:57,480 tradable gold is in the LBMA, London Bullion Market Association vaults. And it's not audited, 189 00:16:57,480 --> 00:17:02,040 it's hard to know how much is there. And we sort of lose that auditability aspect 190 00:17:02,040 --> 00:17:06,520 of Bitcoin in the process of mainstreaming it as a financial asset. 191 00:17:06,520 --> 00:17:11,640 I think that's definitely a scenario. You know, we've seen a similar sort of consolidation 192 00:17:11,640 --> 00:17:16,280 with open source into commercial entities, but I could see it sort of playing out where a couple 193 00:17:16,280 --> 00:17:19,720 hundred dollars here and there, that's really kind of just still peer to peer, you know, 194 00:17:19,720 --> 00:17:25,000 so over some layer to not really a big deal. But when you want to say spend 900, you want to cash 195 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:29,800 out $900,000 worth of Bitcoin because maybe you got to like buy a house in the Pacific Northwest. 196 00:17:29,800 --> 00:17:35,080 I suspect you're only going to be doing those transactions with companies like Coinbase or 197 00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:39,480 that, you know, New York Stock Exchange or Fidelity or whoever it is at that point that's 198 00:17:39,480 --> 00:17:43,480 managing your Bitcoin stash. And it's going to be they're going to hold your keys for you. 199 00:17:43,480 --> 00:17:46,760 And, you know, their reputation will be on the line. They have to hold a bunch of assets right 200 00:17:46,760 --> 00:17:50,120 now, but it's going to be more like that, I think, for the very large transaction because, 201 00:17:50,120 --> 00:17:55,880 you know, terrorism and we got to protect from fraud. Right. And I find that very depressing 202 00:17:55,880 --> 00:18:02,040 because for me, Bitcoin has always been about having financial sovereignty, being able to do 203 00:18:02,040 --> 00:18:08,040 what you want with your money. And now it seems like there are a couple of asterisks to that, 204 00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:11,640 depending on how you want to interact with the regulated financial system. 205 00:18:11,640 --> 00:18:14,680 Although, you know, all those right wingers that can drive you crazy in Bitcoin, 206 00:18:14,680 --> 00:18:19,800 they're going to get inspired by this and motivated to build systems that preserve privacy. 207 00:18:19,800 --> 00:18:23,160 I really believe that because that's just sort of been the playbook throughout Bitcoin. 208 00:18:23,160 --> 00:18:26,920 Things that, you know, we have these ideas and these concepts that we poke at them and we poke 209 00:18:26,920 --> 00:18:31,080 at them. And then there's a market need all of a sudden. And then it's the best thing ever. 210 00:18:31,080 --> 00:18:37,960 And it starts getting traction. Maybe. I mean, one counterpoint to that is that a lot of Bitcoin 211 00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:45,400 scaling solutions are centralization based, for instance, Barack's ARC protocol, which no one 212 00:18:45,400 --> 00:18:51,960 fully understands, but it's a concept of a kind of hybrid LSP slash something else provider. And 213 00:18:51,960 --> 00:18:59,000 they have this system where you can kind of trade for free inside the ARC server. But you can always 214 00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:05,160 withdraw as long as you're online once a month to kind of refresh your virtual TXOs and you can 215 00:19:05,160 --> 00:19:10,600 withdraw to lightning. But this is a centralized entity. And for sure, it'll be regulated because 216 00:19:10,680 --> 00:19:15,560 as we're observing even Binance, which built itself in a antifragile way that was hard to 217 00:19:15,560 --> 00:19:20,120 regulate, it is throwing in the towel. It's not worth it to fight for them anymore. 218 00:19:20,120 --> 00:19:24,280 But the problem, dad, even there with, you know, okay, yeah, that's that's a problem for ARC. 219 00:19:24,280 --> 00:19:28,360 The problem is at the exits. It doesn't really matter what solution we use to mix our coins or 220 00:19:28,360 --> 00:19:33,000 to get, you know, privacy on the network. If we still want to take those sats across the exit 221 00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:38,040 into some sort of local currency to buy something with a large amount, the problem is going to be 222 00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:41,720 there at the exit. It always will be. And that's where the control is. That's why I really feel 223 00:19:41,720 --> 00:19:45,880 like Bitcoiners should spend a lot more time thinking about creating a Bitcoin economy, 224 00:19:45,880 --> 00:19:51,800 you know, doing business with businesses that take Bitcoin, because I just feel like if we can 225 00:19:51,800 --> 00:19:56,680 avoid the off ramps all together, then we're all better off. And businesses are much more happy 226 00:19:56,680 --> 00:20:00,440 to sit there and stack sats and look at the market. Well, I think in the future, but you know, 227 00:20:00,440 --> 00:20:05,880 stack sats and sell or sell them directly and deal with the tax consequences and manage the KYC 228 00:20:05,880 --> 00:20:10,440 there because a business is already KYC'd up the wazoo anyways. And so it just to me, it just seems 229 00:20:10,440 --> 00:20:14,280 like we could keep in a circular economy where the businesses can cash out to there to whatever 230 00:20:14,280 --> 00:20:18,600 their preference is. Individuals can buy in and cash out to their preference, but we could buy more 231 00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:23,480 and more goods and sats. I think it solves a big part of the problem. And then you look at, well, 232 00:20:23,480 --> 00:20:28,120 where is this actually happening? Well, bit refill, there are some things out there, but podcasts, 233 00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:32,440 podcasts are one of the few things where we actually price things in sats. Like we don't, 234 00:20:32,920 --> 00:20:37,560 I don't know how much, you know, a row of ducks converts to in US dollars right now. I don't know 235 00:20:37,560 --> 00:20:45,320 what a McDuck row of ducks converts to in dollars. I know what it is in sats is 22,220 sats, 222 sats. 236 00:20:45,320 --> 00:20:51,000 Or, you know, a row of ducks is just 2,222 sats. I have no idea what that is in USD price because 237 00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:55,480 I don't care if we've been pricing it in a sat based economy because it is a sat, it's all, 238 00:20:55,480 --> 00:20:59,160 it's all sats the whole way through. And I think we need more of that. And then we don't really 239 00:20:59,160 --> 00:21:04,280 have to worry about the exit point. And in a lot of ways, things like lightning, I think they make 240 00:21:04,280 --> 00:21:08,680 this more of a reality. And that's why I'm still, even though it's frustrating to run the node right 241 00:21:08,680 --> 00:21:12,600 now, I'm actually still very positive on these things. And we can't always avoid the exit points, 242 00:21:12,600 --> 00:21:17,880 but maybe we can have less and less of them. And I agree. I mean, sometimes the simplest solutions 243 00:21:17,880 --> 00:21:25,160 are the best. And so if we do have the potential during this Bitcoin bull run to also see serious 244 00:21:25,160 --> 00:21:31,160 issues in the legacy financial system, we've talked about them. The regional banking crisis in the US 245 00:21:31,160 --> 00:21:36,920 isn't over. The commercial real estate crisis in the US is really just getting started. The US 246 00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:43,320 government is in an increasingly unsustainable fiscal position. And as a result, financial 247 00:21:43,320 --> 00:21:47,640 surveillance and financial control in the legacy system is tightening, and it's even tightening 248 00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:55,160 into Bitcoin and crypto as we've described. And so this might incentivize people who previously 249 00:21:55,160 --> 00:22:01,160 dealt in dollars or all of their financial transactions to consider dealing in SATs. And it 250 00:22:01,160 --> 00:22:06,680 does feel like maybe we are some way away from that, but the incentives for dealing in SATs 251 00:22:06,680 --> 00:22:11,560 directly seem to be getting better. So maybe there is a silver lining there. Yeah, I think it just 252 00:22:11,560 --> 00:22:16,520 takes a new, a new generation of businesses. But there is a bit of an upside to some of this 253 00:22:16,520 --> 00:22:21,240 cleanup of things like Binance or some of these other exchanges that are shutting down. It will, 254 00:22:21,240 --> 00:22:26,360 