It's all. Going to zero against Bitcoin.
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Interesting news coming out. There is a Bloomberg article.
The headline was Bitcoin is trumping dollars for many
inflation wary Argentines. Now it's really interesting
because what tends to happen in the developing world.
I've seen this over and over again is that you have a large
demand for tether like stable coins, right?
This is really the first time that I've seen a developing
country that is going to benefit tremendously from switching to a
sound money standard actually opted into Bitcoin rather than
stable coins. Very, very interesting.
How much does that have to do with the recent presidential
election, the first time a Libertarian candidate was
elected in world history? I don't know, maybe the 2GO hand
in hand, but what I can tell you is that there's kind of like
this, this global awakening happening and it's kind of
refreshing like it it feels good.
Like all these years in clown world, like we were just talking
about the, you know, the the clown worldness of the pandemic
a couple minutes before we went on air.
It's really kind of refreshing to see this in a way, you know,
in a way you could say you can make a really good argument that
the fight is halfway one. And the reason I say that is the
famous quote, you don't change Bitcoin, Bitcoin changes you.
So if this article really is true and if this is really the
case and a large percentage of the Argentine population is
holding on to Bitcoin, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna do
what bitcoiners do, right? Which is, you know, small
government. Leave me the F alone.
You know, hopefully a lot of them are taking self custody.
If not, you know we got to push that.
So it's it's really exciting stuff man.
I I'm, I'm really hopeful about this future but we got to fight
and not fight in the traditional sense, in the kinetic sense but
we got to really get the message out there, Bitcoin or slavery.
Anyways in other news also we had the Coinbase CEO, Brian
Armstrong, he was being interviewed on Bloomberg TV and
you know he's just pretty crazy. Coinbase basically accounts for
90% of the custody of the Bitcoin for the ETFs.
That's a large amount. And that's just, I just, I hear,
you know, my brain just can't help to think, you know, 6102.
And we have a very special guest to talk about that today who has
a 6102 order in his background. Of course, I'm talking about the
founder and CEO of Bigel, Adam O'Brien.
What's up man? How you doing?
Yo. 61O2 vibes man. I was literally in Vancouver
talking to a group of incredible bitcoiners and this exact topic
came up. It was like Coinbase has too
many bitcoins and that has theft written all over it.
Yeah, I I think it's just a matter of time.
Like, I I can't believe not enough people are, you know,
kind of waking up to that reality.
You know, they're just, yeah. Even the micro strategies, like,
you know, I think what he's doing is awesome.
But like, those aren't sitting in a cold card, man.
Those aren't sitting in a passport like in, you know, in a
fireproof safe with backups on a seed plate.
Like that's just sitting in Brian Custody's treasure chest.
Hopefully not like actually sitting in the crypto casino of
Binance. Like, we don't know.
They don't publish proofs of reserves like we got no clue.
How funny would it be if you know Brian just had a like a
hardware wallet with the labels of like Coinbase Micro strategy?
Micro strategies like this one's for, you know, Wisdom Tree ETF.
This one's for like, they're just all in this, like his desk
side drawer. No, his bedside.
Table. His night table.
He's just like, has him there.
He's got like, how to scam 101 for dummies and then like a
bunch of a bunch of hardware wallets sitting on top of.
Dude, I'm just telling you, it's like, yeah, here at Coinbase,
you know, we, we offer a sophistic level of cold storage
and you know, and he's just like laughing his ass off, like,
yeah, you could send the funds, you know, and he's just using
like Sparrow and like look at. This will Coinbase be Mt Gox 2
point O? No it won't.
It'll be it'll be Mt Gox like 6 point O.
Because we've got we we we've passed two and three and four
and five point O already It's like oh bad, so bad.
Yeah keep your keep your coins. You know yourself folks you
don't have enough Bitcoin. You you simultaneously have too
much Bitcoin for it to not be important it therefore it is
important and you don't have enough that you should feel
scared to hold it yourself. Like, you know, I can kind of
see sailors like, you know, whatever.
But like, I think you Kelly taking like that's a like who's
the giga Chad here, that's like that's pretty dope.
Yeah, I mean, dude, total, absolute Giga.
Chad and I, I I think I saw his, his beard grow a little bit, You
know, I think I've seen their beard grow, 'cause I know like
by the time after they're in it for a couple cycles, you know,
it's inevitable that their beards get thicker and longer
so. Look at look at us like you know
couple of couple of bearded beard you know it's we're
hitting in a couple cycles here where this is the way.
I couldn't grow facial hair when I first got.
It's like the weirdest thing. I bought Bitcoin and then I
could grow a beard. It's so strange, you know, You
don't change Bitcoin, Bitcoin changes you.
Literally. I want to welcome my optimistic
Co host. Hold on, hold on.
I'm sensing a lot of Beardism here because your boy can't grow
facial hair, so. I don't know that you.
Got I don't know what's going on here, bro.
This. Seems a little anti beard here.
You're way a little too pro beard here.
You're the Johnny Depp of Bitcoin, bro.
Hey I could only hope. I could only hope.
But you also also I got another point of contention.
You guys are giving Brian Armstrong way too much credit.
We all know he just has one hardware wallet if that and all
the coiner is is in one pool and he just does whatever he wants
with it and it's not separated by companies or holders it's
just like one bag. Hey, here, take some coins.
What? Do what you with it?
Wherever he's hypothecating. Who really cares?
No one answers. He's like, he's like, Oh no, my
Utxos are out of whack. I got a UTXO managed.
Let's just put them all into one address, yeah?
Exactly. Oh man, we got a comment in the
chat Optis SB theme Tighty whities for bull market says.
Is Opti not stacking at all or just?
Larping Dude, I can't grow facial hair, so I'm Larping out
here. She took control of the bank
accounts and that's it. He can't move to Bitcoin
anymore. It's a Fiat only.
You know you know if I if I could grow beard guys I would
have a beard. But like I I is it early enough?
Yeah. We're we're past in 2 minutes.
I I don't like growing pubes on my face.
You. Know.
I think it's even. Nice and clean.
All right. All right.
Fair. Enough.
All right, ladies and. Gentlemen, it's gonna be an
amazing show. We have a ton to uncover and ton
to ton to unpack. But before we get to it, I wanna
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All right everybody, let's jump into the numbers.
We have a lot to talk about today.
Let's check it out. The Bitcoin numbers.
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started. Anyways, I totally did not plan
this. It just happened to come up on
my feed and we have the perfect guest to kind of offer like a
little rebuke right because Adam is the CEO of a Bitcoin on ramp,
a Bitcoin exchange and Bitcoin only exchange.
Better said and you know I I want to get your thoughts on
this Adam 'cause this is very interesting coming from the Lex
Luthor of Bitcoin or crypto or whatever.
Anyways, let's check out what Brian Armstrong has to say.
And also you could see in the background this is the night
table that we were talking about.
This desk is where all the coins are.
You're talking so much about other use cases for crypto
outside of even just being a store of value here as many
people see it as they're entering this asset class, some
for the first time. With the advent of these spot
Bitcoin ETFs, it begs the question, how do you see the
future of Coinbase? There are a lot of questions
about the future of crypto exchanges in the world where
Bitcoin ETFs have gotten so much share.
Do you see Coinbase going far and above beyond being simply a
crypto exchange? Yeah.
So with the, you know, the ETFs that got approved, we've seen a
huge influx of capital into the system, about $12 billion of
inflow have happened. And you know some when that
happens, sometimes people ask us well what does that mean for
Coinbase? Well, you know it's actually
incredibly positive for Coinbase.
We're storing, we're the custodian for about 90% of the
assets in those Bitcoin ETFs. And so we have monetization
opportunities there as a custodian, but we, it didn't
cannibalize any of the opportunity in our direct
products to our retail app or institutional product.
We actually saw increased inflows there.
While the while we saw $12 billion of inflow into the ETFs.
So the Atfs were incredibly positive for the industry.
They were a regulatory approval, they unlocked new pools of
capital. And Coinbase is going to be not
just a place where you store crypto, it's a place where you
can actually trade crypto. You can use it increasingly in
many different applications all over the world.
And it's not just Bitcoin either.
You know, we support over 100 different crypto assets.
