welcome back to bitcoin center live stream number 34 brought to you by bite federal we're gonna do
a year in review i'm cedric youngleman i'm paul tarantino how are you this week i'm good nice to
meet you nice to meet you yeah man it's uh christmas time i've been making lots of food and
cleaning stuff hanging stuff have you been thinking about like sort of 20 20 25 i mean i have
a lot how fast did it go by yeah i don't know i think i feel like someone has turned up the
clock in the simulation like it's just like going at one one and a half did i stop i stopped like
really paying a lot of attention to social media this week and things have slowed down
it's really nice you have more time in the day i guess um i feel much less bothered i'm much happier
way happier like i've not like i mean i have been on x and i have been on some things but like when
i i see that those clips that are like you know world's ending everything's gonna fall apart
nuclear war at any second i'll just like scroll but like i don't care whatever i don't care
and I feel way better.
It's like a cleanse.
Yeah, it's really good.
Before the show, we were talking about
almost like our lives in review
and probably the stupidest shit we've done.
Yes.
And do you think our kids are going to kind of have their own?
Oh, dude, wow.
Yeah.
Or are they just going to kind of skip that, you know?
I think kids are far more aware, at least while my kids,
they're far more aware of the dangers these days.
I don't know if that's a good thing.
do you think i think that's from the phone yeah for sure i think they're much more cautious it
seems but in in that way maybe they're not living life to the fullest not your kids in particular
i know maybe kids are no exactly i'm like they're on tv like um tv i just worry about the exposure
to all the like drama and and what kind of impact that has on their childhood as opposed to like
like all the things we're talking about where you just like were you you really didn't perceive of
the risks that you were taking as a kid when we were younger just did dumb stuff got hurt when
like you didn't even like even when why do you think they perceive the risk more because it's
all over their phones i think they see everyone else's sort of mistakes you mean they learn by
watching like the worst thing we saw was the what happened nasa rocket blowing up right sure sure
now they get they see every they see people on the daily getting beat shot kidnapped it's all
over social media maybe they stay home more than because of that yeah i think somebody i did hear
somebody uh analyze gen z and calling them the home generation like do they go in the alleys the
malls likely to stay home parks after dark do they like sort of roam the streets in the neighborhoods
it's yeah i'm guilty too because i'm petrified that something bad is going to happen sure
well are we safer generally speaking as a society
i don't know when i turn off like when i turn off social media i do feel very safe and like i
look around the world i'm like ah everything's like we look around your local world your your
what you know what you touch and hold every day and you know it's a pretty it's a pretty uh easy
going place. But then as soon as you start flipping through your phone, you're like,
oh my God, the world is ending. So, you know, and we all know a lot of that is engineered to
make us feel that way, whether that's just purely because they want our attention or it's because
they're trying to engineer the fear and the chaos and the threat. But there's a lot of it is, I think,
overdone i think the average everyday person if they put down their phone wants to be happy wants
to take care of their family wants to love their neighbor wants to be a good person and there's this
existential exterior force that's constantly pushing us negative thoughts and i don't think
it's healthy i agree with everything you're saying that but do you think some people don't put the
phone down because maybe they don't like their lives at home and i'm speculating here maybe they
they don't like their jobs or they're frustrated or,
and then so then the phone is like this massive escape that just is
continuous in perpetuity. And you wake up to, you know,
cause then you don't have to maybe take as much action in your own life.
The phone kind of gives you that escape. And I'm not talking about the kids.
No, I guess. I don't know if it's as much,
I didn't know how to describe it. Cause I wouldn't use the word escape,
but the phone's not, it's not an escape.
Well, I mean, it's almost like, I think you're,
it's almost like you feel like you're missing something
or you're not fully informed.
And this desire to know everything that's happening
in every single moment pulls you into it.
And then you end up having all these negative repercussions
because it gets your mind to be thinking very negative thoughts.
Right?
And I've been thinking about this a lot lately,
about how you kind of have to go through that process
to wake up you kind of have to become aware of all the horrible in the world in order to wake up
but then once you're awake then you have to go through the process of letting that go
because if you don't right formula you're going to be stuck in this like horror loop
that with your mind and could spin you off into a very negative place and have very bad
repercussions through your entire life. Whereas if you can like learn it, go down that rabbit hole,
see the evil, and you can pull back from that by choice. If you're consciously making the choice to
not engage with it, I think that there's something there that maybe like, like, you know, it's the
yin and the yang, it's the dark and the light. And it's like, you have to be aware of it, but you
also have to wake up from it and choose to not engage with it and not give your energy to it.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
I've been just kind of thinking about that a lot lately.
Yeah, that's apt going into the new year.
Let's do the year in review.
Let's get into it.
Let's do it.
This is Bitcoin Center brought to you by Byte Federal.
Let's be real, right?
Phrasing Telegram for launching a Bitcoin wallet.
I've always felt like Luke Haley.
Bitcoin, this digital currency that's out there
that people say, oh, it might be the next big thing.
What do you think?
I think it's rat poison.
Bitcoin.
You never heard of them a few weeks ago?
Now everybody's talking about them.
But is it a currency?
I don't know.
Or is it more like a stock?
Or is it a tulip bowl?
Or is it just stupid?
To me, it smells like Ponzi scheme
and the greater fool theory, right?
You do like five minutes of freaking research.
Well, thanks for coming to my set talk.
Yes.
Don't buy shit.
Oh, man, I didn't get that wrong.
All right.
Bitcoin's recent rally.
Do you agree?
Is crypto finally dead?
Go to the next one.
Matter of fact, they're kind of in the Ethernet.
What are they?
Some rumors that it's a Japanese guy, but they say no, that he's a fake name.
It was a pseudonym.
I mean, you're literally putting real money onto a system that we don't even know who created it.
It will come to a bad ending.
Is this the most exciting bull run ever?
Not for me.
No, it's not.
Welcome to Bitcoin Center, the fast-paced show where the debate is the story.
The federal government is already among the largest holders of Bitcoin, as you know.
really one of the largest holders in the world with as many as 200,000 Bitcoin obtained via
civil law and various other forms of law and including enforcement actions. These existing
holdings will form the foundation of the new reserve. Unfortunately, in recent years,
the U.S. government has foolishly sold tens of thousands of additional Bitcoin that were worth
billions and billions of dollars had they not sold them but they did sell them mostly during
the biden administration and not a good not a good thing to have done from this day on america
will follow the rule that every bitcoin knows very well never sell your bitcoin that's a little
phrase that they have i don't know if that's right or not who the hell knows
dude all right looking back at 2025 did the trump white house meaningful meaningfully deliver on its
pro bitcoin promises it delivered on stable coins right uh what else though uh
uh no uh no well i mean we got the genius act i mean dude this is i don't know getting clarity
the clarity act which i agree is mostly about the stable coins what about the strategic
bitcoin reserve yeah we got something they seized 350 000 bitcoin who has more bitcoin burma or us
i think it's close i think i think america does and burma mind it good for them uh did they mind
this burma no bruton i think that's something that was i thought 150 000 of that was seized as well
really yeah i don't think that was all mine they do mine big well i'll look into that on my phone
on a second but what about what about ross ross got out on yeah yeah i mean that's delivering day
two or three well keone keone's now in jail like four days now four nights um so i don't know dude
i mean like we talked about this right like when we were all at um nashville yeah and trump spoke
yeah it was really kind of like uh eh compared to um when kennedy spoke
he really understood bitcoin or his speech writer did he got it well or his speech writer did but
no i mean he he was talking he talks like a bitcoiner he speaks like a bitcoiner he understands
it um i mean just in that comment right there like i don't know whether you should sell it or
not you know like he's he's not he never sell your bitcoin who the hell knows didn't you get
the sense since you get the sense that it was a way to get a to get the vote like his his speech
about bitcoin wasn't like really heartfelt it i think trump is is in the um you know i figured
out bitcoin and so now let's do crypto everything like i learned bitcoin and that means everything
blockchain is good sure and it all means being deep uh banking yeah they're looking at it and
a way to make money he's looking at it purely as a way to make money in a power play i think they're
up 11 or 12 billion uh what do you what do you think of that that uh trump and his family have
have allegedly proffered to the tune of, let's say,
10 billion plus in their net worths in the last 12 months.
Yeah.
What is that?
How do you process that as a United States citizen and any president,
not just Trump?
Yeah, it's interesting.
I mean, I think I've said this a few times on the show, right?
It's not insider trading, but it is, you know,
it's definitely insider information about what,
what legislation is coming,
what kind of deals are being made.
And you could certainly have dinner with your kids and say, Hey,
we should probably be doing this kind of stuff.
And they're doing this kind of stuff.
Now they were into it prior to the election.