over time, cultivate more trust in the marketplace. That is going to be the upshot of this, is that 255 00:22:26,360 --> 00:22:32,280 you're, instead of these crazy names and brands, you've never heard of that are mostly, for most 256 00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:36,200 people, just an app on their phone that are, you know, these new startups, it's going to be 257 00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:39,800 institutions that have been around their entire lives. It's names they've heard since they've 258 00:22:39,800 --> 00:22:44,040 been babies that are known to be like the top brands in money. Despite what we might think about 259 00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:48,920 the banks, average people and the brand recognition is huge. And the fact that they're going to be 260 00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:52,440 talking about Bitcoin now, and they're going to be talking about it through their instruments, 261 00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:57,640 I think is, it's like the difference between when people refuse to put their credit card on 262 00:22:57,640 --> 00:23:01,800 Amazon and now everybody buys everything on Amazon. That's a good point. You remember, 263 00:23:01,800 --> 00:23:05,400 you're old enough to remember this too, right? Like our parents and family members were afraid 264 00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:09,640 to put their credit cards on the internet. It was a thing for a long time, but trust shifted. 265 00:23:09,640 --> 00:23:14,280 And now everyone's on Amazon and everybody's putting their credit cards into a membership 266 00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:18,040 for a streaming service or buying something through an app on their phone. I wasn't the 267 00:23:18,040 --> 00:23:23,080 case in the 90s and in the early aughts. It took, it took a shift. And that's what's going to happen 268 00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:30,280 with Fidelity, Bitcoin ETFs and BlackRock Bitcoin ETFs. Now it's clearly not a black market criminal 269 00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:36,200 money system because BlackRock's in it, Fidelity's in it. So there is that aspect to it. It's definitely 270 00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:42,760 a legitimate asset now. And the cost is you take out CZ. Binance gets knocked down to 271 00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:46,520 a fraction of itself, a skeleton version of itself. The exit points get a little tighter, 272 00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:52,680 right? That's the trade-off. And we see that as well with exchanges like Bitrex shutting down. 273 00:23:52,680 --> 00:23:58,280 And obviously Bitrex is a small exchange. I think its market share has been decreasing steadily for 274 00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:04,040 a very long time, but it's shutting down operations on December 4th. And it's just another one of 275 00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:10,120 these bucket shops, another one of these sort of international exchanges that had like KYC 276 00:24:10,120 --> 00:24:16,760 shutting down. And I think it's another sign of the institutionalization of the Bitcoin exchange 277 00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:22,040 market sort of in preparation for exchange traded products and Fidelity. 278 00:24:22,040 --> 00:24:26,120 And I'll remind you, we started the show talking about Kraken. The SEC has already taken a bite 279 00:24:26,120 --> 00:24:31,160 out of Kraken earlier this year. They had a massive fine already once this year. They're 280 00:24:31,160 --> 00:24:36,680 coming back for round two with the securities lawsuit against Kraken. They're, I think again, 281 00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:39,880 I don't know if they're going to destroy them, but they're going to financially wreck them and 282 00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:43,560 take them down to be an insignificant player in the market. Probably, you know, it's a war of 283 00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:48,440 attrition. But you take it all together with Binance and CZ, Bitrex stepping down or shutting down, 284 00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:53,640 I'm sorry. The second round of attacks on Kraken, all within a couple of weeks, all within a couple 285 00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:57,320 of weeks that they've been working on this stuff for a while. And it's all coming together right 286 00:24:57,320 --> 00:25:02,120 now. I think where this is remarkable history being made. And it's all kind of machinations 287 00:25:02,120 --> 00:25:04,360 behind the scenes that I don't think most people are paying attention to. 288 00:25:04,360 --> 00:25:09,320 Well, there's another perspective to the SEC's lawsuit on Kraken, because they already settled 289 00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:15,160 for $30 million when they sued Kraken for their staking operation. The thing is that this lawsuit 290 00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:21,640 against Kraken is a copy pasta of their lawsuit against Coinbase. And so the SEC is suing both 291 00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:27,160 Kraken and Coinbase, the two largest, I think, US exchanges. I'm not sure if Gemini is larger than 292 00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:33,160 Kraken. And what's going on here? Well, noticeably absent from the settlement against Binance and 293 00:25:33,160 --> 00:25:40,040 CZ was the SEC. So there is a sense that the US Justice Department and other US financial regulators 294 00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:46,200 are kind of keeping the SEC at arm's length because they didn't get in on the Binance settlement. 295 00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:50,600 And I think this kind of speaks to some of the concerns we've mentioned about Gary Gensler. 296 00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:57,640 He seems to be really interested in his own career and kind of the credibility of his agency 297 00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:03,160 is secondary to that. And it seems like the SEC is trying to hedge their bets because if they 298 00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:09,560 lose one of the lawsuits against a US exchange that might create a legal precedent that they 299 00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:14,920 do not have the ability to regulate US crypto exchanges, they want another lawsuit that gives 300 00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:18,840 them the opportunity to win and maintain that precedent. And of course, the lawsuit against 301 00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:25,640 Kraken is quite absurd because the SEC claims that Kraken never tried to register with the SEC 302 00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:31,080 and was just operating with impunity when we all know that Kraken and Coinbase have tried 303 00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:36,120 very hard to register with the SEC. And the SEC has not been interested in accepting their 304 00:26:36,120 --> 00:26:41,800 regulation. They'd rather keep them as kind of gray market entities and then regulate via 305 00:26:41,800 --> 00:26:46,440 enforcement whenever it was convenient to the SEC. I think it's falling off our radar, 306 00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:52,680 but I just looked it up. The SEC sued Gemini in January of this year for their earn program. 307 00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:57,240 Gemini has then countersued to try to get it dismissed a couple of months ago. And then 308 00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:03,640 something else that has happened that we kind of forgot about is the New York AG is suing Gemini, 309 00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:09,560 Genesis and DCG and others for defrauding customers and other issues. So there's also some local 310 00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:14,280 states that are going after Gemini. So Gemini's got a couple of lawsuits as well going on right now. 311 00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:19,160 So the pressure really is on on all these exchanges. It's really kind of when you zoom out 312 00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:23,240 and look at it all, it's kind of impressive the coordination in the amount of crackdown. 