So we want Coinbase to be the most trusted and easiest to use
place to to store crypto, to trade it and to actually use it.
And we can actually become people's primary financial
account in some cases in this new crypto economy.
Kind of like a crypto bank. Yeah, One might say that I don't
think we're ever going to go get actually a bank license because
banks get licenses to do fractional reserve of the
assets. I don't really think that's the
right path. I think it's caused all kinds of
issues with bank failures and and that kind of thing.
We don't want to do fractional reserve.
We want to store 100% of customers assets or if they
prefer they don't even have to store it with us.
They can do self custody and you know if they choose to opt in
their funds into some product to earn rewards or something like
that, they can choose to do that.
We're not going to do it on their behalf in the way the
banks do with fraction of reserve.
So it's a new paradigm. I think that there's a new
generation of people who are looking at they want to see
crypto update the financial system because you know 87% of
Americans when you survey them, they say the current financial
system doesn't work for them. Fractional reserve is just one
piece of that. But if you look at you know
credit card fees and overdraft fees and why does it, you know,
take two or three business days to send an ACH transfer.
And so our financial system really needs to get updated and
that's what we think is that crypto is this most important
technology to update the financial system globally, bring
economic freedom and good financial infrastructure to
people all over the world. If they just have a smartphone
with an Internet connection, you're.
Talking a couple things here, right?
So which is the whole Bitcoin not crypto thing thing.
And in the very beginning she asked him, like, you know, what
does this mean for the future of Bitcoin?
I mean what does this mean for the future of Coinbase.
When I was thinking I was like the real the right question
should be what does this mean for you know Bitcoin in the
world future right. I think as bitcoiners I think
that we that the way that we see it Maybe I'm wrong here.
Maybe I'm speaking for myself is that Bitcoin is bigger than
anyone individual, this movement of this technology, you know and
I think that's what's gonna fundamentally change the world
looking at it from like company standpoint, how is Coinbase
going to change the world? I I I just, I don't think.
I don't think it's it's going to and again one thing is what they
say, but another thing is what they do.
It was recently announced a couple weeks ago and it made
quite a bit of a splash on Twitter, that Coinbase stopped
accepting Bitcoin for a lot of their merchants.
Right. So I mean, and talk's a big
talk, but you know, when it comes down to it, I think it's a
different story. And it's really interesting that
we got to see the famous, you know, night table behind him
where he stores everyone's Bitcoin, which is kind of funny.
I didn't think he was going to show it on that clip.
But Adam, what's your take on, you know, that 2-3 minute clip
on Brian Armstrong? What are some things that you
noticed? What are some things that you
didn't notice? And then also another thing I
got to say is, you know, I I'm a bigger fan of your black shirt
than Brian's black shirt. Thank you.
Thank you, man. I appreciate that.
Brian is looking good. He's obviously spending some
time in the gym, man. He's talking to both sides of
his mouth there, isn't he, he's he's kind of saying, you know we
have lots of new inflows in Coinbase custody which opens up
monetization opportunities and then saying, but we're never
going to be fractional. It's like what is the
monetization opportunity like other than them just paying you
a fee, which is, which is fine. But like he, it's very, very
difficult. I think for anybody in their
right mind to think it's a good idea to give their money to
somebody else, to give their value that they earn with their
time, that they spent their time.
They could have been spending, you know, with their family,
they could have been spending doing any number of activities,
but instead they spent that time providing value for someone
else. They then received that value in
the form of money and they just hand it over to someone talking
on what I don't know what that news channel was, CNBC or
whatever, rather than holding that themself.
And then he said we're not going to be a bank because we're not
going to do fractional reserve unless they opt in, which is
which is incredibly bad. So now we've got the
opportunity, we've got the FOMO, we've got the scam promotion.
This is the reason we need more automatic self custody platforms
because there should never be an opt in to get rid of your value.
We don't have vending machines where you can opt in to heroin
because we know heroin is bad. We don't have vending machines
where you can opt in to murder because we know murder is bad.
Why do we have platforms where you can opt in to literally
giving up the value you produce with your time and and throwing
it into some bucket? For like 8% APY like dog, your
Bitcoin is better than 8% APYI don't care if it's 100 percent,
205 hundred 801,000% APY. The risk is not worth it because
the opportunity cost is so great and you having getting rid of
your value in that way for this Fiat mindset.
This is the problem with crypto and This is why it's Bitcoin and
not crypto. So I think this is spot on for
Coinbase. Coinbase is obviously a crypto
company. They are not a Bitcoin company.
I mean, you just said it. They took away the ability for
merchants to take Bitcoin, but if you ask them, they will say
they allow their merchants to accept Bitcoin.
They're like, oh, Bitcoin, hard on chain fees, bad.
We need to make it fake. That's fractional guys.
That's how it works. That's how it starts.
That's how the 61O2 starts. We pretend like Bitcoin isn't
working. We pretend like there aren't
opportunities to just invest and grow and build down the pipe.
And then we take everyone's Bitcoin.
We make them use fake Bitcoin. Like, does this sound familiar?
Does this sound like the Fiat currency?
Does this sound like taking everyone's gold and then
removing money from the relationship with gold and then
just printing and printing and printing trillions of dollars?
Like, guys, we have seen this movie before.
We have seen this script, and it's right here.
Like, come on, let's be better. Amen.
Let's be better. I completely agree and you got
and I saw Thomas, shame on you man, you should be using Bitcoin
well by now, he says. Coinbase stopped working
yesterday. I had to wait 11 hours for my
Bitcoin to get sent to the blockchain.
No, that's like, I think that's down to 33 seconds at
bitcoinwell.com now. So you you, you hit by and then
we've got a bunch of scrambly numbers and it says preparing
your TX ID and then like within 33 seconds that money is is on
the blockchain. Real Bitcoin.
Like, not wrapped Bitcoin, not like Bitcoin.
You can only spend inside the Coinbase ecosystem like real
Bitcoin that you can just spend anywhere on the blockchain. 33
seconds. I got, I got I got AI.
Got an idea for you Adam. What if?
What if you came up with bitcoinwell.com/drop, Coinbase
and special special giveaway? Potentially.
Maybe just thinking out loud. Just thinking out loud.
Anyways, I did see another another comment and from
lightning goats Lightning goat says never trust a a guy without
a beard with your corn. I completely agree.
I would be extremely skeptical of Opti also.
Well, hey. I've been telling you guys for a
while, never trust me with your corn at all.
But I will take all of your corn.
All of your Bitcoin is mine. I'll give me one Bitcoin.
I'll give you 2. You already know the deal.
No. Fractional.
Yeah. No.
Fractional. No, man.
OK, so it seems like the chat is not a big fan.
Oh, we got our, we got our boy Stamp seed.
In the chat, Brian Armstrong stored the seed words in notes.
That is absolutely. Hilarious on the cloud.
Those seeds in his in his night drawer.
Those are on paper. They're not on titanium only.
Only bit corners store their seed on titanium.
But that's obvious, right? That's obvious.
Metal's bad for the environment. I wouldn't want to waste.
I wouldn't want to make good metal.
That's that's just bad for our What's the scam du jour?
It's no longer the ozone layer. I'm I'm sure there's other
things that. Climate change now?
Right, right, right. That's bad for the weather.
This is this. This is not good.
How? How dare these bitcoiners take
up metal to protect their generational value?
Oh man, UT Excel says Opti is going to run for president when
at six 102, all Bitcoin. Your Bitcoin is mine.
Our boy says you could hide the corn in your beard.
It's true man. One of my beard hairs are fake
and it's a little rolled up. Micro print seed words in there.
That's the best off SEC in the world now now.
But see what Nico just did there is now.
If you see Nico's Beard hair on on on eBay, you should
definitely bid on it. Gross.
That's gross Opti. What's your take on the Lex
Luther, Lex Luther of crypto of of shit coins?
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, the first part of him saying
like oh you know, Coin Base never wants to be a bank.
Like they're already kind of a de facto bank as far as like the
crypto eco space. And of course, you know, they
are, quote, UN quote, custodying all of the ETF Bitcoin.
