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Well, Dad, I noticed some interesting news kicking around that came out of the Mining

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Pool Observer Project. They noticed something kind of unsettling, but I thought maybe I'd

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start with, could you kind of explain what the Mining Pool Observer Project is and what

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they're doing?

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This is a really interesting project. It's produced by Bitcoin developer OXB10C, obviously

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a pseudonym. And if you will recall, I think last year, there was a US Mining Pool, I want

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to say Marathon, that added an up-return message to the blocks they mined that said

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something to the effect of, this is an OFAC compliant block. And it wasn't true because

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they weren't filtering blocks for Bitcoin addresses that were on the OFAC sanctions

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list. And of course, OFAC stands for Office of Foreign Asset Control, and it's one of

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these sanctioning entities in the US Treasury. It's used to sanction Iran, Russia, Hezbollah,

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all of the entities that the US government doesn't like. Basically, it's a list of names

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and businesses and Ethereum and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency addresses that the US

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government thinks are related to bad people that they don't like. And so you're not supposed

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to interact with them. Well, last year when this mining pool hinted that they were OFAC

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filtering, basically not mining blocks from addresses on this list, this developer developed

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a tool called Mining Pool Observer. And what it does is basically monitors mem pools. And

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so I think the developer is monitoring their own mem pool. And I think you can also add

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your mem pool as like a data source to this observer. I'd have to look at the documentation

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again. And what it does is every second, it builds a Bitcoin block out of the transactions

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that are in its mem pool. And then when a block is mined by a pool, it compares the blocks

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that it's built to the blocks that are being mined, and it tries to find transactions that

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are missing. And usually when a transaction is missing, there's an innocuous reason like

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it only showed up in the mining pool observer pool a second ago, so it might not have propagated

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to the mining pool. Also, there are transactions that show up in the block, the mining pool

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block that shouldn't be there, transactions with fees that are too low. And these are

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generally ascribed to the initiator of that transaction used a mining pool accelerator

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channel like a credit card transaction or a bank wire to add additional fees to that

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transaction so that the mining pool would mine it. But sometimes there are transactions

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missing and there's no explanation. And the reason therefore has to be probably the transaction

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was filtered out at the pool level for some reason.

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And I'm guessing based on that opera turn code that said OFAC compliant transaction,

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for some reason is they're filtering based on this list provided by the US government.

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Well, the irony was that that OFAC compliant message, they were not actually filtering

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those blocks. So there were sanctioned addresses in those blocks. So it was just some sort of

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marketing or they were getting ready to do that, but they kind of jumped the gun. But

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what's happened is that mining pool observer has detected, I think six blocks mined by

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F2 pool that seem to be missing addresses or outputs from addresses that are on the OFAC

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compliant list. So this is really good evidence that F2 pool has been filtering transactions,

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censoring transactions using the OFAC list of sanctioned Bitcoin addresses as their filter.

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Hmm. You know, I'm grateful that we have projects that are watching this. And now more people are

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going to be watching as a result of this. Now they've walked this back. I think there was news

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that someone from F2 pool said something to the effect of that they're going to roll back the

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patch that enabled this filtering until there's more consensus around how the community wants

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to handle this sort of thing. And mining pool observer is a really important project, because

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if we didn't have this tool monitoring blocks and mem pools, we would have totally missed this

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because it's hard to, it's actually hard to identify a block filter or a censorship filter,

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because you're trying to find something that should be there, but isn't there. That's actually

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quite difficult. And so this is a very important project. And I think it also is ringing an alarm

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bell that we are on a slippery slope to censorship. And obviously we don't need to play it out all

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the way to the end, because things often don't go to their logical extreme. But this is the beginning,

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perhaps, of censorship on Bitcoin. And it's happening at the pool level, which makes a lot

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of sense, because they're centralized larger entities, they can be regulated. Two of the largest

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mining pools in the world are based in the US. Together, they control over 51% of Bitcoin

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hash rate. Does that mean they're going to 51% attack Bitcoin? No, because they don't have a

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financial incentive to and even if ordered to by the US government, miners could direct their

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hash rate elsewhere. There are also developments like the stratum v2 protocol that allows the

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individual miners in the pool to build block templates, not the pool itself. So this takes

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away some of the censoring power of the pool. So there are positive developments in Bitcoin

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mining that kind of offsets this censorship activity. But it's still happening. And we

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still need more development on freedom technology and mining, in my opinion.

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I think we're really in the trend of this episode, I think is going to kind of lay it out there.

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We're on the precipice of a bunch of really historical forks in the road for Bitcoin in

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particular. I also think that maybe this will reignite interest in the plebs to set up

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little mining operations at home, even if they're small, little low power operations,

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you know, we can always add a little bit more decentralization to the network. So

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kind of gets me thinking about it. Maybe others will too. This is the Bitcoin dad pod recorded

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on November 24, 2023. I'm your Bitcoin dad. Happy Thanksgiving. And I'm here, as always,

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remotely with me, Chris. Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for joining us.

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On today's show, we're going to touch on another SEC lawsuit against Kraken that asserts polygon

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and Solana are securities. The major news of the week is that finance CEO CZ has pled guilty to US

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money laundering charges. And the exchange is going to pay a $4.3 billion fine to settle some

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US allegations. Seems like the exchange space is becoming much more compliant. Also,

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Bitrex and other non US crypto exchange is shutting down. The question has to be asked

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is Bitcoin entering its epoch of diminishing returns? The last happening disappointed in terms

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of the Bitcoin price gains? What's going on? Are we going to have another disappointing

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happening when million dollar Bitcoin will get into that? Butans Bitcoin mining operation has been

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identified by Forbes. I know we always accuse Forbes of being incapable of serious journalism,

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and they seem to have kind of done an interesting job here. So there's sort of an interesting story

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about Bhutan and their relationship with mining. Wallet of Satoshi, a popular custodial Bitcoin

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wallet is removing its US support. Obviously, it's not compliant with US regulations around

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financial custody. So that was kind of an obvious thing that would happen when it got large enough.

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On the subject of app stores, Apple has again started beef with Zeus developer Evan Kalutis

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after his developer account has been suspended. In economics, we have an excerpt from Lynn Alden's

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book, Broken Money. The title is the monetary gates are down. And this is a really interesting

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high level take on financial technology adoption, dollarization. And I think it ties in nicely with

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the news from Argentina about a new president who is sort of a outsider candidate and is talking

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about officially dollarizing the Argentinian economy. In privacy, Cloudflare seems to be

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filtering for Ethereum of fact listed addresses. So the theme of this episode is financial censorship

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and address filtering and coin center, a crypto lobbying group in Washington DC,

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as a blog post linking to their larger report on the US Bank Secrecy Act and how terribly

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illegal it actually is. And then we have some boosts and that's our show.

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Big show because there's some big things happening that are going to kind of lay down,

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I think the future of Bitcoin and how Bitcoiners are going to act with their Bitcoin. So let's

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start with CZ. The US federal government made a big show out of this. In fact, it's the first time

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that Janet Yellen and the head of the Justice Department did a press conference together.