But yeah, it's, it's interesting.
I mean, this is a dilemma that goes across all of politics, right?
whether it's individual stocks or crypto or Bitcoin.
Well, just business operations.
I mean, look at the Biden family.
Right?
I mean, they profited.
The Clintons have profited.
Obama, they've all profited from the connections and the knowledge of legislation and the deals that get made while they're on the clock running our country.
In the 90s, it used to be a book deal.
for two or three million then you know now is to like say 2005 and then then with obama
and i'm i'm only naming names to just because of the years it's not even uh the individuals but
just as time goes on so obama is now 20 2008 2012 2000 the net the netflix deal you know 80 90 100
million so that that's the evolution and then now you know with crypto or any way they could kind of
figure things out now you have a regime or family that's profiting to the tune of several billion
and how much of that is inflation verse it just is worse uh corruption as is an or a magnitude or an order greater do you see what i saying is it like is this just greater corruption or is it just the money worth less or is it obviously it both i think it all the above
yeah it's all but is it is is what trump doing that much more corrupt or is they just garnered
that much more money out of the corruption dude i i yeah because it doesn't seem that
more corrupt to me it just seems like more money and anything it seems less corrupt and that it's
more transparent it's like anything it's like the boiling frog it's like every anything right the
needle keeps moving through every administration it keeps we keep accepting it we we will get all
we in the past i remember you know getting all hot and heavy over certain things the politicians did
when we were younger and nothing ever happens to them they pardon themselves they move on so you get
to the point where you just like you as a citizen of the united states and many many countries around
the world uh where you are not in a position where you feel like you have the power to really even
do anything but have an opinion i try to keep an open mind from the this whole thing is very early
so much that i'm trying to learn yeah we kind of got off topic yeah but i think it's i think it's
relevant but uh what's that now now i forgot what i was gonna say well i mean we're talking about
like it was what did you deliver on bitcoin right and i the delete like no he hasn't delivered on
bitcoin there hasn't been a a way to acquire more bitcoin that's revenue neutral other than
confiscation right but well what about even even well we talked about building a strategic bitcoin
reserve we got the crypto reserve we've got the bitcoin reserve that's still the same size as it
was when we started except for i don't know if they've now accumulated more coins they have more
coins now there's up to 350 yeah 350 000 i forget the the where they got the latest 120 000 that
that were confiscated also of note would you rather see them though like supporting the network
be like hey oh the 120 000 was from the pig farming yes the big farming so those should have been
returned to victims uh keone or samurai's bitcoin and whatever bitcoin i guess personal holdings uh
of their their keone and bill were confiscated seized but then sold by sdny so it didn't even
follow sort of really the 2025 sbnr mandate i didn't know they sold yeah sdmy went rogue there
and sold the coins um but i don't think trump is actually delivered is this something though maybe
he is and i'm just trying to play it early on i was giving him the benefit of the doubt thinking
okay well they're going to get stable coins in place what are they doing that they're going to
get the genius act laying the seeds and then yeah are they planning and sowing the seeds i guess
guess we'll see building the rails they haven't delivered that yet in 2025 okay what would be
evidence of delivery for you that they're participating in the network and that they're
looking at bitcoin as a way for uh rebuilding the balance sheet of america that means like
they're they're mining bitcoin they're um like i said participating in the network it's very
interesting to say it that well yeah run a node take self-custody provide value to the network
instead of just confiscating other people's because that's not providing uh right network
they haven't they haven't provided uh i mean the genius act is supposed to provide clarity
in it i mean not the genius act the clarity act right supposed to provide clarity most of the
clarity is coming around like is your shitcoin a security or not well they did repeal sab what 121
and rolled out sap 122 which is banks and you see progress here okay so we're talking about though
we're we're talking about progress that's related to trying to get traditional finance involved in
the bitcoin space well what we're and maybe they've been fighting the legacy banking i'm
just playing devil's advocate maybe they've been fighting we're not seeing an adoption of the
bitcoin core the philosophy ethos culture of what it means understanding of what that is right and
And that's kind of where I was starting with this.
I think Kennedy had an understanding of the true importance of Bitcoin
and what it meant for humanity when he spoke at Nashville.
Okay.
And Kennedy is in the administration.
Is he delivering?
Has he delivered on what you think on sort of the health aspects of things?
I think he's actually being somewhat effective in the face of massive pushback.
I mean, I think he's doing what he can.
He's making deals, doing what he can.
Maybe you could say the same thing about Trump.
I'm not going to say that, but I was playing devil's advocate.
So I don't know.
I guess we will see.
Does the support of Bitcoin for Trump mean pumping massive liquidity through the rest of his administration?
Maybe that's the way he sees.
Because that also fills his bags, right?
Sure.
Now that they've got a big footprint in mining and they hold Bitcoin and they have ETS and they have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, I don't think.
Then maybe he knows full well that he wanted to get, you know, they want to get that in place.
I don't know.
The scorecard comes down to Samurai right now.
And I'm trying, man, to be a happy person.
You're making me angry.
We should be.
I don't think they've delivered clearly on most of the promises other than Ross.
i think i take that very seriously and i think that was enough in a lot of ways and and i wish
they did nothing else in some ways instead of i guess i just don't i guess but my seizing bitcoin
i'm not a fan of my i guess doubt comes from is this is the pardon of um coming from a place of
sincerity or is it coming no i don't think is it coming from a political promise and trying to keep
the what's very disconcerting to me is he spoke about keone when the reporter and and he knows
this man's life is in his hands yeah he jokes that it sounds like he's innocent he says we're
going to hand this off to our team and then nothing and this man goes to like this this is not like
If you are truly a compassionate person, I mean, look, you can't respond to every single issue.
I get that.
But this is one that was brought to your attention.
You noted it.
You should act on things that you speak on.
Right.
He's going, well.
That to me is a major.
I mean, he speaks on all sorts of stuff.
Well, then don't do that then.
Well, that's just who he is.
Or have a team that follows up and prioritizes based on timing and justice.
That has been, well, I don't want to make this a political show about Epstein and everything else.
But, I mean, there's a lot of rhetoric and there's a lot of things that I think after he runs his mouth, there's a little bit of like, hey, maybe we need to rethink that.
From his team, from people around him, from advisors, whoever.
Pongiorno's getting back in podcasting.
All right, let's get on to the next topic here.
We should have him on the show.
okay core versus knots uh looking back at the core v30 op return change what did the intensity
of the debate reveal about bitcoin's governance fault and what does that imply for coordinating
far more consequential upgrades in the future like quantum resilience
i think this was a crossroads i think this shed a lot of light um i don't think the issue at hand
is as egregious as maybe the battle felt um and i i still think that's i mean people are looking
at a fork soft fork so i think that's still reverberating but something i keep coming i'm
starting to look at or come back to is that blocks are still four megabytes so this wasn't going to
affect that and that's a great thing so my positive take on this whole debate was that
there's still a lot of people in bitcoin that are not going to trust anybody
and they're going to try and verify what the real situation is so if anything to me
has showed that we still have a significant immune response within the core of not not core but
within the culture of bitcoin to question things and i think that's positive right that that we're
not the the the bitcoin community is not going to just let this stuff go without being questioned
and without being reviewed and dug into
and to really try and understand what's happening
to see if there's a real threat there.
So I think that's a positive way to look at this debate.
I still feel like if at some point in the future,
quantum becomes a real threat,
that there's so much value locked up in Bitcoin
that consensus can be had.
because everybody risks losing their life's work.
So I don't buy the debate that this shows us
that we're going to get destroyed by quantum.
No, I don't think it shows that.
But I think it revealed a certain level of immaturity.
And I think that's sort of natural.
I mean, Bitcoin is a very young network and protocol.
And it's an open source boardroom.
Like, there is no leader, right?
So these things are always messy.
And you're going to have opinions, and you're going to have disagreements, which is fine.
Right?
Like, the best government we have is when they can't achieve anything.
Right?
so um again i guess it's like don't trust verify and i'm hopeful because that's still alive in
bitcoin when we stop questioning these things when we stop calling everybody out when the community
just rolls over and just goes oh well yeah i guess okay that that's when i think you should
be afraid let me read uh shinobi's words here from bitcoin magazine back in september
This is sort of, he's alluding to not supporters here.
What they do matters, not what they say.
Just trying to show both sides as much as we can.
Not supporters proclaim themselves defenders of Bitcoin,
here to ensure it remains a decentralized, censorship-resistant money.
But their actions push towards the exact opposite goal.
The things they do to champion mining decentralization
actually create dynamics that worsen its centralization.
While proclaiming Bitcoin as money and defending its use as such,
Their chief goal, the software they release and run actively undermines multiple layer twos,
whose entire purpose is to scale Bitcoin's use as money.