And then he kind of goes into, like Adam was saying, you know,
the idea of like, oh, we don't want to fractional reserve your
Bitcoin unless you opt into it. So it's very interesting that
he's saying like, Oh yeah, we don't want to fractional reserve
your Bitcoin. But then again, maybe you might
want to fractional reserve your Bitcoin and, you know, shouts
out to lightning goats. He's been putting in the chat.
Some good signal. He's like friends don't let
friends use Coinbase. You know, Coinbase is for better
or worse basically you know, they have the the mind share of
the newbies coming into Bitcoin. And This is why I think this
cycle is going to be different is because there's a lot of
awesome Bitcoin only companies now.
There's a lot of Bitcoin only media out there and hopefully we
can get people to go to like Bitcoin well and avoid Coinbase
and avoid getting psyop into the the shit Coinery out there.
And so, like, you know, the fact that Brian Armstrong can't even
say Bitcoin over crypto. It's very interesting.
It's a long track record of him not being able to say Bitcoin
and always saying crypto, except for when it comes to like
Bitcoin being bad. You know, whenever, whenever
there's a bad take on Bitcoin or the crypto ecosystem at large,
he always says Bitcoin. But when he's talking about the
ecosystem in a positive light, he will always say crypto.
And I know, you know, on a normie level, I understand
people can confuse Bitcoin and crypto.
Obviously it's Bitcoin, not crypto, but I mean, Brian
Armstrong's been in the game for so long and you know, what do we
always say on the show? Show me the incentive and I'll
show you the behavior. And obviously he's incentivized
to keep pushing crypto out there to the masses because his whole
business model has been built on shit coins.
And so, I mean, it's very interesting that he said one
thing and then he might possibly be doing the complete opposite
on the back end. None of us really know what
Brian Armstrong's doing back. There, I just wanted to do what
he was doing, bro. He's putting it on and night
table on paper, bro. On recycled paper, man.
That's what he's doing. Yeah, yeah, definitely,
definitely recycled. Only organic paper.
Obviously, that's obviously what he's doing anyways.
Just real quick on your on your note there I just quickly DM Ed
the team when I was off. If you sign up for Bitcoin, well
with the ref code drop Coinbase it's not ready yet.
Give it like give it all all update then we'll add we'll add
500 points to that account. You can go enter the Bitcoin.
Jackbox and. Let's let's let's rip it and
then just DM me on Twitter. If you already have an account,
then you deserve points. And so we'll also just like DME,
drop Coinbase or or follow me and and quote tweet me, whatever
and we'll figure that out. Sweet Opti, could you put Adam's
name handle on screen? And yeah, boys drop, don't drop
yet. Not ready.
Yet you'll be ready. For custody Self custody by
default, let's go at bitcoinwell.com All right
everybody, if you want to give a shout out to our merch, we
teamed up with a Bitcoin artist named Opti.
Awesome, Ella. Thank you.
And we got different merch. We got the Peaceful Bitcoin
Revolution Gold tee, We got the Gold Pill shirt.
We got the Gold Bitcoin snapback.
We got the Gold Bitcoin Dad hat. We got the woman's Peaceful
Revolution tank. And we got the woman's Bitcoin
pill tank. So get yours.
While supplies last. It is flying off the shelves.
We appreciate you all for supporting the show.
All right, everybody, let's get to the news.
We have a lot to talk about today.
Let's check it out. Here we go.
The Daily News. I want to give a shout out to
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Oh, man, just kidding. It's a bad joke.
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Anyways, scan the QR code and it'll take you directly to
Foundation Devices website. OK, ladies and gentlemen, quick
ETF update. We guys, we you guys know the
deal. We update you guys on the ETFs
every single day. Specifically, the battle between
MicroStrategy in the ETFs. Grayscale.
Holy Cow continues to gobble up all the corn, 238,000 Bitcoin
and Fidelity at 135 and MicroStrategy with 214,000
Bitcoin. So yeah, I mean you know, these
ETFs, these public companies and I'm sure more public companies
are going to be joining MicroStrategy very, very soon.
You know, continue to gobble up all the corn.
But I just got to remind everyone, right you guys, if you
stacked Bitcoin before January 9th, 2024, you front run Wall
Street. Those are good for you.
Pat yourself on the back, but keep your head in the game,
right? There's no such thing as having
too much Bitcoin. That is literally impossible.
Anyways, I do want to cover today's article because I think
it would make a great conversation.
And for audio listeners, the name of the article is Bitcoin
is Trumping dollars for many inflation wary Argentines.
It's an article by Ignacio Dole. It's a Bloomberg article goes on
to say Argentines are buying Bitcoin to protect themselves
from 276% inflation instead of rushing to exchange pesos for
dollars, upending A timeless strategy that's made the crisis
prone country one of the top places for greenbacks in the
world. Bitcoin purchases in Argentina,
one of the nations with the highest level of cryptocurrency
adoption globally, approach their highest level, highest
weekly value in 20 months at a local cryptocurrency exchange,
Lemon, the most popular among retail customers in the South
American country. Now how much does that have to
do with the Elon Musk and Don Lemon interview?
I don't know, maybe they are related, but that is surely a
huge coincidence. Anyways goes on to say
Argentines are looking for ways to survive a recession and one
of the world's highest inflation rates as President Javier Mali
implements his shock therapy policies intend to reset the
economy. Exchange pesos for dollars, the
main safe haven for decades, has lost some of its appeal in the
past two months as the commonly used parallel exchange rate has
strengthened 10% against the dollar while Bitcoin has rallied
almost 60% against the greenback.
Over the the same period. Lemon recorded almost 35,000
customer transactions to buy Bitcoin in the week ending March
10th doubled the weekly average last year.
The the behavior was similar to that of customers of other major
exchanges in Argentina such as Repo and Bellow.
A major driver behind the strong peso in recent weeks as Malays
tight grip of of the amount of money in circulation, not
letting it grow while the central bank rebuilds its
stockpile of cash dollars volume and Bitcoin and shit coin have
increased tenfold so far in 2024 compared to the same period last
year. At Digital Wallabello CEO Manuel
Bertwat said in a phone interview.
He noted that purchases stable coins crypto assets often tied
to currencies like the US dollar have fallen to 60 from 70% over
that period as bitcoins rally lured in more buyers.
I love number go up technology. It's it's just it's such a great
technology. It is like it just convinces
people doesn't matter where you are, doesn't matter how hard
buttoned you are. Eventually everyone bows down to
the king. It seems like this is no
different. Anyways it goes on to say quote
the users decide to buy Bitcoin when they see the news that the
currency is going up. While stablecoin is more
pragmatic and many times used for transactional purposes as a
vehicle to make payments abroad. I mean the and like that's such
a like, you know, that's such a like that's an education
problem. Like that's an education
problem. Like, I don't know about you
guys, but using Bitcoin for transactions globally is 100
times easier than anything else like like full stop And then
also a couple things about stablecoins before I finish the
article is that stablecoins give you a false sense of financial
sovereignty. You can freeze a stablecoin.
Like you can freeze an address to a stablecoin and not to
mention like it. Like if you're already going
through the those hoops right? To take a sable coin into self
custody. But I bet you the vast majority
of people are not and they're leaving on exchange.
Like why not do the same for Bitcoin?
Right? Exactly.
Someone put in the chart in the chat hard Hoddle said no excuse
for permission. Permissionless money.
Yeah, I mean I completely agree. Anyways, the article goes on to
say thank you, Opti Argentina is one of the top two countries in
the world, along with Russia, for shipments of U.S. dollar
banknotes. According to a 2012 Federal
Reserve paper, the New York Federal Reserve Press office
declined to provide more recent data.
Savers in the South American nation hold some $200 billion in
US currency, a figure only surpassed by the United States
and Russia. Amid the Bitcoin rally,
Argentines are now shedding some of their dollar savings and
initiating investment options that allow them, for the first
time in years, to save themselves from inflation.
Subsequently, there was a fivefold jump in reports of
cryptocurrency scams in February.