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And of course, also the head of the FBI was there and they announced a massive crackdown on

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Binance and that CZ was stepping down. And I think anybody that's kind of been watching the ETF news

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and kind of reading the signals from Gary and the SEC and from BlackRock, it seemed kind of

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inevitable that before the ETFs for Bitcoin were going to get approved, Binance was going to get

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reigned in, at least taken down a peg if not completely taken out. And I think we've definitely

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seen that now. The sheriff's in town, dad. And actually, CZ was in our neck of the woods on

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Thursday. Just yesterday, he came to Seattle to plead guilty in federal court there. And he did

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not stop by to get a coffee despite my offer. So I'm feeling a little rejected. But yeah,

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that's too bad. He had to get back to Dubai, I guess. So what's going on here? Well,

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some of the reporting suggests that Binance has been in talks about this settlement with the US

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Justice Department for three years. So this has been a long time in the making. I think that they

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set up their operations to be stateless, high degree of secrecy. They designed themselves to

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be kind of a hard target for US law enforcement. But I think that was very difficult and very

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costly. And we saw in the past year, just an outflow of Binance executives, first from Binance

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US, which was the supposedly compliant Binance operation. But clearly, they also broke the

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rules. There was some leaked information about how market making firms associated with CZ were

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interacting with Binance US and maybe the assets between Binance US and global Binance were

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commingled. And so all of the kind of compliant by the book CEOs that they hired in the US to

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kind of add a veneer of respectability and compliance to their US operation, they left.

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And so that was a bad look for Binance. That suggested that things were probably not going

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well. That said, this settlement is in many ways a great outcome because personally, I thought that

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Binance very easily could be another FTX, another insolvent exchange with very little scrutiny

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over their finances. So why wouldn't they be insolvent? Why wouldn't they have played games

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with customer funds? And it doesn't seem to be the case because as part of the agreement between

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Binance and the US Justice Department, the exchange seems to have a huge amount of cash on hand.

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They've kind of opened their books a little. And as long as that information is in false and

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frankly, providing false information to the US Justice Department is pretty suicidal,

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so I don't think they've done that, then they seem to be in a pretty okay financial position.

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The other aspect is that this paves the way for less resistance to Bitcoin and Ethereum now spot

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ETF proposals because Binance used to be 80% of global crypto trading volume. It's since dropped

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down to 60% and as they become more compliant with US regulation, which they will because they

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have to have a third party auditor that monitors their compliance operations, they're going to get

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less and less volume because they're going to be less competitive versus already compliant exchanges

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like Kraken or Coinbase. That also means that some Binance customers who are not able to KYC

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with a US compliant exchange, they're going to move elsewhere, but those are going to be smaller

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volumes, smaller venues, and it seems like eventually the majority of crypto trading is going to be

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under the US regulatory umbrella. And so crypto bros, I think like this because this means bigger

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market cap, more opportunity for centralized projects that require some legal cover to print

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tokens and whatever, pump and dump them. But I think for us, for the kind of cypherpunk

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big Bitcoiners, this is the end of an era. This is the end of the Wildcat exchanges. This is the

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end of a kind of free-for-all, wheeling and dealing international exchange Bitcoin financial market.

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And it seems like something much more compliant, much more under the thumb of US regulation is

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replacing it. Well, Ted, you're just using the wrong language. What Wall Street is calling it is,

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this is the end of the quote, legacy exchanges, and we're now entering into the era of trusted

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exchanges. So you see, dad, you're just looking at it from the wrong angle. They got them dead to

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rights on a few things. It's pretty embarrassing. I mean, I guess they better. If it took them three

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years across three different agencies, and God knows how many staff to work on this obvious

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case, I hope they had some good stuff. And one of them is internal communications that essentially

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are just walking through some whale customers through pretending like they're not from the US

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and how to transition their account when they had to create Binance US, how to transition and make

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things seem normal. They also have communications internally of the staff walking someone through

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who got flagged with fraud, I think maybe like another OFAC sanction, Ethereum thing. And so

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their account got flagged and they're like, well, you don't really have to leave, but you just have

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to make it look like you're leaving the platform. Here's some tips, you know, that kind of stuff

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just right there in the chat. So that's one of the reasons why CZ's kind of, they got them

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dead to rights. I don't really quite understand how it works since he's not a US citizen, but

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clearly there's a bilateral cooperation, I suppose. Yeah, I got to agree with Sam Bankmanfreed on

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this one. If you put something in the Slack chat, expect it to be on the front page of the New York

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Times. So that is certainly some egg on their face. You know, in the previous SEC denials

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of spot ETFs for Bitcoin, I believe at least in one of them, it's been a while and they're really

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thick, but I believe at least in one of them, they specifically cited Binance as a market

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manipulator of the Bitcoin price, which is why we kind of, you and I months ago said, yeah,

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Binance is done. They got it in for Binance. If they're specifically calling out Binance as a risk

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and now BlackRock, the big dog wants a spot ETF, they're going to have to go clean up

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the exchanges and that's exactly what happened. And Fidelity has just opened a proposal for a new

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Ethereum spot ETF. So it seems like the era of regulated financial products,

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wrapping cryptocurrencies is here. And again, it could have been worse for Binance because

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they are not admitting to market manipulation. They're not admitting to her loining customer

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assets. Oddly enough, kind of like Tether, they're this, they were this gray market,

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black market entity that didn't have to do financial compliance because they were so

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clearly out of compliance, but they were pretty good, it seems. They didn't monkey around with

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and hurt their customers that much. And so in an odd way, it kind of is an example of how maybe

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regulated financial compliance is maybe not as necessary as people seem to believe.

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You get market compliance when you succeed at being just a little bit less shady than your

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nearby competitor. I don't know, man. When it comes to all of this stuff, it seems like there

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was pretty good indications though that they were intermingling customer funds and their finances.

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I didn't dig super deep into it, but I did see multiple references to it in the brief

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that there was co-mingling of funds. And you know, the SEC has been signaling about coming

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after co-mingling of funds for two years. So I mean, there was some of that going on, it seems.

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Right. So they were kept in similar, they weren't fully segregated accounts. And this is kind of

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the argument that the future for exchanges is separating custody and trading. And this is how

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US markets have prevented financial fraud for over 100 years now. Because if the exchange has to

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trade your assets by contacting your custodian, your custodian is keeping records of what the

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exchange is doing and therefore it becomes much harder to pull an FTX and basically use

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customer assets for whatever you want. Corey, is that you? Are you there, Corey?

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On the one hand, you can see how separating custody and trading is a good idea. On the other hand,

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I wonder if this leads Bitcoin into the gold rabbit hole where in order to trade on these

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venues, you have to send coins into regulated custodians and these regulated custodians,

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you know, that the coins never come out. They just end up sitting there forever. And then you

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end up with a market like the US stock market where all the shares are actually custodyed by

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the deposit clearing corporation or like the bullion markets where the bulk of the world's

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tradable gold is in the LBMA, London Bullion Market Association vaults. And it's not audited,

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it's hard to know how much is there. And we sort of lose that auditability aspect

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of Bitcoin in the process of mainstreaming it as a financial asset.