313 00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:27,000 I think I disagree with your take on Gary now. You know, you say Gary is looking out for his 314 00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:31,240 career. I believe that part. But you say at the cost of the credibility of the SEC. I don't know, 315 00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:37,720 man. Fast forward five years where the consumers are buying Bitcoin spot ETFs, the market's been 316 00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:42,520 cleared up. Gary might be remembered as the commissioner who cleaned up crypto. That might 317 00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:47,800 be his whole thing. He's like, he's the guy that came in, launched 125 legal actions or something. 318 00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:52,840 They're up there near the 120 different legal cases involving crypto right now. So he launched 319 00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:59,800 125 crypto legal cases, cracked down on things like CZ for billions of dollars, roped in these guys. 320 00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:07,240 But he didn't get in on the Binance settlement. The SEC has a separate civil case against Binance, 321 00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:11,640 which clearly Binance doesn't think is more threatening than the Justice Department case, 322 00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:15,160 because they weren't interested in including that in the settlement that they've already 323 00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:19,160 inked with the Justice Department. I still think though, I think he's going to be remembered 324 00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:24,680 as the sheriff that cleaned up crypto and all of these scammy exchanges and whatnot. 325 00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:29,640 It'll be his picture next to SPF, even if it's not quite true. I think it's going to be fantastic 326 00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:34,040 for Gary and I think it's going to be fantastic for the credibility of the SEC and they'll have 327 00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:38,280 expanded their power and their reach considerably through these actions. Because there's always 328 00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:43,880 going to be crap coins coming online. This is going to be an endless amount of work for the SEC 329 00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:47,720 that they now clearly, through all these legal actions, the established cop for that beat. 330 00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:51,400 And Gary did that for them, helped bring that to them. I think he's going to be 331 00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:55,880 remembered as a massive success for the SEC and as the crypto cop. It's going to be great for him. 332 00:28:55,880 --> 00:29:00,120 And all we had to do was give up our privacy, lose our ability to mix our coins, 333 00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:06,760 not really have access to self-custody apps and only sell and buy through KYC major institutional 334 00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:10,520 players. But number go up. I think that's what they're hoping. We'll see. I don't think that's 335 00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:15,480 necessarily the future, but I think Gary's going to come out looking like the top cop. 336 00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:19,320 He's feeling great looking like the king. He could slide right into that treasury position if he 337 00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:25,160 wants. I was going to say when he becomes secretary of the US Treasury, we should send him a note, 338 00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:30,600 I guess. Yeah. Have a party on the show for Gary. You did it, Gary. Well done. From a pure Bitcoin 339 00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:35,480 perspective, it's kind of good to see some of this go. We needed FTX cleaned up. We did kind of need 340 00:29:35,480 --> 00:29:40,280 Binance cleaned up. Binance doesn't serve Bitcoin. CZ has never done anything for Bitcoin. In fact, 341 00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:45,720 you can find video online years ago when there was some Binance software error where he's advocating 342 00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:51,720 to roll back the blockchain. What are you thinking? It was one of their hacks. It wasn't 343 00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:56,680 one of their big hacks, but one of their hot wallets was hacked for $63 million. And he was like, 344 00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:00,920 hold on, we might roll back the chain. And everyone was like, what are you talking about, CZ? 345 00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:04,840 It's a little controversial, but I think if we have the discussion, it might happen. 346 00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:12,440 Yeah. I mean, so he's never been a big Bitcoiner. And all of these casinos have done 347 00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:20,280 irreparable harm to Bitcoin's reputation. Imagine if the iPhone came out and there was one app and 348 00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:28,040 25,000 scam virus malware apps. Nobody would trust the iPhone in the app store. It would crater the 349 00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:32,920 trust in the product. Android has a little bit more of a problem with malware than Apple does, 350 00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:37,160 even though Apple has a problem, but they have a little bit more. And there is, overall, less 351 00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:43,160 market trust in the play store. And it shows in statistics. It's this damage that has been done 352 00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:48,280 to Bitcoin, where everybody has just lumped crypto into a single category, and it's all a scam, 353 00:30:48,280 --> 00:30:54,040 has done harm to humanity and the adoption of a sovereign technology that if could have been 354 00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:58,280 adopted at a quicker pace before governments got their hands around it, could have provided more 355 00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:02,040 sovereignty and more freedom and more optionality to more people in the world. But instead, that 356 00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:05,720 adoption was slowed down because many people were scared away from it for very understandable 357 00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:10,120 reasons. So in a way, like, what's Gary done that he's wrong about? Like, Gary's not responsible 358 00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:15,400 for operation, you know, choked the goose. That's Warren and her friends. Right? That's 359 00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:18,760 Warren and her friends. That's not Gary. As far as I'm concerned, he's actually done a pretty good 360 00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:22,360 job. He could have done it better and sooner before people lost millions of dollars. And we 361 00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,240 could have done it through proper regulation. But with that was never going to happen. We were 362 00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:28,440 never going to get Congress to do a good job at that ever. This is really our only option. 363 00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:31,960 And through these actions, long term Bitcoin will be considered more legitimate. 364 00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:36,600 Yeah. I mean, I think that, I don't know what to add there. I don't fully disagree. I mean, 365 00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:41,320 it could turn out that way. I guess we'll just have to see. It is, I guess, gross to watch somebody 366 00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:45,720 play the political, you know, be a political mover, especially for a topic that we care a lot about. 367 00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:48,600 That part really does gross me out. So I'm not giving them a full pass. 368 00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:55,480 What about wallet of Satoshi? Do you give them a pass as they pull out of the US app stores? 