According to Bitcoin Argentina, the country's main non
governmental organization in the sector quote, Argentine's
desperation to make it to the end of the month and not lose
their savings leads them to make hasty decisions without
measuring the risks, transforming them into easy prey
for scammers. All right, a lot to unpack
there. But I got to say the part where
I was just disappointed the most, I mean, look, this is
great. This is a step in the right
direction. Clearly, I think it has to do
with the rally. You know, that's what it says
that people, you know, people just tend to buy in when the
price of Bitcoin is pumping, Everyone's just like, Oh my God,
I got to buy. Now let's ignore the thing when
it was over $1000 for many years.
You know, let's, let's just jump in now, I guess, right.
It's funny how the human brain works, right?
Anyways, it goes on to say stablecoin is more pragmatic and
many times used for transactional purposes as a
vehicle to make payments abroad. I mean, I'll pass that on to
you, Adam. Like, I think Bitcoin is the by
far the easiest thing to transact with.
People globally like it, you know, you know, you can trust it
after one. I know you should wait three
confirmation, but after one confirmation like that thing
ain't going back right? And like especially like
traveling abroad it is way easier because all of us should
already have Bitcoin and self custody.
You don't have to change from currency to currency.
When I was in Costa Rica at the Freedom Festival there, which
was awesome and if they do it again, I highly recommend
everybody come to Costa Rica and check out the Freedom Festival.
I didn't have to do anything like I just they grabbed my
phone and I had my like my Bitcoin wallet and my lightning
wallet on my phone and it was all good.
And then I didn't have to like mess around with whatever I
guess I did in like I did for driving in on on on the toll
roads. I think the toll roads and the
Starbucks were the only places that I had to spend.
I spent USD and not the local currency and I think that's
that's a testament to how bad money remittance is.
Everyone just kind of uses USD. I mean, look at even Argentines
that actually made me think too of this funny world where the US
dollar now has less business because of Bitcoin.
Like Bitcoin is just literally a competitor for the US dollar,
which I think is hilarious. But yeah, if you're spending
Bitcoin, it is a lot less work, a lot safer, and requires a lot
less trust to to use Bitcoin rather than swapping your
Bitcoin into local Fiat or into a like whatever stable coin du
jour is. Not to mention like we all know
what the C in USDC stands for, right?
It's like C is for Coinbase, that is Coinbase's stable coins.
That's where the money sits. You know, our buddy didn't say
that he wasn't fractionally reserving the C in USDC,
although I think that is a bit tighter and more regulated.
So I won't like, you know, I'm not going to come on here and
spread FUD, although I kind of just did.
But I think at the end of the day, we have to realize that
stable coins, just because it's on a blockchain doesn't mean
that it's truly decentralized like what the Bitcoin blockchain
is. The original perfect blockchain
is decentralized. It is trustless.
It is not required to. You can audit it, Look at that
thumbs up, you can audit it, but.
And that's what makes it awesome.
But you don't need to in order to transact on it.
Every other blockchain is just somebody else's database.
It is not decentralized and we are not able in most blockchains
cases to audit it. And so why is your money better
there compared to like in the Fiat system?
It's exposed to Fiat inflation, it's exposed to worse because
you can't undo transactions in in in most cases on the
blockchain, at least with the bank, when the bank screws up,
they for the most part undo that screw up and they give you your
money back. What happens if Ethereum screws
up? What happens if Solana screws
up? Are they going to actually
reverse that transaction and give you that money back?
Probably not. Like it is just the worst of the
worst. And yeah, there are certain
niche use cases where sending a stable coin like if the other
side, you know really doesn't want any volatility or there's
going to be like there are certain use cases to exist
there. In my opinion, the use case is
way, way, way way less than how much stable coins are actually
used. Stable coins.
They incentivized high time preference day trading, and I
personally don't see them as being useful.
I do see spending Bitcoin as the future and that's where it's
going to be. Like why?
Why go through the hoops like just, you know, create value,
sell the value, store the value, spend the value.
That's it. Like why make it more complex
than that? It doesn't.
It doesn't need to be more complex than that. 100 percent,
100% Don't. It's it's so simple.
It's it. People make it complicated.
That was my dad joke, by the way, for the Super chat Thomas
hair. I appreciate it.
We want more dad jokes. There's your dad joke.
Yeah. I mean, beautifully said.
I'm. I'm becoming a fan of Adam's
monologues, man. We'll have, we'll have
something. Kind of ranty today.
We'll have something for you guys soon.
Wink, wink. All right, Opti, what's your
take on this? You not being a dad?
Do you want to drop a joke? I'm not a comedian, so I don't
have anything on the top of mind right now, but yeah, maybe soon.
Anyways. Honestly, like I I like the, I
like the evolution and the progression we've seen in
Argentina. We've been covering this story
for, I don't know now a couple of months.
And I know when we first were talking about this story, we
were kind of wondering how come the Argentinians are going into
a stable coin. And you know, Peter McCormick
did a very great documentary on this idea of how there was just
still so much friction and kind of to what Adam said.
You know, people are very turned off by quote, UN quote, the
volatility of Bitcoin and they get loaded to sleep by the idea
of a again, quote, UN quote stable coin because they're only
stable until they're not. And I just finished reading The
Bitcoin Dollar by my friend Mark Goodwin.
Highly recommend everyone of you guys read it and it just it
keeps popping up in my head that I'm not here for dollarizing or
digitalizing the dollar. Like we're here for exactly what
Adam just said, to create values, store your value in
Bitcoin and then spend that value in Bitcoin into the things
that you want. But I also understand that
humans, you know, it takes a long time for them to learn
things. And I've been saying for a while
that we're seeing that there is like a natural progression
towards people becoming bitcoiners and self custom their
Bitcoin. And hey, if your currency is
absolute trash like the Argentinian currency is, then of
course you're going to move towards a stronger currency
which in you know for the average person is is a dollar.
And then once they get used to the dollar, and most people are
already kind of used to the dollar and Argentina is pretty
much, you know, dollarized at this point, whether it's on the
on the black market or what do they call it, the blue market.
People understand that, yeah, if my local currency is trashed and
I move into a stronger currency, which for most people is a
dollar, and then they wake up to the idea that, oh wait, there's
an even stronger currency, which the end game is obviously
Bitcoin. So there's steps towards people
taking self custody. And I mean, at least the
progression here is that people are starting to wake up that,
yeah, I want to hold Bitcoin and not a stable coin.
And again, you know, the, the classic trope of correlation
does not mean causation. But it's very interesting that
since Malay has become president that we're seeing a a mass
inflow into Bitcoin. So it just goes to show that the
signal is spreading and people are waking up to the idea that,
oh, maybe I want to hold some Bitcoin over digital dollars and
hey, you know, Bloomberg. Poor Bloomberg.
You know, we, we can't, we can't hold them to the same
journalistic standards that as bitcoiners hold ourselves to.
So you can, you can, you know very obviously see that they are
going to kind of say good things about stable coins.
They don't, they don't want to basically be like, yeah,
bitcoin's the solution here. Stable coins do have a huge
market in South America and it's kind of probably because it is
hard for them to actually just get Bitcoin directly.
And so they have to make steps towards getting to Bitcoin.
And again, this is all just kind of going through just how early
we are in this whole Bitcoin ecosystem and the fact that they
are coming down and trying to clamp on, on and off ramps.
And so there are obstacles and there are loopholes that people
have to jump over to even get into Bitcoin, especially when
anyone that knows anything understands that they're trying
to control the currency. So they're not going to make it
easy for you to get into Bitcoin.
But I love that we have another, I don't know, another testing
ground for the same idea that we see in Nigeria.
You know, Nigeria jumped the CBDC out there.
No one watched it. They're going into Bitcoin
Argentina. We saw that they're moving
towards stable coins. And now we're seeing that like,
oh wait, we don't want stable coins, we want Bitcoin.
So the signal is spreading and people are waking up that, yeah,
we're not here for digital dollars.
Like digital dollars is just recreating the Fiat system again
with new fancy buzzwords. And the real end goal is
Bitcoin. So I love that we're seeing a
progression from very bad local currencies towards Bitcoin.
And this is going to take time and This is why we show up every
single day. This is why we tell you guys
every single day to have these conversations with your friends
and family so they understand that the end game is Bitcoin and
not a stable coin. It's not a digital dollar, it's
not your local currency. Or it's rather it's not going
into a stronger currency, It's going into the strongest money
that man has ever seen, which is Bitcoin.