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I think that's definitely a scenario. You know, we've seen a similar sort of consolidation

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with open source into commercial entities, but I could see it sort of playing out where a couple

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hundred dollars here and there, that's really kind of just still peer to peer, you know,

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so over some layer to not really a big deal. But when you want to say spend 900, you want to cash

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out $900,000 worth of Bitcoin because maybe you got to like buy a house in the Pacific Northwest.

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I suspect you're only going to be doing those transactions with companies like Coinbase or

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that, you know, New York Stock Exchange or Fidelity or whoever it is at that point that's

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managing your Bitcoin stash. And it's going to be they're going to hold your keys for you.

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And, you know, their reputation will be on the line. They have to hold a bunch of assets right

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now, but it's going to be more like that, I think, for the very large transaction because,

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you know, terrorism and we got to protect from fraud. Right. And I find that very depressing

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because for me, Bitcoin has always been about having financial sovereignty, being able to do

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what you want with your money. And now it seems like there are a couple of asterisks to that,

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depending on how you want to interact with the regulated financial system.

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Although, you know, all those right wingers that can drive you crazy in Bitcoin,

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they're going to get inspired by this and motivated to build systems that preserve privacy.

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I really believe that because that's just sort of been the playbook throughout Bitcoin.

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Things that, you know, we have these ideas and these concepts that we poke at them and we poke

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at them. And then there's a market need all of a sudden. And then it's the best thing ever.

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And it starts getting traction. Maybe. I mean, one counterpoint to that is that a lot of Bitcoin

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scaling solutions are centralization based, for instance, Barack's ARC protocol, which no one

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fully understands, but it's a concept of a kind of hybrid LSP slash something else provider. And

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they have this system where you can kind of trade for free inside the ARC server. But you can always

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withdraw as long as you're online once a month to kind of refresh your virtual TXOs and you can

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withdraw to lightning. But this is a centralized entity. And for sure, it'll be regulated because

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as we're observing even Binance, which built itself in a antifragile way that was hard to

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regulate, it is throwing in the towel. It's not worth it to fight for them anymore.

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But the problem, dad, even there with, you know, okay, yeah, that's that's a problem for ARC.

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The problem is at the exits. It doesn't really matter what solution we use to mix our coins or

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to get, you know, privacy on the network. If we still want to take those sats across the exit

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into some sort of local currency to buy something with a large amount, the problem is going to be

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there at the exit. It always will be. And that's where the control is. That's why I really feel

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like Bitcoiners should spend a lot more time thinking about creating a Bitcoin economy,

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you know, doing business with businesses that take Bitcoin, because I just feel like if we can

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avoid the off ramps all together, then we're all better off. And businesses are much more happy

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to sit there and stack sats and look at the market. Well, I think in the future, but you know,

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stack sats and sell or sell them directly and deal with the tax consequences and manage the KYC

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there because a business is already KYC'd up the wazoo anyways. And so it just to me, it just seems

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like we could keep in a circular economy where the businesses can cash out to there to whatever

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their preference is. Individuals can buy in and cash out to their preference, but we could buy more

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and more goods and sats. I think it solves a big part of the problem. And then you look at, well,

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where is this actually happening? Well, bit refill, there are some things out there, but podcasts,

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podcasts are one of the few things where we actually price things in sats. Like we don't,

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I don't know how much, you know, a row of ducks converts to in US dollars right now. I don't know

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what a McDuck row of ducks converts to in dollars. I know what it is in sats is 22,220 sats, 222 sats.

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Or, you know, a row of ducks is just 2,222 sats. I have no idea what that is in USD price because

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I don't care if we've been pricing it in a sat based economy because it is a sat, it's all,

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it's all sats the whole way through. And I think we need more of that. And then we don't really

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have to worry about the exit point. And in a lot of ways, things like lightning, I think they make

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this more of a reality. And that's why I'm still, even though it's frustrating to run the node right

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now, I'm actually still very positive on these things. And we can't always avoid the exit points,

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but maybe we can have less and less of them. And I agree. I mean, sometimes the simplest solutions

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are the best. And so if we do have the potential during this Bitcoin bull run to also see serious

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issues in the legacy financial system, we've talked about them. The regional banking crisis in the US

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isn't over. The commercial real estate crisis in the US is really just getting started. The US

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government is in an increasingly unsustainable fiscal position. And as a result, financial

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surveillance and financial control in the legacy system is tightening, and it's even tightening

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into Bitcoin and crypto as we've described. And so this might incentivize people who previously

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dealt in dollars or all of their financial transactions to consider dealing in SATs. And it

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does feel like maybe we are some way away from that, but the incentives for dealing in SATs

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directly seem to be getting better. So maybe there is a silver lining there. Yeah, I think it just

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takes a new, a new generation of businesses. But there is a bit of an upside to some of this

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cleanup of things like Binance or some of these other exchanges that are shutting down. It will,

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over time, cultivate more trust in the marketplace. That is going to be the upshot of this, is that

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you're, instead of these crazy names and brands, you've never heard of that are mostly, for most

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people, just an app on their phone that are, you know, these new startups, it's going to be

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institutions that have been around their entire lives. It's names they've heard since they've

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been babies that are known to be like the top brands in money. Despite what we might think about

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the banks, average people and the brand recognition is huge. And the fact that they're going to be

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talking about Bitcoin now, and they're going to be talking about it through their instruments,

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I think is, it's like the difference between when people refuse to put their credit card on

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Amazon and now everybody buys everything on Amazon. That's a good point. You remember,

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you're old enough to remember this too, right? Like our parents and family members were afraid

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to put their credit cards on the internet. It was a thing for a long time, but trust shifted.

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And now everyone's on Amazon and everybody's putting their credit cards into a membership

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for a streaming service or buying something through an app on their phone. I wasn't the

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case in the 90s and in the early aughts. It took, it took a shift. And that's what's going to happen

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with Fidelity, Bitcoin ETFs and BlackRock Bitcoin ETFs. Now it's clearly not a black market criminal

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money system because BlackRock's in it, Fidelity's in it. So there is that aspect to it. It's definitely

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a legitimate asset now. And the cost is you take out CZ. Binance gets knocked down to

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a fraction of itself, a skeleton version of itself. The exit points get a little tighter,

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right? That's the trade-off. And we see that as well with exchanges like Bitrex shutting down.

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And obviously Bitrex is a small exchange. I think its market share has been decreasing steadily for

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a very long time, but it's shutting down operations on December 4th. And it's just another one of

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these bucket shops, another one of these sort of international exchanges that had like KYC

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shutting down. And I think it's another sign of the institutionalization of the Bitcoin exchange

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market sort of in preparation for exchange traded products and Fidelity.

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And I'll remind you, we started the show talking about Kraken. The SEC has already taken a bite

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out of Kraken earlier this year. They had a massive fine already once this year. They're

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coming back for round two with the securities lawsuit against Kraken. They're, I think again,

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I don't know if they're going to destroy them, but they're going to financially wreck them and

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take them down to be an insignificant player in the market. Probably, you know, it's a war of

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attrition. But you take it all together with Binance and CZ, Bitrex stepping down or shutting down,

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I'm sorry. The second round of attacks on Kraken, all within a couple of weeks, all within a couple

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of weeks that they've been working on this stuff for a while. And it's all coming together right

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now. I think where this is remarkable history being made. And it's all kind of machinations

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behind the scenes that I don't think most people are paying attention to.