They are literally fully engaged in a campaign with the end goal of preventing certain kinds
of Bitcoin transaction from being made while proclaiming themselves defenders of Bitcoin.
At the end of the day, this is an open network and people can run whatever software they want
to interact with that open network.
That is a critical and important aspect of Bitcoin.
This is not about software.
this is about people this this is about the stated goals the stated values of bitcoin in this space
being the complete opposite of the actions they engage in i hope that bitcoiners are smart enough
to eventually see the orwellian news speak that has been dominating the entire dispute around
bitcoin core and not over knots over the last few years the party told you to reject the evidence of
your eyes and ears it was their final most essential command i'm not sure what the main
point there was that yeah of contention but johanna shed light on i guess what the way i'm
looking at this and then i i'm not taking one side or the other because when i've heard both sides
debate they're they're i i'm seeing straw man arguments on both sides and i'm seeing people
talk past each other and i'm i'm seeing people use language that kind of you know um frames things
in a way just for debate and just for argument and i i see rights and wrongs on both sides
so i think the best that we can uh expect out of all this is that there's multiple clients
multiple ways for you to interact with bitcoin the more uh options there are the less censorship
there will be on the network and the less censorable bitcoin will be and i think that's
that's the positive outlook from this.
I don't think they're ever going to agree, right?
These teams are not going to have a kumbaya moment
and go, oh, yeah, there's a happy medium.
That's not, there's a lot of passion on both sides.
I think that passion is probably good.
The passion in the debate is probably good for Bitcoin.
We don't necessarily all need to be on the same page.
that uh and and you know and until uh but i don trust any of them anymore which i think is a good thing don trust verify uh and the system will continue to evolve and we figure out i think different
and better ways to come to consensus yeah yeah so uh all right let's move on to the next uh let's
move on to the landing round before we do uh this is kind of brought to you by federal i can subscribe
The big dream of everybody in the Bitcoin industry, everybody in crypto has always been fix the money, fix the world.
The profound idea is rebuild the entire world's monetary order on digital technology.
So you start with this idea of digital assets, which offer the promise of, you know, speed of light between 8 billion computers and 8 billion computers a million times an hour in self-care.
custody on an Android phone, 24, 7, 365, everywhere, right?
That's the digital asset vision.
And that applies to digital tokens, digital securities, digital commodities,
you know, digital currencies, right?
That's what holds the entire digital industry together.
And then the next piece of that is building a digital capital structure on top
of a digital commodity.
That's Bitcoin is store of value.
And once you get digital capital, you start thinking the third idea is digital credit.
What if I strip 90% of the risk and 90% of the vol off the digital capital by over collateralizing
at 10 to 1? What if you issue $1 of digital credit for every $10 of digital capital every year,
right? That is the perfect product. I submit to you, I used to think the iPhone was the perfect
product but the iphone you got to actually be able to hold it and look at it and you got to be awake
or maybe be able to hear or be able to see but you know a bank account that pays you eight percent
or seven percent you could be deaf dumb blind and a coma unborn child you still want
i don't hear you what do you think of those two clips i think we're or
we have been able to watch sailors transition in real time going from bitcoin centric to
micro strategy centric and uh from bitcoin is hope to let's uh build a digital economy with
digital credit i mean it's it's like he's i mean he's at the end of the day right he's
he's got the Bitcoin and now he wants to build a business around it and he's
going to build products and services and you can't,
can't blame him for that. I mean, he's going to,
he's going to do what it needs,
what he needs to do to make micro strategy the future of finance.
So do you think he's refining Bitcoin for the traditional markets in the way
Rockefeller or, you know, refined oil to, you know,
You had propane, and then you had oil, and then you were finding even further enough gas.
No, I think he told you exactly what he's thinking.
He wants to build the killer app.
He wants to build products and services that is going to make his business incredibly profitable and large
and make him one of the richest people in the world.
And I think he believes this.
He's passionate about it.
I don't maybe fall as much down the conspiracy rabbit hole as other people do about his having overall bad intentions from the beginning.
But it's just he's going to build out what he thinks is going to make his business very successful.
Let's say his intentions are awesome.
I mean, he's been great for Bitcoin.
Let's say, do you think he's recreating money in the way that there was private money in the 1800s?
and this money, this is better money.
He says he is.
At the same time,
or is he just offering better credit and yield?
The other thing I think I felt
when I heard him say that
was he's disclosing.
He's probably had these conversations
with JP Morgan and other big banks.
They definitely are.
And he's telling the world,
this is what can be done.
so by telling that story publicly and openly like he's sort of forcing
all the big banks and wall street to move in that direction because he's saying he's going to do it
with or without them so it's it's kind of like by selling the world on the idea and open sourcing it
he's forcing the uh embedded players in the largest financial system in the world
to have to move to play chess.
He's forcing the game, so to speak, right?
And...
Well, they play chess back.
So, I mean, that's, you know,
is that a good thing or a bad thing for...
What about volatility?
And also, I think people have to parse out,
like, what is good for the government
and big business may not necessarily be good for you.
Right?
And I think this is where Bitcoiners...
stumble or have issue with Saylor, right? Because...
I think we should play a clip right now.
All right, go ahead.
Can we play the Jeff Booth clip?
I just recorded this with Jeff Booth.
And I think this is the question or the issue of the year.
This is not financial advice.
It's not about whether Michael...
Yeah, can we just play the clip?
I'll give you a framework that two different starting points
would give you drastically different outcomes.
If you saw...
And Michael Saylor is a friend, right?
And I think he's been really good for Bitcoin.
And I categorically disagree with him on this issue that I'm going to say and how he views the world and how I view the world through this lens.
If you thought Bitcoin was an asset and your view it was the best asset of all time and it couldn't be taken, then you'd have to ask, what is an asset?
An asset has always underlined money because we couldn't trust money.
We could never store our time in money because money was always broken.
So we always had to find assets to store our value because money was broken.
And if you held more assets, you did better than everybody else because money was more broken and they didn't have the asset.
And if you saw Bitcoin as an asset, then it would make perfect sense to try to control all the Bitcoin, get it all,
and then leverage on top of that and all of the broken money and then create instruments from that.
And all you would have done with the entire world structure is create new kings, right?
Same zero-sum game that we've always lived in with different rulers.
But from that system, if it looked like that, Bitcoin would get centralized and it would fail
because it would get centralized.
If you saw now, so one framework, Bitcoin is an asset within a control system.
A different framework, a different starting point, is it's a protocol coming in layers,
adding more functionality like the internet bounded by energy. So it's an open, decentralized,
secure protocol bounded by energy. That's the first layer. The asset that they think is an asset
is a protocol and different layers are building to provide more functionality like privacy,
like communications in Noster and in transfer of value in Lightning and ARK and Spark and everything else.
And that protocol layer is emerging where the protocol is repricing everything.
And now you can store your money in money.
So those two scenarios produce radically different opportunities.
One, if you're thinking of it as a protocol, you're building value in the layers of the protocol and you're building society in a world that's never existed where prices constantly fall and we contribute in the first global free market to each other through that vehicle.
If you're pricing in the asset only, then you're contributing to the centralization of Bitcoin.
These things cannot coexist long term.
It's impossible for them to coexist long term.
Why?
Because the natural state of the free market is deflation.
Because the free market, the value that we create for each other has to come to us.
And the other system has to absorb that value into a control system.
They're incompatible, completely incompatible at times.
So now the question is, is it a protocol emerging in layers or is it an asset?
And for a time, it could look like both.
But over time, we will see it's a protocol.
And that means a lot of people that are taking risks on somebody else's Bitcoin
could also get liquidated in time.
You think Bitcoin could fix Jeff's mic?
I heard him.
I mean, he's brilliant.
I love Jeff.
Well said.
And when he was talking there,
what reminded me when I was listening to Sailor
describe his digital dollar
and the high interest on that dollar
all I could be thinking about was all the people that would get that and not own Bitcoin.
All the people that would be happy with that and opt into that system as opposed to owning real Bitcoin.
And in the same, you know, he's literally telling you, I mean, Sailor has said this so many times,
if you want to get rich, you want to build wealth, own Bitcoin.
You want to have an income, own this credit.
and I understand it meets different needs for different people at certain points in their
life, but everybody needs to have real Bitcoin. If you don't need it for yourself, then you need
it for your kids. You need it for the future younglmens, right? And I think this is what
really pains some of us Bitcoiners when we see the financialization of Bitcoin and we see as much
as we love Sailor, love what he's done for Bitcoin and the way he talks about Bitcoin has been so
brilliant. I mean, like the what is money 16 series with Sailor that Breedlove did just
changed me forever, right? Like so good. But then to see this, you're realizing that
he's building products and services that are going to pull people away from owning the truth
to owning the thing that will last forever, that'll be here, the bedrock under New York,
like he talks about. The thing that's so important that everybody should have at least some.