369 00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:59,720 This is hard to see. Somebody who's gotten a lot of emails on Coder Radio from developers 370 00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:04,440 from an internal, like, discussion standpoint, this tears these people apart. They've been 371 00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:09,000 working on this thing for years. It's a business. They've jumped through all of Apple's hoops. They've 372 00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:13,240 paid their fines. They've done all the submissions. They've responded to app review, fixed all the 373 00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:19,640 things. They've built a user base and a brand. And then one day, Apple has an issue with something 374 00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:23,320 about your app. We don't know exactly what it is. Some of these discussions are actually 375 00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:28,280 under NDA, so we don't get a lot of detail. But wallet of Satoshi is pulling out of both 376 00:32:28,280 --> 00:32:33,480 the Play Store and the Apple App Store because it is, quote, not in compliant with US regulations 377 00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:37,640 around financial custody. That's a concerning little bit of detail right there to me. 378 00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:43,800 Wallet of Satoshi is a popular custodial Bitcoin lightning wallet. I think for a while, 379 00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:50,040 it was the most popular Bitcoin lightning wallet. And now there are many other options with a whole 380 00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:57,480 rainbow array of custody versus self custody versus convenience. And I think that Wallet of 381 00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:02,040 Satoshi always struck me as something that was going to be a stopgap. It was a fully custodial 382 00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:07,640 solution run by who knows who runs it. But they seem to have done all right by their users. I've 383 00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:11,960 never heard anyone complaining that Wallet of Satoshi stole their funds or anything. But 384 00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:17,880 they never were going to be able to survive at scale because an operation like that only survives 385 00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:23,880 as long as it's small enough to avoid attention. And I think maybe they got large enough or there 386 00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:28,760 is just, you know, more attention on financial compliance today. And so they are pulling out 387 00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:34,600 of the US. This doesn't smell like the swan situation to you, where essentially the banks 388 00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:40,600 that swans depended on interpreted the guidance that the FinSec is just floating right now as 389 00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:45,320 we're going to take action on this. Wallet of Satoshi doesn't have any dollar rails. It's all 390 00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:51,080 lightning Satoshis. So they don't have any overlap with the banking system. Maybe Apple 391 00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:56,040 or the Google Play Store might have an issue with what they're doing from a financial compliance 392 00:33:56,120 --> 00:34:01,480 point of view. But I think that this is how they at least delay US sanction. You know, 393 00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:07,080 they pull out of the US and I mean, they still obviously have US users. If any of their electronic 394 00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:12,360 communication crossed the US, then they're going to be, you know, that gives jurisdiction to US 395 00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:17,480 financial regulators. So, you know, what they're doing will be regulated away at some point. But 396 00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:22,360 I think part of the playbook is you pull out of the US to try and get to the back of the queue 397 00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:28,040 of US law enforcement actions and then you eventually get enforced against and then, 398 00:34:28,040 --> 00:34:33,160 you know, probably shut down with a fine. I read this as they were approached by Apple 399 00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:38,520 with an issue. And I think when you combine it with the fact that Zeus, Zeus developer Evan, 400 00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:44,840 had his account deactivated by Apple. Now, he theorizes on Twitter, it could be because 401 00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:49,800 his complaints were cited in someone else's antitrust suit against Apple. And so it's just 402 00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:55,080 Apple taking, I guess, like a punitive move. However, I doubt that because we have seen other 403 00:34:55,080 --> 00:35:00,440 developers with much larger platforms attack Apple and their policies. And we haven't seen 404 00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,360 Apple take punitive actions. Maybe it's maybe it's just circumstances. But I just find it 405 00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:09,960 interesting that within two days, wallet of Satoshi and Evan, the Zeus developer have their 406 00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:14,600 accounts removed and or in some capacity or another. And Evan got no notice from Apple, 407 00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:18,120 he just had his account deactivated. And I think it might still be a test flight, but he had his 408 00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:23,720 he can't publish anymore. And Zeus is, in my opinion, maybe the best mobile app out there for 409 00:35:23,720 --> 00:35:28,760 Bitcoin and Lightning. And this is a massive, massive loss. And you know, because we met Evan 410 00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:33,160 at adopting Bitcoin, he recently bought an iPhone, he switched from Android, he bought an iPhone, 411 00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:37,960 so that way he could be deep in that ecosystem and make sure that the iOS app was first class 412 00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:42,520 for iPhone users. And then Apple goes and does this to him. I wonder if it has to do with 413 00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:48,280 Zeus integrating a Lightning service provider, because now Zeus is kind of more of a financial 414 00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:52,520 services provider, not just software that allows you to interact with your own node. 415 00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:58,200 But frankly, that seems a little nuanced. I mean, generally when Apple bans applications, 416 00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:03,880 it's because of some automated process, not a careful, considered look at all of your features, 417 00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:08,680 right? Yeah, it seems like the issue Apple has is things that enable peer to peer payments 418 00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:12,520 without KYC. That's what I think the common denominator is. And I think we're going to see 419 00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:17,880 the Apple app store crack down on anything that can do peer to peer that doesn't KYC or go through 420 00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:23,480 Apple Pay. And you know, it's ironic, dad, we just are crossing over in like two days, 421 00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:28,440 my one year mark from switching from iPhone to graphing OS, because Apple started screwing 422 00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:33,000 around with other Bitcoin wallet developers a year ago. And now here we are in my one year 423 00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:36,840 anniversary, and my favorite app has just got their account pulled. This is the one I just 424 00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:41,160 switched my wife and kid over to as well during adopting Bitcoin on their iPhones. 