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Well, there's another perspective to the SEC's lawsuit on Kraken, because they already settled

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for $30 million when they sued Kraken for their staking operation. The thing is that this lawsuit

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against Kraken is a copy pasta of their lawsuit against Coinbase. And so the SEC is suing both

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Kraken and Coinbase, the two largest, I think, US exchanges. I'm not sure if Gemini is larger than

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Kraken. And what's going on here? Well, noticeably absent from the settlement against Binance and

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CZ was the SEC. So there is a sense that the US Justice Department and other US financial regulators

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are kind of keeping the SEC at arm's length because they didn't get in on the Binance settlement.

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And I think this kind of speaks to some of the concerns we've mentioned about Gary Gensler.

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He seems to be really interested in his own career and kind of the credibility of his agency

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is secondary to that. And it seems like the SEC is trying to hedge their bets because if they

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lose one of the lawsuits against a US exchange that might create a legal precedent that they

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do not have the ability to regulate US crypto exchanges, they want another lawsuit that gives

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them the opportunity to win and maintain that precedent. And of course, the lawsuit against

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Kraken is quite absurd because the SEC claims that Kraken never tried to register with the SEC

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and was just operating with impunity when we all know that Kraken and Coinbase have tried

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very hard to register with the SEC. And the SEC has not been interested in accepting their

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regulation. They'd rather keep them as kind of gray market entities and then regulate via

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enforcement whenever it was convenient to the SEC. I think it's falling off our radar,

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but I just looked it up. The SEC sued Gemini in January of this year for their earn program.

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Gemini has then countersued to try to get it dismissed a couple of months ago. And then

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something else that has happened that we kind of forgot about is the New York AG is suing Gemini,

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Genesis and DCG and others for defrauding customers and other issues. So there's also some local

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states that are going after Gemini. So Gemini's got a couple of lawsuits as well going on right now.

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So the pressure really is on on all these exchanges. It's really kind of when you zoom out

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and look at it all, it's kind of impressive the coordination in the amount of crackdown.

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I think I disagree with your take on Gary now. You know, you say Gary is looking out for his

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career. I believe that part. But you say at the cost of the credibility of the SEC. I don't know,

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man. Fast forward five years where the consumers are buying Bitcoin spot ETFs, the market's been

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cleared up. Gary might be remembered as the commissioner who cleaned up crypto. That might

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be his whole thing. He's like, he's the guy that came in, launched 125 legal actions or something.

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They're up there near the 120 different legal cases involving crypto right now. So he launched

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125 crypto legal cases, cracked down on things like CZ for billions of dollars, roped in these guys.

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But he didn't get in on the Binance settlement. The SEC has a separate civil case against Binance,

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which clearly Binance doesn't think is more threatening than the Justice Department case,

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because they weren't interested in including that in the settlement that they've already

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inked with the Justice Department. I still think though, I think he's going to be remembered

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as the sheriff that cleaned up crypto and all of these scammy exchanges and whatnot.

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It'll be his picture next to SPF, even if it's not quite true. I think it's going to be fantastic

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for Gary and I think it's going to be fantastic for the credibility of the SEC and they'll have

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expanded their power and their reach considerably through these actions. Because there's always

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going to be crap coins coming online. This is going to be an endless amount of work for the SEC

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that they now clearly, through all these legal actions, the established cop for that beat.

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And Gary did that for them, helped bring that to them. I think he's going to be

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remembered as a massive success for the SEC and as the crypto cop. It's going to be great for him.

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And all we had to do was give up our privacy, lose our ability to mix our coins,

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not really have access to self-custody apps and only sell and buy through KYC major institutional

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players. But number go up. I think that's what they're hoping. We'll see. I don't think that's

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necessarily the future, but I think Gary's going to come out looking like the top cop.

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He's feeling great looking like the king. He could slide right into that treasury position if he

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wants. I was going to say when he becomes secretary of the US Treasury, we should send him a note,

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I guess. Yeah. Have a party on the show for Gary. You did it, Gary. Well done. From a pure Bitcoin

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perspective, it's kind of good to see some of this go. We needed FTX cleaned up. We did kind of need

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Binance cleaned up. Binance doesn't serve Bitcoin. CZ has never done anything for Bitcoin. In fact,

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you can find video online years ago when there was some Binance software error where he's advocating

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to roll back the blockchain. What are you thinking? It was one of their hacks. It wasn't

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one of their big hacks, but one of their hot wallets was hacked for $63 million. And he was like,

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hold on, we might roll back the chain. And everyone was like, what are you talking about, CZ?

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It's a little controversial, but I think if we have the discussion, it might happen.

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Yeah. I mean, so he's never been a big Bitcoiner. And all of these casinos have done

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irreparable harm to Bitcoin's reputation. Imagine if the iPhone came out and there was one app and

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25,000 scam virus malware apps. Nobody would trust the iPhone in the app store. It would crater the

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trust in the product. Android has a little bit more of a problem with malware than Apple does,

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even though Apple has a problem, but they have a little bit more. And there is, overall, less

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market trust in the play store. And it shows in statistics. It's this damage that has been done

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to Bitcoin, where everybody has just lumped crypto into a single category, and it's all a scam,

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has done harm to humanity and the adoption of a sovereign technology that if could have been

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adopted at a quicker pace before governments got their hands around it, could have provided more

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sovereignty and more freedom and more optionality to more people in the world. But instead, that

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adoption was slowed down because many people were scared away from it for very understandable

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reasons. So in a way, like, what's Gary done that he's wrong about? Like, Gary's not responsible

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for operation, you know, choked the goose. That's Warren and her friends. Right? That's

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Warren and her friends. That's not Gary. As far as I'm concerned, he's actually done a pretty good

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job. He could have done it better and sooner before people lost millions of dollars. And we

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could have done it through proper regulation. But with that was never going to happen. We were

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never going to get Congress to do a good job at that ever. This is really our only option.

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And through these actions, long term Bitcoin will be considered more legitimate.

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Yeah. I mean, I think that, I don't know what to add there. I don't fully disagree. I mean,

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it could turn out that way. I guess we'll just have to see. It is, I guess, gross to watch somebody

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play the political, you know, be a political mover, especially for a topic that we care a lot about.

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That part really does gross me out. So I'm not giving them a full pass.

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What about wallet of Satoshi? Do you give them a pass as they pull out of the US app stores?

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This is hard to see. Somebody who's gotten a lot of emails on Coder Radio from developers

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from an internal, like, discussion standpoint, this tears these people apart. They've been

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working on this thing for years. It's a business. They've jumped through all of Apple's hoops. They've

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paid their fines. They've done all the submissions. They've responded to app review, fixed all the

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things. They've built a user base and a brand. And then one day, Apple has an issue with something

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about your app. We don't know exactly what it is. Some of these discussions are actually

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under NDA, so we don't get a lot of detail. But wallet of Satoshi is pulling out of both

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the Play Store and the Apple App Store because it is, quote, not in compliant with US regulations

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around financial custody. That's a concerning little bit of detail right there to me.