Don't get caught up in the financialization, Wall Street 2.0 that he's building
until you have your Bitcoin, right?
Get that.
Get that in place.
Get it in self-custody
because that's the most important thing you can do.
Yeah, I agree.
Thanks, man.
All right, let's move on to the next one here.
The Genius Act and stablecoins taking center stage.
Is there anything else we could say about stablecoins?
Do you think that this is a bridge to Bitcoin?
and not a forever walled garden that they're sort of erecting.
Sure. I mean, I can see it as a bridge, especially for parts of the world where they don't have a functioning financial system,
where their currency is inflating at 45%, 50% a year, a month, or whatever.
These people need a stable coin.
They need to have a checking account in their wallet before they can have savings, before they can invest in Bitcoin.
So in that regard, I can see it as a stepping stone into Bitcoin.
But at the same time, just like what I described with Sailor, don't miss the forest through the trees, right?
Like there is one real asset.
There's one real significant change in the world, and it is Bitcoin.
Everything else is a derivative of that.
uh and and if if you get if you start chasing all those shiny objects you're going to miss
the most important thing the one true thing the one asset without an issuer the most pristine
collateral on the planet on and on and on you're going to miss that thing that will build wealth
for your family in perpetuity because you're buying securities you're buying non-fungible
tokens you're buying jp you know you're buying these jpegs you're buying real world assets
whatever they may be because it's on a blockchain and it's so cool and new right
it's not going to change your life right the cat video that became netflix
didn't really change your life and maybe gave you some entertainment and a cheaper
thing to interact with but it didn change your life yeah all right i agree get the real thing take self um that at Bitcoin buy federal ATMs If you enjoying the show please hit like and subscribe What do you think
about Bukele here and the IMF? Let me ask you that question. You were on this early saying that
you didn't think that these were real purchases, right? And it's looking more and more like it's
not so where how do you feel about this with i mean bukele is another one of those that like
really woke the world up to bitcoin and did some amazing things and got everybody very excited i
think he's still doing a lot of amazing things especially for his country and his people
i mean as as a leader of his country seems like he's achieved a lot for el salvador um so but you
know and like i we were all so excited that he was pushing back on the imf so like it's kind of hard
to have like a world view where you're like all politicians are bad and then you say well there
could be no good ones i mean how you know but you well i think that there's a system here that
doesn't allow you to gain power without being corrupted or uh or you know so you don't get
into the club until you've been captured and so then if you then then so when you kind of say oh
you carve anyone out of that you're saying it's like an irrational thought in a way to say you
know i i believe in this construct that there can't be a good politician and i'm not saying
that's that's so that's kind of how i feel uh i mean at a certain level i'm not talking about
about your local politics where i think your vote actually might actually be counted and mattered
and so i think it's just so what a lot of what you see is about someone you might i like that
but then there are these like uh these red flags like i remember my friends were really into hardcore
like like gangster rap like just you know and then like they really like like biggie and tupac
And it's like, how can you like, in a lot of ways,
when you do guilty by association, it's like, well, Biggie's so tough.
Why is he hanging out with Diddy?
And even back then, I think certain things could like rub you wrong.
That'd be hard to like, just even you could say like,
like glitches in the matrix,
like Diddy coming out dancing two weeks after Biggie dies.
Like that's not what friends do.
You know, and some people, you point that out, people say, well,
maybe he's MTV music awards or, you know, so.
I think things with Bukele aren't always what they seem, probably.
And you hear these great stories.
Can you run a country and be perfect?
Can you get to any level of power and do everything right?
How can you be a Bitcoin ethos company and then cut the deals you do with the IMF or work with the Trump regime around prisoners?
i think well this is like this is the sailor thing too right like there's the there's bitcoin
and then there's running your business and running your country so i think that those are done what's
right for el salvador necessarily always aligned right i think if at your best case scenarios i
think i think it's quite but i think okay has been great for el salvador in the sense that
bitcoin is a great marketing plan look at steak and shake
right you could be a struggling fast food restaurant you latch on to what you see is
trending on social media you try it out more people come it generates good buzz it's just
it's aligned incentives now they're a bitcoin company but i don't think that they intended to
become one and and they so it's a great thing what's happened but so so look at like something
like el salvador i think by getting on a by going into a bitcoin standard whatever that means
that brings new levels of tourism investment real estate development maybe uh at an order
uh order of magnitude greater than neighboring countries that have better real estate raw real
estate or better raw beaches or better these things so you know could bring a lot of attention
and i mean development doesn't yeah it has changed i mean i've seen on the trips i've
made to el sable i've seen dramatic change right i mean they they have done amazing things for that
country and bitcoin was a part of that right wrong uh you know wins losses that becali has had along
the way um again i come back to i i don't know if you can be in a position of that much power with
that much responsibility if you look at something if you look at something like covet if you look
at something like coven and sort of the uniform universal global response and i don't think that
was just organic i don't think it was emergent right and you look it's like something like that
you say wow that just appears just i can't see how that's not coordinated and so then it's like oh
here's money i i don't think they coordinate on this issue so i see something like bukele and
malay and my my cynical mind says those must be outposts for the cia the nsa
they're allowed to happen.
They're test cases.
So you can have test cases
that are both good and bad for humanity
that maybe not great people coordinate
and try to see what happens.
And I don't think that there's been
real Bitcoin ethos in El Salvador around,
you know, they stopped with the legal tender.
They rolled that back.
I mean, they stopped buying.
I understand what you're saying.
a lot a lot of even just rolling it out as legal tender is forced that's coercion that's not a very
emergent i understand i do understand what you're saying but at the same time it's custodial by
making it a bitcoin friendly country many people have moved there had influence at the grassroot
level uh bitcoin beach is a great example right and some people and they've they've taught
a whole new generation about a new future that could be built with bitcoin even though mccale
may have had may have had to make compromises with the imf and and maybe he couldn't fully
implement the bitcoin dream that he proposed early on you can't have still gonna have a gun
still having good you can't have a gun there you can't uh use marijuana there
mm-hmm uh so just in terms of freedom and what is freedom and what should be free to be debated
it's on the spectrum the the the commercial about the prisoners scared the living out of me
like i i mean i get there's two sides to every story and you try to balance them both and i try
to balance both in my mind yeah and can hold two contradictory thoughts like yeah i'm just i guess
i'm not of the i i i think when i look at that and i just don't know if we're being co-opted in this
story over the longer term because you can have hope you can see progress and then things can be
turned off with a light switch yes and the way i think we don't know you know i'm having a
been conversation with Aaron Day come out early next year about, you know, the Trump administration
has probably pulled forward 10 times what a Harris Biden administration could have done in terms of
crypto surveillance. Yeah. Right. So things aren't always what they seem and over a longer arc could
be very regretful. Yes. But at the same time, and this is the way the world works, right? This way
the universe works as if that could all be true and probably most of it is but simultaneously
you're infecting yeah the mind virus of bitcoin is infecting people around the globe
and especially younger kids with a vision of the future that's completely different that they could
not have imagined and and so yeah you might be losing on one battlefront and winning on another
simultaneously, but everything is progressing forward. And if, you know, Jeff Booth is right,
and we have an unstoppable protocol, then we need that mind virus to spread.
And we need to incite builders to build freedom tech, because they believe in that vision.
So even though your leader may be trying to oppress that vision, if the message is there,
and the belief is there that that's a potential,
humanity will move forward.
And that's why I think...
Do you see El Salvador as a place you would move
if you had to flee America?
No, no, no.
I don't, I mean, that's just my personal thing, though.
Does that not say a lot about the leader?
That has nothing to do with Bitcoin.
But if, well, I think it does.
For me, it doesn't.