Absolutely. Beautifully said.
I mean, look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna borrow from, you know, our
friends over at Bitcoin. Well, I'm gonna say, you know
that that what you guys say enable independence.
I think that's the key, right. And if you don't push self
custody by default, 'cause this is an educational thing all
around the world. Like the the reason I believe
like in developing world that people are seeking tethers
versus Bitcoin is I I think it's a it's a generational thing and
I think it's an educational thing.
I think self custody isn't more widely used because it's an
educational thing. I think a lot of people you know
fall into the convenience trap. So yeah, I mean I think I'm
gonna pass that on to you guys. Are you guys enabling
independence? Are you guys pushing, you know,
sovereignty? Are you guys pushing freedom all
over the world? Because you know it and I and I
heard Thomas, I'm. I'm not gonna lie, Thomas, even
though you sent us a super chat, I was quite disappointed when
you said you were withdrawing your funds from Coinbase.
Look guys, if you fall into the convenience trap, if you're
pushing kind of, you know, these exchanges that don't properly
incentivize self custody or don't have self custody by
default, Better said, I'm not going to say it's as bad, but
you know, self custody is the revolution, right?
It is the revolution. That's what's actually going to
change. Thing worldwide is 1,000,000
upon millions of individuals holding unconfiscatable wealth
out outside the grasp of government, right.
That's really what's going to change things.
And it's not because the government's going to want to
change, it's that it's going to force the.
It's going to force the government to change, right.
Or at least that's what we hope, right.
So anyways, I want to get your thoughts on that, Adam, and then
we'll get on to the culture. Yeah, man.
I mean, I think we talked about it last time I was on the show.
It's like when you are on a mission to enable independence,
which which which we are and and I and I truly hope that our
audience listening right now is also at least keen to help
enable independence, like we just need the help man.
I think that building for a community with hyper, hyper
aligned core values eliminates the ability to fall down the bad
ways and it also forces us to listen in like what is
important, like I'm seeing some chat here.
You know, why doesn't Coinbase enable this?
You know, Swan's doing that. Like yeah, I fully agree with
all that and it's good for me and us as a team to be able to
see what do people care about how do we build a better
platform that you are comfortable referring your
grandma to referring your aunt referring but then most
importantly like onboarding your kids into.
Because our habits follow our kids and and like I'm a dad of
four I've got kids aged 7 and younger.
Without question. What you do is what will show
your kids what to do. If you are working hard, you're
in the gym, you're eating properly and you're a generally
kind individual. Your kids will be that way if
you tell them work hard and then you sit on the couch and do
nothing for six hours a day. Your kids are going to be fat,
lazy slobs. If you tell your kids take self
custody and then you use a a platform that enables other
people that even goes as far as to not disincentivize them from
taking self custody by giving them fancy rewards for opting
into certain things like that's bad.
That's teaching your kids that it's OK to be complacent.
It's OK to take the generational wealth that they are have the
like it's it's it's our generation and the next
generation and that's it. That have the opportunity to
truly decouple money in state like we got 2025 years left and
that's it. And the way that we raise our
children, the way that we tell the next generation how to stack
corn is what will be the future of money.
And if we're comfortable with, you know, your great, great
great granddaughter's Bitcoin being stacked in like some, you
know, closed loop garbage Fiat system, then like great, don't
use a self custody platform. But if you want to push
platforms to be better, then you got to like have your voice be
heard, use those platforms and do it for the kids.
Man, it sounds like Greg Foss up here.
Like like do it for the kids. Make sure that the kids and the
future generations are able to act responsibly because this is
the worst self custody will ever be.
This is the hardest it will ever be, and it's only because you
guys are using and pushing self custody platforms to the next
level. And I think that's like that's
so important. Absolutely agree.
All right, ladies and gentlemen,
let's get to the culture. Let's talk more about self
custody. Self custody by default.
And Adam was telling me he gave a interesting presentation at a
Bitcoin Meet up and want to hear about that?
All right, ladies and gentlemen. Let's get to the I want to be an
Optes night stand. That's.
No you don't. No you don't.
Bunch of Christmas toys in there.
Oh, man. All right, what is an optes
night stand? That's the question.
I plead the 5th, the daily culture.
So I do want to give a shout out to our sponsor Kabhi Max, the
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All right ladies and gentlemen, let's get to the culture, let's
widen it up cuz Adam was showing us his multi Cam before the
show. So.
Wanna see this? You guys ready?
I don't think. I think I just turned the ready
for this. Whoa, what's up?
A real influencer. Real influencing.
Yeah. This is like a proper studio in
here. Like this is leveling up so
much. I'm yeah, this is like wow.
I'm just so stoked to have two. I got like it's not set up, but
I could put one up there. If I'm like tinkering with my
hands a little bit, I'm going full.
Full content creator full. Influencer on US, Full
Influencer full. Influencer.
All right, all right. Well, let's start with we have a
a lot on the docket today, but let's let's continue the
conversation of self custody. You, Nico was saying just a
minute ago, you've been telling us about this presentation
you've done on self custody. So Adam and everyone in the
chat's like this guy gets it. So why is self custody
important? And then you can kind of angle
that into why Bitcoin, well, is self custody by default.
Yeah. OK.
And like, I don't this is a self custody talk.
This is not intended to be a Bitcoin well talk.
I'm gonna like note my bias off the top.
Like obviously I I care about Bitcoin.
Well, where I think the only self custody, like automatic
self custody platform in the States were one of two in
Canada. Like there's a bias there.
But if we don't all agree that self custody is the most
important thing, then I I, I this, this will surely convince
you. So off the top with that
instead, as promised, if you sign up with Drop Coinbase or
you tweet me drop Coinbase, I'll add 500 points to your account.
You can sign up for the Bitcoin jackpot contest and like
whatever, have some extra stuff and be a part of a self custody
platform. But the platform or the
presentation that I gave in in Vancouver was based around three
things and it was kind of the three risks that that you have
when you're don't have Bitcoin in self custody.
The 1st is like nefarious platforms, right?
We've seen that with Mount Gox. We saw it with Quadriga here in
Canada. If you guys don't know about the
Quadriga story in Canada, it is absolutely shocking.
Dude went like basically this guy was like Sam Bakeman Free
Junior and did all the stuff that Sam Bakeman Free did, but
like just for himself. Like he was just gambling on on
platforms and then you know, obviously FTX.
So that's like step one, which is the big problem there, right?
When you give your money to somebody else, you give them the
ability to spend the money however they want.
We had Mark Karpolis, who many people probably don't know who
he is. He was the OG like Bitcoin
exchange bad guy. Mount Gox was the only Bitcoin
exchange forever. From inception until I think
2014 or 2013, that was where like you know I had to buy some
of my first Bitcoin was like super sketchy wire money to like
a Russian bank and get it credited onto Mount Gox like
months later and then be able to buy Bitcoin and then he got
hacked and went belly up 2018 quadriga, same thing all of
Canada is using basically this, this, this one platform in
Canada. Everyone's using it.
Dude is like sending money to Binance and and FOMO ING into
ICO scams lost it all and then like allegedly died in India,
took taking all the Bitcoin with them and then we've got SPF who
everybody watching probably knows about.
So it's like that's problem number one.
But to be fair that problem is probably going away as we get
more more eyes on the space, more regulation on the space.
Like you would really really hope the FTX was the peak you
know crypto exchange guy scam. That's like that should never be
able to happen again. It can functionally happen
again, but you'd hope that regulations will at least, you
know, do whatever regulation can to prevent that.
But then there's Step 2, which is the honeypot.
And that's where the, the, the problems are kind of moving to,
which is like the Coinbase problem, like 90% of what did we
just say there was like 500,000 bitcoins sitting in Coinbase.
So you've got all of the ETFs bitcoins sitting in Coinbase and
then all of the retail bitcoins sitting in Coinbase.
Like if you're a hacker and you want to try and steal some
bitcoins, what are you going to do?
Are you going to try to corrupt myself custody where you're
going to get one individual's like total bitcoins or are you
going to try and infiltrate the the honeypot that is a Coinbase
holding literally hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin?