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Wallet of Satoshi is a popular custodial Bitcoin lightning wallet. I think for a while,

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it was the most popular Bitcoin lightning wallet. And now there are many other options with a whole

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rainbow array of custody versus self custody versus convenience. And I think that Wallet of

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Satoshi always struck me as something that was going to be a stopgap. It was a fully custodial

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solution run by who knows who runs it. But they seem to have done all right by their users. I've

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never heard anyone complaining that Wallet of Satoshi stole their funds or anything. But

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they never were going to be able to survive at scale because an operation like that only survives

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as long as it's small enough to avoid attention. And I think maybe they got large enough or there

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is just, you know, more attention on financial compliance today. And so they are pulling out

387
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of the US. This doesn't smell like the swan situation to you, where essentially the banks

388
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:40,600
that swans depended on interpreted the guidance that the FinSec is just floating right now as

389
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:45,320
we're going to take action on this. Wallet of Satoshi doesn't have any dollar rails. It's all

390
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:51,080
lightning Satoshis. So they don't have any overlap with the banking system. Maybe Apple

391
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:56,040
or the Google Play Store might have an issue with what they're doing from a financial compliance

392
00:33:56,120 --> 00:34:01,480
point of view. But I think that this is how they at least delay US sanction. You know,

393
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:07,080
they pull out of the US and I mean, they still obviously have US users. If any of their electronic

394
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:12,360
communication crossed the US, then they're going to be, you know, that gives jurisdiction to US

395
00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:17,480
financial regulators. So, you know, what they're doing will be regulated away at some point. But

396
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:22,360
I think part of the playbook is you pull out of the US to try and get to the back of the queue

397
00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:28,040
of US law enforcement actions and then you eventually get enforced against and then,

398
00:34:28,040 --> 00:34:33,160
you know, probably shut down with a fine. I read this as they were approached by Apple

399
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:38,520
with an issue. And I think when you combine it with the fact that Zeus, Zeus developer Evan,

400
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:44,840
had his account deactivated by Apple. Now, he theorizes on Twitter, it could be because

401
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:49,800
his complaints were cited in someone else's antitrust suit against Apple. And so it's just

402
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:55,080
Apple taking, I guess, like a punitive move. However, I doubt that because we have seen other

403
00:34:55,080 --> 00:35:00,440
developers with much larger platforms attack Apple and their policies. And we haven't seen

404
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,360
Apple take punitive actions. Maybe it's maybe it's just circumstances. But I just find it

405
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:09,960
interesting that within two days, wallet of Satoshi and Evan, the Zeus developer have their

406
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:14,600
accounts removed and or in some capacity or another. And Evan got no notice from Apple,

407
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:18,120
he just had his account deactivated. And I think it might still be a test flight, but he had his

408
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:23,720
he can't publish anymore. And Zeus is, in my opinion, maybe the best mobile app out there for

409
00:35:23,720 --> 00:35:28,760
Bitcoin and Lightning. And this is a massive, massive loss. And you know, because we met Evan

410
00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:33,160
at adopting Bitcoin, he recently bought an iPhone, he switched from Android, he bought an iPhone,

411
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:37,960
so that way he could be deep in that ecosystem and make sure that the iOS app was first class

412
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:42,520
for iPhone users. And then Apple goes and does this to him. I wonder if it has to do with

413
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:48,280
Zeus integrating a Lightning service provider, because now Zeus is kind of more of a financial

414
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:52,520
services provider, not just software that allows you to interact with your own node.

415
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:58,200
But frankly, that seems a little nuanced. I mean, generally when Apple bans applications,

416
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:03,880
it's because of some automated process, not a careful, considered look at all of your features,

417
00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:08,680
right? Yeah, it seems like the issue Apple has is things that enable peer to peer payments

418
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:12,520
without KYC. That's what I think the common denominator is. And I think we're going to see

419
00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:17,880
the Apple app store crack down on anything that can do peer to peer that doesn't KYC or go through

420
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:23,480
Apple Pay. And you know, it's ironic, dad, we just are crossing over in like two days,

421
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:28,440
my one year mark from switching from iPhone to graphing OS, because Apple started screwing

422
00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:33,000
around with other Bitcoin wallet developers a year ago. And now here we are in my one year

423
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:36,840
anniversary, and my favorite app has just got their account pulled. This is the one I just

424
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:41,160
switched my wife and kid over to as well during adopting Bitcoin on their iPhones.

425
00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:46,200
It looks very prescient because like we knew Apple was going down this route towards more

426
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:52,840
curated app store. And it makes financial sense because the app store is where Apple is making

427
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:57,880
the bulk of their money right now, because they leverage this 30% fee on top of all

428
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:03,160
transactions in the app store. So they have every incentive to kill this golden goose, right?

429
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:08,680
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think maybe mutiny made the right call when they rebuilt the mutiny wallet

430
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:12,760
app as a progressive web app, just completely bypass the app store and just take advantage of

431
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,680
modern browser technology. You want to put an icon on your dashboard or on your desktop, whatever

432
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:19,960
you want to call it, your launcher, you can on Android, if you want it as an app, you can.

433
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:26,840
But on iOS, you get a great progressive web app. The monetary gates are open, an excerpt from Lynn

434
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:32,920
Alden's recent book, broken money. This is kind of a condensation. Lynn describes how the world

435
00:37:33,240 --> 00:37:39,400
monetary system is basically 160 different currency bubbles. And inside your currency bubble,

436
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:46,760
you can spend these fiat assets or these fiat dollars or yen or Egyptian pounds. And then the

437
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:52,840
moment you get outside of that little bubble, the salability of these bills decreases rapidly.

438
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:59,080
And also while you're inside this bubble, you're entirely subject to the monetary policy and the

439
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:04,920
inflation taxed against you by the monetary sovereign inside that bubble. And that moving

440
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:10,680
money between these bubbles is very costly and it's a permissioned activity. So even if I want

441
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:16,120
to send you dollars in another country, the amount of money you actually get is kind of a result of

442
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:22,040
legislation and fees being taken out. And it is probably not as much as I sent you or significantly

443
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:29,720
less in many situations. And what Lynn observes is that with the advent of Bitcoin and stable coins,

444
00:38:29,720 --> 00:38:37,080
these new technologies are holes in the wall of these isolated monetary environments. The gates

445
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:43,960
are open. Now, people in Argentina who have been experiencing basically 200% inflation per year

446
00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:49,880
over the last 40 years, they can now hold stable coins or Bitcoin, they can easily hold assets that

447
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:55,320
have better property rights than US dollar bank accounts, which are frequently confiscated and

448
00:38:55,320 --> 00:39:02,040
devalued and whatnot. And this basically means that monetary policy around the world outside of

449
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:08,040
the United States is becoming harder and harder for local governments. And I think this is generally

450
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:14,280
viewed as a good thing by Bitcoiners and people who are interested in human freedom and property

451
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:19,800
rights. And I think it's viewed as a bad thing by institutions like the IMF and World Bank that

452
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:25,640
are very concerned with government's ability to perform monetary policy against their citizens.