425 00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:46,200 It looks very prescient because like we knew Apple was going down this route towards more 426 00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:52,840 curated app store. And it makes financial sense because the app store is where Apple is making 427 00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:57,880 the bulk of their money right now, because they leverage this 30% fee on top of all 428 00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:03,160 transactions in the app store. So they have every incentive to kill this golden goose, right? 429 00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:08,680 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think maybe mutiny made the right call when they rebuilt the mutiny wallet 430 00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:12,760 app as a progressive web app, just completely bypass the app store and just take advantage of 431 00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,680 modern browser technology. You want to put an icon on your dashboard or on your desktop, whatever 432 00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:19,960 you want to call it, your launcher, you can on Android, if you want it as an app, you can. 433 00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:26,840 But on iOS, you get a great progressive web app. The monetary gates are open, an excerpt from Lynn 434 00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:32,920 Alden's recent book, broken money. This is kind of a condensation. Lynn describes how the world 435 00:37:33,240 --> 00:37:39,400 monetary system is basically 160 different currency bubbles. And inside your currency bubble, 436 00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:46,760 you can spend these fiat assets or these fiat dollars or yen or Egyptian pounds. And then the 437 00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:52,840 moment you get outside of that little bubble, the salability of these bills decreases rapidly. 438 00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:59,080 And also while you're inside this bubble, you're entirely subject to the monetary policy and the 439 00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:04,920 inflation taxed against you by the monetary sovereign inside that bubble. And that moving 440 00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:10,680 money between these bubbles is very costly and it's a permissioned activity. So even if I want 441 00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:16,120 to send you dollars in another country, the amount of money you actually get is kind of a result of 442 00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:22,040 legislation and fees being taken out. And it is probably not as much as I sent you or significantly 443 00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:29,720 less in many situations. And what Lynn observes is that with the advent of Bitcoin and stable coins, 444 00:38:29,720 --> 00:38:37,080 these new technologies are holes in the wall of these isolated monetary environments. The gates 445 00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:43,960 are open. Now, people in Argentina who have been experiencing basically 200% inflation per year 446 00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:49,880 over the last 40 years, they can now hold stable coins or Bitcoin, they can easily hold assets that 447 00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:55,320 have better property rights than US dollar bank accounts, which are frequently confiscated and 448 00:38:55,320 --> 00:39:02,040 devalued and whatnot. And this basically means that monetary policy around the world outside of 449 00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:08,040 the United States is becoming harder and harder for local governments. And I think this is generally 450 00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:14,280 viewed as a good thing by Bitcoiners and people who are interested in human freedom and property 451 00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:19,800 rights. And I think it's viewed as a bad thing by institutions like the IMF and World Bank that 452 00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:25,640 are very concerned with government's ability to perform monetary policy against their citizens. 453 00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:32,760 This observation I think is quite prescient because we've recently had an election in Argentina of 454 00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:38,600 kind of a fringe candidate who was a part of his manifesto. I think his name is Javier Millay. He 455 00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:43,960 wants to dollarize, officially dollarize the Argentinian economy, which is already highly 456 00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:49,960 dollarized, but not officially that's, I think, illegal to a deal in dollars. So what does this 457 00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:56,920 mean for Bitcoin and Bitcoiners? I think that this article and the trends that Lynn is highlighting 458 00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:03,240 are basically the rest of the world is catching up to concerns that Bitcoiners, gold bugs, 459 00:40:03,240 --> 00:40:09,080 and people who have been concerned about monetary debasement and centralized monetary policy since 460 00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:13,640 2008 have been talking about. Yeah, they're catching up as their bags depend upon it. 461 00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:22,760 As inflation in your local economy accelerates, you just have a much greater incentive to understand 462 00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:29,240 the value of deflationary assets like Bitcoin. And I don't know how deep we want to get into 463 00:40:29,240 --> 00:40:35,800 the stablecoin discussion, but one advantage of stablecoins for people in developing economies 464 00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:41,640 is that even though the stablecoin is issued by a central issuer, they're usually outside of this 465 00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:47,480 local economy where you're being aggressively inflated away. And so the property rights of a 466 00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:53,400 stablecoin are generally better than, say, a US dollar bank account in Russia or a US dollar bank 467 00:40:53,400 --> 00:41:00,120 account in Turkey or in Argentina, because these bank accounts are periodically converted into 468 00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:04,360 local currency, the dollars stolen and given to the government for their hard currency needs, 469 00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:10,200 and then you're stuck with a local inflating currency and you need to quickly rush and buy a 470 00:41:10,200 --> 00:41:15,960 harder asset. And often that's real estate or gold or something. And I think this gets to how 471 00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:21,560 it's incredibly difficult to save in non-developed economies because there just aren't a range of 472 00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:27,080 financial products that provide the year on year price growth that compensates you or sort of 473 00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:32,840 protects you from inflation. This is a really interesting development because we seem to be 474 00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:39,640 entering another period of financial contraction. There are, as we highlighted two episodes ago, 475 00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:46,120 there are a lot of signs of stress in the financial system, particularly around US government debt, 476 00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:52,040 that even though it's yielding high rates, the entire maturity curve has moved up. And so a large 477 00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:57,400 amount of US government debt today is actually underwater on a market to market basis. And 478 00:41:57,400 --> 00:42:01,960 so that just suggests financial stress. It indicates that we might have further banking 479 00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:08,520 system problems and the price of oil is falling, indicating a lack of global demand, which is 480 00:42:08,520 --> 00:42:14,680 generally a leading indicator of recession. So in this environment, what is the standard 481 