I think it does.
for me it doesn't i i think it does no i wouldn't i wouldn't i you know i'm i'm not gonna uh um i i
think if if if it was a more bitcoin-esque country you would say you would feel more like wow yeah i
definitely would go there that that seems like i couldn't be here wow that seems like the place to
be i i can't think of a reason let's go but i can think of a lot of reasons where i'm like well maybe
things aren't the way they seem or it won't always be the way they seem i don't know that
doesn't mean people aren't fighting for things i i look at it totally differently that this is just
more of a personal thing like i don't uh like the environment i live in is is much more important to
me than uh a lot of things and um i so i think i think it's not my the second amendment i think
carries a lot of weight in this just like i like i like there's so many people that love dubai or
love Singapore and, and, and fall in love with the safety and the security that comes from
that kind of surveillance and oppressive regime. I guess that's not the right word. Not, you know,
but I mean, like, you know, Dubai, the UAE is not like, I mean, it feels totally free because it's
so safe. Like you could leave your laptop and right. And you could, you could leave your car
unlocked and, and no one's going to steal anything for it, but just because it's surveilled
and because the repercussions of doing something free and safe is a perspective yes they talked
about with a fraud right right so very like you feel i wouldn't feel free in dubai because like
that doesn't like i get what you're saying like yeah i feel very safe and here right so it's like
i know i feel safe as a community wow this looks like everyone looks safe but like i don't know if
i'm safe it was like it nabbed me freedom comes freedom comes with radical uh acceptance of risk
even true freedom comes with acceptance of risk even in the united states when i go through
security any border yeah and they take your id yeah there's a i feel less safe in that moment
like they just stripped me of my documentation yeah they have more power and more control in
this moment right and that's going through or coming you know either way on the border
when you go into a different country you give up as a citizen of another country you're you're
labeled you have less rights and i think certain countries portray themselves as less welcoming or
sure you know i don't know yeah it's a good question like would you feel more safe in el
salvador or dubai it's hard to say and what what is something if i had to choose one or the other
and then throw in switzerland throwing like switzerland definitely go to el salvador or dubai
okay now throw in switzerland
hmm probably go to switzerland right and i'm sure there's you know but i mean but i don't
that'd be a hard one for me because i like yeah i think i think there's also different threat
factors like maybe even like the dominican you know maybe there's more uh crime on the street
but maybe you could disappear more easily yeah but that's a whole like that i don't know man
Like, you just, like...
I mean, McAfee, McAfee.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Look how that worked out really well.
I'm revisiting Snowden, right?
You mentioned before the show.
So there's a video of McAfee who's like,
Snowden is a CIA PSYAP, guys.
He worked, he was a contractor for the CIA or the NSA.
He leaves America, he goes to Hong Kong,
and then he's trying to get to Ecuador
for really no good reason.
Right.
I don't think that really worked out for Sanj.
But to get to Ecuador, he's like, I travel a lot and I would not go through Russia.
It's just not a good route.
And then he gets to Russia and he can't leave.
And I don't know what.
Now, apparently, I was grokking it.
Like, he's a free man in Russia.
I don't buy any of this.
And the girl that he was with at the time he did all this, she is now in Russia.
And she comes and goes.
I don't buy any of it.
Yeah.
I don't buy a lot of these.
Yeah, they don't pass the sniff test.
No, of course not.
Snowden just doesn't get to zoom into conferences and say his piece.
No, he does.
doesn't like that's he gets to say whatever he wants to say then it's either a russian op or a
u.s op or both or both right yeah so yeah i i don't i don't know what what would where would
you go if you had to leave america would you would you go to russia for safety well i mean first of
all like the practical implications of leaving america let's say as a like the america was like
as a bit like it's not safe for bitcoin yeah and you're trying to flee as a bitcoin like do you one
do you go where they're like come tell us you're a bitcoiner document it as an entrance fee
or do you go somewhere where it's like hey why don't you just go somewhere where this
point has nothing to do with being a big point maybe uh maybe africa all right we'll get to
africa in a second all right let's let's move here's let's go let's go with africa
Africa's Bitcoin moment.
I don't get any of this.
Really?
Okay, no, I don't.
It's totally ground up, grassroots.
Yeah, I don't know how meaningful this is.
That's what I mean by this.
I'm being honest.
It's meaningful for them.
Does it need to be meaningful for you?
It doesn't need to be meaningful for you.
No, well, I mean this in the way of, hey, what's going on in El Salvador?
Is it meaningful for me?
But I'm interested, and I think it is meaningful.
Oh, I think what's happening in Africa is so good.
So why?
What is so?
interesting. Okay, so you have basically the people adopting Bitcoin and using it as money
regardless and prior to the state, the different parts of Africa approving
the usage. They just literally grassroots said, hey, we're already operating our own
cash economy with our own banking system. And we can now do this digitally with our phones
over Bitcoin. They're adopting Lightning. They're adopting Sats. It's becoming a currency for the
people. And the people are jumping into the future without permission from the state or the banks.
It's literally just the opposite of what you see happening in the West.
I'm going to go back to my conversation with Aaron Day, which hasn't come out yet.
But he made a point to me, you know, growing up, you'd hear things like you should finish eating whatever's on your plate.
There are kids in China starving.
And you think about China.
Now, the message there, I think, is a greater message of it's destitute.
They're all peasants.
fast forward to 2025 50 of the top 60 technology companies in the world are in china
and maybe what we were hearing in the 80s and 90s wasn't the full story or the truth it was just what
abc cbs and sure so either there's been tremendous progress right from there's like no progress
There's no technology there.
They're all poor and starving to huge cities now and big AI companies and technology companies.
And or there was progress all along.
Well, if you think back to China, right, when we were laying fiber and we were worried about fiber optics and we were getting digital.
I mean, we're getting DSL lines.
They brought to our neighborhood.
They jumped straight to mobile.
But my point is, right, so they did a lot of jumping and development.
And Africa's doing that.
Are we going to see?
Africa's doing that on the Bitcoin system.
Is this going to result in material progress of Africa,
even not all of Africa maybe, but like pockets of government?
Think about it.
Like if you're using Bitcoin as money, think about what Jeff Booth said.
now your money is also your savings vehicle sure and growing what scales is gonna impact
african societies it's gonna that's huge um that's huge i'm trying to learn right like so
if you're if you're if you were just doing that on uh uh on the african what is the the frank or
what the french currency that they used in africa what it's called if you were just doing that and
it's inflating away on a daily basis you're never going to give you for example so in college
in grad school we were talking about microfinance a lot and what it was going to do for the on bank
and people couldn't act and i don't think it delivered the results where anywhere okay uh that
that i can that that are still being pointed to at least in sort of notable news sources so that
microfinance still had to be backed by traditional traditional i get that right right and this is
just exactly what's so cool that's happening in africa they're not relying on traditional finance
for permission or rails are we going to wake up in eight to ten years they've just they've just
see a drastic change in african society around buildings and infrastructure they have a
incredibly young population.
I forget, some huge
percent of their population is like 19
or younger. So they have
a giant uprising
and growth in their population.
They have a new
digital economy
that's built on banking
themselves through their mobile walls with
sats. They're going to
be building
infrastructure for themselves.
It's literally... Does this connect
I think the coolest thing happening on the planet.
Right.
Is this going to lead to an influx or an exponential growth in African entrepreneurship intertwined with the rest of the world?
More importing, exporting, product, services.
I'm not even thinking about it in that level.
I'm thinking it purely from the perspective of if you take somebody, anybody with a passion and you endow them with some Bitcoin when they're young.
and now they're living on a money that's growing while the rest of the the infrastructure around
them is inflating away they're going to create wealth and then they're going to have the ability
to innovate and bring good things to people around them when you when you have abundance
sure some people are going to be greedy and and just want to rape and pillage but others are going
to want to share that abundance with the people around them, in their community, in their family.
So endowing as many people as possible with hard money that grows is going to lead to good things.
This is why we had the golden age. This is why we got beautiful art and beautiful structures when
we had hard money, right? Compared to the garbage we consume and build today. So yeah, I think we
We have an enormous amount of adoption on a Bitcoin standard operating on sats in Africa,
and that will lead to massive progress within the country.
So when the bright orange future...
You fix the currency, you fix the world.
I don't think everyone's going to get the bright orange future at the same time.
It would be interesting to see which continents get there first.
Maybe Africa would get there first.
It'd be awesome.
It is a bit of a race.
I want to be on the continent that gets there first.
Yeah, dude.
I want to start picking up your African accent.
My parents went to Africa.
I got to go.
It's one of the places.
I'm going to go right now.
Let's do it.
Let's not even do the rest of the show.
No.
If you're enjoying the show, hit like and subscribe.
This is a serious topic, I guess.
The Samurai Wallet Senses.
Yeah.
We ended the year on the biggest story of the year.
Well, we got a few more stories, I guess.
But this is...
Last week, you know, we did the telethon or the streamathon.
They're up to about 11,000 signatures on the petition.
I think Keone's on his fourth or fifth night in jail.
I don't think Bill has reported yet.
I think he goes to a Portugal prison.
I think he's an American citizen.
I'm not sure.
Yeah, how worried should we be about this going into 2026?
Do you think this story is going to get lost?
I hope not.
um I you know to me everybody wants to talk about money transmission and what they pled to but the
real right the real lesson here is privacy the real the real thing that the Southern District
New York went after was privacy and um that they don't want to have transactions that are private
The Genesis Act, the Clarity Act, there's a bunch of language in there about how to monitor the blockchains more, how to oversee all these transactions, right?