453
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:32,760
This observation I think is quite prescient because we've recently had an election in Argentina of

454
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:38,600
kind of a fringe candidate who was a part of his manifesto. I think his name is Javier Millay. He

455
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:43,960
wants to dollarize, officially dollarize the Argentinian economy, which is already highly

456
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:49,960
dollarized, but not officially that's, I think, illegal to a deal in dollars. So what does this

457
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:56,920
mean for Bitcoin and Bitcoiners? I think that this article and the trends that Lynn is highlighting

458
00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:03,240
are basically the rest of the world is catching up to concerns that Bitcoiners, gold bugs,

459
00:40:03,240 --> 00:40:09,080
and people who have been concerned about monetary debasement and centralized monetary policy since

460
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:13,640
2008 have been talking about. Yeah, they're catching up as their bags depend upon it.

461
00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:22,760
As inflation in your local economy accelerates, you just have a much greater incentive to understand

462
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:29,240
the value of deflationary assets like Bitcoin. And I don't know how deep we want to get into

463
00:40:29,240 --> 00:40:35,800
the stablecoin discussion, but one advantage of stablecoins for people in developing economies

464
00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:41,640
is that even though the stablecoin is issued by a central issuer, they're usually outside of this

465
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:47,480
local economy where you're being aggressively inflated away. And so the property rights of a

466
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:53,400
stablecoin are generally better than, say, a US dollar bank account in Russia or a US dollar bank

467
00:40:53,400 --> 00:41:00,120
account in Turkey or in Argentina, because these bank accounts are periodically converted into

468
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:04,360
local currency, the dollars stolen and given to the government for their hard currency needs,

469
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:10,200
and then you're stuck with a local inflating currency and you need to quickly rush and buy a

470
00:41:10,200 --> 00:41:15,960
harder asset. And often that's real estate or gold or something. And I think this gets to how

471
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:21,560
it's incredibly difficult to save in non-developed economies because there just aren't a range of

472
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:27,080
financial products that provide the year on year price growth that compensates you or sort of

473
00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:32,840
protects you from inflation. This is a really interesting development because we seem to be

474
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:39,640
entering another period of financial contraction. There are, as we highlighted two episodes ago,

475
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:46,120
there are a lot of signs of stress in the financial system, particularly around US government debt,

476
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:52,040
that even though it's yielding high rates, the entire maturity curve has moved up. And so a large

477
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:57,400
amount of US government debt today is actually underwater on a market to market basis. And

478
00:41:57,400 --> 00:42:01,960
so that just suggests financial stress. It indicates that we might have further banking

479
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:08,520
system problems and the price of oil is falling, indicating a lack of global demand, which is

480
00:42:08,520 --> 00:42:14,680
generally a leading indicator of recession. So in this environment, what is the standard

481
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:19,240
government response and the standard government response is to cut interest rates, to attempt to

482
00:42:19,240 --> 00:42:24,600
stimulate local economies. And when the US does this, all other countries sort of have to do this at

483
00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:30,920
the same time or else their currency will sort of either strengthen or devalue sharply against US

484
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:35,160
dollar. And so basically every central bank around the world, they have to move lockstep with the US

485
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:39,880
dollar or they're going to experience sort of a dislocation in their currency. Well, if the

486
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:47,560
monetary gates are open, if their citizens can opt out of local monetary policy by holding Bitcoin

487
00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:52,840
or stablecoins, that just leads to a very different potential outcome. It might mean that

488
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:58,440
monetary policy is more inflationary and less stimulative. And so I think that this is kind of

489
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:04,040
a trend that bears watching. And it's just very interesting in the context of recent electoral

490
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:10,840
wins in Argentina, where a pro dollar anti local currency candidate has just been elected to the

491
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:16,120
presidency. Yeah, as we record, the news has come out that he's confirmed that he plans to shut down

492
00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:19,480
the central bank because he's released a statement that he's going to shut them down. What I hear

493
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:24,200
you saying is that you're bullish on stablecoins over lightning. That's what I hear is we're going

494
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:28,040
to need stablecoins on lightning. I didn't like it. I didn't want it, but you're making the case

495
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:33,480
that stablecoins are going to just be in massive demand. And right now, the only way to get stable

496
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:38,360
coins is some crappy altcoin, where there's a massive amount of third party risk.

497
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:44,360
Well, I mean, I think that's always going to be the case. A stablecoin entails third party risk.

498
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:50,680
But I guess what you mean is if you can have stablecoins on lightning via taproot assets,

499
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:55,800
then you don't have to deal with the platform risk of using tether on Tron, right?

500
00:43:55,800 --> 00:44:01,080
Or Ethereum. You and I have observed how Ethereum keeps sneaking in the door of institutions.

501
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:05,080
There's some spot ETFs that have been submitted for that. When the SEC sues,

502
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:10,200
crack in a coinbase, and they list all of the securities, Ethereum isn't on that list.

503
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:15,480
And I think it's because of stablecoins. That's right. That's the real use case for Ethereum

504
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:21,160
is that different jokers can make their own crappy stablecoin. And there's just a massive,

505
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:25,240
massive, massive worldwide demand for stablecoins. And I don't know, maybe we want to just,

506
00:44:25,240 --> 00:44:30,680
maybe the conversation is, do we want to just seed that territory to Ethereum or Tron or whatever?

507
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:36,200
Or do we want that action backed by Bitcoin over a layer two? I'm not sure we do, but maybe that

508
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:41,400
conversation should be had because I think the signal from the institutions is stablecoins are

509
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:45,720
here to stay. And I think Lin's analysis makes it clear there's going to be worldwide demand for

510
00:44:45,720 --> 00:44:50,440
stablecoins. It just seems like that's not going away. That's an innovation the market likes.

511
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:56,040
And Bitcoin is in many ways a permissionless technology. And so I don't think we can stop

512
00:44:56,040 --> 00:45:00,920
stablecoins on Bitcoin. And let's not forget that the first stablecoin was built on Bitcoin.

513
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:06,840
That was Tether built on the Omni protocol, which was way back in the day. And it quickly moved to

514
00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:13,080
Ethereum and then to Tron as Bitcoin fees increased. And maybe one day they come back home. I'm

515
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:18,440
actually looking forward to that conversation if it picks up. I think in the notes, we'll put in a

516
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:24,440
link to Cloudflare, who seems to be following OFAC approved lists for their gateway service.

517
00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:29,640
That's a good read. And then we have an optech, which has some details about lightning addresses.

518
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:37,160
Right. And maybe we'll skip over the coin center piece on the US Bank Secrecy Act. But the TLDR

519
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:43,960
there is that the Bank Secrecy Act is a sweeping surveillance policy that essentially removes

520
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:50,600
all financial privacy from any individual who uses a third party in a financial transaction,

521
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:55,320
which is basically every financial transaction other than Bitcoin in the world. And the question,

522
00:45:55,320 --> 00:46:00,360
of course, is this constitutional? And it's definitely not, but it's probably not going to

523
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:06,920
be changed because it's a very useful tool for social control, tax evasion, all sorts of government

524
00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:12,120
policies that could be used for raising revenue. And the US government is in a period where it

525
00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:17,320
needs more revenue. So things like the Bank Secrecy Act, I believe will be very useful tools for

526
00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:21,000
going after additional sources of income. This is a good analysis by coin center.