00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:19,240 government response and the standard government response is to cut interest rates, to attempt to 482 00:42:19,240 --> 00:42:24,600 stimulate local economies. And when the US does this, all other countries sort of have to do this at 483 00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:30,920 the same time or else their currency will sort of either strengthen or devalue sharply against US 484 00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:35,160 dollar. And so basically every central bank around the world, they have to move lockstep with the US 485 00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:39,880 dollar or they're going to experience sort of a dislocation in their currency. Well, if the 486 00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:47,560 monetary gates are open, if their citizens can opt out of local monetary policy by holding Bitcoin 487 00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:52,840 or stablecoins, that just leads to a very different potential outcome. It might mean that 488 00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:58,440 monetary policy is more inflationary and less stimulative. And so I think that this is kind of 489 00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:04,040 a trend that bears watching. And it's just very interesting in the context of recent electoral 490 00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:10,840 wins in Argentina, where a pro dollar anti local currency candidate has just been elected to the 491 00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:16,120 presidency. Yeah, as we record, the news has come out that he's confirmed that he plans to shut down 492 00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:19,480 the central bank because he's released a statement that he's going to shut them down. What I hear 493 00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:24,200 you saying is that you're bullish on stablecoins over lightning. That's what I hear is we're going 494 00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:28,040 to need stablecoins on lightning. I didn't like it. I didn't want it, but you're making the case 495 00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:33,480 that stablecoins are going to just be in massive demand. And right now, the only way to get stable 496 00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:38,360 coins is some crappy altcoin, where there's a massive amount of third party risk. 497 00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:44,360 Well, I mean, I think that's always going to be the case. A stablecoin entails third party risk. 498 00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:50,680 But I guess what you mean is if you can have stablecoins on lightning via taproot assets, 499 00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:55,800 then you don't have to deal with the platform risk of using tether on Tron, right? 500 00:43:55,800 --> 00:44:01,080 Or Ethereum. You and I have observed how Ethereum keeps sneaking in the door of institutions. 501 00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:05,080 There's some spot ETFs that have been submitted for that. When the SEC sues, 502 00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:10,200 crack in a coinbase, and they list all of the securities, Ethereum isn't on that list. 503 00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:15,480 And I think it's because of stablecoins. That's right. That's the real use case for Ethereum 504 00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:21,160 is that different jokers can make their own crappy stablecoin. And there's just a massive, 505 00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:25,240 massive, massive worldwide demand for stablecoins. And I don't know, maybe we want to just, 506 00:44:25,240 --> 00:44:30,680 maybe the conversation is, do we want to just seed that territory to Ethereum or Tron or whatever? 507 00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:36,200 Or do we want that action backed by Bitcoin over a layer two? I'm not sure we do, but maybe that 508 00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:41,400 conversation should be had because I think the signal from the institutions is stablecoins are 509 00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:45,720 here to stay. And I think Lin's analysis makes it clear there's going to be worldwide demand for 510 00:44:45,720 --> 00:44:50,440 stablecoins. It just seems like that's not going away. That's an innovation the market likes. 511 00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:56,040 And Bitcoin is in many ways a permissionless technology. And so I don't think we can stop 512 00:44:56,040 --> 00:45:00,920 stablecoins on Bitcoin. And let's not forget that the first stablecoin was built on Bitcoin. 513 00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:06,840 That was Tether built on the Omni protocol, which was way back in the day. And it quickly moved to 514 00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:13,080 Ethereum and then to Tron as Bitcoin fees increased. And maybe one day they come back home. I'm 515 00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:18,440 actually looking forward to that conversation if it picks up. I think in the notes, we'll put in a 516 00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:24,440 link to Cloudflare, who seems to be following OFAC approved lists for their gateway service. 517 00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:29,640 That's a good read. And then we have an optech, which has some details about lightning addresses. 518 00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:37,160 Right. And maybe we'll skip over the coin center piece on the US Bank Secrecy Act. But the TLDR 519 00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:43,960 there is that the Bank Secrecy Act is a sweeping surveillance policy that essentially removes 520 00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:50,600 all financial privacy from any individual who uses a third party in a financial transaction, 521 00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:55,320 which is basically every financial transaction other than Bitcoin in the world. And the question, 522 00:45:55,320 --> 00:46:00,360 of course, is this constitutional? And it's definitely not, but it's probably not going to 523 00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:06,920 be changed because it's a very useful tool for social control, tax evasion, all sorts of government 524 00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:12,120 policies that could be used for raising revenue. And the US government is in a period where it 525 00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:17,320 needs more revenue. So things like the Bank Secrecy Act, I believe will be very useful tools for 526 00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:21,000 going after additional sources of income. This is a good analysis by coin center. 527 00:46:21,560 --> 00:46:24,440 Actually, I'll give them a shout out for doing good work there. Link in the show notes for that 528 00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:27,400 as well. All right. So there's also a link in there to the optech. Is there much we want to get 529 00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:32,040 into with the lightning addresses? Well, I mean, it's basically improvements to 530 00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:38,680 Ellen URL. So the ability to have a lightning address, Chris at jubiterbroadcasting.com, 531 00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:45,560 that's reusable and that provides some sort of privacy from the entity that's hosting the 532 00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:51,000 web server that's providing that data to lightning wallets. I think that's the TLDR. 533 00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:55,640 It's kind of nice. I like it. And it's kind of done via DNS. It looks like a DNS lookup to 534 00:46:55,640 --> 00:46:59,400 validate. It's kind of a neat idea. It would be a lot easier if I could just say send me 535 00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:03,560 you know, stats to chris at jubiterbroadcasting.com instead of Chris at Zeus or whatever it might 536 00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:08,520 be, Albie or whatever happened might be, I would like just my email address. It would make it a 537 00:47:08,520 --> 00:47:14,360 lot simpler for people. And I think that you can, you can host your own Ellen URL right now. So, 538 