So this is all about eliminating privacy.
So should we be worried about this?
I don't know if we should worry, but I do think that like what Jeff was saying, Jeff is so smart.
He hit so many good things in that one little clip, you know, building the tools for the future.
So that there's different layers on top of the Bitcoin protocol that are also decentralized, that are also uncensorable, that are so the Bitcoin can become freedom tech.
Like in order for Bitcoin to be the protocol that it is today, to be as resilient as it is today, it had to live on a system that is pseudonymous.
It had to be there.
So privacy tech, freedom tech needs to be built on these other layers.
And so I think it's a battle that will continue.
I don't think this fight is, maybe fight's not the right word.
I don't think the evolution of Bitcoin is over.
These kind of struggles will continue between people that want to preserve their sovereignty.
And that doesn't, you know, and I think people need to realize, right?
Like I can hear people yelling at me right now, but just because you want privacy and
you want sovereignty doesn't mean you're doing illegal things.
And that's not a defense of criminal activity, right? I think we should fight crime. I think crime fighters should be pursuing it as hard as they can.
In fact, I mean, we're all online every day seeing horrible crimes get committed that go uninvestigated or investigated poorly.
And, you know, we witness that all the time.
But so all for fighting crime, all for making the world a safe and secure place.
And we need to build tools that allow us to do that in a private fashion so that good people can preserve their humanity.
yeah trump said i will defend your right to self-custody during his keynote speech at the
bitcoin conference in nashville in 2024 i do think he was i don't think he's a bitcoin but he was
definitely pandering to the crowd i think he knew some tropes but you can have fire gensley you can have self and not have privacy well yes you can but that not really anything of value Right And so he promised to defend the right to self
Trump made a promise, one that he still has the opportunity to keep.
So without financial privacy, self-custody is dramatically weakened, as seen by the growing wave of physical attacks on Bitcoiners in recent years.
the liberty previously enjoyed by software developers to build self-custodial bitcoin
tools like samurai wallet is now on trial so the chilling effect the u.s government has for the most
part learned not to attack an already hardened legal precedent like freedom of expression
however by going after the developers and maintainers of samurai wallet directly
the doj had a net negative effect on financial privacy in the united states and then spread a
chilling effect among bitcoin software developers immediately following the rest of rodriguez and
hill phoenix wallet arguably arguably the best self-custodial lightning while in the industry
exited the u.s app stores a decision to made to protect their business from a u.s government that
appeared hostile to bitcoin self-custody software as of april 2025 though phoenix is once more
available in the u.s wasabi wallet another financial privacy software company stopped
offering its non-custodial mixing services to the public and while it's like blink from el
salvador geo-fenced american users from their app entirely so if trump is really going to defend
the right to self-custody and stop the eventual deployment of a central bank digital currency
which i don't believe he's going to do that in the united states or stop it uh he will have to buy
to address the need for financial privacy and he's got to set these guys free yeah so again so self
custody uh and privacy are not at all correlated and i think um that
well without privacy then they're going to make you declare yourself custodial holdings they're
going to tax them differently they're going to blacklist address i mean we can see where
the slippery slope goes um so while you're trying to catch your thought there um
man i think we have to keep up the noise and the pressure uh i i believe that you know probably the
next round of media will be from keone's no i remember one of the stories like you know when
you i watched a recent um conversation i forget ray dalio was talking to he's talking to somebody
And he was talking about how central banks will never hold Bitcoin because it's not private.
Right?
The central bank wants private transactions.
For themselves, you mean?
Yeah.
The Bank of International Settlements wants private transactions.
We discovered through Doge that a lot of the government had and wanted private transactions.
some of those things were for good purposes and some of those things were for bad
and all where i think when we we talk about privacy we have to frame it under this you know
idea that we all want the same things regardless of whether you're a central bank or you're uh
you know the central bank of cedric like it's we're all we're all uh should be due uh the same
the same rights and the same capabilities.
And if you're up to no good, you should expect to be pursued.
And if you're using privacy tools and you're, you know,
sovereign and you're doing things good and you're providing value to humanity,
then you shouldn't be looked at as a criminal, right?
So this is the battle.
this is the education this is the the space i think we need to get to with privacy and i think
that's going to be a battle for a while that's going to be something that we are constantly
uh well this is the struggle and they fight you face i don't mean literally right now but this is
the wall coming at us but this is the fight i mean around privacy i think and surveillance
yeah all right let's move on to the next one here uh number go up so has this been a reality check
for bitcoiners um why was price expectations completely misaligned in 2025 it seems were
expectations too high um how did you navigate this year personally yeah so i mean this year was a
ended with a fizzle, right? Like I think we, and there's been a lot of analysis I've watched over
the last couple of weeks as to why and what's coming, et cetera, et cetera. The way I look at
this is that I believe in the long-term value of Bitcoin and that whenever price doesn't go as high
as I expect, it's more opportunity to accumulate. You never have as much Bitcoin as you want.
So Bitcoin under $90K, Bitcoin at $70K, Bitcoin at $60K, $50K, $40K is a massive opportunity.
Because at the end of the day, the acquisition of Bitcoin will far outpace new supply.
And adoption is going to outpace new supply.
It's going to outpace sellers, right?
we like well i think earlier in the year we talked about the bitcoin's ipo moment and i think at that
point in time i was kind of like ah poo-pooing the idea i love it and it's made more and more sense
to me now over the years regardless of how these whales got into or rationalized the selling of
their bitcoin whatever their mindset was um we have to realize that those coins are now moving
and dispersed into more hands and more people that are less likely to sell.
Another batch of long-term hodlers.
And if you don't have the amount of coin that you have that you want yet,
now's your chance.
Now's your chance.
This is a huge opportunity for anybody who understands
Bitcoin's long-term value proposition.
I don't think they were selling their Bitcoin.
they were trading it for things they wanted or needed that they waited for they worked for uh
that they fought for with their family and their loved ones who didn't believe them and probably
made them made promises along the lines of uh you said this thing when it hits blah blah blah
you're gonna uh you're gonna and and even i think you know i think a little differently yeah i'm not
an og just i'm not in this group right but you know if you think if you're in that group and i
think even i think in some ways things that you're you're selling or trading for are liquidity
the ability to do the things that you're trying to do and there's a way to kind of go about that
at probably a certain level that i'm not in tune with or aware of but i'm sure they're going through
those steps and it's a natural order of things but to your point it's moving to stronger hands
those were incredibly strong hands i don't think they're they're doing weak things i think they're
probably acting rationally for their situation in ways we can't imagine because we're not imagine
if they would have sold 80 000 bitcoin in 2017. right it would have it would have crushed it right
it's not that they that's also what people don't realize that they can why they wait no maybe they
wanted to sell much earlier yeah you never maybe they weren't true believers in 2017 in 2021 but
they didn't have the liquidity the options or the infrastructure or the infrastructure to do the
thing they want to do exactly and it wasn't the amount of fiat they gained it was the optional
optionality in their own lives also having the clarity around inheritance how to structure right
this wealth and like there's a lot that goes into that so and maybe the next i've come around more
to that but and that doesn't mean that the next uh long-term holders will have the same they might
have different and better options for the same things in 15 years right that weren't available
to long-term oh geez no we absolutely at this point in time we absolutely will and and just
people need to keep coming back to this like i mean this is um but i know it's hard because i've
I've been there during other past bear markets where it's scary, man.
But I've sat through presentations where people made projections, mining companies, mining pools, and every chart around Bitcoin price was up and to the right, just to lesser degrees.
Like chart A, this is our optimistic one.
Bitcoin is going to be $500,000 at the end of 2025.
Here's our, you know, medium base case, mid-range of 250.
And our bear case is 175.
And it was just like, how do you not have, for argument's sake, it flattened and not another one down into the right and do your projection?
Well, that can't happen.
What do you mean?
And the more we heard it was only going to be one way.
I mean, it's almost obvious in hindsight.
Like, you know, it never goes the way we all expect.
No, it never goes the way you expect.
We all expect that.
You got to take the opportunities you're given.
And if we stay here or lower for a period of time, it is a great opportunity.
And don't kick yourself because you didn't take advantage of this opportunity when the price is back over $100,000 at some point in the future.
Because you will.
And, you know, at every major bear market, I've always come out of it wishing I had bought more.
Yeah.
All right.
We have a special round here.
Best tweets of 2025, according to Grok.
So hit like and subscribe.
Chat in the comments.
This is Bitcoin Center brought to you by Byte Federal.
Go bank yourself.
All right.
Let's rip through these.
This one speaks for itself.
I'll read this one.
You're the official tweet reader because I don't have my glasses on.
At 26, Ross launched a website that would change Bitcoin forever.