Not to mention the opportunity for centralized attacks inside
of Coinbase. So this is quite popular, not so
much in banking but in cell phones.
If anyone has heard of a SIM swap, the only reason SIM swaps
are possible is because of inside jobs.
And so the concept is you have a cell phone number tied to a SIM,
somebody inside somebody as part of like whatever Verizon or in
Canada like Bell or Telus or Rogers or like whatever,
somebody's able to change the SIM.
And once that SIM gets changed, all of the data that was going
to that SIM card goes to the different one.
This is only possible because of, you know, men inside that
are bad actors that are part of bad organization that do these
things. So what's stopping like you know
the group that has the keys inside Coinbase from just being
bad people? There's eventually going to
become a time where the the money at hand is so life
changing, is so like like talk about country founding wealth,
like is so insane. Human beings are are just broken
human. The human condition is a sinful
and and blasphemous condition. And do we trust that Coinbase is
only employing humans without that condition, without the
ability or with the ability to push back on that temptation of
like, oh, you know, if me and Jimmy and Johnny, who we eat
sandwiches with every single day, you know, we could each
take 100 Bitcoin. Like, come on, there's hundreds
of thousands in here, that's no problem.
Well, then what? Right.
Who repays that? Like, this is a massive problem.
That's problem #2. And then problem #3, like, guys
sitting right here, 61021933, Roosevelt's like, OK, you know,
we're in the middle of The Dirty 30s.
He probably didn't call it that because it wasn't called that
then. But he's like economic growth is
stalled. How do we get people spending
money right? Are we hearing that same
language right now? Like economic growth, We need
more growth. We got to kick start the
economy. You know, we're going to
stimulus like blah, blah, blah. In the 30s they were like,
everyone has too much savings. There are people that are just
hoarding the value they create with their time and waiting to
spend it in the future. They're not spending enough.
What should we do? And the brilliance at hand was,
let's take the gold, give them a fair value for it, and then that
will incentivize spending. And it did.
And for a short period of time, the economy was on cocaine and
the economy was, was, was working And you know, it pulled
everyone out of the thirty 30s. But at what cost?
Because what happened was they gave everyone like 20 bucks per
ounce of gold, OK, which at the time in those dollars was
$400.00 per the price, like in in today's dollars.
So gold right now I think is trading over like $2000.
So already there's a loss there. But then even worse, the next
year, 12 months later, gold was magically trading at over $35.00
an ounce. Like the government on day one
devalued the money that they traded for the gold.
And if you think I'm kidding, like just just look it up.
Like read the order. It was punishable by $10,000
fines in 1930. Three, $10,000 is a quarter
$1,000,000 equivalence today. So like the real world example
of this happening is the Biden administration coming in, being
like guys, there's too much saving going on.
The economy needs to grow. What should we do?
They're like, well, everyone's holding these bitcoins.
We need to get the bitcoins out of the hands of these savers and
put and put spending dollars into there.
It's like, OK, great, let's give them all $80,000 per Bitcoin.
That's a little bit of a premium.
All these high time preference idiots are going to take that
and they're going to go in, Jack that $80,000 into there.
It's like wow, why would they do that?
It's like cuz we'll punish them with a $250,000 fine if we don't
like that was the ultimatum the majority of people had.
It is absolutely catastrophic. The lengths at which the
government can and in my opinion will go to, you know, for the
greater good, right? Let's shut down the economy for
the greater good. Let's force experimental
medicines for the greater good, like, like we've seen this
happen time and time again. It will continue to happen, and
the worst possible case is that it happens to your value.
If it happens to your value, your hoops, you're done, because
there's nothing else you can do. You're then forced to work until
the day you die if you cannot store your value properly.
So I think it was a bit longer. There's a bit more examples,
some fun personal stories. I've got a ton of.
We were talking off air like, I I've got a ton of hilarious
personal stories just of like, government overreach.
I'm like famously debanked here in Canada.
So I like, there was a bunch of like cool anecdotes that I was
able to share with the crowd. But the coolest part of it was,
was after I had five people who didn't know each other, like,
independently come up and say, hey, I'd heard about self
custody. I was like, you know, pretty
sold on it. But this changed my life.
I'm going home right now to take self custody of my coins, my
generational wealth. And I was like that that that
like struck me like quite emotionally, like that was that
was very, very inspiring that like guys we have to talk more.
We have to, we have to spread the mission of self custody.
They knew it was important they said that, but they didn't maybe
think about how important. They weren't thinking about, you
know, their bloodline. They weren't thinking about the
generational wealth that it can be.
And that's because they had their coins.
It was convenient. It's like I got Bitcoin
exposure. I I did it.
I ended the Fed. It's like, no, you didn't.
You end the Fed when they can't 6102 you You end the Fed when
they don't have the power over your value.
If you have to ask somebody else's permission, that somebody
has two opportunities, the opportunity to make you ask
permission and do whatever they want you to do.
But then you're also exposed to their, to their backbone, you
know, will they say no to the government at B, you know and
and personally I don't want that responsibility.
I don't, I don't want to have a government agent saying like,
give me Nico's coins. Like, like frankly Nico, I like,
I love you. But like if somebody stole my
daughter and said give me Nico's coins or this little girl
disappears, like bye to your coins, right?
Like like my daughter's life Trump's your coins.
I'm sorry every single day And and we have you know, out of
obligation to our users, but also to like our families and
the future of this incredible asset class, we have removed
that that, that scenario from the equation.
You removed, you removed. You created the incentive
structure. Right.
Bingo. Like that.
That's really like the key. And that's really what's this?
Fascinating. Clearly you guys really thought
about that line. Enable independence 'cause you
know, it's maybe I'm reading too into it, but that's essentially
what what you're doing when you create a a self custody by
default platform, because it's exactly what you said.
Why do you? Of course you will, but but
that's what that's what you do right when when you create a
self custody platform in the traditional sense, you'd be
like, why would you do that? Like from a business
perspective, 'cause it's a lot more painful, It's low time
preference, right? It's a lot easier to create the
kind of convenience, but it's a lot more difficult, I would say,
from an educational standpoint. And it's just the right thing to
do from the revolutions aspect, right?
You know, the separation of money and state, right?
And again, the, you know, with Adam, with with your daughter in
that example, it's a great example because look, no one is
better than their incentives. At the end of the day, I I don't
care who you are, but it's just like no one, no one is better
than their incentives. And if you create an incentive
structure where it's not that you're going to do it every day,
It's not that Brian Armstrong, you know, his night table was
reliable, you know, 364 days out of the year.
But it only just takes one day, you know, for someone to knock
on his door and say, you know, like, hand me over those seed
words in your night table next to a picture of Christine
Lagarde and. He could think it's all totally
fine until it's just not like like nobody needs disaster
protection until disaster has struck.
And like, you know, here we get into the craziness of like, oh,
you know, we got to bunker down and and and you know, we got to
like we got to prepare for the worst and blah blah, blah.
And there's probably a balance there.
Honestly, taking self custody of your Bitcoin is the lowest
possible like disaster preparation that you can
possibly do. Like if you if you even think
about wearing a seat belt when you drive and have car
insurance, you should self custody or Bitcoin, those are
the same things. It's like, you know I'm probably
not going to crash my car, but if I did I don't want to go
through the windshield. So I'm just going to like click
this thing in. It's like you know, takes a
little bit of time. I had to learn how it worked but
it's like it's it's it's very worth it for me to not go to the
windshield in the slim chance that I crashed my car.
I think there's a greater chance that we see one of the three
disasters that I kind of explained either you know, the
theft, the honeypot or the 6102. Those three things are like
historically have happened. I would say it is quite likely
it will happen in the future. Just put your seat belt on self
custody or Bitcoin like it. We need to get this message out
there. We need to normalize self
custody and it's be like we need to look at, you know, how we
like look at people right now when like, like people that are
like jogging with masks on outside and you're like, what
are you doing? Like who?
Who do you think you are? Who are you protecting?
It's like, it's like when you have your coins sitting on
someone else's platform, it's got to be that same look.
It's like, what are you doing? Like why are you doing this?
Why are you part of this charade?
Like, stop this. That's that's what I think.