00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:19,240 you know, maybe we should just be doing that and put our sats where our mouth is. True, true, true. 539 00:47:19,240 --> 00:47:23,800 If we hosted ourselves, then that removes the privacy implications of relying on someone else 540 00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:27,960 to host it for us. Because you and I definitely need more self hosted infrastructure right now, 541 00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:32,280 especially in the holidays. Oh, absolutely. And we need another project real quick. I know. 542 00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:36,760 Yeah. Did I tell you I set up that new machine learning server? It's great. My office is so 543 00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:41,080 warmed right now. Good. Yeah. Running for the holidays and keep your office warm. That's what I 544 00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:47,000 would do. If you'd like to get in touch with us, bitcoindadpod at protonmail.com or head on over 545 00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:52,200 to Weapon X and you consider us at Bitcoin Dad Pod or just get in that matrix chat, 546 00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:56,840 decentralized federation, get account matrix.org and then jump in there with element or something 547 00:47:56,840 --> 00:48:02,040 like that. We got links in the show notes for that. And I just want to mention we got our 3000 548 00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:08,760 sat reoccurring boost from Bob B. Thank you Bob for being a reoccurring booster. You basically 549 00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:13,640 are the only listener with the Bitcoin Dad Pod membership and there are absolutely no benefits 550 00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:19,400 to that membership. So don't know what to say. He's a pioneer. He's a pioneer. We did get some great 551 00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:26,600 boosts this week, including a baller boost from Bitcoin lizard, 100,000 sats using podverse. 552 00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:31,400 And he writes great interview with waxwing. Not sure if everyone picked it up, but waxwing 553 00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:35,880 gave a subtle shout out to the media produced by the sound engineer. He was of course referring 554 00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:40,600 to the Epic Plan B podcast produced by none other than Chris. Thanks, Chris, for producing the great 555 00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:45,160 Bitcoin content for over 10 years and thank you both for the excellent Bitcoin Dad Pod. 556 00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:48,760 Well, that's a great deep reference catch Bitcoin lizard. 557 00:48:48,760 --> 00:48:54,360 Right, because Chris was handling the sound for that interview. So if you thought, gosh, 558 00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:59,320 the sound quality on this interview is way better than your standard Bitcoin Dad Fair. 559 00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:05,640 It's because the podcasting OG original Plan B Chris was handling it. 560 00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:10,760 I'm impressed, A, because it was a vague reference and B, we never made reference to the 561 00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:14,680 fact that I'm there. I might have laughed or something in the background, but that's a pretty 562 00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:19,400 good catch. Nice one and thank you for that great boost too. Yeah, how great is it that waxwing 563 00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:25,800 really was tuned in? And what I really appreciated about my conversations with waxwing was that he 564 00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:30,840 has a real clarity to history where some of it's faded for me because I followed the Linux and 565 00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:35,800 open source community so closely that some of that OG Bitcoin drama has faded a bit. But when 566 00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:41,240 I talked to waxwing, it comes back crystal clear again. And so I really enjoyed reminiscing and 567 00:49:41,240 --> 00:49:46,280 getting his insights because he's a real smart guy and clearly he clearly has been following 568 00:49:46,280 --> 00:49:50,840 things closely for a long time. We also received a baller boost or two from 569 00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:57,480 Patar who sent in a 50,000 sat boost with the message great show guys and then a 25,000 sat 570 00:49:57,480 --> 00:50:03,000 boost with the message this is the way I remember a lot of the old days. Do you think he was listening 571 00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:08,680 to the waxwing interview on that? I do. I do. 75,000 total sats. Thank you, Patar. It's really 572 00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:13,720 nice. Nice to see you. Yeah. Oh, me too. I know exactly what you mean. I felt it in the field. 573 00:50:13,720 --> 00:50:23,240 Jen in Indy comes in with 10,000 sats using fountain and says boost. Thank you. Thank you, Jen. 574 00:50:23,240 --> 00:50:29,720 And Scott sends in a row of ducks. I'll come join your Bitcoin Island, Chris, but my primary skill 575 00:50:29,720 --> 00:50:35,880 is software development, which might be oversaturated given your audience. Side note, but dad, I heard 576 00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:40,840 you say that you studied econ in college, but also that you work in IT. Did you double major or 577 00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:45,800 something? As someone entering college but split between econ and CS, it would be great to hear 578 00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:52,120 your story and advice on the matter. Oh, man, that's quite the story. Gosh, okay. Well, Scott, 579 00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:57,640 thank you so much for the boost. Basically, when I entered college, I did not get a lot of 580 00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:02,680 guidance from my parents. They just said, do what you love. And that's a nice sentiment, 581 00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:09,160 but it wasn't actually very practical. And so I did the prerequisites to major in astronomy, 582 00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:15,000 computer science, and economics. I think I probably loved astronomy the most. I thought 583 00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:19,640 computer science was kind of the most fascinating. I mean, it's slightly different, but it just seemed 584 00:51:19,720 --> 00:51:23,640 like really challenging and interesting. And I settled for economics because people told me 585 00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:28,760 it was practical. I was also very interested and I had the opportunity to work with some professors 586 00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:35,080 and that was a great experience. But frankly, I have to say that I think that studying economics 587 00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:40,360 is, well, if you could study something else, I would do that just because academic economics, 588 00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:47,080 as a lot of orthodoxy, it's a field that's been entirely shaped, in my view, by the incentives 589 00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:52,440 of central banks that employ probably the most economists per capita of any other institution 590 00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:58,200 in the world. And so this has really distorted the focus of academic economics. And so if you 591 00:51:58,200 --> 00:52:01,880 are into Bitcoin and listening to this podcast and you go and study economics in 592 00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:05,480 college, you're just going to have a bad time because you're going to be someone who like 593 00:52:05,480 --> 00:52:10,680 brings up obscure Austrian economic philosophy and no one's going to have read it. No one's going 594 00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:14,600 to really care. And you're going to kind of be like the weird guy out in the corner. So while I 595 00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:20,440 think that economics is theoretically an important