527
00:46:21,560 --> 00:46:24,440
Actually, I'll give them a shout out for doing good work there. Link in the show notes for that

528
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:27,400
as well. All right. So there's also a link in there to the optech. Is there much we want to get

529
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:32,040
into with the lightning addresses? Well, I mean, it's basically improvements to

530
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:38,680
Ellen URL. So the ability to have a lightning address, Chris at jubiterbroadcasting.com,

531
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:45,560
that's reusable and that provides some sort of privacy from the entity that's hosting the

532
00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:51,000
web server that's providing that data to lightning wallets. I think that's the TLDR.

533
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:55,640
It's kind of nice. I like it. And it's kind of done via DNS. It looks like a DNS lookup to

534
00:46:55,640 --> 00:46:59,400
validate. It's kind of a neat idea. It would be a lot easier if I could just say send me

535
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:03,560
you know, stats to chris at jubiterbroadcasting.com instead of Chris at Zeus or whatever it might

536
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:08,520
be, Albie or whatever happened might be, I would like just my email address. It would make it a

537
00:47:08,520 --> 00:47:14,360
lot simpler for people. And I think that you can, you can host your own Ellen URL right now. So,

538
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:19,240
you know, maybe we should just be doing that and put our sats where our mouth is. True, true, true.

539
00:47:19,240 --> 00:47:23,800
If we hosted ourselves, then that removes the privacy implications of relying on someone else

540
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:27,960
to host it for us. Because you and I definitely need more self hosted infrastructure right now,

541
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:32,280
especially in the holidays. Oh, absolutely. And we need another project real quick. I know.

542
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:36,760
Yeah. Did I tell you I set up that new machine learning server? It's great. My office is so

543
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:41,080
warmed right now. Good. Yeah. Running for the holidays and keep your office warm. That's what I

544
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:47,000
would do. If you'd like to get in touch with us, bitcoindadpod at protonmail.com or head on over

545
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:52,200
to Weapon X and you consider us at Bitcoin Dad Pod or just get in that matrix chat,

546
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:56,840
decentralized federation, get account matrix.org and then jump in there with element or something

547
00:47:56,840 --> 00:48:02,040
like that. We got links in the show notes for that. And I just want to mention we got our 3000

548
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:08,760
sat reoccurring boost from Bob B. Thank you Bob for being a reoccurring booster. You basically

549
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:13,640
are the only listener with the Bitcoin Dad Pod membership and there are absolutely no benefits

550
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:19,400
to that membership. So don't know what to say. He's a pioneer. He's a pioneer. We did get some great

551
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:26,600
boosts this week, including a baller boost from Bitcoin lizard, 100,000 sats using podverse.

552
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:31,400
And he writes great interview with waxwing. Not sure if everyone picked it up, but waxwing

553
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:35,880
gave a subtle shout out to the media produced by the sound engineer. He was of course referring

554
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:40,600
to the Epic Plan B podcast produced by none other than Chris. Thanks, Chris, for producing the great

555
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:45,160
Bitcoin content for over 10 years and thank you both for the excellent Bitcoin Dad Pod.

556
00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:48,760
Well, that's a great deep reference catch Bitcoin lizard.

557
00:48:48,760 --> 00:48:54,360
Right, because Chris was handling the sound for that interview. So if you thought, gosh,

558
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:59,320
the sound quality on this interview is way better than your standard Bitcoin Dad Fair.

559
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:05,640
It's because the podcasting OG original Plan B Chris was handling it.

560
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:10,760
I'm impressed, A, because it was a vague reference and B, we never made reference to the

561
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:14,680
fact that I'm there. I might have laughed or something in the background, but that's a pretty

562
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:19,400
good catch. Nice one and thank you for that great boost too. Yeah, how great is it that waxwing

563
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:25,800
really was tuned in? And what I really appreciated about my conversations with waxwing was that he

564
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:30,840
has a real clarity to history where some of it's faded for me because I followed the Linux and

565
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:35,800
open source community so closely that some of that OG Bitcoin drama has faded a bit. But when

566
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:41,240
I talked to waxwing, it comes back crystal clear again. And so I really enjoyed reminiscing and

567
00:49:41,240 --> 00:49:46,280
getting his insights because he's a real smart guy and clearly he clearly has been following

568
00:49:46,280 --> 00:49:50,840
things closely for a long time. We also received a baller boost or two from

569
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:57,480
Patar who sent in a 50,000 sat boost with the message great show guys and then a 25,000 sat

570
00:49:57,480 --> 00:50:03,000
boost with the message this is the way I remember a lot of the old days. Do you think he was listening

571
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:08,680
to the waxwing interview on that? I do. I do. 75,000 total sats. Thank you, Patar. It's really

572
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:13,720
nice. Nice to see you. Yeah. Oh, me too. I know exactly what you mean. I felt it in the field.

573
00:50:13,720 --> 00:50:23,240
Jen in Indy comes in with 10,000 sats using fountain and says boost. Thank you. Thank you, Jen.

574
00:50:23,240 --> 00:50:29,720
And Scott sends in a row of ducks. I'll come join your Bitcoin Island, Chris, but my primary skill

575
00:50:29,720 --> 00:50:35,880
is software development, which might be oversaturated given your audience. Side note, but dad, I heard

576
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:40,840
you say that you studied econ in college, but also that you work in IT. Did you double major or

577
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:45,800
something? As someone entering college but split between econ and CS, it would be great to hear

578
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:52,120
your story and advice on the matter. Oh, man, that's quite the story. Gosh, okay. Well, Scott,

579
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:57,640
thank you so much for the boost. Basically, when I entered college, I did not get a lot of

580
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:02,680
guidance from my parents. They just said, do what you love. And that's a nice sentiment,

581
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:09,160
but it wasn't actually very practical. And so I did the prerequisites to major in astronomy,

582
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:15,000
computer science, and economics. I think I probably loved astronomy the most. I thought

583
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:19,640
computer science was kind of the most fascinating. I mean, it's slightly different, but it just seemed

584
00:51:19,720 --> 00:51:23,640
like really challenging and interesting. And I settled for economics because people told me

585
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:28,760
it was practical. I was also very interested and I had the opportunity to work with some professors

586
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:35,080
and that was a great experience. But frankly, I have to say that I think that studying economics

587
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:40,360
is, well, if you could study something else, I would do that just because academic economics,

588
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:47,080
as a lot of orthodoxy, it's a field that's been entirely shaped, in my view, by the incentives

589
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:52,440
of central banks that employ probably the most economists per capita of any other institution

590
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:58,200
in the world. And so this has really distorted the focus of academic economics. And so if you

591
00:51:58,200 --> 00:52:01,880
are into Bitcoin and listening to this podcast and you go and study economics in