Beautifully said, that comment from Wine Kiss Wine Kiss, which
is absolutely hilarious. Why can't Brian Armstrong be
like Adam? No beer man.
OK, Opti, what's your take on all this, brother?
I mean, we say it all the time here, we say it all the time
here. And we've had a lot of hype
around the Bitcoin ETFs and stuff because it's like the
latest evolution of the Bitcoin space.
But we say probably every single day like self custody is the
revolution we've seen. As Adam was saying, you know, he
gave us 3 great examples. And we've seen this play out for
basically as long as humans have had history, that if you give
someone the ability to store your money, it's no longer your
money and they're going to do whatever they want with it.
That's like the whole basis of why we tell you guys to take
Bitcoin into custody. Because look, you can be the
most moral, principled person ever.
But like, if your money's just storing with someone, there's
always going to be that, that allure, that possibility of them
fractionally reserving your Bitcoin of you, or rather using
your money in a way that you didn't give them the, you know,
the permission to do. This is literally how we got
into Fiat money in the 1st place.
We saw this happen with the Roman Empire.
We saw this happen with gold. Like now we're just in a new
evolution of this where we have a better money.
We have the strongest money ever.
It is Bitcoin. And I think bitcoiners, being
adversarial thinkers, we're all wondering like, OK, how do we
make sure that we are not just building ourselves a gilded cage
with Bitcoin and recreating the same problems?
Because look, I know a lot of us bitcoiners we we do run with the
meme of like, Bitcoin has already won.
But we still have to stay vigilant out there because like,
we're not out of the woods yet. We we haven't necessarily
created a system where this isn't a possibility like it may
be you know, a very small chance, but it's a non zero
possibility that your Bitcoin can be taken from you if you
aren't taking your custody, your Bitcoin into custody.
And that's why we tell you guys every single day self custody is
the revolution. Because if everyone is holding
their own keys to their Bitcoin then there is no possibility of
this happening. And then we build that
peer-to-peer circular economy that all of us bitcoiners want
to happen, but we're not out of in the woods yet.
You know, we still have to develop this system.
We still have to build the layer twos out there, or else like,
for better or worse, like we can build a system that pretty much
recreates the Fiat system. But just odd, quote UN quote,
the Bitcoin network. And this is what all of us
bitcoiners are looking for and and trying to avoid and being
vigilant that we don't just end up recreating the system again
because we know humans are no better than our incentive.
And look, I jokingly say this, I think I'm a moral, principled
person. But if you guys gave me your
Bitcoin and you didn't touch it for, I don't know, 10 years, I'm
sure, I'm sure that green will take hold and like, look, I can
just. Take like a little bit of this.
Come out of the night stand, baby like.
Exactly like send your Bitcoin to my night stand.
And after a certain while I I can almost convince you that I
will use some of your Bitcoin and try to recreate it.
Like embezzling has been a part of humanity for a long time.
And just got the big. Corners.
A public address on his night stand with my inside the drawer.
It's like deposit to my night stand, please.
Guys, This is why we don't trust banks in the 1st place.
You know, we saw this happen in 2008.
Like, humans aren't better than their incentives.
And This is why we we talk about taking your Bitcoin into
custody. So you completely take that
opportunity off the table and hence why automatic self custody
is such an important thing out there.
It's like, look, I want you to get Bitcoin, but I don't want to
hold your Bitcoin. How do we make this happen?
How do we make sure that the transition and the friction is
minimized so that you own your Bitcoin and you control your own
wealth? Like it?
Really. Another trend.
I'm going to full screen myself here.
Another It really blows my mind that the status quo of humanity
right now is trusting someone else with your wealth.
It absolutely blows my mind that the average people, I think that
giving a bank their money is the safest way to store your value.
Like it it it makes it almost makes me insane when I think
about this is like everyone out here thinks that their money is
in a safety deposit box in a bank and they're not doing crazy
nefarious financial trickery with it.
And it's like, no, you literally gave your money to someone else.
They can do whatever they have. What's the meme?
You know, a possession is 9/10 of the law.
Well, in Bitcoin, possession is 10 tenths of the law.
Like he who owns the keys controls your Bitcoin.
It's literally that simple. And I, you know, actually Adam,
I do want to ask you because we see the meme right now of, you
know, Bitcoin ETFs being a gateway drug to self custody,
but it's also like, you know, Bitcoin ETFs with paper Bitcoin.
So what's your thoughts on this idea of people going to ETFs and
then eventually going into Bitcoin?
Yeah man, I think gate. I think that ETFs are the
gateway drug into self custody. The problem with gateway drugs
is they just cause a lot of heroin addicts.
And I and I think like gateway drugs are bad.
Like, like, no one's ever like, Oh yeah, I started partying with
marijuana and then, you know, then I got hooked on heroin.
And I'm really happy that I had that gateway drug.
Like, and I and I know that like that that's a hyperbolic
progression. Don't come at me about, like,
how weed is a gateway to to, like, smack.
But, like, gateway drugs are not good.
Gateway drugs are the problem. And if we don't normalize you
know opioids and we don't normalize like this party
culture of drug doing, then we don't have the homeless and drug
problem that we have. And so if we don't normalize
ETFs we won't have the problem that exists here.
I think the like you know if we keep this example running the
only reason we do drugs is to feel better, right.
That's it period. That's that that's that's the
reason drugs exist. High time preference dopamine.
Well the only reason we self custody is to be free.
When you own ABTFBTF an an ETF you are not free.
When you own Bitcoin in self custody you are and so like if
you want a quick high tide preference dopamine do some
cocaine. If you want long lasting
dopamine like get up early, work hard, eat steak and drink lots
of water like so. If you want high time preference
Fiat gains from Bitcoin then buy the ETF.
If you want generational wealth and freedom for you and your
family then buy Bitcoin and self custody at bitcoinworld.com.
Like it's it's it's it's not that hard in my opinion.
It's like we need to Unless your Bitcoin is in your custody, it's
not real. Unless you bought Bitcoin and
saw a TXID come out of the blockchain because of it, it's
not real. Anything other than that is
fake. And like, we want fake Bitcoin.
Like, we saw how fake dopamine is ruining society.
Fake Bitcoin will be 25 times worse than that.
On an order of magnitude, let's like be better.
Amen. Amen.
Love that. OK, let's pivot a little bit to
the giveaways that we've been doing the last couple of days
actually. But before we do this, I want to
acknowledge everyone out there, you guys are the real MVPS
because the Bitcoin jackpot has doubled since we announced.
This, but love to see it. But those are rookie numbers.
We gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers.
Com contest. Yeah, sign up.
Okay. So just hit.
Just FYI, had just hit 3,000,000 Sats.
I'm looking at a live number 3.0.
OK, it's not live yet, OK? That doesn't update
automatically, unfortunately. 3 point O 34410 is the amount of
Sats sitting in the jackpot and on behalving.
We're going to have our our script figure out who's going to
take home 69% of that jackpot. OK, so back to last week's Are
we announcing the Stamp Seed winners live or you got them or?
So I tweeted last week, before we drew, which blocks would be
determined. Remember, if you Scroll down a
little bit, Opti, you can audit the script that chooses the
contestants. This is like, you know, there's
no funny business here, right there, Audit the script.
So I ran through, I took five blocks.
We had five people that that were, you know how many people
entered on that day with the blah cache, which is obviously
random and yeah, voila. And so I've got 5 usernames
here. I'm gonna just read them out and
I'll be in touch with you later today on who want.
So first username, I'm not gonna show the usernames because, well
just for obvious reasons, but first one is Andrew J, second
one is Mark 123, third one is Dennis Leclair C, third one is
Tavon and fifth one or fourth one is Tavon and 4th one, fifth
one is Randy Bowman. And so those are the usernames,
the well tags of all the people. Congrats to you guys.
You got some free seed plates you can like go stamp your value
into the future. That's super dope.
So nice work. Just as a reminder, like Bitcoin
jackpot contest is still alive. We're going to be giving away
other random prizes later on down the road, but sign up at
bitcoinwell.com/contest and yeah, let's like, let's go guys.
Obviously, you know, I'm super lucky to be able to come on here
and chat with you guys. But if you can't, I'm like, I'm
like looking at myself, I'm like a little flush in the face.