discipline to provide a lens to looking at 596 00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:26,120 politics and society and sort of figuring out the actual financial reasons why things happen, 597 00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:30,680 you know, who's actually getting paid here in your individual life. I mean, I think that 598 00:52:30,680 --> 00:52:36,440 something else would probably be more useful to you. That's just my sense. I would also say that 599 00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:41,400 when I was in school, I didn't have a huge amount of confidence in my abilities. And so I kind of 600 00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:45,960 settled for economics because I thought that computer science was too hard. And I wasn't sure 601 00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:50,520 if I could do it. Now, I think that had I gone the CS route, I probably would have had a pretty 602 00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:56,120 good time. But it's all very individual. And I hope that, you know, you find a an answer that 603 00:52:56,120 --> 00:53:01,800 you're happy with how it comes in with 10,000 sat boosting to remind you about the 1000 sat 604 00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:07,560 bet laid out in episode one on one, the JPA will reference work from home in some official remarks 605 00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:12,920 before January of 2024. Dad took yes, and Chris reluctantly took no. I haven't been able to find 606 00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:18,840 any statements. So look back, reviewed transcripts, I did find October 2. JPA said, quote, we're still 607 00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:23,240 coming through the other side of the pandemic in reference to the labor market. But he did not 608 00:53:23,240 --> 00:53:29,320 reference work from home specifically. Okay, so the clock is ticking. Sounds like I'm going to 609 00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:35,640 give me 1000 sats. Yeah, the best sats ever. Thank you so much for reminding us. 610 00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:39,640 Halleck, you are the large language model of our show, it seems. 611 00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:49,240 And we received a death boost from the Golden Dragon 4444 sats. Actually, that's two rows of 612 00:53:49,240 --> 00:53:54,440 ducks. It's a flock. It's a flock of ducks flock of ducks. What do you call a group of ducks? 613 00:53:54,440 --> 00:54:00,200 Are you asking Halleck? Yeah, a group of ducks is called a flock or a waddling or a raft. It's 614 00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:04,040 a raft of ducks. I liked waddling. Okay, it's a waddling of ducks. 615 00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:09,960 Great episode. I wonder if mempools will ever clear or if Odell is right, and they will never 616 00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:15,880 clear now. That is a good question. I would not bet money on mempools clearing. I just don't, 617 00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:22,600 I don't, I don't get the angle here. Like, so what we're essentially seeing is ordinals buying up a 618 00:54:22,600 --> 00:54:28,040 lot of like the block time. I mean, we're just seeing them dumping like whenever the whenever 619 00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:32,280 the fees are low, they're dumping and bringing up the fees. They're down right now, though, actually. 620 00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:36,600 I mean, they're not outrageous at the moment from where we were last week. My mempool is not even 621 00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:40,600 fully maxed out at the moment, actually. I don't know. I just don't get the strategy. I don't know 622 00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:44,600 how long this could last. It feels like it's a temporary thing. People can only buy so many 623 00:54:44,600 --> 00:54:48,840 JPEGs for so long before they're going to run out of hard money. And then what are they going to do? 624 00:54:48,840 --> 00:54:52,920 It seems like it's going to stop at some point. The Golden Dragon continues. Also, 625 00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:57,160 would gladly join Bitcoin Island. Well, we'd be glad to have you. 626 00:54:57,160 --> 00:54:58,040 Yeah, sure. 627 00:54:58,040 --> 00:55:02,840 But if there is a Golden Dragon and a Bitcoin lizard, I mean, that's two lizards, right? So 628 00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,960 kids would love that. Tell you what, kids would love that. Thank you, Dragon, for the boost. 629 00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:10,120 DPG sent in 2000 sets. I don't see a message though. Let us know if that was an error or not. 630 00:55:10,120 --> 00:55:15,160 But thank you for the port. And Loomer came in with a row of ducks. Just simply said wax wing. 631 00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:21,080 Kyren also sent a row of ducks. He was listening to the wax wing interview. Fantastic Convo, 632 00:55:21,080 --> 00:55:26,280 dad. I love these historical insights. You'll note that wax wing rarely had strong assertions, 633 00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:32,280 a sign of nuance that fact and opinion rarely line up. Also, not a word about price, a breath of 634 00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:36,680 fresh air. Ah, it's true. Price never did come up. And look at Kyren coming in now with a new 635 00:55:36,680 --> 00:55:41,080 branding. No more mere mortals podcast. But thank you Kyren for the row of ducks. Yeah, 636 00:55:41,080 --> 00:55:44,440 that was a great conversation for me just to sit in on. I enjoyed just sitting there. And 637 00:55:44,440 --> 00:55:48,760 you know, we were doing it in El Salvador as the sunset. It was pretty fantastic. It was a great 638 00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:52,120 venue and a great spot. Great temperature too. Because he's up on a hill a little bit. It was 639 00:55:52,120 --> 00:55:55,480 really fantastic conversation. And it seems like the audience really enjoyed it too. Thank you 640 00:55:55,480 --> 00:56:00,520 everybody. Yeah, I think we also had our best meal in El Salvador. So that was a treat. 641 00:56:01,240 --> 00:56:07,240 That was. Thank you everybody who boosted in. We had 14 boosters, a total of 17 boosts across 642 00:56:07,240 --> 00:56:13,640 all of them. Thanks everybody. And we stacked a total of 210,363 sets. We really appreciate that. 643 00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:17,400 I love seeing that number across the 200 threshold. If you got some value out of the show, 644 00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:20,680 some insights out of the conversation, helps you kind of wrap your head around a few things, 645 00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:23,880 and then you got some value from that, please consider boosting it. It's a great way to support 646 00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:27,080 each production and get your message read on the show. It's one of our favorite segments. 647 00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:31,480 You can do that with a new podcast app, podcastapps.com. You heard it here. Fountain and 648 00:56:31,480 --> 00:56:35,800 Castamatic and Podverse are the most popular in our audience. And then some people still boost 649 00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:38,600 them with the podcast index too, because they don't want to switch apps. To do that, you just get 650 00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:41,960 Albi, you top it off, then you can boost from the web like the fountain website, I think you could 651 00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:45,720 do it the podverse website. And of course, the podcast index. And to help you sort it all out, 652 00:56:45,720 --> 00:56:50,680 we'll put links in the show notes. It's a great way to participate in a circular Bitcoin economy 653 00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:54,920 and support the Bitcoin dad pod at the same time. Thank you, everybody who takes time to do that. 654 00:56:54,920 --> 00:57:01,160 This has been the Bitcoin dad pod recorded on November 24, 2023. I've been your Bitcoin dad, 655 00:57:01,160 --> 00:57:07,720 and I'm here as always remotely with me. It's Chris. Thanks for joining us, everybody. We'll see you 656 00:57:07,720 --> 00:57:23,720 next time.