592
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:05,480
college, you're just going to have a bad time because you're going to be someone who like

593
00:52:05,480 --> 00:52:10,680
brings up obscure Austrian economic philosophy and no one's going to have read it. No one's going

594
00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:14,600
to really care. And you're going to kind of be like the weird guy out in the corner. So while I

595
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:20,440
think that economics is theoretically an important discipline to provide a lens to looking at

596
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:26,120
politics and society and sort of figuring out the actual financial reasons why things happen,

597
00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:30,680
you know, who's actually getting paid here in your individual life. I mean, I think that

598
00:52:30,680 --> 00:52:36,440
something else would probably be more useful to you. That's just my sense. I would also say that

599
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:41,400
when I was in school, I didn't have a huge amount of confidence in my abilities. And so I kind of

600
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:45,960
settled for economics because I thought that computer science was too hard. And I wasn't sure

601
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:50,520
if I could do it. Now, I think that had I gone the CS route, I probably would have had a pretty

602
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:56,120
good time. But it's all very individual. And I hope that, you know, you find a an answer that

603
00:52:56,120 --> 00:53:01,800
you're happy with how it comes in with 10,000 sat boosting to remind you about the 1000 sat

604
00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:07,560
bet laid out in episode one on one, the JPA will reference work from home in some official remarks

605
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:12,920
before January of 2024. Dad took yes, and Chris reluctantly took no. I haven't been able to find

606
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:18,840
any statements. So look back, reviewed transcripts, I did find October 2. JPA said, quote, we're still

607
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:23,240
coming through the other side of the pandemic in reference to the labor market. But he did not

608
00:53:23,240 --> 00:53:29,320
reference work from home specifically. Okay, so the clock is ticking. Sounds like I'm going to

609
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:35,640
give me 1000 sats. Yeah, the best sats ever. Thank you so much for reminding us.

610
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:39,640
Halleck, you are the large language model of our show, it seems.

611
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:49,240
And we received a death boost from the Golden Dragon 4444 sats. Actually, that's two rows of

612
00:53:49,240 --> 00:53:54,440
ducks. It's a flock. It's a flock of ducks flock of ducks. What do you call a group of ducks?

613
00:53:54,440 --> 00:54:00,200
Are you asking Halleck? Yeah, a group of ducks is called a flock or a waddling or a raft. It's

614
00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:04,040
a raft of ducks. I liked waddling. Okay, it's a waddling of ducks.

615
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:09,960
Great episode. I wonder if mempools will ever clear or if Odell is right, and they will never

616
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:15,880
clear now. That is a good question. I would not bet money on mempools clearing. I just don't,

617
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:22,600
I don't, I don't get the angle here. Like, so what we're essentially seeing is ordinals buying up a

618
00:54:22,600 --> 00:54:28,040
lot of like the block time. I mean, we're just seeing them dumping like whenever the whenever

619
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:32,280
the fees are low, they're dumping and bringing up the fees. They're down right now, though, actually.

620
00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:36,600
I mean, they're not outrageous at the moment from where we were last week. My mempool is not even

621
00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:40,600
fully maxed out at the moment, actually. I don't know. I just don't get the strategy. I don't know

622
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:44,600
how long this could last. It feels like it's a temporary thing. People can only buy so many

623
00:54:44,600 --> 00:54:48,840
JPEGs for so long before they're going to run out of hard money. And then what are they going to do?

624
00:54:48,840 --> 00:54:52,920
It seems like it's going to stop at some point. The Golden Dragon continues. Also,

625
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:57,160
would gladly join Bitcoin Island. Well, we'd be glad to have you.

626
00:54:57,160 --> 00:54:58,040
Yeah, sure.

627
00:54:58,040 --> 00:55:02,840
But if there is a Golden Dragon and a Bitcoin lizard, I mean, that's two lizards, right? So

628
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,960
kids would love that. Tell you what, kids would love that. Thank you, Dragon, for the boost.

629
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:10,120
DPG sent in 2000 sets. I don't see a message though. Let us know if that was an error or not.

630
00:55:10,120 --> 00:55:15,160
But thank you for the port. And Loomer came in with a row of ducks. Just simply said wax wing.

631
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:21,080
Kyren also sent a row of ducks. He was listening to the wax wing interview. Fantastic Convo,

632
00:55:21,080 --> 00:55:26,280
dad. I love these historical insights. You'll note that wax wing rarely had strong assertions,

633
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:32,280
a sign of nuance that fact and opinion rarely line up. Also, not a word about price, a breath of

634
00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:36,680
fresh air. Ah, it's true. Price never did come up. And look at Kyren coming in now with a new

635
00:55:36,680 --> 00:55:41,080
branding. No more mere mortals podcast. But thank you Kyren for the row of ducks. Yeah,

636
00:55:41,080 --> 00:55:44,440
that was a great conversation for me just to sit in on. I enjoyed just sitting there. And

637
00:55:44,440 --> 00:55:48,760
you know, we were doing it in El Salvador as the sunset. It was pretty fantastic. It was a great

638
00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:52,120
venue and a great spot. Great temperature too. Because he's up on a hill a little bit. It was

639
00:55:52,120 --> 00:55:55,480
really fantastic conversation. And it seems like the audience really enjoyed it too. Thank you

640
00:55:55,480 --> 00:56:00,520
everybody. Yeah, I think we also had our best meal in El Salvador. So that was a treat.

641
00:56:01,240 --> 00:56:07,240
That was. Thank you everybody who boosted in. We had 14 boosters, a total of 17 boosts across

642
00:56:07,240 --> 00:56:13,640
all of them. Thanks everybody. And we stacked a total of 210,363 sets. We really appreciate that.

643
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:17,400
I love seeing that number across the 200 threshold. If you got some value out of the show,

644
00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:20,680
some insights out of the conversation, helps you kind of wrap your head around a few things,

645
00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:23,880
and then you got some value from that, please consider boosting it. It's a great way to support

646
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:27,080
each production and get your message read on the show. It's one of our favorite segments.

647
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:31,480
You can do that with a new podcast app, podcastapps.com. You heard it here. Fountain and

648
00:56:31,480 --> 00:56:35,800
Castamatic and Podverse are the most popular in our audience. And then some people still boost

649
00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:38,600
them with the podcast index too, because they don't want to switch apps. To do that, you just get

650
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:41,960
Albi, you top it off, then you can boost from the web like the fountain website, I think you could

651
00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:45,720
do it the podverse website. And of course, the podcast index. And to help you sort it all out,

652
00:56:45,720 --> 00:56:50,680
we'll put links in the show notes. It's a great way to participate in a circular Bitcoin economy

653
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:54,920
and support the Bitcoin dad pod at the same time. Thank you, everybody who takes time to do that.

654
00:56:54,920 --> 00:57:01,160
This has been the Bitcoin dad pod recorded on November 24, 2023. I've been your Bitcoin dad,

655
00:57:01,160 --> 00:57:07,720
and I'm here as always remotely with me. It's Chris. Thanks for joining us, everybody. We'll see you

656
00:57:07,720 --> 00:57:23,720
next time.