At 29, he was sentenced to die in prison.
After 10 years behind bars, Donald Trump just pardoned him.
Here's the wild story of Ross Ulbricht, Bitcoin's most controversial pioneer.
He's got 160,000, 167,000 likes.
Oh, man, I don't have the thread.
in front of me. I just have that main tweet. I'll try to pull up the thread. But
yeah, I mean, I think this is the story of 2025 as a Bitcoiner. And I think in a weird way,
we began the year on this note. This was the day one thing. Not day one of the calendar year, but
very early on in the administration, day one in January, he was released. And now at the end of
the year we gone full circle and we have a couple of our own in prison We going to prison Which I feel is a very parallel sort of case
I think the parallels are striking.
From coders trying to enable you to use your Bitcoin the way you want to.
I mean, I mean, Ross built it.
What was Ross trying to do?
Ross was trying to help you use freedom money to buy what you wanted on the open market.
Well, he built Silk Road.
Yeah, I think that's – but he combined it with – he didn't build Silk Road with a dollar.
Right.
He could have.
Could have done the same exact thing.
But he built it with Bitcoin, which made it more powerful both ideologically demonstrated.
What I'm saying is the point of difference for me is that I would assume Ross knew he was building something quite illegal, regardless of what the currency or exchange of value was on it.
So, yes, I will agree that that note.
And it's very clear that FinCEN and Samurai did their research and were on the clear right side of the law.
They were doing nothing illegal.
They knew they were going to be under scrutiny.
And the government went after them for conspiracy, not doing anything, 100%.
But I think, you know, this gets into sort of, for Ross, it's more about like lawful versus legal.
So I think it was illegal what he did.
I think that was obvious.
But I don't think it was unlawful what he was enabling people to do.
like i don't think it's unlawful to enable people to buy marijuana for their i'm just dying
relatives of cancer and i like don't like it's kind of like in a few good men it's like
you reprimanded him for bringing a hungry man some water right right like i mean right no aren't
we supposed to help people so i don't think what ross did was i think it was it was it was maybe
illegal, but I don't think it was unlawful.
And he was trying to help Bitcoiners
use their money.
He was trying to help people use their money to get the things
that they wanted in the world.
I think he knew the risk he was taking, right?
Yes, I think.
But I think even, you know,
I think Keone
shows us
the government could just show up
your houses with a bunch of drones and a bunch of
agents and a bunch
of armored tanks
and accuse you of conspiracy
You're saying, conspiring, doing basically anything.
And now you have to mount a defense.
You have to argue.
You have to accept everything they're saying until trial,
accept everything they're saying is truth,
all their concerns and facts.
And that's no different, I think, than China.
They could just show up at your door.
This is no different than Russia.
They could just take you away, have a trial,
put you in a glass box for the whole world to see,
and make you fight with one hand tied behind your back.
Right.
So that doesn't feel, I don't know.
No, I hear you.
I hear you.
This is a part of it.
I think a Bitcoin, like you're more on the front line than a PayPal user.
You know, and Charlie Shrem, I mean,
they didn't let him send his money to a charity.
PayPal didn't.
I mean, PayPal can suck in that way.
But like you're probably much more at risk as a Bitcoiner in this country now.
Sure.
Then, you know.
So, all right, let's move on to the next one.
Actually, I want to bring up the, let's see if I can bring up that tweet real quick.
Here it is.
All right.
So it goes on to say, meet Ross.
He's an Eagle Scout from Austin, Texas.
Physics scholar on scholarship, early Bitcoin believer, libertarian idealist.
In 2011, he had an idea that would transform crypto forever, a truly free marketplace using Bitcoin and privacy tech.
Sounds like a scumbag.
He called it Silk Road.
The goal, create a free market outside government control.
The rules were simple.
No violence allowed.
No stolen property.
No harming third parties.
Bitcoin only payments.
But things quickly spiraled out of control.
The site exploded in popularity.
first major platform to use.
I mean, this sounds no different than Craigslist.
And Craigslist had rampant sex trafficking,
prostitution, money, all of it, crime.
They never shut Craigslist down.
In fact, we have Angie's List now.
Yeah, good point.
You know, the site exploded in popularity.
And I think this is why, almost to our detriment,
that Bitcoin was focused on payments in the beginning.
The site exploded in popularity.
First major platform to use Bitcoin.
Pioneered escrow and review systems.
Created trust in digital payments.
Helped prove Bitcoin's real-world use.
I mean, he was doing this, like, he was doing better work than Amazon.
But it also became known for illegal goods.
Maybe not unlawful, right?
But illegal goods.
And the feds were watching.
So in October 2013, FBI agents tracked Ulberg to a San Francisco library.
As they arrested him, one agent kept him talking while another grabbed his laptop, still logged into Silk Road's admin panel.
The site was seized, but the real shock was yet to come.
The sentence, two life terms plus 40 years.
No possibility of parole.
First time nonviolent offender.
For comparison, major drug dealers got 10 years.
Site admins got eight months.
Other defendants averaged two to five years.
Why such a harsh sentence?
Many believe it wasn't about drugs at all.
Silk Road was the first major proof that Bitcoin could work.
It showed that digital currency could challenge government control.
And the message was clear.
From Bitcoin, he reflected.
From prison, he reflected.
When Bitcoin clicked for me, I got so excited.
I thought I could make a difference.
But I was impatient.
I rushed ahead.
He spent four months in solitary, started teaching meditation to inmates.
despite everything his impact on crypto's undeniable,
proved Bitcoin's real-world utility pioneered digital reputation systems,
which is very interesting,
drove early Bitcoin adoption, influenced modern crypto marketplaces.
And the controversy continues.
Some see him as a digital freedom fighter,
others as a cautionary tale, many as both.
So, you know, on the takeaway, innovation often lives in gray areas,
and Bitcoin's path to legitimacy wasn't straight.
I don't know.
I think it took a lot of
genius and
sort of visionary
insights for such a young person
to put all this together.
And courage.
I don't think he did
anything wrong.
I think he maybe enabled other people
to do things that were wrong in the eyes of the government,
which is very similar to Keone's case.
right like we we can't really figure out what you did wrong but you allowed all this to happen
and you allowed people to use money the way they want to and we're going to assume that's bad
and and we're not necessarily going to charge the bad actors or go after the
you know and the ross thing so similarities i mean well well yeah he wasn't the only one
with access to the the username i really believe other people right who had the access why didn't
they why didn't the DEA come to him and say hey look you built a platform that's gonna allow us
to see in real time who the drug dealers are yeah and who's buying and uh you're gonna keep
your mouth shut and we're gonna use this to fight crime but that was not on the drug activists came
out and said this is great for drug users and we hate drugs they're not in the alleys getting shot
and stabbed they're not buying drugs that will kill them because of the rating system so if
anything this was improving the lives of drug users uh improving the safety of of the drug trade it
would allow them to track really to the roots of a lot of uh it helped them with banking and cash
you know this was sort of like a red lights district in amsterdam you know like yeah and if it's
It's when viewed through the eyes of what we're hearing Uncle Jack talk about as far as the formation of who Satoshi is and how Bitcoin was created.
If that's accurate, then Ross just found himself in the crosshairs of a bigger battle.
Well, yeah.
That still could be going on today, right?
a bigger battle
between
two different power structures in the world.
Why didn't Ross take
Satoshi-like
protection
to be more anonymous,
more private, maybe in a different
country?
You knowingly know you're
doing some stuff that is good.
Even if you believe in it,
which I do,
Right.
That was kind of where I was starting with this.
You know that you're going to be stepping into a hornet's nest with this one.
Right.
Which is really, that's what was really glitchy with his speech,
that he was nervous about growing the mushrooms and getting caught.
It was like, dude, you're doing way...
Riskier things.
Yeah, that's going to upset some people in Humboldt County
down at the sheriff's office.
You're going to do three to six months tops.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
How does that, how do you, that's where I really didn't understand the line of thinking in terms of his own freedom and consequences and the calculations he made.
You'll never know.
Well, maybe we'll know.
Maybe we'll understand more.
Maybe Ross will tell us someday.
You know, and I think to some extent, even if you know you're not acting on the wrong side of the law, even people in the privacy space, they, this is the, that's a, especially after Samurais now, they definitely know.
Even if you're on the right side of the law, like they can come after you.
All right, let's move on to the next one here.
The next tweet, it's got, wow, it's got 188,000 likes.
This was actually technically from 2024.
I can't stand Donald Trump.
He is braggy, he insults people for no reason, and he's just a brutal personality.
But my mind is made up.
I'm voting for him, and here's why.
I mean, I don't know if I agree with this.
He puts Americans in their well-being first.
Kamala will not.
I mean, I don't know if he's really truly American.