I'm like, I'm so fired up about self custody.
Like, you know, whether you use Bitcoin well or like if you're
in the States, you literally can't use any other platform
that is automatic self custody because they just don't exist.
But if you are in Canada, you know, whether you're using
Bitcoin well or using bull like at the end of the day use a
platform that aligns with your values.
And if your values are like, you know, oh I'm here.
I'm good. I'm.
I'm looking for paper gains and like whatever.
Like Bitcoin well is probably not for you and and and that's
OK if your values are Bitcoin is freedom money.
Bitcoin exists to give me and my family independence based on the
value of our efforts. Then like Bitcoin well is for
you and and and I want to work for you.
I want to work as hard as I possibly can to give you and
your family the best possible platform to use.
And so please like tell me what's working.
Tell me what's not. We had some great feedback like
hey the time delay between funding the the Fiat and be able
to receive Bitcoin too long. We're fixing that.
Like it's it's going to be fixed soon.
You're going to be able to smash by and and and get that Txid.
Like, like we're just making the platform in such a way that we
want the community, the hardcore Bitcoin community, to be able to
use it easily and feel good about onboarding their friends.
So that's the pitch. I don't want to shell anymore,
but I love you guys absolutely. Adam, there is a few questions
in the chat that that I think we should clear up.
First of all, when does the contest and we we say it all the
time, but again refreshing for the people.
Yeah, so the contest is going to go until the halving.
So block 840,000 is going to trigger the end of the contest.
Not a time, it's a this is a, this is a Bitcoin contest.
We are ending in blocks, the 20. So how the jackpot works, it's
split three ways, 69% obviously, 21% obviously and then what's
left is 10%. So 69% goes to the grand prize.
This is drawn out of block 840,000 and two.
So the hash of that block will determine the winner of all of
the entrance. We then have the the secondary
prize which is 21% and that is 840,000 and one.
So block 840-0001 is going to determine that winner and then
and then the last 10% goes to a project on Geyser.
There's currently a poll on the Bitcoin well Twitter at the
Bitcoin Well you can you can you can vote for one of the three
projects that we've chosen to to donate this the rest of the
jackpot too. So even if you don't win you can
feel really good about about funding one of the three
projects on Geyser. So trying to be like, pretty,
you know, community focused and contest ends at the halving.
So enter now. You can enter as many times as
you want. You enter with your Bitcoin,
well, points. You get points by signing up
with Drop Coinbase if you're listening to the show.
You get points by tweeting me. Drop Coinbase right now at Adam
O'Brien under score and you get points by signing up, making
purchases, referring your friends, and all the rest of it.
Love it. Love it.
OK And the last one to clear up for everyone Where is Bitcoin
Well available? And then they're wondering, are
you thinking of expanding? I see that at the beginning of
every episode. Every episode we're we're in
Canada and the US all 50 states. Yeah all 50 states that's that's
that's relatively new. We launched in the states like
9:00-ish 8-9 months ago, but we only got all 50 states in
February, so super stoked on that.
So every single province in Canada, every single states in
the US buy Bitcoin goes automatically to self custody.
I saw someone in the chat asking about selling.
We're going to have sell. You're going to be able to sell
Bitcoin directly from self custody.
So the workflow will be so simple, it's going to be sell
Bitcoin. Which bank do you want the money
to go into This bank, please. Here's your QR code and then
you're going to send Bitcoin and receive Fiat right in that bank.
And so now there's a there's a debate here.
There's there's a question here, well, why would I sell my
Bitcoin? I am.
I'm a hardcore maxi. I don't.
I don't ever sell. Yes, you do.
Only hardcore Maxis sell because only hardcore Maxis are all in.
And if you are all in, you need to sell to live unless you plan
on not consuming anything ever again.
So I do believe that selling Bitcoin is part of creating a
Bitcoin, a hyper bitcoinized society.
Because if you all you're doing is buying, you're just holding
the rest of your value in Fiat. If you have dry powder, it means
you don't have enough Bitcoin. If you have dry powder today,
you didn't stack enough Bitcoin yesterday.
And so giving our customers the ability to sell from self
custody in a super easy and convenient way is the number
one. Like, that's part of it.
It's not #1 maybe, but it's part of the ecosystem.
It's part of creating an environment that's like not a
bank, Brian, but it's like the modern banking ecosystem that
gives our users the ability to use their money in a way that's
from self custody. Amen spend don't sell.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. But like, you can't pay a
mortgage or rent in Bitcoin. The majority of people, yeah,
that's where we're going to yet that's where we're going to.
And in Canada, we're gonna bring this to the States eventually.
You can pay your bills in Bitcoin.
You can literally take like, your Amex card, tap, tap, tap,
and then pay that off at the end of the month with Bitcoin.
That's awesome. But like you just cannot Canada
and the and and the US North America the payments
infrastructure is so incestual and bad but also convenient like
you're not walking into Wendy's to buy a Baconator with Bitcoin
anytime soon in Canada. You can barely do that in El
Salvador and it's legal tender like like the the execs are not
looking at at this with any type of of of reality anytime soon
And so for the for the time being we Bitcoin well and and
other incredible companies need to make ways need to find
products and invent products invent workflows and pathways
for money to move so that you can spend your Bitcoin even if
the merchant doesn't accept and that's the next phase.
So phase one Bitcoin accessibility we're like getting
there pretty good. Phase two make it easy on and
off directly from self custody we're like we're in that phase
and then the next phase the most exciting phase hyper
bitcoinization. How do you as the user have the
ability to have all of your money in self custody but still
have full access to the real world and and being able to
spend that money? That's the Holy Grail.
Amen to that. Amen to that.
We got one more question from Thomas.
Thomas says how long does the identity verification take?
It's pretty effing fast, man. Couple minutes like, yeah, 120
to 180 seconds is kind of our benchmark.
If you're like you know it does, you do have to verify your
identity. So if you're like taking bad
pictures, it'll be longer. If there's like you know things
that are wrong with the verification, like you're a
scammer, then it will also take a little bit longer.
If we think, you know, if the robots that do the verification
think you're a scammer, then it will take longer.
But like our support team, so we had a big meeting 3 weeks ago
and I and I, I welcomed the team to Operation Toro.
And Operation Toro is an absolute maniacal urgency.
All hands on deck 24/7. This is going to be insane while
we on board as many people as possible.
And so like if there's problems, you know, reach over to the
team. There is someone there like all
the time. And if if you want to like, you
know, follow me on Twitter, like hit me up on Twitter.
I am so active. I'm living, sleeping and eating
this operation tomorrow season that we're in.
And yeah, like we want to make sure that you are on board to
the safest possible Bitcoin platform in the world.
That is Bitcoin Well. And we want to make sure that
that happens very fast. Boom.
All right, Thomas, you literally
have no excuses, bro. I caught.
You. Yeah.
Or dude, stop taking on the zoomer I caught.
You I caught you in the beginning admitting that you
were using Coinbase. You know, transition to self
custody by default. Thomas, you could do it.
You could do it. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
Holy cow. All right, we're at 1743 live
viewers on Twitter, about 350 on YouTube, and about 674 on
Rumble. Shout out to a rumble audience.
I love rumble, man. Rumble makes me feel good.
Anyways, guys, if you are enjoying the show, smash that
like button. We really, really appreciate it
helps convince the algos that we're doing something right.
Anyways, guys, if you enjoyed the show, you know what to do.
Smash that like button. Consider subscribing if you feel
like we provided you value. But the number one thing you
could do to push this peaceful Bitcoin revolution is share
Bitcoin content, Share Bitcoin culture.
Just get the message out there. I also want to thank our very
special guest, the EO and founder of Bitcoin L, the first
Bitcoin on ramp in the United States to have self custody by
default of the heart. Wow.
All right, guys, that was our show.
Oh, that's happened to me before Camera dies.
All right, guys, if you enjoyed the show, you do.
I already said it. Smash the like button.
We'll see you tomorrow for a brand new episode of Simply
Bitcoin Live and back next week for the IRL.
And stay tuned because Ruston's going to come in hot with some
Simply Bitcoin originals as well.
Love you guys. Take care.
I'll see you tomorrow. Peace out, everybody.
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