I don't know.
He will bring Elon into the cabinet as the efficiencies are.
This alone may be the best single reason to vote for him.
I don't think that's really panned out.
I don't want to read all these.
I don't think these have all panned out.
But it gets to sort of like the lesser of two evils, I think, here.
Do you think they're keeping illegals out of the country?
Do you think the borders actually, when we hear about deportations,
We see sort of the fights.
What was interesting, one statistic I saw
was that deportations are actually down
in aggregate numbers compared to the Biden years.
That it went from about 1800 I don know if it was a day or a month to about 1200 That 1200 is obviously making a lot of noise And I invalidate the numbers One thing I know is that we don know
We don't know.
None of us know.
And every time I've thought I've known, I've been proven wrong.
Yeah.
So are we getting to the point where do we need to know?
What are we talking about?
Exactly.
Yeah.
All right, let's move on to the next tweet.
There is no knowing.
Thank you.
That's the way I want to feel in 2026.
Do that again.
2026.
You got there.
You'll get there.
All right, this one.
Let's see what this.
me in 2011
instead of claiming five Bitcoin
for free.
You get this one? Yeah. He's playing video
games instead of getting five Bitcoin.
Okay. I think that's people
in 2025 at
88,000.
I love
these interviews that you see
on X where they go around and they talk to
college kids and they're like, hey,
would you rather have your tuition paid off or
one whole Bitcoin?
and they're like uh yeah my tuition all right let's let's move on to the next one here
this is tyler winklevi or one of the winklevi twins i just donated one million in bitcoin
15 and a half bitcoin to real donald trump and we'll be voting for him in november here's why
you think he got his money's worth maybe gemini did yeah but what about like someone like gary
cardone he i think paid 12 bitcoin to be at like an event with trump wow and i think he felt that
it was better for bitcoin trump got elected better for ross he definitely put his money where his
mouth is one day those bitcoin will be worth an astronomical fortune they already are i mean 12
bitcoin is an astronomical fortune too yeah most of us all of us i mean it's just it's uh yeah do
you think he i mean what i mean i don't like giving any money to any politicians 12 bitcoin huh
all right let's move on to the next one here i don't care what logos they're wearing all right
first time ever breaking under 20k it's got 38 000 likes i i don't know i don't think 120k is the
number that it was exciting don't get me wrong but yeah it's all local all-time high but yeah all right
there you go
all right next one's from pete rizzo so someone just moved this is from this is from uh 11 15
2024 this is not new news justin someone just moved 2000 bitcoin worth 179 billion
million million they held from six cents to 90 grand legend what do you think that is pretty
legendary i wish i knew what bitcoin was at six cents that would have been amazing
yeah so you know it's possible they had more than 2 000 bitcoin sure but you you think like why not
just uh how about a thousand and move doesn't mean they sold but let's say they sold i mean
but that's that's that's some balls dude to move that many bitcoin in one transaction yeah
i wonder if there was a test one all right let's move on that was that was the test transaction
that was your test transaction all right uh let's go to the next one here so now we have
uh bitcoin logo appears in a video game from 1991 this is a trip
uh and it's got the rocket it's so weird good and i think one of the developers was named
what was it satoshi nakamoto something like that or is like something backwards or
nakamoto satoshi or something yeah and i think one of the developers might even been like a
josh man i don't know but this is a weird thing do you i mean crazy
uh is that the i guess that's the bitcoin symbol it also kind of is it a coincidence
they were like buckazoids they were called buckazoids
so it's a b and a buck i mean it could be just lucky coincidence but i think satoshi
could be somebody you know somebody could have been um you know seeing the future somebody could
have left their body and viewed uh that logo at some point in the future it's just crazy dude what's
What's this?
Is it the all-seeing eye?
What is that?
Is that what that is?
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Okay.
I need my glasses.
The all-seeing eye.
Yeah, it's the buccazoid and the Illuminati.
Yeah, there's an eye, dude.
Come on.
All right.
There's the record scratch.
Let's move on.
It also looks like an Andrew Drodd.
Drone on there.
An Andrew Drodd.
All right.
Well, here's Bukele tweeting on September 7th,
buying 21 Bitcoin for Bitcoin day.
So that's August.
So where are those coins coming?
Are they moving from like the central bank
to their equivalent of their treasury?
Like how are they spoofing these buys?
Like if they're spoofing them.
As far as I can tell,
it's moving from different government wallets
to the actual quote unquote reserve wallet.
And it's just moving and transferring coins around,
not new purchases.
So make of that what you will.
What are you making up?
That's sad.
Why tweet about it or brag about it if you're not actually buying Bitcoin?
Because you want people to think you're buying it.
Okay.
I don't know.
Why else would you do it?
All right.
You move there.
All right.
Next one.
Bitcoin flash is fresh.
I hope to visit, though.
I don't know, man.
You go in.
I hope you get out.
No.
Shit.
El Salvador is great.
They got to bring me down there and prove it.
It's great.
Bring me in and let me go.
All right.
Bitcoin flashed its fresh golden cross.
This was on December 17th.
104,000 views.
What does this mean?
Bitcoin has just experienced its fifth golden cross, a technical signal, historically followed by significant price rallies.
Yeah.
This means that this will be the first time it breaks.
because every time something becomes well followed it doesn't work again so quit posting
this shit so that it keeps working previous golden crosses were followed by strong
price advances of 87 40 percent 78 33 33 like the freemason number historically these crossover
signals appeared early in cycles during times of hesitation and doubt before widespread optimism
in return all right well we'll see this means there's like groundhogs day this is like six
more weeks of a down market all right let's go on to the next one uh what do we got here
you tell me dude i'm opening it up okay this is from there's another recent one 12 22.
the gold chart yeah breaking gold just hit a new all-time high and history shows that bitcoin
always follows it with a lag i could quit talking about this shit another groundhog's day here
uh but this happened in 2016 2017 gold starts trending up first did i have a way still slow
to start do you have any charts i have on trading view with shit that people have said always work
that just don't work anymore.
Dude, this is depressing now.
We got six more weeks of Bitcoin sideways.
All right.
Well, is that the way to end the year?
I don't know.
Okay, this is the way you need to end the year.
You better buy more Bitcoin.
You need it.
We all need it.
This is an opportunity
to accumulate the coins
and get to the targets that you want faster.
Well, I think my biggest tweet of 2025 was probably,
I think it got 10,000 likes,
was Bitcoin will never go to zero
because I just put in an order for all 21 million Bitcoin at $1.
Oh, yes, that's right.
I don't know if it shows your sentiments really good or really bad,
but I guess people are really excited
it's not going to zero
you know another one was
if you own a $20,000 Toyota Camry
and have two Bitcoin worth $230,000
in cold storage people think you're broke
but if you finance a $230,000
G-Wagon and have
$20,000 in the bank people think you're rich
and I think
that says a lot about where we are
I think it's true
alright well this has been Bitcoin Center
brought to you by Byte Federal Go Bank Yourself
we got the point of sale
We got the crypto wallet and the Bitcoin ATMs.
Buy the Bitcoin.
Put it in self-custody.
Stamp your seed phrase.
Maybe use micro seed.
Use the code matrix.
Take care of your health.
Be a self-custody maximalist.
Use crowd health.
How does it feel to get BTC coal this Christmas?
What does this mean?
Coal, dude.
You just stick it into your diamond hands and it becomes Bitcoin.
It's going to be a great Christmas in retrospect.
It's good, dude.
It's all of 2025.
I like it.
down if i asked you at the beginning of the year would you be excited and happy if i told you know
if you had future now that now is going to be a sideways year and you could stack all year and
you had that in hand in january but you had you had to accept that no blow off top in 2025 would
no i've always wanted to stack below 100. so i've always i've always felt like anything over 100
i was overpaying do you think uh in 2025 i'm happy with this did we have a lot of time under 100.
no not enough not a lot of time under 100. and we went there fast like kind of going up right
but then we stayed above we went down we went about like it wasn't all under 100. yeah so maybe
maybe a lot of people spent their bullets so in you know july at 115. reload buddy all right reload
All right.
Any more questions or comments, please hit like and subscribe.
We do this every week, Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, except for next week, I think, the holidays.
But every Tuesday, tune in Bitcoin Center brought to you by Byte Federal.
Any parting words?
Buy more Bitcoin.
There you go.
Buy more Bitcoin.
Put it in self-custody.
I don't know what else there is to do.
Use it.
Spend and replace.
Run a node.
Yeah, but I'm looking out for you
Run privacy software
We need more anonymous developers
That's the way I think we need
Less hired and funded developers
More anonymous developers
I think you should start vibe coding
After the show
That would fail miserably
Alright
Alright Francis, is that it?
You want to run the outro?
.